I trailed down the shore of the beach, my shoes already full of sand. When I go birding I always wear old shoes, and those old shoes always have multiple holes. My shoes were emptied multiple times today. The first bird I saw was an Osprey; its wings glowing gold in the sunrise. He was heading towards the harbor or the settling ponds, so I guess I wouldn't see any Osprey action today. Drat. The surf was really small, and the tide was low, but it was already pretty warm and the thermals were doing a good deed by elevating all of the lazy pelicans to their preferred diving height. There was a small breeze too, so it wasn't a bad time to bird. Turns out that the phalaropes were just waiting for me at the near end of the estuary. They were bathing and feeding with a couple of Bonaparte's Gulls, and then two Wilson's Phalaropes joined the group. When I neared in, the gulls flew away like wimps, but the phalaropes were totally chill about me just sitting on the little dune, sketching them. They were too occupied with whatever they were eating. Some Killdeer and Spotted Sandpipers were running around on the shore of the estuary, eating little bugs and whatever else there is to eat. I spent about 45 minutes taking notes and just watching the phalaropes, and a cool fuzzy caterpillar climbed on my leg. Since there was no apparent vegetation on my pants, he slowly moved on, and so did I.
I saw birds that I've seen here normally around this time. Dunlins and peeps (peeps is a term for the smallest of sandpipers) running up and down the estuary, terns diving into the ocean, and gulls trying to steal whatever the terns had caught. American Avocets were accompanied by a juvenile Black-necked Stilt, and cormorants and ducks were swimming around. I found a Greater Yellowlegs in the crowd of all of the other birds. I've seen them multiple times before, but always from a distance. I was a lot closer today. It was near one of the avocets, and was only a couple of inches shorter. (American Avocets are about a foot and a half tall) You could take a wild guess on why this bird is called a yellowlegs. And you could probably guess that a Greater Yellowlegs is larger than a Lesser Yellowlegs. The hard thing is differentiating between them when they aren't so near. But, there were no Lesser Yellowlegs today, and actually, the greater has a bill that is ever so slightly upturned. (not as much as an avocet's of course)
I reached the end of the estuary, and saw a beached sea lion. It's a good thing that McGrath State Beach isn't one of those heavily populated beaches, because there would probably be kids and stupid moms around it if it were. He wasn't injured, and he was just sleeping, but I called the marine animal hotline just to let them know about the little guy. If he's okay, then no harm done. It started to get really windy, which wasn't a problem for all of the airborne pelicans. They were more than fine with the stronger drafts coming up from the waves. Brown Pelicans are just natural surfers, carelessly gliding over the carved waves. There were about 200 Clark's and Western Grebes sitting behind the surf. (the two are very similar species, almost identical) They didn't seem to mind the wind either, since they could just dive down to get away from it. However, it was getting a bit too much for me. I enjoy the wind, but it's not very easy birding when the wind is blowing into your eyes. I headed back to my car, but not without watching the phalaropes for a couple more minutes, still bobbing up and down on the wind-generated waves in their small corner of the estuary.
One thing. Obviously, if you aren't a birder, a lot of these names and descriptions fly right over your head.(just like a bird would) I'm not going to post other people's photos, since that's rude, but I'll include a link to the bird guide on the Cornell website. It's very good, and has nice pictures and recordings of every bird that I've talked about. It's right below.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/search
No comments:
Post a Comment