Nest building activity at Palo Alto Baylands

Its quite evident that the Egrets aren't the only ones who have started with their nest building activities. Infact, the Black-crowned Night Heron's are in large numbers at the Palo Alto Baylands preserve, I had counted atleast 20 nests on the trees behind the ranger station and there are about 15-20 in nearby surrounding trees adjacent to the Duck Pond.

I got lucky when I pulled my car into the Duck pond parking lot, I noticed one of the BCNH was perched on top of a tree with its nest building material.

You can also notice his legs have turned pink indicating they are in their breeding season.


The sparrows are highly active everywhere at this time, I caught one song sparrow with some twigs in his mouth. He was shuttling to and fro from his nest that was hidden inside a shrub.



Song sparrow's got their name from their ability to learn upto 20 different songs and then continuously improvise them to create lots and lots of variations, sometimes even upto a 1000. The females choose their mate by his ability to show as many variations. Here is one showing off his talent.