Baylands Nature Trail

 Biking along the Baylands Nature Trail

Life is like riding a bike, you gotta stay balanced and keep moving to reach your destination ~ Albert Einstein (edited)

I dusted off my dirt bike and hit the open trails along Shoreline Park - a 16.7 mile stretch mostly along the SW edge of San Francisco Bay waterfront. The route incorporates both paved and unpaved paths that skirt a series of undisturbed tidal marshland or sloughs called the Baylands, stretching from Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve to the North all the way to Shoreline Park further south and extending into downtown Mountain View via Steven's Creek Trail.

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I highly recommend taking along a good pair of binoculars and stopping often to admire the breathtaking scenery. 

Check out this video of a squadron of White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) working together to drive a shoal of fish into a concentrated mass using their bills and by beating their wings. There is a nearby recreational flying club where hobby pilots take off and land in fancy monoplanes. Your truly can afford only a dirt bike 😁

Around Shoreline Park, the migratory American white pelican is much more common than the native California brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis californicus). These snowy white birds nest and breed at inland US lakes during spring and summer, then spend late fall and winter in the Bay Area.  Unlike brown pelicans, white pelicans don’t plunge-dive. While hunting, they catch fish by scooping water into their distinctive elastic throat pouches, then strain out the water and swallow the fish. These large birds mostly eat fish, but like many predators, they can be opportunistic feeders, preying on lizards, frogs, crabs and lobsters. Pelicans have even been observed in the wild eating smaller birds, sometimes scooping up water in order to drown them before swallowing them.

30 sec video of Black necked stilts (Himantopus himantopus mexicanus) wading in shallow water, in pursuit of tiny aquatic invertebrates, small crustaceans, amphibians, snails, and tiny fish. In the nesting season they are particularly aggressive and will often fly low over an intruder with their long red legs trailing behind them, uttering a sharp alarm call. The only Native American stilt, they are now threatened due to loss of wetland habitat

Ride as much or as little, ride early morning or late evening, but ride! ~ Eddy Merckx 

I hope you enjoyed the photos/videos as much as I did biking 🚴🏼 under open skies with fresh sea breeze and the wildlife. #LifeInTheSlowLane #OnTheRoadAgain #CountryRoads

After all a bad day on a dirt bike, beats a good day at the office

~ Mike Brcic (edited)