Excerpt:

Alameda birders gathered at dawn, armed with high-powered bird-spotting telescopes that cost more than a used car, "The Sibley Guide to Birds" and much adrenaline. They trekked along the shoreline, at the Least Tern sanctuary at the shuttered Alameda Naval Air Station, and near residential lagoons to peer over the water and into the trees.

"Is that a long-billed curlew?" Kim Wallace said as she bent over her scope at the Elsie Roemer Bird Sanctuary along the Alameda mudflats.

"A curlew! Hot shoot!" said Leah Norwood, running to her tripod-mounted scope to confirm the sighting.