Western phoebe

I spent some time last week in San Jose, Calif. I went for a morning walk around the center of the city--the ninth-largest city in the United States. San Jose sits in a valley just south of the San Francisco Bay. The Guadelupe River flows through the center of town and is flanked by a recreational trail. The river is really no more than a creek in a little ravine lined with sycamores and other riparian trees. It was there, in the shadow of the headquarters of Adobe (above), that I saw my lifer black phoebe. The bird isn't uncommon in its range along the West Coast. Like the eastern phoebe, it spends time near bridges and branches hanging over streams.