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Santa Cruz County Beach Birding

A towhee had taken up winter quarters on Laguna Creek Beach. This beach is close to Davenport on Highway One and 10.2 miles from my cabin (I checked).

Two towhees, a large, sparrow-type bird, are common on the California Coast. The appropriately named California towhee and the spotted towhee. Neither of these two species were the reason I headed north on Highway One on a Saturday morning.

I was here, hiking into a headwind on a sunny but blustery winter’s morning, to see a rare towhee on the coast. It is said that every bird is rare somewhere and the green-tailed towhee is rare here on the California coast. I have seen many green-tailed towhees at elevation in the Sierra Nevada Mountains but I was going to attempt to add this species to my Santa Cruz County list. I wanted a green-tailed towhee at sea level!

Who knows how long this wayward towhee had been on the Santa Cruz Coast but on January 12, 2021, two birders happened to be birding this beach and also happened to know that this towhee was out of place in this location. They reported it and other birders searched for it, some getting momentary looks of this sulky towhee. There where even less quality photos of this ever-moving and scrub-loving bird.

So the bar was low for a quality sighting and capturing great photos was an even lower bar. That’s if I didn’t whiff on this towhee altogether, for any sighting is never guaranteed. As one birder noted, “Ducked into a bush and never reappeared.”

The bird was seen on the northern part of the beach, north of the creek and just left of an “AREA CLOSED” sign. The sight was described as being where the sand meets a six foot high cliff. So here I was, peering into the bushes. Flanked by two nude male sunbathers.

The first bird I saw was a blue-grey gnatcatcher as is foraged and called at eye level in the coyote brush.

I turned on my bluetooth speaker and selected a recording of the towhee’s “cat-like ‘mew'” call. I hit play and after a single call, the green-tailed towhee shot out of a bush in front of me and stood before me on the sand. Sometimes birding is just this easy.

I had amazing views of the towhee as it foraged on the sand and I was able to get great photos in amazing light. The towhee stayed out in the open for about two minutes before disappearing into the coastal brush.

This photo proves just how elusive the green-tailed towhee can be! Now you see it, now you don’t. You have to be quick to photograph this bird.
The green-tailed towhee with it’s rufous crest, white throat, and greenish wings. This bird almost seems to be posing for me.
The profile view would have made Roger Tory Peterson proud. Here you can see the greenish tail.

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Saw-whet in Paradise

In mid- January, my neighbor from down the hill from my cabin, emailed me that she heard an owl calling, just after dark.

She thought it could be a saw-whet or a western screech-owl. On following evenings the mystery owl called again and again, just after dark. She confirmed that she thought that the owl calling was a northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus)!

This would be an amazing Santa Cruz County bird to add to my list and especially so to hear this diminutive owl in my own backyard! Well, close to it anyway.

The Northern saw-whet owl is can be common or uncommon resident of the California coast, favoring mixed conifers and deciduous woods. This owl may be much more common than believed because if it isn’t calling, this owl goes undetected. It is one of our smallest owls with a length eight inches and weighing in at 2.8 ounces. In other words, this owl weights as much as three standard sized envelopes.

The northern saw-whet gets its common name because it’s incessant “toot-toot-toot” territorial call that reminded early ornithologists of the whetting or sharpening of a saw; a common sound in the forests as lumberjacks felled trees to fuel a growing nation.

I have never heard a saw-whet call in Paradise Park. This may be because wildlife has been displaced by the destructive CZU Lighting Complex Fire. This fire burned in the late summer of 2020 for 44 days, consuming almost 400,000 acres of the western side of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Some of those animals are now wildfire refugees and are now establishing a new territories.

I planned to head down to Santa Cruz and do some owling, to see if I could confirm the existence of a saw-whet in Paradise Park. So I set out at 5:30 PM and walked around as the diurnal birds stopped calling, one by one as they sought out their nighttime roosts. The last diurnal call was the “chip” of a California towhee. It was now time for the night shift.

I centered my search at the picnic grounds. This is where my neighbor had recently heard the saw-whet. Now it was a matter of waiting a time with patience. A time to focusing the senses, to filter out the sounds of traffic on Highway 9 and seek the repetitive toots of the saw-whet.

