ML619016435

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

Continuing spectacular find by Noah Eckman. Always in the same row of bushes and small trees (olive and oleander) where Noah reported it earlier, around (37.4459, -122.1172), adjacent to the north end of the Emily Renzel Wetlands, along the bike trail. Seen roughly from 3:35-3:50, 4:15-4:20, and 4:30-4:35. I was the first one on the scene, with other birders beginning to arrive shortly after I did. I had been searching for about 75 minutes, alongside the other birders, when Garrett Lau finally spotted it, and we all got intermittent, mostly obscured views. After most of the other birders left, it appeared again, and it popped out and foraged in the open by the edge of the trail for a glorious 30 seconds or so before going back into the bushes. I and a few other birders were still getting intermittent views of it hopping around and under these bushes when I left. Beautifully intricate plumage pattern, which I got great binocular views of, but my photos don't capture it adequately. Silent, as far as I could tell, but any calls it gave could have gone unnoticed among the calls of White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows in the same area. From searching eBird and South Bay Birds, seemingly about 6 prior records for Santa Clara County in eBird, plus this one from 2021 not in eBird: https://groups.io/g/southbaybirds/message/25101

Technical information

Model

Canon PowerShot SX620 HS

ISO

1600

Focal length

112.5 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.6

Shutter speed

1/160 sec

Dimensions

870 pixels x 653 pixels

Original file size

199.13 KB