Famosa Slough Bird and Nature Walk

 On the third Saturday of the month there's a bird and nature walk at the Famosa Slough near where I live. This afternoon I went over for the second time.

Most of the birds are actually gone this time of year except for the year around residents like this black crown night heron shown to the left.

This immature black crown was also hanging out.

There were some great egrets to be found too.




 

TernWatch - Part 4

 I got these three pics of the California Least Tern chicks when I was on predator watch this morning.

 I'm going to work on trying to get the focus better. This is the best I know how to do for now... new camera.

Cute little buggers eh?

Ternwatch - Part 3

Today a lot of the nests seemed abandoned like these two.

... and then a lot of them weren't.

Mom bringing a nice fish for her chick to have for lunch.

A picture borrowed from Wikipedia of a California Least Tern chick. 

Agua Dulce Creek Birding With San Diego Audubon

I drove up to Mt Laguna an hour east of San Diego, on the far right side of the map above on Friday morning. [click on the map for a larger view]

In the late morning and afternoon I hiked to Water of the Woods and Big Laguna Lake. I've lived here for nearly four years now as this is the fullest, nearly to the outlets, I've seen these lakes.

I always expect to see Hoss, Little Joe, and Pa Cartwright come riding through the meadow... but had to settle for these two women on horseback today.

I stayed over Friday night near Mt Laguna at the Burnt Rancheria Campground to go on a San Diego Audubon bird walk at nearby Agua Dulce Creek. There were LOTS of woodpeckers, flycatchers, wood pewees, swallows, nuthatches, and juncos. An acorn woodpecker is pictured above... we also saw Nuttles, ladder-back, and hairy woodpeckers.

The forest floor next to the trail was covered with wildflowers in bloom too...

Ternwatch - Part 2

The picture below shows one of many chicks that can now be seen at the Mariners Point tern nesting area in Mission Bay where I spent two hours this morning looking for tern predators. Pretty cute eh? The Dept of Fish & Wildlife guy dropped off a dead western gull to scare away others who might be thinking about eating a baby tern. 

Ternwatch

The California Least Tern, shown here, is on the endangered species list. The idea here is to launch as many fledglings as possible so if global warming does comes to pass the population will be as large as possible[it's the conservative thing to do]. The San Diego Audubon in cooperation with the US Department of Fish and Wildlife and the City of San Diego has set aside five tern nesting areas of which Mariner's Point is the most active with over 100 active nests.

Here I am during a Ternwatcher shift at Mariners Point in San Diego's Mission Bay on Wednesday morning.

Ternwatcher 2017

This morning I did my 1st Ternwatcher shift of the season from 8-10am at Mariner's Point on Mission Bay. After a short visit with Dave from Fish and Wildlife, he makes daily short visits, I settled down for my shift.

There were LOTS of CA Least Terns flying around and occasionally landing who looked like they wanted to drop an egg... but I didn't see any who actually did that. Dave said there were in fact some active nests with eggs in them but I was never able to spot them.

I also saw a flock of brown pelicans fly over, a horned lark, some house finches, and two western gulls.

Learn more about California Least Terns at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_least_tern

Mission Dam San Diego

Today I took a birdwalk with The San Diego Audubon at Mission Trails Dam.

A Lazuli Bunting is the coolest bird we spotted on this morning's Audubon bird walk at Old Mission Dam. The first time I saw a Western Bluebird I thought it was a Lazuli. This was my 1st "for sure" Lazuli Bunting. [not my picture-- from Wikipedia]

We also saw one of my all-time favs a Belted Kingfisher. This isn't my picture but is pretty close to the one we saw. [Attribution: Michael L. Baird]

San Diego's Famosa Slough

Today I visited Famosa Slough located just a couple of blocks from where I live in San Diego. I learned about it while researching birding hot spots in San Diego and it turned out Famosa Slough was just a short distance from where I live in the Point Loma neighborhood. Sightings of nearly two hundred species of birds have been reported here.

More about Famosa Slough at: www.famosaslough.org/





My first sighting of a Little Blue Heron was along the San Diego River Estuary just a couple of days ago. I saw this one at the left this morning over at the Slough.

There were lots of Northern Pintail Ducks too.

I also saw several Snowy Egrets.

... and this beauty of a Great Blue Heron.

I'm not solid on this... but I think it's a Northern Mockingbird.













Other birds I saw today but didn't get pics of were:
Blue-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Ruddy Duck, Pied-billed Grebe, Great Egret, American Coot, Black-necked Stilt, Ring-billed Gull, Western Gull, Mourning Dove, Black Phoebe, House Finch, and a House Sparrow.

Audubon Bird and Bike

This morning I went bike-birding along the San Diego River with an Audubon group.  The group saw nearly 70 birds of which I saw about half of them.  Lucky for me this is only about a half mile from home.

Sweetwater Marsh National Wildlife Refuge

This morning I visited the Sweetwater Marsh National Wildlife Refuge [http://www.fws.gov/refuge/san_diego_bay/] on San Diego Bay about two miles west of where I'm staying here in Chula Vista south of San Diego.

One of the new birds I saw was this Savannah Sparrow. Actually it's a protected local version called a Belding's Savannah Sparrow and is considered a rare subspecies.

For a complete list of the birds I saw:
www.ebird.org

The wildlife refuge has a way better pic of the Belding's Savannah Sparrow than mine on their websight.

Another new one for me was this Common Yellow Throat Warbler.

And I think now on I'll be able to recognize a Northern Mocking Bird when I see one.















I first came here a couple of weeks ago while on a bike ride and was a bit put off by what looked like a $14 entry fee and shuttle bus ride.  But after a phone call learned that I was free to take the shuttle bus in and hike the trails in the refuge without paying for the separate $14 nature center tour.  I'm sure I'll be going back.

San Diego Bay Birds

Here are some of the new birds I've seen so far since I've been here in San Diego. Can you guess which is which? 

For a list of all of the birds I saw: www.ebird.org

[A]Spotted Sandpiper  [B]Brown Pelican    [C]Snowy Egret  [D]Western Gull  [E]Marbled Godwit  [F]Long Billed Curlew  [G]Western Brant.

[1]

 [2]

 [3]

 [4]

 [5]

[6] 

[7]

For the birds...

Bird watching has become a new past time for me while staying here at Lake Havasu.  I've been going for a daily morning bird walk for an hour since mid-January.  About twice a week I've been going on a guided bird walk in the state park next to where I'm staying.  The walk is lead by volunteer Jim Scott on Wednesday through Sunday.  Thanks to Jim I've seen 52 kinds of birds.  You can visit his blog at: cascaderamblings.blogspot.com/ .

Havasu Birds

I'm seeing a lot of really great birds in the state park here in Lake Havasu.  In the past couple of days I've seen these[pics not by me]...

Ladderback Woodpecker

Red tailed Hawk