At 6:10 I heard the first call of the saw-whet. It seemed distant and tough to locate. The saw-whet’s call is very loud for such a small bird, it can be heard from half a mile away.

I moved along the road to try and locate the owl, but as always, owls are elusive. At times it seemed the saw-whet was close and at other times far. As if the owl was frequently changing locations. In reality the owl was probably changing the dynamics of it’s song. It would be silent for a short time and then resume it’s name token song. I now had a new Santa Cruz County bird in my own backyard!

On Saturday evening, I went out for another owling ramble, to reconfirm the saw-whets presence in my world. Would I hear it two nights in a row? I also wanted to get a better sound recording of the owl. The evening before I recorded a faint but distinctive recording.

This time I set out a little later. I was at the picnic grounds at 6:30 pm and it wasn’t long before I heard the saw-whet calling up the hill.

I walked up the road toward where I thought the sound was coming. Hanging from my belt loop was my bluetooth speaker (an indispensable piece of equipment for any tropical bird guide).

I was going to use a recorded call of a call-whet to try to bring the owl closer so I could get a better recording of it’s call. In birding terms this is called using “playback”. When I played the recording through the speaker, the saw-whet seemed to accelerate it’s song. The call was getting louder as if the owl was coming closer to my location.

An owl’s flight is silent so I could not hear if the saw-whet was flying towards me. But what I did hear was the owl’s wings brushing against the branches above me. I was able to get two recordings with my iPhone and then I left the saw-whet to it’s “day”of establishing it’s territory and hunting for small rodents.

Here is a link to my eBird checklist with the two recordings I made: https://ebird.org/checklist/S81289488

I headed back to my cabin, satisfied with my night revels but I had one last trick up my sleeve. I stopped outside my neighbor’s house and I turned my bluetooth speaker on and played the saw-whet call at full volume! Within a minute, she came out surprised that it was just me and not a saw-whet. I thanked her for telling me about the saw-whet owl in our backyard!

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County Birding: San Mateo and San Francisco Counties Part 2

On Sunday I decided to head to Lake Merced and its environs.

I started at the Vista Grande Canal which is just south of the Concrete Bridge. This concrete canal can have some nice species including the continuing swamp sparrow. I found the sparrow shortly after arriving and enjoyed watching it foraging in the water with excellent mid-morning light.

The continuing swamp sparrow and it’s relflection. The reflected green makes this scene look like a May Morning instead of early February.

Above my head, on a power line, a California scrub-jay perched with an acorn in it’s mouth. This intelligent species is an avian gardner, responsible for oak trees “growing” uphill because of the jay habit of caching thousands of acorns in the ground.

In the distance, toward the lake, I could here the unearthly song of a male great-tailed grackle. This “Devil bird” has been slowly making it’s way north.

My next stop was the Boathouse and docks. This is where I had seen an adult bald eagle a few weeks before. The docks can sometime yield interesting gulls.

I first checked, quiet hopefully, the eucalyptus for the adult bald eagle but this bird had flow weeks ago. With the naked eye, I could see a lone gull on the nearest wooden dock. It’s grey mantle and white underparts said, “small adult gull”.

I put bins on the bird and I realized that this was no ordinary gull for this location. What I was looking at was a wintering pelagic gull that rarely comes ashore excepted when pushed towards land, ahead of a storm front. And there had not been a storm in the past week. The bird I was looking at was an adult black-legged kittiwake!

I grabbed my camera and headed down to the docks to get a better look. Yes the yellow-green bill and dark “ear muffs” put this in the kittiwake category. I took some photos for documentation for this was indeed a rare bird at this location. Most kittiwakes in San Francisco, are seen by scope when birders are doing a seawatch. The last two eBird reports of black-legged kittiwake from Lake Merced where from 2001 and 1977!

One of the first photos I took of the wayward kittiwake. The indentation just under the breast seemed off. When the kittiwake turned to face me I could see the reason this pelagic species had been forced ashore. There was a deep indentation under it’s breast and a large, open wound in it’s chest. The kittiwake was injured.

The kittiwake had come ashore to rest and die.

