First walk of Fall 2013 at the San Diego Salt Works

Western sandpipers

Today, I went on the very first walk of the fall 2013 at the San Diego Salt Works.  Once a month, from October to March, San Diego Audubon holds a walk in this restricted area. It's a great chance to see some birds that are difficult to see from the areas regularly open to the public. Most of the walks take place on Saturday, but today they did this one on Sunday.  They are also canceled if there's bad weather.  Though today was foggy, it cleared up enough to see some birds.

So, let's get our sandpipers in a row:

So, like I said, it started out dark and cloudy.  Here is a shot of one of the drying ponds.  That is all salt in there, not snow or ice.

I think one of the most common birds inside the salt works area were western sandpipers.  I got lots of photos of them.

There were a log of cormorants hanging out on this thing until just before I took this photo.  You can see a couple of them flying away.

Also on this building were two turnstones, one ruddy and one black.  They seemed like they were best friends.

After a while, we finally saw the willets and godwits:

Willets flying away:

And, where you see willets, you also see marbled godwits:

I saw a few least sandpipers, too:

And, a few red knots:

Western grebe:

Eared grebe, very common there:

And, a surprise horned grebe.  Note the different shaped head and bill and brighter side and neck/head area:

A few greater yellowlegs were around, too:

There were a good number of long-billed curlews there, too.  Here's one with a couple of dunlin:

Here's a couple of western sandpipers with a couple of dunlins.  Lots of dunlins, too.

The ever-present Belding's savanna sparrow:

Royal tern:

Black-necked stilts:

Stilts with a few avocets:

There was also a surprise stilt family there with chicks that are still fuzzy and have gray necks.  Here is dad with the two chicks:

Here are the two babies:

And, a couple more surprises.  This is a photo of the first cattle egret ever seen at the salt works.  Cattle egrets, though common in many areas in the south, are not common in the San Diego area.

And, there was a short-eared owl, though I couldn't get a photo of him flying around.

And, then the sun came out and made the salt ponds look like glass:

New Year's Shorebird Counting

This is the third year I've done shorebird counting on New Year's day at the San Diego South Bay.  This year, I went at a rising tide early in the morning.  The weather was mostly cloudy, but not foggy like last year.  I also didn't walk as far as usual because I was carrying a scope and tripod (which I dropped once, but it was OK).

**Yes, I know that some of the photos say "2012" on it.  I was watermarking them and my fingers aren't used to typing 2013, so several of them were mismarked, but I didn't want to go back and change them.

Willets and godwits were plentiful.  Though I saw many willets socializing with individual godwits, I did not see the special willet-godwit pair that I've seen the last two years.

This godwit was itchy:

I saw hundreds of western sandpipers, but only about a dozen least sandpipers:

Lots and lots of them:

 A good mess of northern pintails, too (and a ton of wigeons which I didn't get any good photos of):

In this next photo, though it's hard to see are several snowy egrets, a reddish egret, Bonaparte's gull, and two types of merganser.  I didn't even know I got a picture of the reddish egret or the mergansers when I took this photo.

These willets, godwits, and dowitchers were all feeding peacefully here:

When a Cooper's hawk went on the attack and tried to attack some coots and other birds along the shore.

The willets and the black-bellied plovers nearby made sure they sounded the alarm until she was gone:

A few greater yellowlegs were around:

One friendly killdeer.  I think I only saw 5 of the 30 I usually see there:

An unusual sight, a white pelican.  They are usually inland freshwater birds:

And, hundreds of black brant.

At lot of them:

Seriously, a lot:

And, lots of eared grebes, too.