Poor 'Picked-on' and some warbling vireos

Poor "Picked-on" the outcast Canada goose.  He has a sprained leg, probably from picking fights with the other geese.  Don't worry, his wings are OK, he likes to hold them that way when he's depressed or not feeling well.  I feel sorry for him because he's been so sad since Louie died, but then he tries to fight with the other geese or kill ducklings.  He's always been a mental case as long as I've known him.

In other news, no ducklings, yet, but there are a couple of babies in the heron and osprey nests.  I think ducklings should arrive soon.  In the meantime, I was having problems identifying some birds that sounded like finches, but didn't look like them.  I think they're warbling vireos.  There's a male singing his head off and a female doing the begging posture.

I threw in a picture of this dog because he didn't like me standing there taking pictures of the birds.  I rarely ever see him.  All the dogs seemed not to like me standing there today.

Bigboi trouble and domestic duck update

It's been a while since I was at Lake Murray and I wanted to check up on the two female buff ducks.  One of the females had a swollen belly.  When I didn't see her, I figured she died.

Here is her skinny sister.

The runner duck was walking around protecting her:

I didn't see Bigboi, but I wasn't that worried because he often goes off on his own and figured that the old duck would be OK.  When I walked away, the runner duck ran over to a concrete wall next to the sidewalk and kept looking over into these weeds.  I could see the weeds moving around, so I went to check.  It was then that I heard a male duck quack and could see Bigboi stuck between the weeds and the wall:

I grabbed him and pulled him out.  He didn't even thank me and ran over to the skinny blonde duck.  The runner duck followed him.  He seemed fine.  I was afraid I grabbed him the wrong way.  He was pretty scared when I grabbed him.

Later, I found the duck with the swollen belly.  She didn't look at me.  Apparently, she was hiding in the reeds either to hide from the males, or to lay eggs.  She promptly disappeared back in the reeds.  Apparently, Bigboi was stuck in the reeds after trying to get to her.

The crested runner mated with the skinny duck and, afterwards, all the males got together to talk about it:

There were two wigeons nearby, too:

Here's Baby Blue and a green heron:

This green heron was clucking around, obviously upset about something:

This is my spot!

I think he was upset with two other herons feeding in the same area and he was the smallest.  The biggest, a great blue heron, flew off, but a smaller snowy egret stayed behind.

No, it's MY spot!

Faking killdeer

I was working at the least tern management site at Mariner's Point in Mission Bay and there was a killdeer acting like he was sitting on a nest.  I thought it was a female, at first, but now think he's an old male.  I didn't have my camera ready when he suddenly did a broken wing act.

In the end, there were no nests anywhere near where he was and he ended up flying away after an hour or two.

Sitting on his fake nest, watching everyone:

Then, getting up and looking around, trilling sometimes:

Other killdeer watched from a distance:

There was a willet, too:

We were pulling fillaree away from the endangered Nuttall's lotus.  Here's a complete lotus plant:

It's called a lotus because of these flowers:

Sunday highlights of the San Diego Bird Festival 2014

Today was the last day of the 2014 San Diego Bird Festival.  It was pretty stormy throughout the entire event, pretty much.  Some days were better than others and most events happened regardless of the weather.  It even rained today, but we had some sun, too.  Today was Family Fun Day which means all events are free and open to the public.  I checked out the Big Sit, the Expo and a lecture on local parrots.

The "Big Sit" circle

The Big Sit list as of about 11:30 a.m.

The Big Sit list 2 hours later

The river was a bit high, covering the roosting spots.  It lowered, later in the day:

Spotted sandpiper with a small crab near the "Big Sit":

Greater scaup in same area:

A pair of red-breasted mergansers outside the Expo in the marina:

Inside the expo, Project Wildlife was there with a barn owl named Boo:

They had something new this year:  SoCal Parrots.  They were advocating for the wild parrots in our area.  These are conures in this cage.