I watched the kittiwake as it repeatedly drank water. It occasionally sat down but then stood up again and took another sip of water.

This angle shows the open wound, perhaps caused by a fishing line.

I put word out to local birders of my find. I wanted other birders to witness this pelagic rarity on the shores of a San Franciscan lake before it flew off or passed away. In all about 11 birders reported seeing the kittiwake that Sunday.

One report, from mid afternoon, noted that animal control attempted to net the kittiwake but it was well enough to fly off towards the gull flock in the middle of the lake. It eventual returned to it’s favored place on the wooden dock.

The last eBird report of this bird was just after 4 PM and then it was seen no more.

The adult kittiwake taking a sip of water. This photo is bittersweet. While is was amazing to see a new San Francisco County bird but also realizing that I was probably witnessing the kittiwake’s last day on Earth.
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County Birding: San Mateo and San Francisco Counties Part 1

On Saturday morning, Grasshopper Sparrow and I headed east on Highway 92, our destination was Parkside Aquatic Park in San Mateo. Our plan was to do some San Mateo County birding. I hoped to add some new birds to my San Mateo County list and Grasshopper was hoping to add some lifers to his list!

This park lines Marina Lagoon and it is a great place for ducks, geese, herons, and waders. But we where here for the rare county duck, the redhead. After a short search, we spotted the distinctive duck with two females.

The appropriately named redhead. This is a male at Parkside Aquatic Park.
A pouch of American white pelicans foraging in the lagoon.

There were plenty of other birds to looked at such as a green heron, a group of American white pelicans, and the stunning hooded merganser.

I love the contrast between this beautiful male hooded merganser and a white house’s reflection on the lagoon.

Our next stop was to Bair Island Wildlife Refuge. Our target bird was a Pacific golden-plover that had been seen a few days early by the legendary San Mateo county birder Peter Metropolis. When we arrived, it was low tide which meant that we were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack or a plover is a vast mash that was full of other birds. We joined Chris Hayward, a local birder who is also a spotter on many pelagic trips leaving from Pillar Point Harbor. Chris had not yet seen the plover. We were joined by another birder, the more eyes the better.

In the marsh were many ducks and peeps. Grasshopper spotted a male Eurasian wigeon. That was the only rare bird we recorded at the refuge. So we left Chris to continue the search and we headed back north on Highway 101 to the next exit to look for some more county ducks at Nob Hill Pond, so named because the pond is located behind a Nob Hill supermarket.

When we first arrived , when checked the channel near the San Carlos Airport for the continuing female long-tailed duck. We had tried for this bird for about five times, without success. We failed again but we would try again after trying to get a very rare duck on Nob Hill Pond.

This duck is common in northern Eurasia but rare in Coastal California. This is the smallish diving duck called the tufted duck because of the prominent tuft of feathers emitting from the back of it’s head, most noticeable in the male of the species.

Grasshopper spotted the tufted duck through the scope. It’s tuft was growing in length like my Covid hair! There is nothing like young eyes! Well spotted Grasshopper Sparrow!

Finally, the tufted duck is ours!! On the right is a stunning male canvasback.

We headed back toward the airport to continue on search for the continuing female long-tailed duck. We had whiffed on this species on about five attempts but we adopted a now-or-never approach to this sought after species.

As the the time neared noon, the reflections where intense and from our position, the birds where backlit. Panning with the scope, all we where seeing where buffleheads. Being diving ducks they appeared and disappeared giving us renewed hope followed by disappointment when an bufflehead surfaced. No long-tailed.

After about a 20 minute search the female long-tailed duck appeared near some pylons on the east side of the airport. County bird and a lifer for Grasshopper!

After a three county duck day we headed back to the hacienda in San Mateo. Grasshopper had spotted a rare west coast sapsucker a few weeks before. Because it was rare, he was unsure of the ID, he submitted his photos to some San Mateo County birder and his sighting was confirmed. (This is the correct approach for a young birder, well learner Grasshopper!)

Over some afternoon suds, Grasshopper said excitedly, “woodpecker!” I was able to get some photos of the sapsucker in the oak in the backyard. A yellow-bellied sapsucker, a fourth San Mateo County bird! Not bad for a day’s worth of county birding.

