Waterfowl and gulls are the main menu here in winter and you will find many! Located in Campbell, this park includes six percolation ponds to explore. It is flat, excellent for walking (as well as for bikes and strollers), and it is partially accessible for people with mobility issues.

Kevin Moran Park is a 10 acre park located in a quiet Saratoga neighborhood and could be easily missed. It's a beautiful multi-use park with plenty of parking. Its convenient proximity to major roadways makes it an easy option to fit some birding into your busy day.

Fueled by water from the nearby water pollution control plant, Sunnyvale Baylands Park is a freshwater oasis for waterfowl and shorebirds (mostly in winter) and upland birds (year-round). Lovely, level walks throughout the park make for a pleasant stroll any time of year. This guide covers a one-mile loop around the park, hitting all the varied habitats and birds found throughout the year.

Visit a historic ranch setting while birding in the Santa Teresa foothills in south San Jose. The Bernal-Gulnac-Joice Ranch offers visitors the ability to go back in time and re-visit life on the Ranch during the late 1800s/ early 1900s. And there is always a wide variety of raptors and songbirds in this easy-to-access portion of the Santa Teresa County Park.

The Spring Valley Area at Ed Levin Park on the east side of San Jose in the Diablo Foothills offers one of the best places in Santa Clara County to observe migratory hummingbirds in spring. Enjoy an easy walk around the Spring Valley Pond and spend some time at the “Magic Tree” watching the hummingbirds come and go, or take the more challenging Spring Valley Trail for a walk in the grassy hills and surrounding woodlands.

Whether you want a relaxing lakeside drive with easy bird watching, or a vigorous hike through the rolling hills, Coyote Lake in Gilroy is a prime attraction for birdwatchers. Beautiful scenery is the backdrop to lots of overwintering waterfowl and wild animals like deer, wild boar, Wild Turkey and California Quail that are habituated to people. Come for the Bald Eagles and courting Western and Clark’s Grebes and you will find so much more.

Explore this oasis in Gilroy! The levees along settling ponds with varying amounts of water and vegetation attract ducks, shorebirds, raptors and more. This site is never crowded and has no hills, just level dirt roads, easy for walking and driving.

Byxbee Park, in the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Reserve, features a hill with a 360-degree vista, grasslands studded with conceptual art, marshy sloughs, a creek and tree-lined paths, throughout which you can find wintering waterfowl, migrating passerines, soaring raptors and a variety of gulls.

The highlight of this urban San Jose park is scouring through the hundreds of Canada Geese that cover the lake and lawn areas in hopes of finding a Cackling, Greater White-fronted or even a Snow or Ross’s Goose. Start this trip in the late morning after the geese have flown in.

Easily reachable by car or public transit (the VTA 51 bus), this Cupertino city park has a level paved trail that follows the creek through orchards, forest and fields and is lined with benches at reasonable intervals, making it a beautiful, accessible natural area in the heart of Silicon Valley. The paved trail continues south through McClellan Ranch Preserve, where SCVAS's headquarters are located.

A lake for winter ducks and summer swallows, a panoramic vista for soaring hawks and cruising vultures, redwoods and oaks for woodpeckers, juncos, and bluebirds, and chaparral for towhees, wrens and jays! Foothills Nature Preserve in Palo Alto, newly opened to the public, has it all, all year round for everyone!

Enjoy this easy, partially shaded walk alongside the Los Alamitos Creek in Almaden Valley. Bird life is plentiful and varied, especially in the spring! Or visit in the summer to take advantage of the shady trails.

Enjoy some interesting birding on this short half-mile easy-paced paved loop in a quiet San José neighborhood. Those of us who have birded this area for many years have discovered a mix of montane, riparian and lowland birds throughout the seasons including migrants and occasionally an unusual vagrant.

Penitencia Creek Trail in east San José is a beautiful, shaded creek side trail with easy level walking where wildlife and birds abound. While it can be crowded after 10 a.m. on weekends, early mornings offer solitude and silence and increase the chance for wildlife and bird encounters. Deer (and their fawns) are especially common, and bobcats, snakes, and other creatures are sometimes seen. The creek hosts numerous Steelhead Trout, and in the past may have supported Coho Salmon.

Just a short hop off Highway 280 in Cupertino brings you to this, our very first Santa Clara County park. Drive through lower Stevens Creek Canyon, stopping to bird at parking spots and picnic areas. Shady creeksides, a reservoir to scan, and oak and chaparral hillsides are alive with resident and migrant birds. The secret to finding them is to come early to beat the heat and crowds. And don’t forget your picnic lunch!

