Hello! Most of my posts take place around San Diego County, (Mostly Lake Murray) unless otherwise noted.
For more posts and photos, I also post on Hubpages, a site that is a bit different than others. Thanks!: Shorebirdie on Hubpages

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Counting day!

It's counting day at Lake Murray again.  Here are some photos to start you off.  We have killdeer activity, I think Killer and Dee may have returned, but I am not sure.  Everyone is looking for a mate except the adults.

In these next photos, I think one of the killdeers is Pollux, one is an unknown male, and one might be Smudge or Peanut.


The male on the top of the rock got excited and tried to do a nest scrape when the killdeer on the lower rock turned around.


I think that is Pollux threatening the strange killdeer.



Miracle and Little Miracle where not far away, waiting for the males to tell them to come back.  Here is Little Miracle.


And, I think this is Miracle, or the other way around.  They look a lot alike.


This is Smudge:

These are juveniles, looks like a male and a female.  Could be Peanut and her brother, or could be two new killdeer, most likely siblings:


I am not sure who this is, but it might be Killer Junior.  However, he looks a lot like Surprise whom I haven't seen in a long time.


Plenty of white-crowned sparrows now and yellow-rumped warblers.



The dumped ducks haven't lost any more from their group in the last couple of days.  They seem to be getting less afraid of everything.


They even came on shore to see if they could get a treat.



Here is one of the crested ones.  All three of the crested ones have lost a lot of feathers in their crest since they arrived.



This duck looks a lot more like Indy than the other one last week. He even has little scars on the same leg that Indy had the hooks attached to.  One of his feet had a blister or scar where one of the hooks was. So, this is most likely Indy and not the other one.  He seemed very tired today.



Indy's siblings were hanging out in their old area.  I think the one in front is Sweetie and the other is one of Indy's brother.  Indy's other brother was just out of the photo:


Also, I saw "Puffy Head" today.  he was back with Donald and Buffy2 in their usual spot.

Here's how the count went:


Species       Count

Canada Goose

3
Gadwall 2
American Wigeon 9
Mallard 139
Mallard (Domestic type) 47
Ruddy Duck 7
California Quail 20
Pied-billed Grebe 6
Western Grebe 8
Double-crested Cormorant 8
Green Heron 4
Turkey Vulture 3
Osprey 1
Cooper's Hawk 1
Red-shouldered Hawk 1
Sora 1
American Coot 1005
Killdeer 14
Western Gull 25
California Gull 5
Forster's Tern 3
Rock Pigeon 72
Mourning Dove 20
Anna's Hummingbird 68
Belted Kingfisher 3
Nuttall's Woodpecker 6
Black Phoebe 9
Cassin's Kingbird 5
American Crow 8
Bushtit 84
Bewick's Wren 1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 2
California Gnatcatcher 2
European Starling 2
Common Yellowthroat 6
Yellow-rumped Warbler 27
California Towhee 8
Song Sparrow 17
White-crowned Sparrow 52
Red-winged Blackbird 31
Western Meadowlark 1
Brewer's Blackbird 3
Great-tailed Grackle 65
House Finch 115
Lesser Goldfinch 50
Nutmeg Mannikin 10

No comments:

Post a Comment