Birding Charleston Slough, 10-30-2006

Thursday I went out for a walk out at charleston slough. I happened to arrive at the same time as a couple of out of town birders from Washington, so I tagged along and we all took in a walk through the area to see what we could find. I was there between 11 and 1PM, roughly.

It was a nice day, but you could sense a bit of chill in the wind, as if a fall storm was trying to break through. The sparrows were very active, both out on terminal and through the rushes. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any rarities, but a lot of white-crowned and golden-crowned, plus one of those really rare house sparrows. I’m seeing white-crowned moving into their black and white racing helmets now. We also had a nice red-tail stop by before we ever got off of Terminal.

Near the pumphouse, we had a flock of bushtits fly through — about 15-20.

I showed them the area down behind the bleachers, hoping to find green-winged and maybe a blue-winged teal. We had a number of cinnamon teals (at least 10) llounging around, but no green-winged (we found one later sleeping on the island in the slough among the marbled godwits; go figure). they were enchanted with that area, FWIW. At one point, they saw something moving deep in the rushes behind the “cormorant sunning stump” — possibly a rail, but they think it was a Sora. I never caught a glimpse, and it scuttled off and didn’t return despite about 20 minutes of watching. (if someone wants to do more looking, there’s a small area of mud that peeks out of the rushes at one point on the opposite shore from the viewing area; it was seen BEHIND that area in the reeds, it never came out in clear view, whatever it was).

Ducks included about six cinnamon teals, and a number of northern pintails, a half dozen of double-crested cormorants and one great egret, as well as some coots.

While there, we had a flight of white pelicans roll in — 25-30 individuals. At one point, we had one raptor at extreme distance which we were able to ID as a golden eagle adult (I got a good look at the coloring of the underside, but the photos I have are all sillouettes. sigh). That’s a new one for me (yay!). later on, we also had a turkey vulture wander by, just so we could verify that the first one wasn’t another vulture…

Out on the island were a large flock of american avocets, long-billed dowitchers, willets, and marbled godwits, and a few black-necked stilts. We also found one (count ‘em, one) black turnstone. Also in the slough were a good number of northern shovelers. In the pond next door on the way to Shoreline lake were the ruddy ducks, plus a few pied-billed grebes. We had a flock of peeps fly in, all the ones I IDed were Leasts.

It’s nice that we finally have the path between the slough and lake open again (yippee!). In the ponds on the terminal road side of that pond we found both snowy egrets and black-crowned night herons.

We didn’t spend much time at shoreline since they’d birded it from the other side earlier, but we did see a couple of greater yellowlegs and I did point out the resident scoters to them. After that, they were off to radio road in search of the skimmers before hitting the airport for home…