Welcome to birdWalker, a website of birding photos and trip reports by Bill Walker and Mary Wisnewski, California birders based in Santa Clara County. We've been collecting our trip reports since 1996, we have now recorded 641 trips and 538 species.

Some of our favorite places to go birding include Charleston Slough and the Duck Pond in Palo Alto, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.

So far in week 35 of 2008 we have seen 329 species. Last year at this time we had seen 311.

The Bird of the Week is the Acorn Woodpecker
Photographed Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at Guadalupe Oak Grove Park

Note to photographers: A good place for morning light on shorebirds, be prepared to walk through some muck to get near the water. You'll have to work to exclude culverts and other man-made structures from your backgrounds. Look in the trees on the way to the shore for warblers and accipiters. No restrictions on early morning access. No entrance fee.

We set out from Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center in search of nesting Least Terns. We might have seen a few, high up and far away, but didn't photograph them. Mostly we concentrated on nearby shorebirds in flight.

I wanted to spend some quality time with the ocean, and also try to find some shorebirds. Turns out I had plenty of both.

Two Bewick's Wrens coming to the platform feeder -- are they a couple?

We observed 14 species about 1 month ago at McClellan Ranch in Santa Clara County, California.

We observed 4 species 2 months ago at UCSC Arboretum in Santa Cruz County, California.

We observed 30 species 3 months ago at 2 locations in Sierra County, California.

We observed 50 species 3 months ago at 2 locations in Sierra County, California.

We observed 83 species 3 months ago at 4 locations in Sierra County, California.