Surprise December Ducklings

Nothing much has been going on at Lake Murray for the last few weeks except for a surprise batch of December ducklings. The mother was first spotted with four, but by the time I saw them, there were only three left. Within a few days, it appears that the gulls got all of them or they were stolen by people. A gull was spotted with one a couple of days after I took these photos. There were also reports of them running up to people. When the mother saw me one day, she acted like she thought I had one of them, so I think one or two may have been kidnapped.

At first, I thought the mother was an elderly duck with a hormone problem. However, when I look at this next picture, I notice she looks a lot like Miss Friendly, a five month old female. Miss Friendly was the super-friendly duckling that loved to follow people around. It appears to be a genetic trait as these ducklings had the same personality.

Also this month, four runner ducks were dumped, one of which has a broken wing. They are two males and two females, it appears.

They found their way over to Sissy and Pumpkin who have adopted them. They are now bonded to the two older buff ducks and hate to be too far away from them.

The killdeer have been super friendly. I've seen Firecracker hanging out in her old hangout where she was raised. Her brother, Killer and his mate, Dee have also been seen hanging out in the same spot. All of these killdeer, including Killer and Dee in the next photo, are now considered nearly elderly for killdeer who usually live about nine or ten years at the most. They are about 5.5 years old.

Birdy update

This was all at Lake Murray in San Diego. I plan to get out to bird some other areas, but summer birding in San Diego is a little slow. Here are some birds that I've seen lately:

First, here is what I think is Troublemaker, the duck, who is almost a year old now. He just showed up and ran up to me all of a sudden:

The obligatory gosling photo taken on the 27th:

While there are no ducklings around, I have seen several baby coots. The set of three I saw earlier are all doing fine, but hard to photograph.  Here is a single coot-ling near the other three:

Here are two more coot-lings, one older one and a tiny one in the back. I think the small one has just hatched:

I finally got a photo of the nervous spotted sandpiper! She wouldn't let me get too close, so I didn't get a great picture of her:

Bye Mrs. Spotted Sandpiper:

I don't know if you can see the gnatcatcher in this photo. I got him to come up really close, but my camera lens is acting up, so all I got was this little picture of him. There were two males and a female around there:

I originally thought this was the Baltimore Oriole that I've heard was in the area, but it's a black-headed grosbeak. This is the best picture I have of him.

I found these young ducks that look like recently released Project Wildlife ducks. I wonder if Uno is one of these guys as he would be about their age. They like to eat in the canal and I'm not sure of their flying abilities. So, please keep your dog leashed up there.

I heard there was a small family of ducklings near the fenceline at the end of the walking trail. I thought maybe they were some of the 13 or so I saw a couple weeks ago. But, they might be some of the three that I saw about a month ago on that side.

Last day of GBBC in the South Bay NWR

Yesterday was the last day of the GBBC and I went down to the 7th Avenue Bayshore Bikeway bench to count shorebirds and ducks.  I also checked out the "10 ponds" on the other side from the bench.  Those are formally known as pond 10 and 10A.  Here are some photos I took while I was there:

Wow, so many sandpipers.  These are least sandpipers.  All the sandpipers that stayed close to me were least and there were over a thousand western sandpipers further away.  There was a dunlin in the second photo.

This curlew was cold as it was windy and foggy.  That's a marbled godwit nearby.  Look at how similar their plumage is.  But, note the thin, dark legs on the marbled godwit.

He was soon joined up with a second curlew who also didn't want to take his bill out of his wings.

The curlew was visited by a semi-palmated plover:

Marbled godwit:

Savannah sparrow:

 Says Phoebe

Back at Lake Murray, "Picked On" has been kicked out of the flock and appears thin and depressed:

A female redhead duck was resting on land:

More redheads were nearby with the coots:

And, Cow is still alive.  Here she is near her 5 boyfriends.  Breeding season is about to get rough in the next month or two.

Shorebird Counting Day

Today is the day where, once a year, Point Blue Bird Observatory counts all the shorebirds around San Diego Bay at the same time. I was assigned the Coronado Island area.

My day started out with a curlew, though with her head tucked in, she looked just like a marbled godwit:

There were a couple of short-billed dowitchers with her:

The other two in the group were marbled godwits for sure because at least one of them pulled their head out and I could see the long, pointed bill:

This kingfisher was spotted with a fish and she dropped it when she saw me coming.  Then, she sat on this light pole hoping I would leave so she could go back and get her fish:

There were a whole lot of shorebirds in that spot:

Close-up of a willet and two godwits:

Look at that middle godwit and how he puts his toes up when he walks across the rocks:

I went to another area and people were chasing the birds!  Oh no!  I asked them to stop and they did, but it was definitely an awkward and uncomfortable moment there for a few minutes.  All the birds came back, I think.  I'm glad because there were a whole lot of them:

And, a sanderling was with them, too:

Some of the godwits were having a disagreement, plus the tide was going up:

And, here is the sanderling again:

There were two spotted sandpipers there today.  I saw this one who might be a juvenile:

Oops, water going over his feet:

Oh no!  My feet are getting wet!

In other bird news, there were plenty of surf scoters around:

This one was showing off and following me around:

And buffleheads.  Lots of buffleheads and coots:

Ring-bills, teals, and woodpeckers

There's still at least one teal at Lake Murray.  Here she is with a male mallard.

There are so many coots, scaups, and ruddy ducks now:

Baby Blue, the dumped domestic duckling,  seems to like to eat Mazuri waterfowl food. He's gotten a lot larger, lately:

Though he is now mostly feathered out, his feathers are not in good condition.  I suspect that his previous owner didn't feed him very well and now he's growing up on junk food.  I hope his condition improves:

I found this blue heron standing on a railing.  I guess if they can hang onto branches, they can stand on a rail.  I think this might be the mom heron or one of the babies.  Mom heron was very grayish like this one:

Finally saw some ring-billed gulls, three young ones:

This Nuttall's woodpecker was out in the open when I first saw him, but when I turned the camera on him, he began to hide from me:

Someone said they spotted a glaucous-winged gull there, but I didn't see him.