Just as the Ohlone people greeted the sun each morning at dawn for hundreds of years, so the swallows begin their daily swooping flights over the ponds, creeks, sloughs, and marshes of the Palo Alto Baylands. Though late spring and summer is thought of as a "quieter" time for birds, at the Palo Alto Baylands there continues to be a variety of avian species that are fascinating, interesting and entertaining to observe and enjoy.

The San Francisco Bay is a critical habitat in spring, both as a migratory stopover and as breeding grounds for many birds. Birding at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge Environmental Education Center (EEC) in Alviso allows close views of the extraordinary species diversity that makes use of this habitat, all in a short distance on flat ground.

Sitting adjacent to an avian flyway (the Guadalupe River), surrounded by suburban sprawl, and boasting the last remnant forest in the city of Santa Clara, Ulistac holds its own as a spring migrant trap. Enjoy the smell of native plants and trees in the restored areas of the park and witness the gradual process of forest regeneration.

For great habitat in an urban setting, visit this paved trail along the Los Gatos Creek in San José. It’s the perfect location for spring migrants!

In the heart of Garlic-growing Gilroy, this jewel of a park has some really top-notch, natural river habitat for both birds and kids to enjoy. The oak-bay woodland on the park’s namesake, Christmas Hill provides plenty of places to explore steep trails with older kids, but even very young children can enjoy the birds on the lawn and in the trees at the playground area. The combination of well-maintained city park and immediately-adjacent wildlife habitat makes this park perfect for a family outing… but the restrooms are CLOSED ON SUNDAYS.

En el corazón de la zona de cultivo de ajos de Gilroy, esta joya de parque tiene un hábitat natural de ribera de primer calibre a lo largo del arroyo de Uvas Creek para que lo disfruten tanto los niños como los pájaros. El bosque de robles de la bahía en el homónimo del parque, Christmas Hill, ofrece muchos lugares para explorar, senderos empinados con niños de mayor edad, pero incluso los niños más pequeños pueden disfrutar de las aves en el césped y en los árboles en el área de juegos. Todos, jóvenes y mayores, humanos o vida silvestre, se sienten atraídos por la belleza de un río natural. La combinación de un parque de la ciudad bien mantenido y un hábitat de vida silvestre inmediatamente adyacente hace que este parque sea perfecto para una excursión familiar… pero los baños están CERRADOS LOS DOMINGOS.

Old Oak Glen Avenue in Morgan Hill is a wonderful place to peacefully look at spring migrants. There is oak woodland on one side of the road, and Llagas Creek along the other. Swainson’s Thrush is often found here, a hard-to-find bird in our area.

If you’re looking for youth-centered birding in Almaden Valley, Lake Almaden offers close views of Mallards, Canada Geese, and many other waterbirds. In Spring, the heron colony on the Bird Sanctuary Island provides excitement and the stroller-friendly path and playgrounds make this destination easy to explore with the whole family.

Tweet, chirp, chatter, shriek, drum-drum-drum: a cacophony of bird sounds and songs will greet you upon your first step onto the oak and eucalyptus tree-lined paved path to Stanford’s Arizona Garden and Mausoleum. The Stanford campus hosts over 125 bird species, many of which can be spotted in this one small area.

Picnic at the shady Live Oak Group Area near the Anderson Lake County Park Visitor Center in Morgan Hill and get a chance to view Wood Ducks in Coyote Creek.

Disfrute de esta área de picnic con sombra en Morgan Hill y tenga la oportunidad de ver Patos Arcoiris (Wood Ducks) en Coyote Creek.

Spring has sprung at Guadalupe Oak Grove Park, an urban park in the Almaden Valley area of San Jose. The grasses are green, the oak trees are leafing out and the birds are active! On this trip, learn about the native oak trees of Santa Clara Valley and observe a variety of oak tree-loving birds.

The McClellan Groundwater Recharge Pond (also known as Bubb Road Percolation Pond) in Cupertino is a treasure of a spot in the winter months, full of migrating winter ducks that especially prefer ponds. Think Mergansers! Buffleheads! and Ring-necked Ducks!

Los estanques de recarga de agua subterránea McClellan (también conocido como el estanque de percolación de Bubb Road) en Cupertino es un tesoro en los meses de invierno, lleno de patos que emigran en invierno y que prefieren especialmente los estanques. Estamos hablando de Mergos (Mergansers), Patos Monja (Buffleheads) y Patos de Pico Anillado (Ring-necked Ducks).

The drought tolerant gardens of the Valley Water Headquarters (previously known as Santa Clara Valley Water District) off Almaden Expressway have become one of our “go to” spots when we are looking for a quiet place to bird in the Almaden Valley area. The one-mile, maintained trail through the gardens and around the large percolation pond is little used by people, has several benches along the route, and has plenty of suitable habitat for birds and other wildlife. This compact location is easy to get to making it an ideal and quick birding location.