May 11-12 ~ Spring Shorebird Migration near Grays Harbor

For years I've been wanting to head to the outer coast of Washington to catch the spring shorebird migration in and around Grays Harbor. This year, we finally made it happen! While we missed the peak numbers by a week or two, we still saw an incredible variety of species - about 15 different types of shorebirds in two days!

On May 10th, the day we traveled there, the weather was both sunny and unseasonably warm. Of course, the next day saw a 30 degree drop in temperature and was very gray! It made photography a little more difficult, but still could have been much worse had it been windy or rainy instead of just gray and cool.

High tide is the best time to view shorebirds on the mudflats, and unfortunately the high tides while we were there were either very early or very late. Our first stop for the day was at Bottle Beach State Park, where we arrived as the tide was very quickly going out in the morning, but we still got to see a lot of shorebirds, even if mostly from a distance.

Dunlin

I also got what was a bit of a surprise life bird in the red knot, as I really thought I had seen them once before! But nope, they were a lifer! Cool!

Red knots in flight

Next we went to Grayland Beach State Park, a known snowy plover nesting colony complete with a blocked off nesting protection zone. We walked along the perimeter of the nesting zone and were lucky enough to see one snowy plover - the first time I've seen this species north of California!

Snowy plover! New Washington bird for me

We were looking at some gulls on the beach when a sudden a bald eagle came swooping by - in pursuit of a greater white-fronted goose!

Bald eagle in pursuit of a greater white-fronted goose

The goose ended up landing in the ocean and dove underwater three times as the eagle was dive bombing it.

An odd sight: a greater white-fronted goose in the ocean

It was one of those same gulls that then came to the "rescue", chasing the eagle away, and allowing the goose to survive.

At Westport Light State Park the best bird wasn't a shorebird at all, but a very cooperative male common yellowthroat, another new one for the photo year list:

In the late afternoon, we made our way back around Grays Harbor towards Ocean Shores, where we were staying. Near the jetty at Point Brown, it was interesting to see fishermen right in the breakers, successfully hauling in fish. I wonder what they were catching?

We were soon distracted, though, but the hundreds of sandpipers just down the beach! They were mostly sanderling, but there were also a fair number of semipalmated plovers mixed in.

This crab also made for a cool photo op. He/she was alive, though apparently missing an eye and probably not doing so well.

The next morning we came back to the jetty at Point Brown, spending most of our time scanning through the scopes. The bird highlight was a parasitic jaeger, unfortunately much too far away to photography, but rarely enough seen by any of us that it was pretty exciting. We did, however, see 4-5 gray whales fairly close to shore, including this one that spyhopped twice.

Next we headed north up Highway 109 towards Point Grenville, a stretch of coastline none of us had never seen before. Unfortunately the dramatic beaches at Point Grenville were closed to the public, but we were able to see part of the view from up on the bluff, though the birding was a bit disappointing.

View from Point Grenville

After a late lunch we headed to an exciting spot for birders in any town: the sewage ponds! The Hoquiam Sewage Treatment Plant was bustling with bird life, and we successfully located the single blue-winged teal that had been reported earlier:

As we continued to zig zag all over the place, the next walk we took was at the Oyhut Wildlife Recreation Area, which provided yet another different habitat with a marshy lagoon. The low-flying swallows (some of whom were perching on the sand) provided an opportunity for me to finally get a nice photo of a tree swallow for the year:

In the evening we made another high tide attempt just before sunset by visiting Bill's Spit in Ocean Shores. The light was fading and the water was coming in fast, nearly cutting off access to the beach, but the quick visit was worth it, not only for the tranquil scenery but for the shorebirds that were coming in to roost for the night.

Looking out over Grays Harbor

Dunlin in flight

I even snagged one last photo year bird, bringing the trip total to a whopping 18 new species added, nearly doubling my goal of adding 10 species.

The unmistakable silhouette (when viewed larger, at least) of marbled godwits

All in all it was a great trip and I was glad to have finally made it out there, but now of course I definitely want to go back again when both the weather and the tides are more cooperative!

A Guide to Birding Puerto Peñasco

One of the big draws to continue heading south to Puerto Peñasco, Mexico was to continue looking for more unusual bird life. Unlike Madera Canyon, or many other popular birding spots in the US, there wasn't a lot of information out there on where to go or what to look for. I was mostly guided by eBird hot spots, but even that didn't provide information on how to access these locations, which proved to be more difficult (and in some cases requiring more of a sense of adventure) than expected. So, I decided to share in this blog post not only some of the highlights of what we saw, but to also make this a bit of a guide for anyone else looking to bird the area. Click any of the maps below to see a larger version.

eBird hot spots that I'll reference

Increasingly, in areas where there are resorts or communities of higher end homes, access requires going through a gate house. The only way to have guaranteed access to these areas is to be staying in them, though we found in many cases that simply saying we wanted to see the area/beaches/hotels/restaurants was enough to get us through. I didn't like pulling the "I'm an American" card, but that seemed to work, though I suspect this may continue to change and become more difficult unless you're staying there

