The sun is warm, soon to be hot, and the smell of sunscreen is in the air.
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It’s 9 a.m. on a Friday morning and a group of eager birders has gathered around its excited leader, Diann McCoy, who is giving out instructions about the adventure that lies ahead.
Bathroom here, she says, water station over there. Shorebirds all around us.
“If you see a bike,” McCoy says, “make sure you yell, ‘bike!’”
Most of those gathered at the Baylands Nature Preserve — with binoculars and water bottles in tow — are there for a singular reason: to scout out the gigantic California gull colony less than 2 miles up a gravel path.
“It’s become an obsession,” says Dori Faust, who drove to the Palo Alto preserve from San Jose. “I’ve been birding for 2 1/2 years. I’ve compared it to the kids playing Pokemon Go, and they get excited to find a Pokemon. Well, that’s how we feel about finding the birds.”
Diane McCoy, second from left, a field trip leader with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance, and Dori Faust, of San Jose, right, observe birds during the organization’s field trip to a California gull colony at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday, May 30, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
In 1980, the California gull was rarely found in the South Bay — just 24 were spotted that year. Last year, there were more than 7,000 nests. Later this morning, hundreds will be found on a little patch of land adjacent to a landfill and surrounded by a salt pond.
Poor waste management has been the catalyst in the resurgence in California gull colonies, said Matthew Dodder, executive director of the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. Landfills have reduced the Bay Area’s marshland by 98% since the Gold Rush, but the California gulls have thrived.
It’s the appreciation of different species that makes this group of people particularly drawn to bird watching, also known as birding.
There are more than 1,200 members in the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance, several of them here this morning, and the journey through the marsh starts with a slow walk.
Having a chat with someone on a bird-watching mission is a game within itself. They’re too in-tune with the habitat to truly engage in the conversation.
“It’s not a hobby,” Doddler says. “We like to say that it’s a life choice.”
Within a few seconds, the faint sound of a swallow in the marsh draws the entire group’s attention.
“The swallows are foraging for insects to feed the young,” Dodder says. “These particular places are fantastic locations for birds. This is fresh water that comes in from the hills and drains out through the channel. It gets salty and creates a different habit for the birds.”
Soon, someone spots a duck that looks different from the others, and now everybody has turned their binoculars on the bird. With a quick glance, Dodder makes the identification.
“A cinnamon teal,” he says. “It’s the color of a penny. It was holding its wing open a moment ago and it’s sky blue. It’s much less common than the mallard.”
He hands a visitor his binoculars.
“Borrow the binocs so you can take a look,” he says.
Matthew Dodder, executive director of the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance, observes birds during the organization’s field trip at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday, May 30, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
As the group oohs and awes over the discovery, Dodder tells a story.
“One time I saw a male cinnamon that was trying to mate with a female mallard, which is twice the size,” Dodder says. “And he was so intent on reaching that goal that he didn’t even notice when I reached down and picked him up.”
It’s the personal stories that connect humans to the birds, he says.
Dodder was just a boy in Brookline, Massachusetts, when he started to wonder how birds find food in the snow-covered winter months. He began to put out seeds and nuts for them to eat.
“Since then, it has become a passion,” he says. “I went to college and went to seminary, then got a fast-paced job in graphic design for 30 years, but the entire time I was interested in birds. I started teaching night classes at Palo Alto Adult School. I had gruesome deadlines at work, but at night, I got to share my relaxing pastime with people.”
At the school he met his wife Kelly. The two have been married for more than 20 years and frequently go on birding adventures together.
Today’s quest is one he’s done dozens of times, but each time it’s different. A mudflat like this one, he says, could be filled with thousands of shorebirds and multiple species. It changes during the year.
Birds with diets of insects, nectar and pollen breed here during the summer. Migrating birds make a home here during the winter months while navigating the Pacific Flyway.
