San Diego and the Salton Sea

Before heading to Sea World On Friday November 29th, we spent a few minutes looking at birds from Shelter Island. We had a good mix of gulls, many Double-crested Cormorants, several Brown Pelicans and at least 6 Surf Scoter. 

On Sunday November 30th we started the day with a couple of hours at Crown Point Park and along Crown Point Drive. The park itself had 40 Brant, a mix of shorebirds including Dunlin, Western Sandpipers, Black-bellied Plover and a single Ruddy Turnstone resting on the beach, a Willet along the water's edge and a fly-by Long-billed Curlew. A group of terns had Royals and Forsters as well as a number of Black Skimmer.

Brant

Dunlin and Western Sandpiper

Black Skimmer

Royal Tern

A stop along the road looking over the salt marsh gave us close looks at Little Blue Heron, Whimbrel, Willet, Long-billed Curlew and a Cattle-Egret while a surprise Costa Hummingbird showed off his purple gorget.

We had a 90 minute stop at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea NWR Headquarters where 1000 white geese fed in the fields and Brown and American White Pelican, gulls, American Avocet, Willet, Western Sandpiper, Long-billed Dowitcher stood along the water edge.

Snow Goose

Lake Skinner and Torrey Pines

On Thursday November 28th  we started the day in Blythe and drove to Lake Skinner in Riverside County. I accidentally ran into a posting on the ABA California Inland counties list serve saying that there were still 3 Blue-footed Boobies around. I had dipped on the one remaining bird at Bill Williams three weeks ago,, and had heard that all these birds had now departed the Salton Sea. We changed our route to stop by Lake Skinner and found all four birds sitting on the pontoons at Boat Launch 1 and approachable to just a few feet! This was ABA bird #550 for me. Other highlights at Lake Skinner were Black-crowned Night Herons, Green Herons, Great and Snowy Egrets, Pied-billed, Western and Horned Grebes and a fly over Prairie Falcon.

Blue-footed Booby

We then drove an hour to Torrey Pines, stopping first at the beach area and finding Blue-winged Teal and Red-breasted Mergansers, Willet, Least Sandpipers and a  Royal Tern along the river, and Marbled Godwits, Forster's Terns and Heerman's. Western, Ring-billed and California Gulls on the beach. A Clark's Grebe was just offshore. We also had a Red-shouldered Hawk which allowed close approach and allowing for decent pictures!

Marbled Godwit

Red-shouldered Hawk

We then drove up the hill and hiked along the cliff trails for an hour and a half. But as it was Thanksgiving there were many people on the trails, and on the beach below. We saw few small birds, although we heard Wrentits a couple of times, but did see a pod of four Common Porpoise not far from shore.

Cameron Trading Post

My arrival on campus on Wednesday November 20th was greeted by a flock of 35 Cedar Waxwings in a tree across Beaver Street from the pool. After working for a while I had a two hour gap between appointments and drove to the Cameron Trading Post to see if I could find the two Rufous-backed Robins that Jason and Tom had found on Sunday. I found one bird feeding in the Russian Olives very quickly, although it did not cooperate for a picture, before I returned to campus for the rest of my work day.

Garland Prairie

On Sunday November 17th I went on a Northern Arizona Audubon field trip to Garland Prairie. The trip was advertised as one for migrating/wintering raptors and this did not disappoint as we had excellent views of the 6 species seen - Bald Eagle, Golden Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, Ferruginous Hawk, Northern Harrier and American Kestrel.

Ferruginous Hawk

Golden Eagle

Other than the raptors we saw little - in particular no sparrows! The only species seen in large numbers was Horned Lark. We had a large flock of these near one of the tanks along Garland Prairie Road.

Lake Havasu

We drove to Lake Havasu City on a family trip on Friday November 8th. The planned birding was designed with two species as my target birds. I was at Windsor Beach at 7:10am on Saturday morning and immediately found the Brown Booby. After finding out that our planned boat trip had been cancelled we went to Bill Williams and spent two hours looking in vain for the Blue-Footed Booby. We did find a nice male White-winged Scoter and female Red-breasted Merganser while searching for the target bird. After lunch we did take a boat across the lake to the casino with an immediate return and saw a Pacific Loon, Forster's Tern and California Gull on the journey. I also had the expected year birds of Horned Grebe and Greater Scaup.

Brown Booby

California Gull

Chicago Weekend

I flew to Chicago late on Wednesday October 16th for a family weekend. On Thursday 17th and the morning of Friday 18th I stayed on campus and as well as the expected birds I saw a Peregrine overhead and 3 Brown Creepers. On Friday 18th we went to the Shedd Aquarium and saw the usual birds on the lake but also 3 more Brown Creepers. Clearly this was migration time for this species.

On Saturday October 18th Pat picked me up and took me to Wooded Island for the third time. The highlight was a Field Sparrow, a bird counted as my 549th ABA bird although I may have seen one many years ago but my record keeping could not confirm this. A nice Fox Sparrow and a small group of Balck-capped Chickadees were also year birds for me. A trip into the city and along the museum campus to the Field Museum did not add anything special.