World Shorebird Day and Trouble Update

Yesterday was the very first ever celebration of World Shorebird Day (though I've seen in some places that it's official the 5th, but celebrated the following weekend).  People were asked to count birds from the 5-7. I went to the lake on the 6th early in the morning, but found no shorebirds.  Today, I went to Fiesta Island in Mission Bay and found several shorebirds.  Luckily, I went before the crowds came in.  It was already crowded with thousands of people and I could see thousands more coming in.  The shorebirds I saw today probably moved to another area after I left.

Marbled godwits and willets

I did a quick drive around the island, stopping at various points to check out the birds.

Black-bellied plover

2 Godwits, I'm thinking 1  might be a juvenile

Short-billed dowitcher amongst the godwits

Western sandpipers

Male and female horned larks

Heermann's gulls

Another Heermann's gull

There were absolutely no ducks or terns on the bay at all, at least in that area.  It was probably a good thing because there was about a hundred speeding watercraft out there.

Back at Lake Murray, the ducks are plentiful.  I took all these photos on Labor Day.

Snowie in her fresh molt

Both sister ducks are seen together a lot, but it's still hard to photograph both of them together.  Here's Big Sister.

After about two weeks of not seeing him, Trouble came up to visit me.  The thing is he was sneezing and his eyes were irritated.  The right eye looked only slightly irritated, but the left one was obviously sore.

He still has his long, yellowish legs:

Trouble couldn't resist rubbing his left eye constantly to the point where it was swollen and red.  I'm thinking the algae in the lake where he hangs out was irritating them.  His nares actually looked clear and clean, not like he has a cold.  His eyes were a little drainy, but not draining mucous.

One good thing is that he now has all his feathers and can fly, but I don't know how well he can see with his irritated eyes.  I didn't see him yesterday, but I hope he's OK.

Trouble still stays within visual contact with his family.  Here are two of his brothers nearby.

Least Terns and more missing ducks

All last week, I went out and helped San Diego Audubon get ready for least tern nesting season.  The terns will be arriving soon!  I helped set up decoys, helped with grid-ding, and helped with pulling more weeds. We mostly worked on Fiesta Island with a little bit of work at Mariner's Point.

The picture below is of decoys being counted and getting ready to be placed.  It sorta looks like a tern massacre, lol.

This is the famous Stony Point hummingbird who likes to sit near the gate at the Stony Point nesting area:

Here is one of the views from Stony Point:

Lots and lots of horned larks on Fiesta Island:

And, the resident killdeer where there.  Here's one from Mariner's Point:

Here's one from North Fiesta Island where they had a nest by the end of the week.  This is dad being very watchful.

This is mom on her nest.  I didn't want to set a bad example and get too close to the nest to see exactly how many eggs she had (I saw at least two from a distance).  I really don't need to know if I'm not monitoring their nest, anyway.

I think they had at least one chick survive to adulthood, last year, and I think he was still hanging around.

I have a lens on Squidoo about helping the California least terns.  Click on the link to see it.

At Lake Murray, I noticed Big Daddy acting sick and lethargic.  It could just be because he's molting.  He and Cinnamon's old boyfriend were ganging up on Cinnamon's Twin's Twin. (Mostly it was the other ducks, not him that was doing it because he was acting sick).  When I tried to stop them from seriously hurting her, a lady fishing with her kids berated me for interfering.  Last year, I saw a domestic duck literally get "bred to death" while on land, so I didn't want it to happen to Cinnamon's Twin's Twin.

Also, I think I will have to say goodbye to Cow, the magpie duck dropped off last year with the big flock of black and white ducks.  She was a favorite of the males and also one of the smallest.  I suspect she drowned just like Cinnamon did.  She was the only one I named from that group.  Like Cinnamon, I really hope she's just sitting on a nest somewhere and will be seen, soon.

Shame on these people who dump these ducks.

Great Backyard Bird Count Day One

Today was the first day of the four day "Great Back Yard Bird Count".  This year, people are counting birds all over the world, not just here.  Because I work on weekends, I did two counts.  The first one was at Lake Murray where I counted 55 species (but only 54 are being "counted" because one of my sightings was a barn swallow that is out of season in this area).

To my surprise, I found the little call duck alive this morning!  He was near his usual area and hanging out with another male mallard.  I thought he had been caught by a coyote, so I was really surprised.

I think this *might* be Zippy, one of the last ducklings to hatch and survive last year.  She looks a lot like her mother in the face, but her body shape is a little smaller and rounder.

And, look who I saw.  It's Bossy!  His ring is back around his neck again.  You can see where he had it around his head before.  He's so healthy otherwise.  Hopefully he will continue not to have any problems with that ring.

I think Bossy likes Zippy.  She seemed a little bit indifferent to him.  She's still young.

Then, I went over to Fiesta Island and counted birds there for almost an hour.  There were some marbled godwits and willets there.  That willet is excited about that seaweed and wouldn't share.

Another willet somewhere else.  He was hanging around a flock of gulls and walking up to a couple in a car who was stopped near a trash can.  That was strange.  I think he was just curious about the people in the car.

Another marbled godwit:

I am not sure, but I think this might be a herring gull getting ready to molt into his third year.  I thought it was a juvenile western gull, but the colors are not right.

Brant, coots and buffleheads:

This brant came up when I called.  I think he/she was curious about me.

Helping at the Fiesta Island Least Tern Site

Today, I went to Fiesta Island to help the San Diego Audubon Society work on their little patch of land on Fiesta Island where the least tern nest.  I had worked that area last year, but this year they set aside areas of land to hand manage.

We were mostly taking out tumbleweeds and cockleburrs.  Here are some cockleburr seeds:

And, here is a cockleburr plant.  Fortunately, it had been raining the last few days, so the ground was soft.  They were easy to pull with their fairly shallow roots.

Like last year, there were killdeer here.  I think it was a family of three.  The one on the left is a young male.  The one on the right might be a female, possibly the mom.

This might be dad.

Lots and lots of horned larks, too!

And, a Say's phoebe:

On the other side of the island, away from the site there was a skimmer skimming:

Some godwits and willets.  There was a dunlin hanging around with them, too, but the picture I got of him was blurry:

A godwit and dowitchers. 

And, there were brant on the shore.

This brant let me get really close.  I could have gotten closer, but I am not familiar with the warning or nervous behavior signs of brant and I know geese can get mean, so I didn't get any closer than I needed to.  He seemed to be very calm, perhaps he didn't feel well:

I haven't been to Lake Murray in a few days (except to find Oreo, which I did and he's doing well), but I remember seeing a pile of feathers near the bench where everyone feeds the ducks.  I couldn't figure out who they belonged to because the feathers were fairly light in color,  but had a little mallard pattern to them except smaller.   There were other feathers around, too, including a lot of gray down, gray feathers, and a light-brown primary flight feather.  I recently realized that I haven't seen the little brown and gray male call duck since I found the feathers.  I didn't think he had any mallard-like pattern to his feathers, but I saw the photo I posted a couple weeks ago and he does have a mallard pattern to his feathers around his shoulder area.  He was sick recently, but got better.  But, he may not have fully recovered and I think a coyote might have gotten him.  He had been there for a very long time and may have also been a bit on the older side.  He could fly extremely well, though.  But, I don't think he's been flying much lately.