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.

Celebrating Earth Day With Whales, Tulips, Birds, and Marching for Science

Last Friday the 21st circumstances aligned to get out on the water to see a group of transients - the T49As, T65As, and T65Bs, who have been regularly traveling together in recent weeks. It was a short but sweet visit with them off the coast of Sidney Island, BC.

Young adult male T49A1

It was cool to see the two young males (T49A1 and T65B2) hanging out together separate from the rest of the group. Interactions outside of a family group always get my mind going as to what could be going on in their social world. These two were close enough to be touching and seemed to be having a good time, doing some rolling and tail slapping.

The other, bigger group of females and juveniles was a bit further away but we got one nice look of all of them surfacing together.

After stalling out for a little bit, the males joined up and all the whales took off at high speed heading north, so we said goodbye and headed back to port.

T49A1 and family head north towards the Canadian Gulf Islands

I had to head back to my home island because I had a ferry to catch! We were heading over to Bellingham for the March for Science, and in the late afternoon the sun came out which made a detour through the tulip fields of Skagit Valley irresistible.

The weather was a bit less cooperative for the March for Science the next day, Earth Day. But that didn't keep more than 2000 people from taking to the streets in Bellingham along with tens of thousands of others around the world to make a statement in favor of adequate funding for, public communication of, and nonpartisan application to policy making of evidence-based science. 

A couple of very powerful speakers took the stage before the march, reminding us all of the importance of not just pursuing our scientific passions but taking the time to share our research and the scientific method with everyone so there's a broader understanding of just how powerful a tool science is. We might hope for certain results from our research, but we must accept whatever the results tell us, and these facts need to be used to inform policy. Selectively picking and choosing what science to listen to is irresponsible both to our environment and to the future of humanity.

After running some errands after the march, there was still time to get a little birding in before catching the ferry home. 

Caspian tern in Anacortes - photo year bird #148

After many excursions specifically trying for this elusive bird (and hearing them often but never seeing one), I also finally photographed a marsh wren!

Marsh wren - photo year bird #149

What will year bird #150 be?! That was my original target to start the year and now I'm wondering if I might reach it before the end of April!

Speaking of the end of April, as the days tick by closer to May, we're all wondering when the Southern Residents return. After making a few visits in March and early April (by just a couple matrilines), they've been absent again for the last couple weeks. Gone are the days with J-Pod regularly on the west side in early spring, so now we are all left wondering when they will take up their typical summer routine. I am just one among many hoping that it is sooner rather than later!

Astoria and Fort Stevens State Park

On Monday as most Memorial Day weekend traffic was heading back towards the city, we headed to the coast for a one day overnight in Fort Stevens State Park near Astoria, Oregon. It was drizzly and windy as we arrived, but we still had to stop to take in the impressive Astoria bridge that spans almost four miles across the Columbia River delta into Washington.

Nearby, among the old dock pilings, were some double-crested cormorants, Canada geese, and a flock of greater scaup.

At Fort Stevens State Park, the rain had stopped and we ate a picnic lunch perched in one of the sand dunes near the shipwreck. While eating, I couldn't believe my eyes when I spotted a gray whale! The peak season for seeing gray whales off the Oregon Coast is between December and March, though there is a small seasonal resident population throughout the year made up of whales that don't make the full migration north. It was amazingly close to shore for this part of the coast, surfacing just beyond where the waves were breaking.

After lunch we hiked a few short trails in the park, and at the beach access furthest out the spit I saw a flock of more than a hundred Caspian terns (194). On the ocean side of the spit there weren't as many terns as on the inland bay side, but I got closer to one here than anywhere else:

This scene of glaucous-winged gulls with the rocky shoreline behind them to the south epitomizes the Oregon Coast to me:

In the late afternoon we checked into our overnight accommodations: a yurt.

While sitting around the campfire that evening roasting marshmallows I couldn't believe my ears when I heard a northern saw-whet owl (195, NA life bird 347)!! Another one started up it the other direction and we heard them off and on for more than an hour. I used a saw-whet owl call as the alarm clock tone on my cell phone a while back, otherwise I might not have immediately recognized it, but it sounded exactly the same. As a side note, when entering the saw whet owl on my life list I realized that the Wilson's phalarope from Eide Road seen a few days before was also a life bird!

The next day before heading back towards Saint Helens, we walked around the south jetty of the Columbia River.

It was great birding here. Some highlights were eight bald eagles, a flock of 200 sanderlings, a dozen or more red-necked grebes in the surf, and most impressive, well over a hundred brown pelicans. They are so cool to watch in flight, as they fly in a long line, often right over the waves, bobbing up and down to stay close to the surface of the water while avoiding the next swell. Here, some groups were up high and flying overhead, providing some photo opportunities. This picture reminds me of one of those shots where people superimpose the same bird in different positions, but these are all different birds just at different stages of their wing beats:

While kind of an awkward-looking species, I actually find the pelican to be a pretty beautiful bird:

They're certainly impressive due to their size!

