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Welcome
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 652 trips and 539 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. This year so far
So far in week 47 of 2008 we have seen 355 species. Last year at this time we had seen 338. See it this week!
The Bird of the Week is the Green-tailed Towhee Locations Visited Recently
 Located near Bodega in Sonoma County, California. We have recorded 123 species during 5 trips. The first trip was over 6 years ago, the latest trip was 9 days ago.
denotes birds seen while driving the roads of Marin County.
Our second most visited site; location of bill's first birdwalk with Steve Shunk. Includes birds sighted at Lucy Evans Nature Center.
Note to photographers: This site is now most famous for the egret and night-heron rookery located immediately adjacent to the duck pond parking lot. Here in April and May you can get great morning light shots of nesting egrets and night-herons squabbling over nest sites, sitting on eggs, perched in the palm trees with their chicks, or flying frequently to and ...
 Located near Potosi in Grant County, Wisconsin. We have recorded 5 species during 1 trips. The first trip was 29 days ago, the latest trip was 29 days ago.  Located near Point Reyes Station in Marin County, California. We have recorded 7 species during 1 trips. The first trip was 10 days ago, the latest trip was 10 days ago. |
Recent Trip Reports
 We observed 11 species about 1 month ago at Palo Alto Duck Pond in Santa Clara County, California.
This trip supports the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory's annual California Fall Challenge. Mary and Stephanie planned the trip to maximize access to passerine migrants and shorebirds at high tide. Two leaders and eight participants started the day at the West Winton Avenue parking lot for Hayward Regional Shoreline at 8:30am, where five species of warblers and a clay-colored sparrow were seen. The long walk out to Frank's dump gave us a chance to observe Osprey and Horned Larks. Highlights am...
This was our big day for the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory's California Fall Challenge (their annual fundraiser). We ran according to standard big day rules. We are entering as "MBB Overdrive" (Mary Wisnewski, Bill Walker, and Bob Power). Our theme this year is "More than a feeling."
Weather began with clear skies and a temperature of 47 F as we drove over Hwy 92 in the dark. Skies continued clear with only light wi...  We observed 85 species 2 months ago at 10 locations in San Mateo County, California.
A warm sunny fall day with a pretty stiff northerly wind for most of the day. Billie and I visited the Princeton willows (north and south), Pescadero Beach overlook, the Pescadero ranger station, and Skylawn between 7:45 and 4:45. We had no new species at Skylawn.
Our most unexpected look of the day was 40 Common Ravens circling on thermals just west of the Hwy 92 summit around 4:00. I think that's the largest group of ravens I've ever seen.
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