Location: Puerto and Malecon

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any

Sense of adventure required: Low

Pros: Easily accessible, lots of shore and water birds

Cons: Lots of aggressive street vendors

Additional notes: The port had a lot of bird activity but was pretty industrial so it was hard to get near the water. Eating at a restaurant on the Malecon is probably one of the best bets to have an extended waterfront viewing time without being bothered by any street vendors. We also discovered another great beach that I recommended as an eBird hot spot: Mirador Beach near the bottom middle of the map. We parked near the corner of Calle Matamoros and Aven Campeche where there's an abandoned lot you can walk across to the beach which is a nice mix of sand and rocks. You can also access this beach from Playa de Oro RV Park.

Yellow-footed gull, an endemic to the Sea of Cortez and a lifer for me, near the Puerto

A brown pelican on the rocks in the Puerto

Semipalmated plover at Mirador Beach

Brown pelicans at Mirador Beach

Location: Bahia la Choya

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any
Sense of adventure required: Low

Pros: Easy to access, potentially more open and rocky shoreline birds

Cons: Limited access - we parked at the boat launch (near JJ's Cantina) which didn't seem to be a problem

Additional notes: Looked for but didn't see an access to the supposedly public Tucson Beach. Tide was high when we were there but from the boat launch moving along the shoreline required some scrambling over rocks - may be better at lower tide

A Heermann's gull on the rocks near the Punta Roca del Toro boat launch

Location: CEDO and Las Conchas

Place to stay to guarantee access: Rent a house in Las Conchas, or tell guard gate you want to visit CEDO

Sense of adventure required: Medium

Pros: Long sandy beach nearly empty of people with lots of birds

Cons: Hard to find beach access if you're not staying at a house, probably best to park near CEDO and find one of the walkways down

Additional notes: This was our favorite birding area, but probably in part because we were staying in Las Conchas so we were here the most and it was easy to get to.  CEDO is an intercultural center for research on the regional desert and ocean and has a visitor center that's worth the visit regardless, but will probably also be the easiest way for non-residents to get access to the beach.

Marbled godwit at Las Conchas

Black-bellied plover and Forster's terns at Las Conchas

Willet at Las Conchas

Fin whale skeleton at CEDO

Location: Playa Pelicano

Place to stay to guarantee access: Laguna del Mar or Laguna Shores resorts

Sense of Adventure Required: Medium

Pros: Huge sandy beach, also several man-made ponds with lots of activity, not much human activity of any type going on out there

Cons: Guard gate (we asked to go see beaches), two up and coming resorts may make this more difficult

Additional Notes: The ponds near the Laguna del Mar resort were hopping with birds - ducks, grebes, gulls, shorebirds, swallows, a great blue heron rookery, and more. The sandy beaches were pretty busy, too, with the highlight for me being the Wilson's plovers, but we just had to park in front of the private homes and walk down to the beach from there (again, no issues with doing this.) We didn't go around further to the north closer to Laguna Shores where there were roads to access even more beach, so I'm not sure what access is like here but it looks like there's a lot more to explore. There is another guard gate if you go this way. Watch the tides when you go because when they go out here, they go waaaaay out.

Wilson's plover (lifer!) at Playa Pelicano

Great blue heron on a nest near Laguna del Mar

Location: Estero de Morua

Place to stay to guarantee access: Playa Encanto

Sense of adventure required: Medium

Pros: Amazing huge estuary habitat - good for herons, boobies, shorebirds

Cons: Takes some creativity to find places to view from

Additional notes: The easiest access points are off Freemont Blvd/ City Hwy 3. One of them is marked on the map below as Camino a la Morua. If you look for either the Oyster Farm or the oyster restuarant El Barco on Google maps you will see the two roads. These are sandy roads; our VW Jetta did okay but be careful on the offshoots as there is some deeper sand and some vehicles could get stuck. There didn't seem to be any problem with walking past the oyster farm or restaurant to the beach to bird. The estuary can also be viewed from the end of the road at Las Conchas, though it looked like you would have to walk a long ways across the sand to get near the water. We found a final good viewing area from Playa Encanto near Coopertiva Punta Roja (see Google Maps). This required getting through another guard gate (we said we wanted to see the town), but then we parked near this restaurant and walked down onto the beach with no problem.