On Sunday I found a bird in San Francisco on Lake Merced that had not been recorded in this location since 1977. Those were the days when birders were few and the optics were poor. But with a open buttoned shirt and bellbottoms, the 1977 birder must have looked sharp!

To be continued. . .

A great bonus was a backyard yellow-bellied sapsucker in Grasshopper Sparrow’s backyard. Four San Mateo County county birds!

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Union Pacific No. 844

If Southern Pacific’s Queen of Steam is 4449 then Union Pacific’s Royalty must be 844.

The FEF class (4-8-4) No. 844 is known as “The Living Legend”. This class of passenger locomotive is a legend for it’s design and motive power but I want to stress the word “Living” because 844 is the only steam locomotive that has never been dropped from UP’s roster, making it the only steam locomotive, owned by a Class I railroad, that has never been retired.

The FEF-3 was designed to be a high speed passenger locomotive and 844 pulled such Union Pacific passenger services as the Overland Limited, Los Angeles Limited, Portland Rose, and Challenger. 844 really had three phases of life. First as a passenger locomotive, secondly, as diesels replaced steam on passenger routes, 844 hauled freight in 1957.

At the end of the age of steam, when steam was being replaced by diesel, Union Pacific had the foresight to preserve one of it’s classic locomotives and 844 entered into her third life as an ambassador to one of the world’s largest railroads: Union Pacific.

I was 10 years old when I first encounter Union Pacific 8444, as she was known then, at the offical opening of the California State Railroad Museum in 1981. She had to be renumbered because there was a diesel locomotive given the road number 844. For the event, two of the most emblematic survivors of the Northern class (wheel arrangement 4-8-4) were in attendance. Southern Pacific’s GS-4 4449, newly repainted in her Daylight livery and Union Pacific’s 8444. On the tracks outside the museum, which paralleled the Sacramento River, these two Superstars of Steam came pilot to pilot. What a sight to see!

844 is not as streamlined as 4449 but the 844’s steam deflectors, also know as “elephant ears”, gives this 4-8-4 a very unique appearance. The steam deflectors help to loft steam exhaust from the chimney or smoke stack to improve the engineer’s visibility and also to keep the exhaust out of the cab.

It was an echo of the famous photograph taken at the uniting of the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869. 4449 represented the Central Pacific, later Southern Pacific and 8444 represent, and still does, Union Pacific.

Union Pacific’s steam ambassador has been all across Union Pacific’s rail network. She is a locomotive that brings people to the tracks to see her in action. One annal excursion is Cheyenne Frontier Days from Denver to Cheyenne. In May, 2019, 844 played second fiddle on the inaugural run of the recently restored Big Boy 4014 from Cheyenne to Ogden, Ut to commemorate the 150 Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. Of course the Big Boy was on point as the lone example of the largest locomotive in operation.

At the ceremony, 844 and 4014 came pilot to pilot, echoing the the famous photograph taken 150 before when Central Pacific’s engine “Jupiter” and Union Pacific’s engine No. 119 came pilot to pilot on May 10, 1869.

The Union Pacific Steam Shop in Cheyenne, Wyoming . This is about as close as I got to seeing the “Air force 1” of Union Pacific: FEF-3 #844 on a visit in the October of 2017. The only sign of steam is the UP yellow tender outside one of the bay doors.
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Raven’s Wake

Everbody is a wonderin’ what and where they all came from,

Everyone is worrying’ ’bout where

They’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done

But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me

I think I’ll just the mystery be.

~Iris DeMent, Let the Mystery Be

Do other beings mourn like humans do?

Those dog and cat owners would answer in the affirmative. What about other animals. Can a newt morn? Do snakes ever get depressed? How about birds? Can you really tell if a bird is in mourning. Ravens are always wearing black.

On the way to get coffee this morning, I saw something that might provide an answer or simply create more questions.

On the sidewalk was a dead raven, lying face down. At least that is what I took it for at first, in the dim, morning light. In reality is was a feathered raven figurine that a neighbor must have used as a Halloween decoration. There was black string trailing behind. The “raven” was set out on the sidewalk with the trash.

