Salton Sea NWR

We visited the Salton Sea NWR way back in April.  Read out our trip, lost car topper and all, at Hubby's blog -- Life in Two Harbors.

I advise you to stop in at the Visitor's Center first.  The person there was very helpful and suggested a driving route that helped us to see a lot of birds -- including more than 20 burrowing owls and the barn owl hanging out in a palm tree at the Center itself.

I have been meaning to go to the Salton Sea ever since we first moved to California.  We had a great time and I hope to return in the winter...

Here is our species list, mainly for birds. Sorry that the species are not in taxonomic order.  Usually I try to transfer it using a species checklist like this one for the Salton Sea NWR, but this time it's straight out of my field notebook.  So things are in the order that I saw them or remembered that I saw them...

Salton Sea NWR

Blooming palo verde tree

25 April 2011

Common ground dove

Eurasian collared dove

Gambel’s quail

Great-tailed grackle

Warbling vireo

Great egret

White-crowned sparrow

House sparrow

Western kingbird

Black-headed grosbeak

Cattle egret

Caspian tern

Western gull

Black phoebe

Mallard

Barn swallow

Northern rough-winged swallow

Western tanager

Burrowing owl along Walker Road

Black-necked stilt

American golden plover

Ruddy duck

American avocet

White pelican

Eared grebe

Great blue heron

Scaup (lesser or greater?)

Surf scoter

Green heron

Pied-billed grebe

Turkey vulture

American kestrel

American coot

Semipalmated plover

Killdeer

Willet

View of the Salton Sea. Not so pretty.

Marbled godwit

Ring-billed gull

Gull-billed tern

Mourning dove

Burrowing owl

Barn owl

Western meadowlark

Red-winged blackbird

Verdin

Marsh wren

Black skimmer

Northern mockingbird

European starling

Wilson’s warbler

Northern raven

Spotted sandpiper

King rail (heard)
Greater roadrunner

Desert cottontails (Sylvilagus audubonii)

Round-tailed ground squirrels (Spermophilus tereticaudus)