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 679 trips and 540 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 27 of 2009 we have seen 207 species. Last year at this time we had seen 333.

The Bird of the Week is the Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Photographed Wednesday, July 02, 2008 at McClellan Ranch

We observed 10 species about 1 month ago at 2 locations in Deschutes County, Oregon

We observed 21 species about 1 month ago at Shevlin Park in Deschutes County, Oregon.

We observed 61 species about 1 month ago at 3 locations in Siskiyou County, California

Rick, Sherry, Mary & Bill go on a 10 day walkabout in California and Oregon, including three days in Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Day 1 includes the drive north on I-5, lunch at Burney Falls, a photo stop at Fall River Mills and the descent into the Modoc plain. Mammals seen on the trip: Pronghorn Antelope and some sort of chipmunk.

We observed 148 species 2 months ago at 23 locations in Santa Clara County, California

We observed 4 species 2 months ago at Palo Alto Duck Pond in Santa Clara County, California.

We're getting ready for our big day on Sunday!

As usual, we were up on the hills above Stanford this morning for Easter sunrise service near the radio astronomy dish. Also, as usual, we were joined by several dozen very curious cattle who aren't usually serenaded by guitars and flutes. The dawn chorus up there was quite impressive, I'm glad there have been such extensive efforts to maintain the habitat up there.