Pretty Much the Best Birding Day Ever

This last Saturday, Libby and I pretty much had our best birding day ever. We saw the most birds we'd ever seen in a day, and all in one place. Bolsa Chica proved its worth once and for all!

Now, if this post inspires you to go and see the wonders of Bolsa Chica, be warned! They've closed the boardwalk on the beach side of the preserve, so you can't walk out into the water and watch the birds play like you've been able to in the past. It looks like they're rebuilding it (which is good, I suppose), and it has no projected opening date. Which means that it will be probably forever before it opens again.

This was just a really cool trip to Bolsa Chica. We left very early in the morning (6:30 from Libby's apartment, arriving at the backside at 7:00 - we just drive straight down Valley View from Libby's Apartment) in order to beat the sunrise. The idea was that it would be very beautiful in the morning, and that we might see a coyote or a fox or something like that. It was fun. As you walk in the backside of Bolsa Chica you're on top of a hill, and looking out over toward the sea, the plain was packed with a while mist, illumined from above by a barely rising sun. Hovering above the mist, looking down, was a silhouetted white-tailed kite searching for something with which to break his fast. That's a bird that's always a priviledge to see, but in this case it was a sublime vision. To our right, the sun began to lit up a field, and we turned at the sound of a dog barking to see a coyote yipping with its nose raised to the sky. I think we could tell from the start that it was worth the loss of an hour or two of sleep.

Basically we just walked everywhere that we could in the park and looked at the birds that were there. Because there are so many habitats in the park, we got to see a lot of birds. Seeing five species of raptors was an especial treat.

There are some flats in the park, next to a channel of water that runs inland, and most of the raptors we saw were sitting on the dead snags in the middle of those brackish fields. As a pair of kites fed on two snags, a kestrel cruised between some other ones, to be joined by a young Cooper's Hawk. The kestrel flew away annoyedly, while the Cooper's took up a serene post on his tree. He only sat there for a few moments, however, for in a moment he took flight away from us, cruising along the ground till suddenly he began flapping his wings, hovered, and dropped. A rabbit burst from the bushes in mad flight: zig-zagging from immediately below his talons. I'm not sure that the hawk could have eaten the rabbit, it was at least half the weight of the bird, if not more, and I can't see him carrying it off very successfully, but it was very exciting for us, and the rabbit, anyway. The hawk gave up after a short attempt at catching the rabbit, and sat himself on the ground nearby, looking at it. That was really cool.

Oh, another thing, don't go to Bolsa Chica on the third Saturday of the month: that's the day that they plant native plants. There was a huge group of people there, and they all walked in from the Warner parking lot at the same time we walked towards the Warner parking lot. Which doesn't work very well, to say the least.

Now for the list!

1. Eared Grebe
2. Pied billed grebe
3. Western grebe
4. American White Pelican
5. Brown pelican
6. Double Crested Cormorant
7. Black-crowned night-heron
8. Snowy egret
9. Great egret
10. Great Blue Heron
11. Mallard
12. American wigeon
13. Northern shoveler
14. Blue-winged teal
15. Greater Scaup
16. Ruddy Duck
17. Turkey vulture
18. Osprey
19. White-tailed kite
20. Cooper's hawk
21. Red-tailed hawk
22. American kestrel
23. American coot
24. Killdeer
25. Black necked stilt
26. Willet
27. Greater yellowlegs
28. Spotted sandpiper
29. Marbled godwit
30. Least sandpiper
31. California gull
32. Forster's tern
33. Black skimmer
34. Rock dove
35. Mourning dove
36. Anna's hummingbird
37. Belted kingfisher
38. Black pheobe
39. Say's pheobe
40. Blackpoll warbler (R)
41. American crow
42. Common raven
43. Bushtit
44. House wren
45. Swainson's thrush
46. European starling
47. Yellow-rumped warbler
48. Common yellowthroat
49. Green-tailed Towhee (very rare: accidental)
50. California Towhee
51. Savannah Sparrow (Belding's)
52. White-crowned Sparrow
53. Western meadowlark
54. House finch

Many thanks to Libby for actually putting it together. It's cool that we saw a kingfisher again, this time a female with its ruddy breast. The two new birds we saw were the blackpoll warbler (we had a devil of a time identifying this bird: its fall colors are light years different than its summer colors: it goes from black and grey to yellow and black) and a green-tailed towhee. The green-tailed towhee has been seen at Bolsa Chica before during this last summer, so I wasn't too surprised to identify it, but it was still really cool to see.