To San Diego in Pursuit of More Birds

After four nights in Mexico it was time to head back to the US, and we decided to make a day of driving out of it and head east to San Diego. Even on our "travel" days, however, we always looked out for a stop or two to break up the day and hopefully provide some new birds. Jason did some research and found a gem in Yuma West Wetlands, a park right on the California-Arizona border. While we didn't see any burrowing owls in their designated habitat similar to the one we saw at Zanjero Park in Gilbert, AZ, we did see more than 20 species including several we hadn't see anywhere else.

The small common ground-dove, a species I had only ever seen once before on a different trip to Mexico

Our first confirmed Costa's hummingbird - we had likely seen some before but had had trouble confirming due to difficult lighting. I love how they can look so cute and so angry at the same time!

It's so much fun visiting these local parks that are oases for both people and birds alike. Many of the species there are probably very common to local birders, but so exciting for us out-of-towners to see. 

Northern mockingbirds are as common as robins in much of the southern US, but they're a rare treat for us to see from the Pacific Northwest

This park featured a fishing hole for both its human and avian visitors. This great egret was hoping for an easy bite, but after the fisherman wasn't getting any bites the egret moved along and had better success on his own.

When we got to San Diego that evening, Jason returned to eBird to research what we might have a chance of seeing the next day. Two of our most hoped-for species on the trip to Mexico had been the blue-footed and brown boobies that are regularly seen there. We searched hard for them, but didn't have any luck. With the relatively low numbers of terns and pelicans also around, my guess is there wasn't enough fish for them in the northern most reaches of the Sea of Cortez. (I remember seeing similar things in San Ignacio Lagoon - some years the fish-eating birds were abundant, and others scarce, depending on the fish.) That's the way it is with wildlife of course; there are never any guarantees. But when Jason found the rare bird alert for the pair of Nazca boobies that have been in San Diego Bay since mid-December, well, we simply had to give it a shot!

I had never heard of a Nazca booby before, and that's because they are a recent split from the masked booby. Their primary breeding colonies are in the Galapagos Islands but they are also seen in other parts of the eastern tropical Pacific in southern Mexico and northern South America. They are considered a "mega-rarity" to the United States.

From reports from other birders, we knew the views from land were usually distant. The boobies tend to sit on the Number 34 buoy in the bay, near a Naval base, where the only viewing is from the far side of the bay. When they're flying around foraging, some have been lucky enough to get closer looks from land, but these sounded rare. The best views and photos were coming from those who got on a boat to go see them closer. We decided to start on land and make sure the birds were even present before deciding what to do next. From the shore-based lookout, we could barely make out a white speck on the buoy across the water - if it hadn't been for so many reports from others, I wouldn't have even been confident there was a bird on the buoy, let alone that it was a booby.

Do you see the Nazca booby? Do you even see the buoy it's on?

We did, however, see the white speck, and another birder with a scope said it was the booby. With having missed the boobies in Mexico, having this one so close, and being on vacation, we decided, "What the heck. Let's splurge and rent a boat and go see it." So we did just that! Loew's Action Sport Rentals was just down the road (and the booby has apparently been good for business!)

If the booby won't come to us, let's go to the booby!

We headed out for the Number 34 buoy and found....nothing.

Just our luck! The bird that had been sitting there had apparently taken off to forage, meaning it could be anywhere in the bay. We had less than an hour and counting to try and find it.

Finding a booby in a bay aka finding a needle in a haystack

We started cruising around at higher speed, stopping for any black and white bird soaring around.

Nope, not a Nazca booby - but a royal tern, that's cool too!

Then something caught my eye that was most definitely a different shape. We found one!!!

Plunge-diving Nazca booby

At first it was flying around at high speed and we only got distant looks. It would dive, and briefly sit on the water, but every time we got closer it would take off and resume foraging. 

But then it turned and flew right over us!

Wow! Success!

On our way back to the harbor we swung by the Number 34 buoy again, and this time we got lucky - the second bird had returned and let us get a great look.

We had definitely been concerned we were going to be skunked once we got out there, but it turned out to be well worth it! As we slowly motored back to port, I felt like we were being watched - and it turns out that we were, by this osprey:

On a roll, we decided to check out  the near by San Diego River estuary for some other great bird sightings that had been reported there in recent days. We found one of them - a little blue heron, a bird far more likely to be seen in the southeastern US than in the southwest.

Little blue heron - another great find!

By this point, however, us island dwellers had had enough of downtown, so we headed north out of the city and made a stop at one of my all-time favorite birding spots: Batiquitos Lagoon. I used to go here regularly when my grandpa lived in Oceanside and is one of the places that gets credit for getting young me excited about birding. I can't go through the San Diego area without making at least one short stop here. It's still basically in the city but regardless of time of year is home to an astounding amount of bird life.

Yay! Batiquitos Lagoon!

