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Monday, January 5, 2009

Beach Bird Walk

Today the persistent winds of the last few days had died down, so I decided to head out to South Beach for a walk to see what I could see. There weren't big flocks of birds, but they were scattered here and there, many too far away for me to identify even with binoculars. Here's the short list of species I did see:

Surf scoter
Long-tailed duck
Bufflehead
Red-breasted merganser
Common loon
Horned grebe
Bald eagle
Glaucous-winged gull

The pair of long-tailed ducks was an exciting find, as I've only seen it once before back in October when it was a new life bird. I took a few good scans for marine mammals, hoping to see a stellar sea lion or a minke whale, but no such luck today - the water was still too choppy to spot much far away.

On the way home I drove by False Bay to see what bird activity might be going on there, but alas it was low tide so everything was far away, and it didn't look much busier, either. Still, it was a pretty sight just before dusk, so I got out my camera:

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