Most of us have seen small brown birds that flit from the ground to a bush or tree just as you start to look at them; they are common in parks and at bird feeders throughout Alameda — but the description fits more than one species of birds.

Recently while bird watching at Crab Cove, my friend and I saw three Great Egrets wading just offshore in the low tide.

Melanerpes formicivorus (genus of woodpecker, anteater)

Last month, Alamedan Dawn Lemoine, brought the 80-year-old Oakland Christmas Bird Count into the modern age while adding one more year of information about birds to the growing National Audubon and Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology databases.

The American coot, fulica americana, a once-abundant species in Alameda, can still be seen regularly in winter and on occasion breeding in a couple of the Island City’s marshy ponds — both fresh and brackish — during the summer.