A day at the beach: At the Tijuana River Mouth

Before anyone asks, no, I didn't go swimming or wading in the water.  I came to this area to look at birds and practice digiscoping (which didn't go well).  But, I got to see snowy plovers and other birds.

This least sandpiper was checking me out to make sure I wasn't going to be trouble for anyone.

Many of the black-bellied plovers are turning into breeding plumage:

Many, many western sandpipers, a lot of which were half-buried in the sand:

And, of course, I got lots of photos of the snowy plovers themselves:

It looks like there's one little plover in a nest or something.  Or, just resting.  I think it was a female checking out a male's nest scrape (in the middle of the photo under the one standing upright; May be hard to see).  Not a good area to nest as vehicles drive through this area.  There's a big area set aside just for them about 100 feet away.  But, they don't seem interested:

There was also a massive amount of terns there, mostly royal terns, hanging out with the gulls.  And, lots of curlews and a few whimbrels.

Shorebirds and missing ducks

This morning at Lake Murray was beautiful with lots of sun.  I started from the north side of the lake.  There was a lady there feeding the geese and duck and noticed that Cinnamon as well as the pekin and Swedish duck were all doing well.  But, no sign of Bossy duck.

On the other side, Pepper, Not Pepper, Buffy and Pepper's family were doing well.  Here's a photo of Pepper with his brother:

Nearby, all the ducks were by where people normally feed them.  However, one of the pekins from that side was missing.  I looked everywhere and could not find him. The two are normally together all the time, so it doesn't look good for the missing duck.  Here is a photo of the remaining one alone with the runner duck and the most recently dumped trio:

I found this new female spoonface today.  She has a spoon on her bill just like Bossy does:

Speaking of spoonbills, here are two real spoonbill (northern shovelers, actually)  females:

Also not seen was Quacker, the flying Cayuga.  This also worries me as I haven't gone a day without seeing her in a long time.  All her friends and adopted family were there but her.  But, it rained recently, so she could have gone somewhere else for a while.  The killdeer were all missing, too, probably for the same reason.  They tend to go missing once we get hard rain.

I also went to Crown Point and saw lots upon lots of shorebirds. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and dark, so the colors were muted:

Black-bellied plovers:

A black-bellied plover and a ruddy turnstone:

Semipalmated plovers and a dunlin:

Shorebirds in general, including marbled godwits:

There were about a hundred plovers all on the sand, too.

Shorebirds seen today 10/20/2011

Today, I took an accidental trip to Crown Point in Mission Bay. When I was driving by in my car, I saw a whole flock of black bellied plovers (with one dunlin hiding between them and possible a Pacific golden plover or two):



And, a few ruddy turnstones:



And a small flock of skimmers, too:



It was funny seeing the plovers hopping around on one leg because it was too cold to let the other leg down.