SoCal birding…
As I’ve hinted at a bit here and in twitter, I’m in SoCal this week, because mom needed to undergo a little surgery and I came down for moral and logistcal support. She came through in flying colors and I’m going to spend a few more days while she heals up a bit, just to keep her from lifting things she shouldn’t lift.
The surgery was Tuesday, and Wednesday i got permission to disappear for a while, so I headed out to do some serious birding and de-stress. I headed out to the coast to a few of the places I haunt here in orange county when I get a chance: bolsa chica in Huntington Beach, Newport Back Bay, and Dana Point harbor. It didn’t hurt that there was a blue-footed booby reported in Dana Point…. yes, I’ll say it. I went running around Dana Point for an afternoon chasing boobies…
Bolsa Chica is a major nesting area in season for terns, one of the few places for least tern, plus it’s a good shorebird habitat (and a snowy plover nesting areas) and the southern california hangout for black skimmers. It’s also known as a place where reddish egrets hang out, although I’ve dipped on that species in previous visits. Not this trip because there was an egret sitting right next to the entrance bridge along with a couple of snowy egrets, intently scratching an itch. After watching for a bit I moved deeper into the preserve to check out tern islands. No snowy plovers, but plenty of semi-palmaeted plovers. No least terns (not a suprise this time of year), and only hatch year Forster’s, but looking out on the island I saw a group of larger terns that I took for Elegant, but on closer looking, I realized the heads were white — Royal Terns (with two Elegants hanging out to confuse me). Ten minutes in, I have to life birds on the list…
I walked out into the shorebird habitats and found a half dozen skimmers a fair way out, but nothing else notable, so I wandered back in. The Reddish egret had moved a bit closer in and stopped scratching — I’ll have photos to add later.
After that, I drove up to newport back bay. There’s a hangout area for Great Blue herons there, and some nice shorebird habitat as well as some scrub and hillside bushes that can generate some interesting surprises (anything from great-tailed grackle to blue-gray gnatcatcher in previous visits). And sometmes, you get Anna’s and Song Sparrows. I stopped at the observation parking lot about halfway in and wandered up into the bushes, and this trip, I got — song sparrows and a couple of arguing Anna’s. Back at the observation platform, however, I saw something flycatching, and it was cooperative enough for me to get a good look at an Ash-throated flycatcher. While watching it hunt bugs, I suddenly heard panic calls from the mud flats and looked just in time to see a Peregrine make two swoops at a group of shorebirds. it missed both times, then gave up and caught a thermal, rose up into the air, and soared away. The only other notable bird at Back Bay was a small flock (8) of greater white-fronted geese.
After that, off to Dana Point in search of boobies. And Pelicans. Arrived about 2:15 and scanned the jetty, no booby. I hauled out the folding chair and settled in for an enjoyable afternoon of waiting.
Which it was. The booby was well-enough reported that even non-birders had heard something about some kind of rare bird, so I had the chance to talk to a number of curious people wandering by. I also had the pleasure of meeting a few local birders, including Joel Weintraub (who manages the orange county rare bird reports), who wandered in to see if the bird could be found since it hadn’t been reported since Sunday.
It never showed. We hung out keeping an eye out until a bit after 5, and it seems to have moved on. Oh well. In the meantime, I had a chance to watch an expert birder pick things out of the air — we had an osprey fly in and hunt just outside the jetty walls, a peregrine come in and chase some pigeons, a single caspian tern fly through (making it a four tern day for me), and I had a ball watching the pelicans fish and fly around. I never would have picked either the Caspian Tern or the Osprey out of the air without Joel’s help.
No booby, but that’s okay. A nice, relaxing afternoon with nice birds and interesting people.
In my last birding note, I said:
If I can get back in the swing of birding regularly (and early), 200 species for the year is quite possible. I definitely need to get to Bolsa Chica to add a few terns to the list, which I’ll try to do this next visit. And my life list is now at 229 — maybe I’ll add one or two before the end of the year, but I’m not planning any trips out of the area, and I don’t twitch, so I don’t think it’s likely I’ll do something too significant here. Which is fine.
And since writing that, a couple of serendipitous birding outings have notched four new life list birds: Reddish Egret and Royal Tern at Bolsa Chica, and a trip out to Palo Alto Baylands added a yellow-breasted chat and a nashville warbler out in the fennel. Bolsa Chica also added Elegant Tern and Black-Bellied Plover as year birds (I haven’t tried hard on the plover, obviously…), moving my year list to 185, almost exactly where it was a year ago, so now 200 for the year is manageable, and the life list has grown to 233. I can’t complain…
I’m hoping to make a day trip to Salton Sea before I head north, but we’ll see. depends on how mom recovers. If not, not…
Location: Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve
Observation date: 9/30/09
Number of species: 22
Mallard X
Pied-billed Grebe 3
Brown Pelican X
Double-crested Cormorant X
Great Blue Heron 1
Great Egret 3
Snowy Egret 100
Reddish Egret 1
Black-bellied Plover X
Semipalmated Plover X
Willet X
Long-billed Curlew X
Marbled Godwit X
Western Sandpiper X
Ring-billed Gull X
Western Gull X
Forster’s Tern 12
Royal Tern 6
Elegant Tern 2
Black Skimmer 4
Rock Pigeon X
Savannah Sparrow 3
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)
Location: Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve
Observation date: 9/30/09
Number of species: 18
Greater White-fronted Goose 12
Mallard X
Brown Pelican X
Double-crested Cormorant X
Great Blue Heron 6
Great Egret 1
Snowy Egret 12
Turkey Vulture 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
American Coot X
Black-bellied Plover X
Willet X
Long-billed Curlew X
Dunlin 1
peep sp. X
Forster’s Tern X
Anna’s Hummingbird 2
Ash-throated Flycatcher 1
Song Sparrow X
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)
Location: Dana Point Harbor
Observation date: 9/30/09
Number of species: 16
Western Grebe 1
Brown Pelican X
Brandt’s Cormorant X
Double-crested Cormorant 1
Pelagic Cormorant 1
Great Blue Heron 4
Great Egret 2
Snowy Egret 2
Black-crowned Night-Heron 1
Osprey 1
Peregrine Falcon 1
Heermann’s Gull X
Ring-billed Gull X
Western Gull X
California Gull X
Caspian Tern 1
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)
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