Exiles on a Maine street

Saturday, September 19, 2026

Day 19.252: Moss Landing State Beach (visit 1)

The reason for my visit to Northern California was a meeting in Moss Landing - about 50 miles and anything from one hour to five hours* south of San Jose. In order to (1) avoid the five hour end of that, (2) stay on Eastern Time and (3) make time for some birding, I decided to leave around 4:30 am (7:30 Eastern), go and do some dawn birding at the local state beach and then go to the meeting at 8 am.

My drive took me down the 17 (which turned quite windy through the mountains in the dark) until I got to the 1 ... later I would take a left on Dolan, straight over and then take the 101 North all the way up to San Jose, California. (Anyone else not able to think about driving in California without thinking of these sketches?)

This is how that visit went (in addition to the sea otter):

In the first light - a whimbrel (Hudsonian) sighting - only a second life record I think and an excellent look in the low light

California gull

Long-billed curlew (I'd been hearing them since before the light was good enough to see them, but I quite like this first shot of one)

Elegant tern (similarly vocal in the dawn light)

I walked over the dunes to the beach and saw this gull harassing this common murre

Sadly, we read that murre's have been struggling to find food out at sea after a successful breeding year

Marbled godwit (also a second life-sighting)

Marbled godwits

Western gull with the godwits

Godwit flyby

California gull

The photography got a little easier as the light improved.

Great blue heron

Black-bellied plover

Harbor seals

Long-billed curlew

Western gull

Brown pelican

Brandt's cormorant

Brandt's cormorants

A happier-looking common murre

Splashing in the harbor entrance

Elegant tern

Loon (likely common)

I liked this comparison of a long-billed curlew and a marbled godwit in flight

For those keeping score on life birds from this short trip to the Pacific coast, there were three in yesterday's post (black phoebe, California gull & American avocet) and five more here (long-billed curlew, elegant tern, common murre, western gull & Brandt's cormorant).

* five hours may be an exaggeration, but the traffic is quite serious at times.

Friday, September 18, 2026

Day 19.251: Shoreline at Mountain View

I arrived in California on Tuesday after an approximately 12 hour journey to find it was still early-afternoon and technically before I was guaranteed to be able to check in to my hotel, so I decided to go for a walk and potentially do a bit of bird spotting. I chose Shoreline Park in Mountain View - right next to the Googleplex - Google's HQ. Driving past the entrance to the Google campus also allowed me to check another item of my San Jose want-to list by spotting several Waymo driverless cabs near the entrance. I figured that a map showing drivers per road-vehicle probably has a local minimum around that entrance albeit with a value below, but still pretty close to one.

My mantra as soon as I saw a bird was "every bird could be a life bird". Of course, that's probably the right way to approach all birding, but as the first time I'd done any deliberate bird identification on the west coast, it was especially true.

Many of the birds I saw at Shoreline Park were not life birds, but a few were. Here is some of what I saw.