It didn't take long to start adding more year birds.

California towhee

While looking up for a possible great horned owl near a nest in the middle of the park, I spotted a merlin feeding on a vole or other small rodent. Their color is so much lighter here than the darker morphs back home that it took me a moment to recognize what it was!

I stopped at a pipe outlet where the water creates a dark puddle in the bushes. On a visit here with my dad probably about 20 years ago we had stopped here and seen a sora emerge from the reeds, still the only time I have ever seen that species. As I was telling Jason this story I couldn't believe my eyes when another elusive bird emerged from the grasses: a Virginia rail! I was trying so hard all of last year to get a chance to photograph this species and now I got a golden opportunity, right where I had seen a sora. Birding is so fascinating this way - how often you can go to the same little place and see the same type of thing even decades apart.

My first time photographing a Virginia rail!

Our trip was already winding down, but we still had a couple days in California, and we had plans to both soak up as much sunshine as possible and see as many birds as we could before heading back north! I'll wrap up our road trip story in the next blog post.

MAJOR Year List Update

For the last 2+ weeks, I've been traveling along the west coast: first driving down I5 from San Juan Island to San Diego, then spending a week with the gray whales in San Ignacio Lagoon, and now slowly driving back up the coastal Highway 1. In the meantime, I've added nearly a hundred birds to my year list since my last update! Rather than recap them all individually here, I thought I'd just share the massive list from my eBird summary, along with a few choice photos.

Ring-necked pheasant (103) at Sacramento NWR on March 19th

Osprey (116) with chick in nest in Kuyima in Baja California, Mexico on March 21

White ibis (124) flying over San Ignacio Lagoon, Mexico on March 22

Willet (117) off the shores of Punta Piedra whale camp in San Ignacio Lagoon, Mexico on March 22

American oystercatcher (137) along the shoreline of San Ignacio Lagoon on March 24

Forster's tern (160) at Bosa Chica Ecological Reserve near Long Beach, California on March 31

Huge flock of Forster's terns takes off in Bosa Chica

Nanday parakeet (163) in Malibu Creek State Park on April 1st - one of two life birds added to my list, along with the very distantly spotted California condors off Big Sur

Clark's grebe in Moss Landing, California on March 4th

American avocet (added at Sacramento NWR as #108 back on March 19th) at Moss Landing on April 4th

So as of today, my year list stands at a whopping 182! I'm well on my way to my goal of 200 for the year, and am wondering if I have a chance at topping 200 before this trip is even over! That, for now, puts me way ahead of my dad, who is at 122, and Dave, at 126. It will be more difficult to add species after being back home, as a lot of what I'm adding are spring migrants that will be on the island when I get back or shortly thereafter.

The most recent addition to the list - California thrasher (182) at Pinnacles National Park today, April 5th

Day Two With The Friendly Gray Whales

The morning of our second full day at San Ignacio Lagoon brought the best dolphin encounter of the trip. Each morning bottlenose dolphins could be found foraging off the point, and on this day there were about 40 of them in calm waters. In addition to getting my first hydrophone recording of cetaceans, I took tons of photos. Nobody seems to know exactly how many dolphins live in the lagoon, but they are seen there year-round so are thought to be a resident population. I asked several of the pangeros, and they estimate there's 100-200. I'm sure it would be possible to conduct a photo ID study given enough time, because the dorsal fins on each one are very unique, with lots of notches and scars.

I thought this one, who cruised by with his eye just above the surface, might be looking at me on shore. But when I looked closer at my photo, I realized his eye was closed the whole time - I guess not! Maybe just basking in the sunrise?

One challenge I always like as a photographer is to see how many species I can get into one photo, especially with cetaceans. Here's two bottlenose dolphins with a royal tern:

It got even better than that, though, when a gray whale breached several times in the background!

Bottlenose dolphins and a breaching gray whale!

Right before it was time for breakfast, an osprey flew overhead. With no bald eagles to compete with, there are a lot more of these "fish hawks" down in Mexico than up on San Juan Island.

On our morning whale watch, we didn't have to go far from camp at all. About one-third of the lagoon is open to whale-watching, while the inner portions are a whale reserve. The camp at Punta Piedra is right on the edge of the whale-watching region - you can see our tents on the point behind this whale's tail!

When migrating, gray whales pretty much just swim along, but in the lagoon, we got to see the whole variety of whale behaviors, such as spyhops. Check out those throat grooves!

When I commented that I had never seen gray whales tail slap, it didn't take long for me to see that behavior, too!

