One of the frequent visitors of Coyote Hills Regional Park at Fremont, resting during its routine hunts.
This place happens to be between my office and home and is a sweet spot to stop by in the evenings. The area is filled with kites and couple of dead trees provides perfect perch for this raptors to take a breather from their evening hunts.
I was recently made aware of the different species of birds that frequent this park. So armed with my long lens setup, I made couple of visits on the way to home from work.
This time of the year, light is gorgeous between 6-7:30 PM. During the first visit, I parked inside the park. There is a $5 fee for it, but the park closes its gate around 8 PM. There are signs posted that any vehicles parked outside of that hour, will be cited. I didn’t want this thing to be on my mind while shooting, so decided to park at the road.
To get a good vantage point, I headed through the muskrat trail leading to a small hill. The hike isn’t strenuous, but its a good walk from the road. Its about 1.3 miles from the road to the vantage point. Add all that weight of heavy gear (a later post on that), a simple visit makes a good exercise for body & soul.
Note: Watch out for poison ivy and poison oak all along the trail.
During a previous visit to this place, couple of ladies warned me about them as I was dangerously getting close to poison oak. I guess before they warned, I had come in contact with it, so only developed minor bumps & rashes. But now that I know, I’ll keep an eye out for it 🙂
The location is perfect with these dead trees. There is good distance between the subject and the background, so you can choose the kind of bokeh you want in your pictures. Currently all the wetlands have dried up, but I can only imagine what it’d be like during spring (I love green bokeh). With every visit there is a good chance you’ll come back with a keeper, though one need lots of patience waiting (and hoping) that a raptor will perch at the location.
I’ll be frequenting this location to get some more species. At the moment all I see are these White-Tailed Kites (Elanus leucurus). Some of the other species of sightings include Egrets, Barn Owl, Western Bluebird.
In a later post, will let you know about a frequent visitor, whom I’ve named as one-eyed Jack.
