Team Sharpies did the SCVAS Birdathon as a distributed team on Friday April 24, 2020. We netted 166 species on the day, getting photos (or audio recordings) of 148 different species. Having the team divide and conquer helped us to top our all-time team record of 149 species and last year's total of 141 birds. Who knew that we would have a shot at 100+ birds each in our various little parts of the world?!?

Team Sharpies was lead by Bill Pelletier and Kitty O’Neil and joined by Barry & Ginger Langdon-Lassagne, Sergio Perez, Garrett Lau, Mike Ambrose & Sonja Kramer, Don Pendleton, John & Youngmi Hurley, Gordon Rhyquist and Gail Cheeseman.

This is Barry & Ginger’s portion of the Sharpies story. The rest is on the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society website.

Barry & Ginger Langdon-Lassagne - Hotspots included McClellan Ranch, Bubb Rd Perc Pond, Cuesta Park, Ulistac, Alviso hotspots, Sunnyvale WPCP, and salt pond A4. Highlights included all three Nuthatches, Yellow Warbler and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher at Cuesta; Gallinule, Green Heron and Golden Eagle at WPCP; A4 delivered big with 30 species, many of them hard to get like Lesser Yellowlegs and a flock of 100 Bonaparte's Gulls https://ebird.org/checklist/S67745045 and ended the day with 105 species.

When we birded our 5-Mile Radius (5MR) on Wednesday as The Piratical Flycatchers, we had in mind our Friday Big Day with The Sharpies as well. In a way, The Piratical Flycatchers’ expedition was a scouting run for The Sharpies Birdathon. Both days were highly successful: we proved consistently (n=2 :-)) that we can find more than 100 species of birds without leaving our 5MR. Considering that we’re smack in the middle of Silicon Valley, more than 5 miles from either the east or the west hills and way too far north for the south hills and Coyote Valley, that’s a pretty delightfully diverse collection of birds.

So, what do we have within our 5MR? Well, we aaaaaalmost make it to the hills. McClellan Ranch is just inside the circle, but the golf course across the street from the ranch is not. Along with the nearby freshwater Bubb Road Percolation Pond, we are able to pick up a good number of forest birds. We got Wrentit here on Wednesday (but alas, not on Friday) as well as California Quail. Black-headed Grosbeaks and both Hooded and Bullock’s Orioles were present on both outings. We found Wilson’s Warblers and Pacific-slope Flycatchers at McClellan, and the percolation pond gave us Ring-necked Duck, Bufflehead and a Spotted Sandpiper.

Cuesta Park in Mountain View is also just inside our zone. A block further out and we’d have had to skip it. There we got our expected Pygmy Nuthatch as well as Red-breasted and White-breasted Nuthatches, another Wilson’s Warbler and two very delightful first-of-spring Yellow Warblers. Two Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were chattering in the Cuesta Park Annex (an open dry grassy field with scattering of trees).

We do have a respectable chunk of Baylands to choose from: Alviso Marina and the close corner of newly-filled Pond A12, Alviso Slough and the Gold Street Bridge. We have Sunnyvale Baylands, Harvey Marsh, Elizabeth Street at Gold Street, the Sunnyvale Water Pollution Control Plant and Pond A4. The famous “State & Spreckles” hotspot is, sadly, about twenty yards too far out.

Elsewhere we have part of Arzino Ranch with Burrowing Owl mounds just in range, Ulistac, a couple freshwater ponds: Heritage Park in Sunnyvale and the Bubb Road Percolation Pond in Cupertino, and numerous city parks including our own neighborhood Ponderosa Park which hosts a pair of Cooper’s Hawks. In all, we have about eighty eBird hotspots of various sizes to choose from, far too many to cover in a single day.

Our morning had been forest birding at McClellan and Bubb, then Cuesta, stopping home for lunch and a quick jaunt to Ponderosa Park. The rest of the day we spent wetland birding in the Baylands. The Sunnyvale WPCP had Green Herons, Common Gallinule and a Golden Eagle. Pond A4 had Northern Harrier, Western and Clark’s Grebes, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs (another first-of-year bird) and a single Redhead. On the backside of Pond A4, a multi-mile hike, we scanned Pond A5 and found over 100 Bonaparte’s Gulls mixed with Forster’s Terns, a single Whimbrel, a few distant Scaup and American Wigeon and we heard the call of a Ring-necked Pheasant.

Ginger scanning Pond A4 near the Sunnyvale Water Pollution Control Plant

Although it was disappointing not to be birding together in the same places, The Sharpies kept connected via text-messaging and scanning each other’s eBird checklists as the day went on. We frequently checked in to see whether expected birds had been found, and reported rarities we had discovered. Through planning, creativity and communication we found lots and lots of birds and we each had a great time apart together.

~Barry & Ginger