Coyote Creek Lagoon Part 2 - Aug. 4, '11

Walking Distance: 2.1 mi. (estim.)
Walking Time: 1 hr. (4:58 - 5:58 p.m.)
Start and End Point: Public parking lot (open sunrise to sunset, day use only); end of Fremont Blvd., Fremont, CA

This evening I returned to walk the second (southern) half of the Coyote Creek Lagoon Trail, part of the Don Edward San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge area.

As I walked out toward the Bay, I passed a crew and a few pieces of heavy machinery involved in some dredging, or removing plants from a water channel. Good for flood control, maybe, but as I was watching the large areas of mud and marsh grasses being peeled off, I couldn't help but think that this probably displaces wildlife that had settled in the area as well.

It was another nice, summer evening walk, with large numbers of various shorebirds, stilts and avocets. As usual, the black-necked stilts were the alarmists among their fellow bird colleagues, with sentries crying out in warning every time I stopped on the trail to take pictures
-- even when I took no steps closer to them, and was using a telephoto lens. Yes, it's happened. I've become one of those crazy bird ladies, telling the stilts that they were annoyingly over-worried. On the other hand, I had spotted gray foxes in this area last week, so I suppose they're better off safe than sorry.

And maybe the big herd/flock of American Avocets nearby appreciated someone keeping an eye out for danger.


Wildlife Sightings:
1 mockingbird; 4 ground squirrels; 3 killdeer; 6 snowy egrets, 1 great egret; 4 sea gulls; 6 swallows; 42 black-necked stilts; 80 ducks; 56 unidentified brownish shorebirds (UBBs); 57 American Avocets; 28 Canada geese; 1 cormorant; 4 crows; 1 kite (bird); 4 red-winged blackbirds; 2 dragonflies; 3 little brown jobs (LBJs)