I picked up coffee at the local coffee shop, which is seven blocks away. I took a different route home and I noticed that the two ravens perched on a power pole, had their attention directed to the north. They both flew off to the north, with purpose, calling.

I walked a block further and as I came to the intersection of Noriega and 26th Avenue, I could hear the eruptions of crows and ravens one block over.

I headed north on 26th to see what was going on. As I neared the intersection with Moraga, there was a swarming cloud of about 50 ravens and crows, circling above the intersection. They were all calling, which seemed intense and heightened than the corvid norm. I knew what had drawn their attention.

It’s always a fool’s game to try and put human thoughts or feelings into the heads of other animals, partly because we will never truly know how another being is feeling or thinking (some would say that understanding other human beings can be just as obscure) and also it seems highly hubristic to put your own thoughts and feelings in to the mind of an animal, especially a wild animal.

From my observation, the mixed murder of ravens and crows were calling up an alarm, so much so that the neighbor on the corner was looking out her window to see what the commotion was all about. This alarm was calling in all corvids within earshot.

I told her that a dead raven was on the corner and this had attracted the attention of the corvids. When I took a closer look at the “raven” I realized that it was just a faux bird.

As I’ve noted before, with experiences with nature observations, that you may never know the “why” but that is the mystery of the natural world. There are things in nature that we may never know and I am fine with not knowing. Indeed that is why I continue to seek out these experiences, whether they on the streets of San Francisco or the deep forests of northern Maine.

So after the murder/congress of crows and raven dispersed and their calls became less frequent, a few crows and ravens perched nearby on power lines and poles. What were they thinking? Were they mourning the death of the “raven” on the cold, wet sidewalk?

Or could they simply be “rubbernecking” by the side of the road?

Whatever they were really doing or thinking, I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

The corvid wake is coming to a close. Many of the members had dispersed, some flying west while others perched on nearby power lines and poles.
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Lost by the Sea

As their name implies, the mountain bluebird lives in the mountains.

The male is a intensely blue bluebird that I see at higher elevations when birding around the Tahoe Basin or in the Eastern Sierra. This is not a bluebird that is associated with the Coastal Region of California. Here you are more likely to find the western bluebird.

So when an immature male mountain bluebird was spotted at Mori Point a few days ago, I headed down to Pacifica to try and add this rare county coastal lifer.

Usually a bird like this is easy to find because of the amount of other Bay Area birders this rarity attracts. As I was heading up to the point, I passed three geared out birders head down. They confirmed the bird was still there.

When I reached the plateau just to the east of Mori Point, the intensely blue bluebird stood out against the green grass. It was an odd juxtaposition seeing this mountain bird with the Pacific Ocean in the background.

The mountain bluebird perched up at Mori Point.

I watched the bluebird forage and took some document photos and then I heard a loud thrasher calling from the hillside. I headed up the hill and saw the singer who I had already identified as a California thrasher.

Up the hill listening to the thrasher. The mountain bluebird is near the large puddle. The figure near the puddle is a birder with a big lens, stalking the bluebird. What a beautiful coastal winter’s day.
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Southern Pacific’s Golden State (GS-4)

There is a concept known as a “spark bird” in birding. This is the bird that first ignites your passion for birds. For the pioneering field guide artist, Roger Tory Peterson, it was the northern flicker. Why can’t a child also have a spark locomotive?

My “spark” locomotive is Southern Pacific’s GS-4 number 4449.

Many children are attracted to trains. Most often it might be a locomotive on static display or maybe watching a commuter or freight train pass by. My passion for steam locomotives comes from my father, who, as an only child growing up in San Francisco, loved anything that rode on two rails: street cars, cable cars, and trains.

While many children, “put away childish things”, my connection to trains, railroads, and locomotives connects me to my father, and that bond has grown stronger since his passing five years ago.

One Christmas, my father gave me a HO scale model railroad. Together, well, mostly my dad, created an oval layout on a large piece of particle board. It came out on our dining room table, a few weeks before Christmas, and stayed up, certainly as long as our neighbor’s Christmas lights. On a part of the oval track was a paper mache tunnel which spanned the tracks. It was made by my father, probably with some help from his father.

