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.

Duckling and Gosling Days

Just as I thought would happen, the ducklings are all starting to appear en masse at Lake Murray. I think the next few weeks will be the peak of duckling season. Hopefully, more will survive this year than last year.

So, I found a mama mallard with eight babies:

Sadly, though, this one appears to be badly injured in the head. I think he might be bleeding out of both ears. However, he is acting mostly normal. He even runs the fastest of all the ducklings in this group. I'm thinking he either got snagged by a gull or another duck.

Here he is with his other siblings, doing what ducklings normally do.

More ducklings:

Another mama nearby had two babies.

She was surrounded by 5 drakes, 3 of whom I chased off. However, she did not appreciate me for doing that and it appears that I added to her stress.

So, I backed off to give her some room and she moved her babies to the water:

Sadly, there is only one tiny gosling left and I think this one might be a female. She has actually grown a lot in the last few days. It looks like she's all legs.

Mama goose was throwing her head up because she was both nervous about me and about the other family of five swimming nearby. I backed away because she's a nervous one.

The other goslings are shedding their baby down:

They all came onshore to go across the road to feed on the soft grasses. Here is the mom of the tiny one following behind the other family. She wasn't being too nervous here, but instead, communicating to the other family about where they were going and how much space they need between them and the other family.

 I think four of their last year's babies flew off with the large group of visiting geese a couple of weeks ago.

In other news, I found this coot family with three chicks. The parents were very busy.

May 2014 Counting Day

Nutmeg Manikins.  I always see them there at Lake Murray

Today was the (unofficial) May 2014 counting day at Lake Murray in San Diego.  I was able to really get out and count the birds carefully because there were so few birds seen.  I only counted about 20 coots, which is the lowest number I've ever counted.  Mallard levels were low, too.  Unlike previous years, there were few ducklings and coot babies, too.  Western gulls, song sparrows, house finches and Anna's hummingbirds were the most numerous birds there.

I saw two gadwalls:

Surprisingly, we still have a few ruddy ducks around.  The scaup were there until a few days ago.

Baby Blue has a new girlfriend and they stick together all the time.  The male she was dumped with has left her because she prefers to be with Baby Blue.  She follows him everywhere.

The mom who had four ducklings still has three of them.  One of the smallest ones is gone.  They're about two weeks old now.  They were the only ducklings there.  Usually, there are at least 40-60 at this time.

This mean old coot didn't like the mama duck eating some grain that was nearby and chased her away:

The ducklings went and hid deep in the reeds and mama went with them.  I didn't see them again:

The two jerk geese were there where the ducklings are.  Well, the Canada goose is really sweet, but the white one is a jerk.

Baby season and summer birds

It's baby season and there seems to be plenty of breeding going on at Lake Murray lately.  While I haven't seen any ducklings for a couple of weeks, I saw plenty of other birds.  The baby osprey were flapping their wings and the heron chicks are getting big, though a bit far from fledging.  

Here's the first baby coot I've seen.  I saw one other that was all by himself:

Lots of baby pied-billed grebes around all of a sudden.  My camera didn't seem to like the lighting on these two fuzzy bodies:

Two handsome mallard drakes hanging out.  Most of the ducks I see now are bachelor mallards because most females are nesting.

One-foot ate and drank too much and is gaping because he couldn't breathe.  He was alright, though.

Two newly dumped ducks:

Baby Blue was very interested in both of them.  I think he wanted to fight the male who was much larger than him and he probably wanted the female, too.

I also saw some terns returning, two Forsters and one Caspian.  Bob2 was also there, all covered with spots, but she refused to let me take her photo, as usual.  She used to not mind me photographing her, but I think the increase in activity on the shore has made her weary.

Graphic pic ahead:

I found these pieces of a Cooper's hawk near a tree where Big Mama used to hunt.  I've seen her son and daughter hunting there from time to time.  This might be one of them.  I suspect a hawk or owl got him.  Here is what's left.  You can see the skull with the hooked bill, and part of a wing.

In other sad news, someone told me that they found a large duck carcass near where Oreo hangs out.  She said it looked like a mallard.  Oreo's gang is alright.  I even saw Stumpy, whom I hadn't seen for at least a year.  I couldn't find Buffy's son, though.  Also, two Pekins are missing, possibly Mr and Mrs. Pekin and it's possible that the carcass was Mr. Pekin because some people don't know the difference between a Pekin and a mallard.  But, I suspect that Mr. and Mrs. Pekin are together somewhere, staying away from the other ducks because of the condition of the Mrs who was near death when I saw her.

Redheads!

I heard a strange sound early in the morning that I couldn't figure out.  A little later, I thought I heard what sounded like quail, but it was coming from all over the place.

The sound actually came from the male redhead duck!

Heehuuuahh! Said the male redhead

Female redhead by herself.  She didn't like that male redhead:

Redhead among the coots:

This redhead couple sure were in a hurry to get somewhere:

I think this and another group of redheads were after them.  The males constantly called:

Rubberband and two of her brothers were nearby.  I think her third brother was off on his own, probably because he saw a female he liked.

The blonde duck has been hanging around the boat docks lately:

Pepper was with his brother.  He's so shy.

November 2013 counting day

Killer and Dee flying away

Today was my counting day at Lake Murray.  This time of year, counting can be a real chore and take most of the morning to do.  This year, I've counted the most coots that I've ever counted there, 1568, and those were the ones that I actually saw.  There might have been another hundred or two that I didn't see.

I only saw one black-crowned night heron, today:

There were a few green-back herons around, though.

I came across some turkey vultures waiting for a pair of gulls to start eating a nice fish when this pelican came, scooped up the fish, and swallowed it.  Here he is swallowing the fish.  He was the only pelican there.

Lots of nutmeg manikins.  I can recognize them by call now and I've found about four different populations of them around the lake.
 

Finally saw my first northern shoveler today.  Usually, they're the first migrating ducks, but this year, they were late:

Also saw my first American wigeons, though they stayed far away:

A pair of gadwalls.  I think this was the ones that might have been released by Project Wildlife.  The male has red feathers on his wing:

There's quite a few scaup at the lake now and I think I also counted a record number of ruddy ducks:

I saw four killdeer, two of which look like Killer and Dee.  Killer is George and Martha's son hatched in the summer of 2010:

Killer

Dee

Here's a close-up of Killer:

I think this might be Dee, but could be Killer again, but most likely Dee:

I won't go into detail about all the other birds I counted.  There were hundreds of yellow-rumped warblers, but not as much as I expected.  And, very few lesser goldfinches, too.

Louie, the Chinese gander, is swimming around the lake and I saw him way on the other side where Bumblefoot is.  He's herding the ducks around there.  I hope he doesn't hurt them.  I wonder if he's looking for Jill.