Cuesta Park in Mountain View
Today, I made an early morning visit to Cuesta Park in Mountain View, CA, to see what birds fall migration had brought to that popular urban park and local birding hotspot. The dawn chorus was still in full swing when I got there, and I was almost immediately overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronate) that I saw flitting through the treetops. I counted thirty of them while I was there, and there may have been even more. I also heard the lilting calls of a few returning White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys) near the off-leash dog area and the children’s hospital. Rounding out the migrants were a Townsend’s Warbler (Setophaga townsendi) and my first Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula) of the fall, both of them located in the picnic area by the main parking area at the end of Nilda Avenue.
Unusual to me was the large number of Pygmy Nuthatches (Sitta pygmaea) that I found on this visit. Normally, in the fall and winter months, I will find maybe two or three of these cute little birds in this park. This time, however, I visually noted a dozen. Pygmy Nuthatches don’t normally migrate unless the cone crops on which they depend are poor, so their unusual numbers here made me wonder what the state of the cone crops were up in the Santa Cruz Mountains nearby. I did notice them foraging not only in the park’s many pine and redwood trees, where I usually see them, but also in its coast live oaks, among its ornamental trees, and even on its grassy lawns. They seemed to be very hungry.
