The Lean Green Birding Machine, 2023 Edition

The Spring Birdathon of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society goes back at least 35 years. "Green" versions of the birdathon go back at least 20 years, to when Deborah Jamison, Grant Hoyt and I spent two days walking and birding from the headwater of Stevens Creek in Monte Bello Open Space Preserve to where it empties into San Francisco Bay (A route I would later complete three different years as a running birdathon as well). Later, in 2013, a biking classic began when Bill Walker, Mary Wiznewski, and I (Steve Patt), along with one or two others, joined Rob Furrow on bikes for his Mean Green Birding Machine Birdathon.

Fast forward a decade, and Bill, Mary and I, now constituting the Lean Green Birding Machine, went out last Thursday for the second straight year post COVID to continue the tradition. Unlike the original, which confined itself to bayside birding, our version starts at Rancho San Antonio, adjacent to my home, and then crosses the valley following Stevens Creek on the Stevens Creek Trail, to end at Shoreline Lake and, if not San Francisco Bay itself, then at least the Forebay.