Oceanside Christmas Bird Count

Today, I went to the Buena Vista Lagoon in Oceanside/Carlsbad for their Christmas Bird Count.  Unfortunately, most of the birds were too far to get good photos of.

This western grebe did come up close, though:

There wasn't anything inherently unusual during this count, but I did see a black and white warbler.  Someone else saw a Wilson's warbler, too.  I also saw a couple of Heermann's gulls.

San Diego Christmas Bird Count

Yesterday, I took part in the annual Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count.  My portion was the southwestern side of Chollas Lake, usually locked to the general public.  It includes the model air plane flying area.

Not many of the birds were co-operative about having their picture taken, especially the horned larks:

Saw many savanna sparrows, too.

 

And, several kestrels:

We could see the snow on Mount Laguna from where we were.

There were also meadowlarks, cedar waxwings, lots of yellow-rumped warblers, northern harrier, gnatcatchers, tons upon tons of Anna's hummingbirds, a merlin, red-tailed hawks,  California towhees, and many other species.  Very disappointed in the severe lack of killdeer (none!).  

At the lake, I saw this cute little female muscovy:

And, Arrowhead!

Update on Jill:

Jill has re-joined the main flock, but is being harassed by all the geese.  Louie is totally in love with her, but attacked her once, probably in an attempt to mate.  Jill resisted and began fighting back.  One of the Canada geese got upset and attacked Louie.  Later, he made sure that Louie couldn't get near Jill.  Louie shadowed her around, cooing and flexing his neck at her, but she kept her distance.  It might be too soon for her and the other geese in the flock are making sure that she's kept at a low rank.  

Someone else also thought that Jack might have been stolen from the lake, too.  They said they saw footprints around where he and Jill hung out.  But, like I said before, there is a lady who looks after them over there and I haven't talked to her about it, yet.

Christmas Bird Count Training

Killdeer

Yesterday, I went to the Christmas Bird Count training at Rohr Park in Bonita.  The actual Christmas Bird Count for San Diego will be next weekend.  So, I was able to brush up on my small birds as there's a lot of small birds there.  However, many of these birds were too fast for my camera, hence the less than perfect focus to blurriness on some of the photos.

Cedar Waxwings

Orange-crowned warbler

 This next bird, the Painted Redstart, is actually far from it's normal range.  They have a summer range of central/southern Arizona and usually live in Mexico.

There also was a northern parula, but it was way too fast for even a blurry photo.

Below, are some sleepy killdeer, sleeping in the horse corral.  These are the same killdeer I see at the church, which is across the street:

Townsend's warbler

Western Bluebird

We also saw a kestrel, merlin, red-shouldered hawk, red-tailed hawk, Cooper's hawk, sparrows, finches of all kinds and a palm warbler.