Birding 101
Birding 101. I don’t mean this is a primer on birds, I mean literally birding US-101. That grey slab of Bay Area concrete that I commute on each day. The 60-mile round trip I’ve filled in various ways: listening to podcasts, the radio or just driving in silence. And often I go about in a lethargic daze. That is until I realized we share this space with birds too.
Birding this road didn't begin as intentional, but my encounters built up over the years. On a grey morning in San Francisco, I took the on-ramp to start my journey south and was greeted by a Cooper’s Hawk perched on the concrete divider. She took off to soar over a distant gas station, giving me an extra update to provide at our team's morning meeting. The pylons that track the salt marshes have been productive too, offering crows’ nests, raptors’ and particularly Peregrine Falcons to those trapped in the traffic mire of Mountain View. Water-loving birds are plentiful where 101 meets the inner bay in South San Francisco. A Great Blue Heron once found a home in a puddle of rain water between the road and off-ramp. The faster traffic in this stretch however means the Belted Kingfishers and dive-bombing terns are only blurs in my peripheral vision—why can’t it be bumper-to-bumper here?!
These moments during unproductive transit time in a place as un-natural as a freeway woke me up to the idea that birds are to be had in every moment. We can opt in to birding whenever we choose. Now I bird waiting in line for a restaurant, walking from the car to the grocery store and even whilst waiting in the purgatory of the DMV. This has had a profound effect on my nascent birding skills, which have improved by slow immersion.
My 101 commuter experiences reflect this progression. Snake-like, oily birds perched on rocks in the Bay have gone from “cormorants” to a spirited to-ing and fro-ing between “Brandt’s” and “Double-crested.” The catch-all “seagull” exclaimed near San Francisco’s waste management site has evolved into a squinting of eyes and furrowing of brow as I grasp to determine the bird’s feet color. I can even occasionally impress passengers by postulating “Red-tailed—until proven otherwise” to every raptor we see on distant columns of San Jose streetlights.
Before I know it I’m at work, out of the car and walking to the entrance. On the way I hear peeping of White-tailed Kites in their parking lot nest and Lesser Goldfinches singing from the tree's. I take lunch on the patio accompanied by the gentle 'pitting' of the Dark-eyed Juncos scrambling over the tiles and Anna's Hummingbirds buzzing about the planted flowers.