My first locomotive was a Santa Fe F7 in the ironic warbonnet paint scheme. This locomotive pulled a short, motley freight consist around the oval, over and over again.

Then one Christmas came an HO replica of one of the most beautiful steam locomotives ever built: Southern Pacific GS-4 #4449. And later came a Daylight baggage car, a few passenger cars, and an observation car.

A GS-4 was a Northern class (4-8-4) of passenger steam locomotives, built for the Daylight route from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Southern Pacific reached it’s zenith with the design of this streamlined locomotive that also had plenty of power and speed to make the 470 mile trip.

The four drive wheels of a GS-4 provide traction to the rails. The four wheels on the other side makes the wheel configurations a 4-8-4. This is the only surviving member of it’s class, 4449 at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center in Portland, Oregon. The white star on the drive wheel indicates an internal bearing and the type of axle grease used.

Out of the 28 GS-4s built by the Lima Locomotive Works, only one survived. As a point of comparison, Union Pacific produced 25 “Big Boys” and now eight are still in existence, including 4014, which has recently returned to steam, making it the largest steam locomotive in operation.

The last remaining GS-4, 4449, was built in May of 1941 and was retired from service on October 2, 1957. It was donated to the City of Portland, Oregon where she was placed on static display at Oaks Park. In the following years the locomotive was vandalized and it builder’s plate and whistle stolen.

In 1974, as our Bicentennial was approaching, 4449 was evaluated to see if she could be restored and brought back to life to haul the Freedom Train, a traveling exhibit featuring historical artifacts aboard train cars that visited all of the Lower 48 states. 4449 was restored and pulled the Freedom Train for many stretches on it’s national tour. 4449 was given the moniker, “The Queen of Steam”.

4449 at speed. This is a still from a Super 8 film my dad took when 4449 was in its Freedom Train livery from May of 1977.
Another still from one of my dad’s Super 8 films of 4449. The amount of steam exhaust emitted from 4449 in this shot would have defiantly put a smile on my dad’s face. Here you can see 4449’s livery of red, white, and blue.

After 4449 was done with it’s two year tour, she returned to Portland, Oregon when in 1981, she was repainted in her red, orange, and black paint scheme of Southern Pacific’s Daylight. During the 1980’s my father and I followed 4449 around the state, this time I took the Super 8 footage while my dad took stills. We even rode on a train pulled by 4449 on a two day excursion from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

One wonders how to keep connected to someone who has passed? While they are in the ethereal and unknown world, that touchstone is often something earthy and physical. It could be a photograph, a house, or a landscape. For me, that touchstone is a locomotive that was built in 1941, nine years after my father was born. While my father is no longer here, 4449, a touchstone to the past, still lives and breaths. When I look into the eyes of her ever-moving mars light, I somehow see the eyes of my father.

Gift of Eagle

Local San Francisco birder, Hugh Cotter, first gave me the Gift of Eagle.

Midmorning on the Friday January 23, Hugh was birding at Lake Merced, in the southwestern corner of San Francisco. He spotted an adult bald eagle flying in from the north. The eagle landed in some eucalyptus trees on the southern shores of Lake Merced. He reported this sighting on eBird.

What was unusual about his sighting is that the eagle didn’t continue on south into San Mateo County but instead, perched in San Francisco County. Most bald eagle sightings are of birds soaring above San Francisco before headed further south down the coast. I wondered if the eagle was going to stick around.

On Saturday January 24, I was going to find out. I headed over to the Boathouse on Lake Merced so see if I could spot the adult bald eagle. I began by eBird checklist at 9:04 AM.

I scanned the eucalyptus trees to the south and the white head of the adult eagle stood out like a shining light. A San Francisco County bird!!

I recorded my sighting on eBird, took a few crappy photos, and continued birding other parts of the lake.

Now it was my turn to pass on the Gift of Eagle.

Across the Bay, Jim Lomax saw my post, confirming that the eagle had overnighted. Jim Lomax is an epic California county birder. He is the first birder to see over 200 species of bird in every one of California’s 58 counties!