Black skimmers and gulls at Estero de Morua

American oystercatcher at Estero de Morua

Loggerhead shrike on the road to Estero de Morua

Location: Estanque de Aguas Residuales (Sewage ponds)

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any

Sense of adventure required: High

Pros: Unknown

Cons: A very poor part of town - lots of trash in the roads, looked pretty sketchy, we didn't feel comfortable getting out of the car

Additional notes: You can apparently park at the end of Sonora Blvd and walk up onto the dikes

Location: Estero de la Pinta

Place to stay to guaranttee access: Mayan Palace or Grand Mayan Resorts

Sense of adventure required: High 

Pros: Previously some impressive bird reports from here

Cons: Apparently no way to access without a pass to the resort, also a local said the birds have moved away from this estuary more due to all the construction

Additional notes: You used to be able to get past this guard gate like the others by asking to visit the restaurant or see the resort, but now it apparently requires reservations or a guest pass. Getting a guest pass means signed up for a breakfast and 1.5 hour (or longer, if what we heard is true) presentation to try and sell you a time share. This gets you a day pass to the grounds and all the facilities. If you want to do this, don't worry, the EcoFun representatives in the Malecon area will find you.

Location: Sandy Beach

Place to stay to guarantee access: Any of the Sandy Beach resorts

Sense of adventure required: Low?

Pros: Unknown

Cons: Unknown

Additional notes: We didn't see an easy way to get to this beach without going through one of the resorts, but we heard you may be able to access it via one of the RV Parks on the bottom left of the map below.

In total, we saw a respectable 60 species in the few days we were there. The "big misses" were the brown and blue-footed boobies that were no where to be found, though were some great finds including the yellow-footed gull and magnificent frigatebirds.

And I've got to finish out this post with a few non-bird related photos from our time in Mexico....

Bottlenose dolphins off Las Conchas

 There was amazing street art everywhere:

And every sunset was pretty amazing, too:

Malibu Lagoon State Beach and Zuma Beach

After our warm hike at Temescal Canyon on November 8th, we headed a little further north along the coast to Malibu Lagoon State Beach. Doing some research via eBird ahead of time, I had circled this beach on the map as one of the most prolific birding sites in the area in terms of the variety of birds seen. It did not disappoint!

Malibu Lagoon - nestled between Highway 1 and the Pacific Ocean

When we arrived, I immediately took my shoes off and enjoyed the warm sand between my toes. Among the first birds I saw were a trio of western grebes, four different gull species, and a flyby from an osprey. I didn't have to walk far to see my first year bird at the site - a single spotted sandpiper (182). While looking at several snowy and great egrets, Keith's sharp eyesight found my second year bird across the lagoon. It was a juvenile green heron (183).

My most hoped for species at this site was a snowy plover, a species I have only seen once before, 12 years ago, also along the California coast. The thing I remembered most about them was that I practically stepped on one before seeing one, and the exact same thing happened this time (184). These sparrow-sized shorebirds blend into the sand almost entirely when they aren't moving, and they don't flush until you're pretty close to them.

Snowy plover close-up

I would see one plover, and then while kneeling to take a photo of it, five others I didn't see would scurry out of the way. In total, there were probably about 30 of them there. Snowy plovers are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. One major threat occurs during the breeding the season. They lay eggs on sandy beaches, where they are easily trampled by humans.

Snowy plover: officially the cutest bird I saw on my trip

I spotted one plover with bands on its legs. I sent some photos and info to a researcher at the Point Reyes  Bird Observatory that's part of a snowy plover banding project and learned and this bird a chick from this year that was banded at Oceano Dunes 150 miles north of Malibu Lagoon. The same bird was spotted at Malibu Lagoon a month ago, so it will probably spend the whole winter here.

A banded snowy plover at Malibu Lagoon - two green bands on its left leg and a blue and red band on its right

 While looking at the plovers, a great-tailed grackle (185) made himself known while rummaging through the wrack. I didn't look at him long, because a mixed flock of shorebirds a little further along caught my attention. In addition to the snowy plovers and spotted sandpiper from before, I also identified some least sandpipers, willets, a black turnstone, godwits, a couple of whimbrel (186), a killdeer, and a whole slew of black-bellied plovers. Nine shorebird species in one little stretch of beach!

From left to right: whimbrel, black turnstone, black-bellied plovers

In fact, it was pretty much the case that no matter where you looked, you were seeing multiple bird species right together. It was a real birder's paradise that way!

Great egret with a whimbrel

Brown pelicans with double-crested cormorants and black-bellied plovers

An hour there turned up about 30 species, with the cherry on top being a Say's phoebe (187) just as we were leaving. I probably could have stayed there the rest of the day, but the boys were ready to hit Zuma Beach and take a dip in the ocean. While they swam, I waded up to my knees in the cool Pacific, camera in hand. Again, the numbers of shorebirds in crowded SoCal was impressive.

Some of the hundreds of sanderlings at Zuma Beach, paying no mind to the surfers, birders, or sun bathers

I spotted two distant long-billed curlews (188) here at Zuma, but was more taken with the large flock of very photogenic marbled godwits. Just like our first day in California, the late afternoon lighting was perfect for shooting shorebirds.

Marbled godwit at Zuma Beach

Marbled godwits at Zuma Beach

Finally, as we drove back towards Venice, we saw a pair of red-shouldered hawks (189) perched along Highway 1. With one more full day ahead of us, I was hoping to pass 190 species on the year list before heading home, but birds weren't going to be my main target the next day when we headed out onto the water....