On Sunday 4/26/2020, Richard and I did a Varied Twitchers Big Day in Santa Clara County. The effort was a bit hampered by COVID-19, including not being able to drive into the Palo Alto Baylands, not sharing scopes, and maintaining six-foot separation. Nevertheless, we managed to find 155 species between our 3:25am start at the Mountain View Forebay and our 8:20pm finish at the Stile Ranch trailhead of Santa Teresa CP. The best and most unexpected find was a second-calendar-year, light-morph SWAINSON'S HAWK heading north over the Mountain View Forebay and then circling up over the Palo Alto Flood Control Basin from 12:43pm to 12:47pm. The rest of the species were pretty much expected at their locations.

This was the 18th year of Varied Twitcher Big Days and, as in the past two years, we failed to add a new species to the cumulative list. At least we also did not miss any species for the first time! We did find two species only for the second time ever, including an alternate-plumaged LESSER YELLOWLEGS that flew by us calling at the west end of Shoreline Lake and then headed to the Forebay, where we later found it again in the southwest corner (reported in prior days by others) and a SAY'S PHOEBE along Hellyer Avenue, which would have been reported more times previously if we had ever had time to check Hellyer Avenue in past years. We did miss four species for only the second time ever, missing both White-tailed Kite and Northern Harrier (we had missed both previously on 4/30/2016 - tough bird in late April I guess) and both Glaucous-winged and Bonaparte's gulls (only other misses of those species were on 4/20/2013 and 4/24/2010, respectively). We also missed Northern Pintail, Marbled Godwit (lack of Baylands access and tide timing the likely causes), and Western Gull for the third time. In fact, we only saw California and Ring-billed Gulls all day, despite walking out to A16 from the EEC entrance road. We tallied 9 gull species in 2008 and have averaged 6.4 gull species over the previous 17 years. Wintering sparrows were likewise challenging. We found only 3 single GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROWS and 1 lone WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW.

We finished up with Sierra Road and were down to Piedmont Ave. by 5:55pm, allowing time for a quick check of the Penitencia Creek recharge ponds from 6:00pm to 6:18pm, where we found 2 alternate SPOTTED SANDPIPERS, but no Solitary Sandpiper. We figured it had departed the night before, but heard later it had been reported by many, until at least 3:36pm that day! That species would have been new to the cumulative list. Sigh.