Jim wrote on the birding listing service, Sialia:

Read Hugh Cotter’s report last night but these birds never stay . . . Then got to my emails . . . and saw that John Perry saw the same bird this morning and suddenly I was out the door. Wearing shorts and flip flops. . . for more than 15 years I have wanted to see this bird in San Francisco but if you read about it, you missed it. They are always flyovers. Most of the San Francisco resident birders have seen more than one, but sadly (snif) . . . not me. UNTIL TODAY!

There perched in the eucalyptus trees . . . was an adult BALD EAGLE . . . I have now seen a Bald Eagle in all 58 counties.

The stars are aligned today.

Wow, what an achievement to see bald eagles in all of 58 counties! That is true birding dedication! And I was glad to play a very small part in making it happen.

To remember the gift, I did a spread which almost looks like an illustrated diary entry. The sketch is from one of my crappy photos and Jim’s Sialia post is on the facing page.

Here is one of the crappy photos I took of the adult bald eagle at Lake Merced. The white head and tail and the yellow beak says: bald eagle!
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Southern Pacific’s Cab Forward

Southern Pacific’s signature, and most iconic locomotive was the 256 AC (Numbers 4000 to 4294) cab forward locomotives.

These were some of the largest and most unique locomotives in the United States. The AC-12 class is less than ten feet shorter than the largest steam locomotives ever built: Union Pacific’s “Big Boy”. The AC-12 locomotive and tender weighed more than a Boeing 747 and an Airbus A380, combined.

The reason the cab forwards were unique is that, as the name implies, the crew cab was in the front of the locomotive, like a modern diesel-electric locomotive, instead of the cab being in back, near the tender.

Having the cab in front gave the engineer and fireman unequalled views of the track ahead. But the real reason for the innovations was to conquers the steep grades of Sacramento’s Mountain Subdivision over the Donner Pass. This massive locomotives operated between Roseville, Ca and Sparks, Nv where a powerful locomotive was needed to tackle the steep grades and have the tractive effort to haul long freight trains over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. A locomotive of this size emits of lots of steam exhaust because a 4-8-8-2 was essentially two locomotives in one.

The Donner Pass route had 40 miles of snow sheds and 39 tunnels. This meant that in a standard locomotive, the crew could suffer from asphyxiation from the steam exhaust. By putting the cab forward, the exhaust stack was behind the crew and they avoided the caustic smoke, steam, and heat that these powerful locomotives emitted.

The cab forward proved to be a very successful locomotive for SP, with 256 of these engines used on it’s rail over the period of 50 years. The railroad had the largest fleet of articulated “Malleys” in the world. As a comparison, Union Pacific fleet contained 25 Big Boy locomotives.

In the 1950s, as diesel replaced steam, cab forwards spend the rest of there working life away from the mountains on the Coast Line and the Western Division. One of the last places cab forwards worked on Southern Pacific rail was the Cal-P line between Oakland and Roseville. 1958 was the last year a cab forward rode the rails, nine of these locomotives were taken out of service on September 24, 1958.

Out of the 256 cab forwards that were built, only one survives. The AC-12 number 4294 which is also the last steam locomotive that Southern Pacific ever purchased. 4294 was in service on March 19, 1944 and was taken off the the roster on March 5, 1956. She was only in service for 12 years.

While the other cab forwards were scrapped, 4294 was put in storage and then was put on static display on October 19, 1958, in front of the Sacramento train station. When the California State Rail Road Museum was opened, 4294 became the centerpiece amongst it’s collection of locomotives and rolling stock.

I was at the museum with my father in 1981 for the official opening of the museum. SouthernPacific’s GS-4 4449 and Union Pacific’s 844 (then numbered 8444) where in attendance and I will never forget when the two locomotive stood, pilot to pilot, on the track outside of the museum!

The massive running gear of the AC-12, Cab Forward. 4294 is the only surviving example of this locomotive.

The last time I have visited the museum was in November of 2017 where I did an aborted field sketch of the cab forward. There was something about the proportions of the locomotive that I did not get right. I had planned to return to the California State Rail Museum in the early Spring of 2020 but the cases of Covid-19 were growing at an alarming rate in the state and the museum eventually closed it’s doors for an indeterminate time.

So if I could not sketch the AC-12, at least I could sketch it from an image, which really is the next best thing.