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.

Famosa Slough and Mariner's Point

Forster's tern

Today, I did two projects with Audubon.  The first was at Famosa Slough getting ready to do nest monitoring this spring.  I took a few photos of the birds that were there.

Least Sandpiper

Dowitchers

Willet

Blue winged teal

Forster's tern

Then, I went over to Mariner's Point in Mission Bay to help remove some invasive weeds before the least terns come to nest.  The killdeer were already there with their nests.  Here is one of the mothers:

Here is another female on her nest.  I was working about 10-15 feet from her and she stayed on her nest pretty much the whole time.

Here she is with her eggs in the background.

This is her with her mate.  When he visited, they mated, so I definitely know that the one sitting on the nest is the mom.

Here is my view of the work area with all the primrose.

This is North America's smallest butterfly, the pygmy butterfly:

This spot had a good sight of the bay.  Here are two California brown pelicans (and a Forster's tern) flying around the point:

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.