“There’s always that sense of wonder and discovery,” Dodder says. “And if you’re really competitive, you’re looking for the new bird that you haven’t seen yet this year or the one your friend hasn’t seen.”
Most birders have an eBird account that keeps track of every birding trip and every species they’ve seen. The free app keeps a lifetime score.
“Mine is 349,” Dodder said. That means he’s seen 349 of the 418 birds found in Santa Clara County. “My best year was 2021, when I saw 274. I was pretty eager to catch everything. But it was exhausting. You’re always chasing. You miss dinner with your wife. And the deadline at work somehow slips away.”
Dodder’s story is soon interrupted. All the binoculars are out again. Somebody thinks they’ve made a discovery.
“It’s a black-neck stilt chick!” someone yells.
“Where?!” cry the others.
Fingers are pointing, shoulders are adjusting and cameras are clicking.
It’s hard to see, but the tiny chick is there, with an all-gray body, black tail and white feathers that can only be seen if it holds its wings just right. It’s sitting on the edge of the Adobe Creek between two adult stilts, its parents perhaps.
“Oh, now it’s standing back up,” Dodder says. “Oh, it just pooped.”
A group of bird watchers observe birds during the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance’s field trip to a California gull colony in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday, May 30, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
The group will spend 10 minutes enjoying the sight, a highlight of the visit to the 1,940-acre site, as Dodder explains what makes this particular chick unique.
“A lot of shorebirds are precocial, meaning that when they’re hatched, they’re pretty much independent almost immediately,” he says. “Ducks and other birds like songbirds are altricial, which means that they’re helpless. They’re like humans or mammals. They need to be fed.”
While the baby chick looks for food, several mallards hunt nearby. A brown pelican suddenly swoops down into the water looking for its own snack.
“You think, how can they feed simultaneously in the same area without competing?” Dodder says. “The shape of the bill, the length of the legs, you realize they’re not eating the same things. The ones with long bills are probing much deeper down. Some are catching things on the surface, some in deep water, some in the shallow water.
“It’s a nice metaphor for humanity and diversity. Our environment benefits from diversity. Nothing is wasted, everything is utilized.”
Even so, climate change and habitat loss continues to be devastating to most bird populations. Dodder says 75% of bird species are in decline and 50% of bird chicks die within their first year.
“And when you think about the EPA being defanged by the current administration, it means that even endangered species don’t have the protections they had before,” he said. “And with the preference for development and fossil fuel, that’s only going to get worse.”
A group of bird watchers walk along the Adobe Creek Loop Trail during the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance’s field trip to a California gull colony at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday, May 30, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
It makes groups like the Bird Alliance even more important to conservation efforts. Dodder is one of seven employees paid by the alliance, which operates on grants, donations and member dues. Only three of them are full-time. And when they’re not busy running tour groups, providing educational videos and self-guided tours online, or leading educational courses and field trips for local elementary school students, the staffers are busy working with city officials.
“We have a huge advocacy arm, so we take on large, politicized proposals with science-based arguments against those proposals, or for other proposals,” he says. “It’s not just the ecology that’s lost. It’s what we’re giving to our children. What are they going to inherit? They’ll inherit a Bay Area with no animals.”
The organization also is currently fighting to keep the city skies dark at night, a necessary ingredient for nocturnal birds to safely move from place to place.
“But we need more people, we need more volunteers and we need more financial support,” Dodder says.
As the group makes its way towards the gull colony, Dodder stops to point out some other discoveries.
A Northern harrier, formerly known as a marsh hawk, flies low and hunts for small rodents by sound. This separates it from a red-tailed hawk, which is a high-altitude soaring bird that uses eyesight to dive down to hunt, or a falcon, which hunts for birds in flight.
A snowy egret flies by. These birds were nearly extinct in the late 1800s because their wispy plumes were popular in ladies’ hats. A few advocates brought it to the attention of the public and the first Audubon Society was formed.
There are American white pelicans and brown pelicans resting in the Charleston Slough to the east, though Dodder explains that the brown pelicans are having a “horrible year.”
