Santa Clara County "Big Day" Birdathon

Twelve of us started out at 4:00am for a 17-hour birdathon tour of the County. We started at the Coast Casey forebay to listen for rails (unsuccessfully), then hiked deep into Monte Bello Open Space Preserve to listen for Northern Saw-whet Owl, Western Screech Owl and Northern Pygmy Owl (all unsuccessfully), while it poured rain on us. However, once dawn hit the rain cleared up and we had much greater success than the first few hours. By the end of the day, we had seen or heard 157 species, tieing our count from 2004.