We were incredibly lucky to have friendly gray whales on each of our whale watch trips. These whales approach the boats and demonstrate a mutual curiosity about humans, allowing themselves to be touched and kissed. It's quite different from the 200 yards we have to keep from orcas in the San Juan Islands, but in such an isolated location it's been possible for this trustful relationship to blossom without harming either whales or people. For their part, the whales are amazingly gentle and aware of their surroundings given that the moms are about twice the size of the pangas. And the humans carefully regulate the interactions, limiting the number of boats that can be out there (no more than 16 in the lagoon at a time), how long each boat can be there (90 minutes per whale watch), and the hours whale-watching can happen (8 AM to 5 PM). That's all on top of making the majority of the lagoon a no whale watch zone. All the boats are run by the local fishermen and they self-police themselves with the help of a "sheriff" who monitors the boat activity every day.

Here's me leaning over to kiss one of the calves - it sounds like a funny thing to do, but when you're there with them you can't help but do it!

There just aren't words to describe what it's like to be that close to a whale - a whale that's checking you out, too!

We even had a baby come up to the boat and open its mouth several times. They seem to like to have their baleen touched. It's pretty unreal to put your hand inside the mouth of a wild whale, but I gently did it! The baleen was amazingly stiff and clean (though of course the babies haven't used it for scraping food off the bottom of the ocean yet).

A baby gray whale opens its mouth alongside our panga

On the bird side of things, I only added one more year bird to the list on this day (March 18th), when I spotted a flock of semi-palmated plovers (128) while walking along the beach just before sunset.

All these amazing sightings and photos, but we still had another whole full day to go!

Birding North of San Diego

It took a day or two to recover from our time in Mexico - there was a lot of sleeping and a lot of shaking sand out of everything, but what small price to pay for the experience of a lifetime. What was most amazing about our first full day back is that that evening we saw a gray whale breaching off our hotel at Moonlight Beach! It was a pretty spectacular sunset, too.

We still had several more days to spend in the San Diego area, and we visited with some family and friends while we were there. On February 15th we went for a hike at Los Penasquitos Canyon. I didn't have my camera with me, but my eyes and ears (and binoculars) were enough to add California quail (131), western scrub-jay (132), Say's phoebe (133), acorn woodpecker (134), and red-shouldered hawk (135) to the list. The acorn woodpeckers were the most amazing - there were several dozen of them cackling away all over the park!

On the 17th I got to visit a very special place to me - Batiquitos Lagoon. This place, not too different from several other lagoons along this part of the coast, isn't too far from where my grandpa used to live. I used to visit here regularly as a kid, when I was just getting into birding, and as a result I probably got more life birds at this one spot than any other single location I've ever been! I remember another birder with a scope here teaching me the difference between western and least sandpipers at this lagoon when I was probably 12 or 13 years old.

Since my grandpa passed away, I hadn't been back to this lagoon, so it was awesome to visit again after about a 12 year absence. It was much like I remembered it.

The birding was like I remembered, too - excellent! While walking here I added Nuttall's woodpecker (136) and white-tailed kite (137). We saw the kite on our way up the trail, but on our way back we saw it again, this time harassing a peregrine falcon! The kite is flying through the trees here, agitating a the perched falcon:

 I even found another life bird - an Allen's hummingbird (138) in with all the Anna's hummingbirds. 

Another Batiquitos life bird, 12 years later: an Allen's hummingbird

There were lots of people enjoying the lagoon, but we only saw one other birder - appropriately a young girl, probably about 12 years old! She was impressive and reminded me in several ways of a young version of myself. She also gave us a tip about some American white pelicans that she saw the day before, and that gave me enough of a head's up to drive around to the far side of the lagoon where we saw half a dozen of them (139).

Being so close, I wanted to drive by my grandpa's old house, where I also saw lots of amazing birds over the years, including my first great horned owl perched on a lamp post on his street, a hooded oriole in his backyard, and a roadrunner on the hillside behind his house. Looking down this same hill, I saw a pair of Cassin's kingbirds (140), not only another tally for the year list but a life bird, as well.

We headed then to Carlsbad, where we camped for a couple nights with some friends from San Juan Island who work up here in the summer and camp host down there in the winter. We weren't there long before we met their resident osprey, who flew overhead several times carrying the largest fish I've ever seen an osprey carry!

Our first morning there, we spent half an hour doing an informal sea watch. In addition to some bottlenose dolphins cruising the surf, we saw, I kid you not, about 5000 black-vented shearwaters (141). They flew by in a steady stream that took about 10 minutes to pass! We also got some great eye-level views of some brown pelicans cruising the cliffs:

We also visited the Oceanside Pier, where in addition to seeing a very vocal great-tailed grackle (142), we got an even closer look at some brown pelicans:

They weren't being intentionally fed, but they were stealing fish from the fishermen! I tried to get an even closer look, but I couldn't get my binoculars to focus...

After a tour of Stone Brewery, a beach walk back at camp yielded the last year bird of the trip - a couple nice flocks of sanderling (143). Finally, on the 19th, after nearly two weeks in California and Mexico, it was time to head back to the comparatively chilly northwest. It was such a memorable trip - I hope you enjoyed virtually traveling along via my blog posts!