“Warm water is not very good for bait fish and other foods that seabirds rely on, so when you have warm water, it can be really hard for the seabirds to survive the nesting season,” he says. “So the pelicans are dying in large numbers.”
A few double-crested cormorants bathe in the Slough. A great egret flies by.
Dodder can tell it’s not a snowy egret because “the wingbeats are slower,” he said. “The bill is yellow as opposed to black. It’s a bigger bird, twice the size.”
Finally, the group spots its treasure: the California gull colony.
McCoy, who helped carry a telescope and 4-foot stand all the way there, sets up the scope for folks to look at the gull chicks.
Even the most casual observer could appreciate the sight ahead: hundreds of gulls sunbathing on a small patch of grass and some on the edge of Soap Pond. They gather in large numbers and often move together.
A swarm of insects flies above them, and suddenly dozens of gulls start flying with them, mouths open, feeding themselves and their baby chicks.
“Look at that!” McCoy yells, and the group suddenly shifts their binoculars.
Diane McCoy, center, a field trip leader with the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance, guides a group of bird watchers to a California gull colony at the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday, May 30, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Among the gulls are a few American white pelicans, one double-crested cormorant and the occasional mallard.
“If I were a gull and a chick, I would be concerned that the pelican would happily eat a small gull,” Dodder says.
The bird enthusiasts will spend at least a half hour here, studying every detail of the gull colony.
Notably, cell phones are in their pockets. Work deadlines are forgotten. Stresses are left behind.
As much as they’ve come for the birds, they’ve also come for the peace.
“This is only my second field trip,” said Claire Bailey, 28, whose interest in birds was almost a direct counter-reaction to the burnout from the pressures of modern society.
She read a book, “How to Do Nothing,” by Jenny Odell, and “it’s kind of a rejection of the go-go-go work attitude, that we’ve got to be productive all the time. That sparked the interest.”
Bailey has a law degree but decided to take a more relaxing job at a library until she moves back to her native Australia sometime next year. Hanging out with birds has been a meditative experience.
“It’s so easy to just be here, listening, looking,” she says. “It’s also a very slow activity. I used to go hiking and you’d be walking pretty fast but here, you’re just slowing down, noticing what’s around you.”
She’s piqued her partner and friends’ interest in birding, too.
“I feel like we’re sparking a little something,” she says. “It’s a movement.”
Call it a movement. Call it a hobby. Call it a life choice.
Or call it a breezy Friday morning in Palo Alto.
Details: The Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance offers two to three field trips a week, most open to the public, in Santa Clara Valley; scvbirdalliance.org. The Baylands Nature Preserve, one of the largest undisturbed marshlands in the Bay Area, offers 15 miles of trails amid tidal and freshwater habitats. Parking is free along Terminal Boulevard near the intersection with San Antonio Road.
Claire Bailey, left, and Edith Peters observe a California gull colony during the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance’s field trip to the Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, Calif., on Friday, May 30, 2025. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Additional bird alliances in the Bay Area include:
San Mateo County Bird Alliance in San Mateo; sequoia-audubon.org.
Golden Gate Bird Alliance in San Francisco and Western Alameda County; goldengatebirdalliance.org/.
Ohlone Audubon Society in Southern and Eastern Alameda County; ohloneaudubon.org/.
Marin Audubon Society in Marin; marinaudubon.org.
Mount Diablo Bird Alliance in Contra Costa County; mtdiablobirds.org.
For beginners looking to get into birding, Dodder recommends taking the following steps:
[DODDER’S BEGINNERS GUIDE]
Join a beginner-friendly trip.
Watch SCVBA’s educaitonal videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw65RGDsD7TsUW6jSf_W7sQ).
Get a pair of binoculars. “We have binoculars that we hand out on some of our walks,” Dodder says.
Download the Merlin app and make an eBird account.
Get a field guide.