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.

Rancho San Antonio

On Sunday October 6th we walked trails at Rancho San Antonio. I had six target birds but after walking for quite some time I had only added Chestnut-backed Chickadee and Nuttall's Woodpecker to my list. Heading back to the car I first ran into a covey of California Quail as I got to the farm area and then spotted a California Towhee as we stopped to look at some Acorn Woodpeckers. Finally as we reached the home straight an Oak Titmouse flew onto a wooden post! I ended the morning with 5 of my 6 targets.

We headed back to Flagstaff in the afternoon. The short trip to California added 32 species to my year's list taking me to 679 for the year. Saturday's Manx Shearwater was a new ABA bird for me - and my first sighting of this species since I saw many on the boat to Skomer in 1981- taking my ABA list to 548.

Wild Turkey

California Quail

Monterey Bay Pelagic

On Saturday October 5th we went to the Monterey Fisherman's Wharf at 7am for a Shearwater Journeys trip to Monterey Bay. Nearly 30 birders, including 5 experts boarded the Checkmate along with Debi. We had Brandt's and Pelagic Cormorants, Surfbird, Black Oystercatcher and Black Turnstone on the way out and had a Pigeon Guillemot and a fly-by Pacific Loon as we headed out.

The journey itself delivered 9 tubenoses including 7 shearwaters - Sooty, Pink-footed, Black-vented, Buller's, Manx, Great and Flesh-footed - just one short of the world record! The Great Shearwater was a surprise and would be submitted to the California records Committee. It was less exciting for em as I had seen 20 just eleven days earlier! Northern Fulmar and Black-footed Albatross were the other tubenoses. We saw many Common Murres, Rhinoceros Auklets and Cassin's Auklets on the surface of the very calm sea, and had a Pomerine Jaeger and a South Polar Skua fly by. The latter came straight at us and passed very close to the boat. The day was not quite so interesting as a year ago - we had a long quiet period in the middle - but I felt more in control of the bird IDs than in 2012.

Moss Landing and Carmel

On Friday October 4th my wife and I flew to San Jose, CA for a weekend away. We arrived at the airport around noon and drove to Moss Landing. We spent about 90 minutes first at the Moss Landing State Wildlife Area and then along Jetty Road. Over lunch at the wildlife area we had Willet, Marbled Godwit, Grey (Black-bellied) Plover and a Long-billed Curlew along the shoreline and saw over a hundred Brown Pelican in three groups. Elegant Terns, Heerman and western Gulls flew overhead and Sea Otter and Harbor Seal swam in the waters.Along jetty road we had more of the same species, some of them very close.

After checking in to our hotel we drove to Carmel and walked along the ocean front to Carmel River Beach. The beach itself was covered with, perhaps, 5000 birds of just there species - Western Gull, Heerman's Gull and Brown Pelican - so different to a year ago when the place was very quiet but had 15 Snowy Plover. The walk back along the road found a few birds feeding on the rocks including Surfbird, Willet and a Whimbrel.

Long-billed Curlew

Whimbrel

Heading back

On Sunday September 29th there was just a couple of hours in which to bird before heading to the Charlottte airport.

We spent the time at Jackson Park and walked the same trails as on Friday, this time seeing 3 White-eyed Vireos and 2 Golden-winged Warblers in addition to birds we had seen before: American Redstarts; Tennessee, Hooded, Chestnut-sided and Black-and-White Warblers; Pileated Woodpeckers; Eastern Wood-Pewees etc.

I headed home with my ABA list at 547 and my year list at 647, both just a little short of my end-of-trip targets. But I saw 168 species on the 7-day plus 2-hour trip of which 23 were lifers. The tour was billed as Songbirds, Shorebirds and Seabirds and I had 23 species of warbler, 20 waders and 6 sea birds.

Great Smokey Mountains and Rankin Bottoms

On Saturday September 28th we visited Great Smokey Mountain National Park in the morning and then Douglas Dam and Rankin Bottoms in Tennessee in the afternoon.

After seeing 4 Wild Turkey just after we entered Great Smokey Mountains National Park we stopped off a couple of times to look at migrant warblers. Bay-breasted was the most common warbler in the trees and Tennessee Warbler the most common in the shrubs, and Steve's pishing brought in a Red-breasted Nuthatch for all to see - I had missed one the day before. After going to the mountain top we descended on the Tennessee side and Steve found us a Winter Wren.

After passing through the touristy town of Pigeon's Forge we stopped a couple of times at a vast reservoir, first near the dams and then at some mudflats. Douglas Dam yielded 5 Black Vultures and 6 Black-crowned Night-herons and Rankin Bottoms 28 Pectoral Sandpipers and an American White Pelican. In between we stopped to look at gulls and found one Laughing and one Lesser Black-backed among 30 Ring-bills.

We ended the day at Steve's parent's place where Steve failed to attract the resident Eastern Screech-Owl - our third failure in three tries for a night bird on the trip.