Scenes From the Last Week

On Saturday, July 31st the K12s, K13s, and K14s of K-Pod headed south past Lime Kiln. They later met up wtih the L12s, J-Pod, and the other four K-Pod whales off the south end of the island. Here's K25 Scoter with his nephew K38 Comet:

On August 1st I was at the redoubt near American Camp when I came across a pair of "teenage" foxes. This one hopped up on the fence to get a better look at me over the tall grass:

Prints of this photo available here

On the way home, I had to pull over to snap a shot of this amazing rural scene with Mt. Baker in the background:

Speaking of Mt. Baker, it was looking especially striking in the evening of August 2nd. I went up to the deck above our marina to take this shot:

Today I went birding down at American Camp. I heard a young bald eagle making a lot of racket near the visitor's center, but it took me a while to locate him - a dark bird hidden in the shadows of the trees. I wonder what all the fuss was about?

Another pair of birds making some noise nearby also caught my attention. They turned out to be a pair of western wood-pewees - cool!

I made another stop at Jackson Beach to look for shorebirds, and I wasn't disappointed. There were 13 killdeer out on the spit. A small flocks of peeps was also foraging nearby. I crouched down and they slowly approached me. Just when I was ready to take a photo, they all took flight! This was the result:

There were 5 western sandpiper and 3 least sandpipers in the mix. I also found six greater yellowlegs. This time the "sit and wait" method was a little more successful, as a pair of them were feeding in the shallows and got close enough for me to take this shot:

They're almost hard to see in the above photo (except for the legs), but the pictures where there was gravel in the background they were almost completely camouflaged! There was also a flock of about 20 mew gulls on the sand spit, and I was surprised to see a pair of Caspian terns hanging out with them! I occasionally see a tern flying overhead at Jackson Beach, but this was the first time I've seen them on the ground there.

As you can tell from all the above photos, the weather has been pretty nice this week! We're finally getting some summer weather now that it's August. Here's hoping it continues through the weekend so I can have some more sunny wildlife encounters.

Birdy Update

I have all kinds of birds sightings and photos I've been saving up and wanting to share, so I figured I would do them all here in one post. First of all, back when I went to Lopez Island I eluded to a bizarre finding at Shark Reef Sanctuary. It started right under this snag, where I saw all kinds of feathers spread all over the place:

I figured a bald eagle had likely caught a bird and eaten it on this perch, and that would be the end of the story. But looking around a little further, we surprisingly found the head of the bird it had eaten - a rhinoceros auklet! Very bizarre...

Also on Lopez Island I took this photo of a gull carrying a shell down the beach. I have seen some pretty ingenious gull foraging tactics lately. Gulls in this area were dropping shells on the road, hoping they would either break open or perhaps get driven over and opened up. The other day with the huge flock of Bonaparte's gulls, we saw birds deftly plucking shrimp right off the surface of the water. Back at home, we have observed a young glaucous-winged gull learn to catch crabs by patrolling the rocks.

Also at home, I've been focusing on getting some hummingbird pictures at the feeder - look for an upcoming post on hummingbird acrobatics - but while waiting for the hummer to return this chestnut-backed chickadee sat nearby waiting for me to go back inside so it could return to the sunflower seed feeder.

A group of Washington ornithologists was recently up on San Juan Island and reported some amazing finds on their trip, including many sightings that would be year birds to me and some species that I've never recorded on the island. An e-mail inquiry revealed that many of their IDs were by call, or at least that's how they located the birds, which has encouraged me to try and improve my ability to bird by ear. Specifically, getting better at vireos, flycatchers, and warblers would be helpful.

When I went out a few days ago, I saw my first cliff swallows (151) of the year flying over a lake with barn, tree, violet-green, and northern rough-winged swallows, so it was my first five swallow day of the year. I also succeeded in hearing a warbling vireo (152) down at American Camp, though I would very much like to see the bird as well! I had some time to go out birding yesterday as well, but was somewhat thwarted by the wind and rain showers. The best find of the day was a pair of Caspian terns patrolling Jackson Beach:

On today's trip out (also in the wind and rain), birds were pretty few and far between, but we did find a nice flock of a few hundred Bonaparte's gulls up at East Point. Everytime I've seen them this spring (and I've seen way more of them this spring than in previous years) they've been flying, but today some of them were at rest on the rocks or floating in the water. I wonder how long they'll stick around before continuing north?

Finally, I've been checking in occasionally on this very cool barn owl webcam. Back at the beginning of April, you could see the female, Molly, with her newly hatched chicks in the nest (one of them is that fluff ball on the left):

This morning, I was very surprised to see how much the chicks have grown since my last visit. They are very large and comical-looking right now as they are between the fuzzy down of a baby and the first feathers of a fledgling. It's definitely worth checking out!