A Little Mainland Action

Oops! Here is a blog entry that I had drafted, but not posted!

Before my surgery in mid-January, Hubby and I decided to do a bit of birding on the mainland. I had heard that the Bolsa Chica Wetlands were great for bird watching, so we headed out there the day before my surgery. The wetlands are managed by the Bolsa Chica Conservancy and are some of the last intertidal wetlands in southern California. See the bottom of this post for a Google Earth image of the wetland and of the birdwatching route that we took.

When we arrived, the parking lot was packed because they were installing a new pedestrian bridge over an inlet that led to a marina. We walked around the intertidal wetlands that are near to the visitors' center, where we saw lots of killdeer and some great egrets. We then checked out the visitors' center, which is small but has a number of taxidermy specimens. Of course, seeing birds close up never gives one an accurate idea of what the bird will look like through one's binoculars -- take the ring-necked duck as one example. If you see a specimen, you can see the burgundy colored ring around the neck, but as a field mark, it's useless. But it was still worthwhile and interesting. There were species lists for birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles available here too.

Hubby and I crossed the inlet via the road (Warner Avenue) and after skirting the heavy machinery and smiling at the construction workers so they wouldn't yell at us, we picked up the trail that takes one along the waterway. To the left were open fields (Canada geese, turkey vulture, sparrows, meadowlarks). The tide was falling and we saw curlew, willets, whimbrels, sandpipers, and snowy egrets. We continued along this path until we got to the bridge that goes across a flood control gate. We did not cross this bridge, but walked along a narrow dike with a channelized waterway to our right and a wetland to our left. More great birds along here!

Altogether, we saw 40 species (and three new lifers: Western sandpiper, Least sandpiper, and California towhee) in two hours of walking -- not bad, even for two fairly mediocre birders. We might have missed some shorebirds, because that's not my strong suit and we didn't have a spotting scope.

Birds seen:
Pied-billed grebe
Western grebe
Double-crested cormorant
Great blue heron
Great egret
Snowy egret
Canada goose
Green-winged teal
Northern pintail
Northern shoveler
American wigeon
Ring-necked duck
Lesser scaup
Bufflehead
Ruddy duck
Turkey vulture
Red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
American coot
Killdeer
American avocet
Greater yellowlegs
Willet
Long-billed curlew
Marbled godwit
Western sandpiper*
Least sandpiper*
Ring-billed gull
Western gull
Forster's tern
Rock dove
Anna's hummingbird
House wren
European starling
California towheee*
Chipping sparrow
Savannah sparrow
Song sparrow
White-crowned sparrow
Western meadowlark