Salton Sea

Trips to the Salton Sea are a pretty draining affair. Even with an hour head's start because we started in Highland, it's a two hour drive. We started at 5:00 in the morning, which meant waking up at 4:30. That was pretty exciting. Thanks to Mom and Dad Moothart for their hospitality!

So, we hopped on the 10 East to the 86 South. At 6:30, we arrived at our first stop, which was Buchanan Street. This is a spot the internet advertised as good for Crissal Thrashers. These are very similar to our local California Thrashers, but are paler and live in dryer habitats. They're pretty uncommon and hard to find, but we poked around in some Mesquite/ dry wash type habitats right as the sun rose. No luck, which was alright. There were some Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers. We heard a Gnatcatcher in the brush somewhere, and our first White-crowned Sparrows were foraging around a little drainage sink. Libby took this picture of the full moon setting.


Desert sunrises/ sunsets and moonrises/ moonsets are among my favorite things. I like how the sunlight sets the tips of the creosote and sage on fire as it races across the flats. In this shot, you can see the beautiful purple of the low horizon. A lot of fun.

We hopped back in the car and jumped on the 111 South. We skipped the Whitewater River mouth because someone had posted that it wasn't worth stopping at on a listserve. I wish I had checked it out, in retrospect, because we didn't have luck getting to any of the river mouths. I also would like to have some experience in case we ever go back.

Our next stop was at Salt Creek Beach. It turns out this is a pay area, but we forgot to bring cash (it's a self-policing system). So we just stopped the car for a moment and scanned the gull flocks. There were lots of Ring-billed Gulls, lots of Herring Gulls, and some California Gulls. There were also a few Eared Grebes. The wind was blowing pretty hard, though, and the sea was full of white-caps.

So, back into the car, after cleaning our shoes and boots (Libby's are awesome) to get off some foul smelling mud or other substance off them that we'd be wrinkling our noses at since Buchanan Road. Next stop was Wister Unit of the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge.

Turns out that it is closed. Probably so that the hunters don't shoot you. Still, we birded the parking lot and it was pretty productive. There was a giant flock of Red-winged Blackbirds, some Common Ground-doves (a favorite of mine), Eurasian Collared Doves, a Ladder-backed Woodpecker (we missed this our last trip to the Sea) and a late Gray Flycatcher. Libby got a bunch of great pictures of the woodpecker. She stalked it and got up real close! She also took the Red-winged Blackbird picture below. I tried to take pictures of the Ground-doves and the Flycatcher, but both turned out poorly. I did get a picture of a flock of geese as it flew over, so I'll throw that in, too.

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Red-winged Blackbird

White Geese flock

So, off we went, driving Davis Road south to Schrimpf (home of the mud volcanoes: pictures in our album). Along the way we stopped at Pound Rd and checked out some adobe ruins, a large and distant flock of white geese, a Belted Kingfisher, and some ponds with ducks and shorebirds. All along this road, Northern Harriers were thick. We saw up to four at a time over the reeds on either side of the road, flying this way and that, dipping and wobbling on their wings as they hunted. Besides American Kestrels, Harriers were our most common raptor. We weren't keeping track, but I'm sure we saw more than thirty. It was probably around 50.

Our next complete stop was the headquarters of the Sonny Bono NWR (hereafter SBNWR). That's a fun place because they've retained some of the desert flora that has been removed in the rest of the valley. It's thick with Ground-doves, Gambel's Quail, White-crowned Sparrows, and desert Cottontails.

Desert Cottontail

We took a walk to get a better view of the geese flocks, but the real highlight of this stop was a single overflying Roseate Spoonbill. This is a rare bird in California, and the Salton Sea is the most common place for it to show up.

Roseate Spoonbill

Libby was the one that found it. I was trying to take a picture of a fairly cooperative Say's Phoebe when Libby grabbed me and said, "Look!" Whoa! Because I had the camera out I looked through its lens and pushed the shutter. It hesitated, and then I had it! And I dropped the camera (it was on a strap), and got my binoculars. "Check it's bill!" I didn't want it to be a feral Flamingo (this is actually possible at the Salton Sea). It wasn't, and we were elated. Ironically, we'd just talked to a lady in the parking lot who had also seen a northward flying Roseate Spoonbill that morning. Not sure where they were heading, though, as we checked out the salty mud-flats north of the SB NWR HQ without any luck. This is the kind of moment that makes birding really pay off. It's like finding treasure!


These American White Pelicans flew over us, too.

This is what the geese flocks look like from a distance. It's very impressive, and they are very noisy. This is at the HQ, but at Unit 1, where we went later, there were probably more than twice as many geese.

After eating lunch at the HQ, we headed south to bird the intersection of Lack and Lindsey Rds for Laughing Gulls. Mission accomplished! These birds were lifers for us, and fairly unique as far as gulls go. The Salton Sea is the only place they are found in the US' West, so we were happy to see a small group before the headed back down to the Gulf of California for the winter. They are actually lingering later than normal in large numbers this year. We didn't get any pictures, unfortunately, but it looked like this photo from Wikipedia:

Laughing Gull in winter plumage, Wikipedia

Next we spent a ton of time driving along between fields as I tried to find Unit 1, which was much further than I expected from Lack and Lindsey. In retrospect, I wish I had stopped at a couple of other roads to scan the sea, but you can't do everything. As we drove, I kept my eyes open for a few birds I wanted to see: Burrowing Owls, Loggerhead Shrikes, and Mountain Plovers. Libby was able to fall asleep, which was great for her! I was able to find a Shrike, but the other birds eluded us.

Here's the one I found. I love these little birds. They look like small stocky Mockingbirds, but they're ferocious little guys. They'll eat things as big as lizards, and they stash the food they catch on thorns and the ends of sticks. How macabre is that?

Just before reaching Unit 1 we had our last lifer of the day, a pair of Sandhill Cranes flew past our car through a field. Unit 1 had tons of geese. This is the place to go to see them! Unit 1 has an observation tower, and the road out to the tower is supposed to be a good place for Burrowing Owls. We didn't have any luck, but on the berm alongside the road we did get really close to a White-faced Ibis. Libby took a few pictures:

I like how exotic they look.

After Unit 1, we headed off south and way east to look for Mountain Plovers. We drove and drove, missed a turn-off, kept on driving, following dirt roads and paved roads. It's lonely out among the fields. We stopped at an intersection (Hastian and Pickett) to scope for possible plovers, and found a bunch of Horned Larks. What was really fun, though, was how you could stand in the middle of the intersection as long as you would like. Not a single car passed us for like 15 minutes. It's kind of spooky.

We decided from there to check out Finney and Ramer lakes. Crissal Thrashers are resident at one of them, and some Spoonbills had been there earlier. No luck on either this time, but we had quite an adventure driving around Ramer Lake through sand and mud in our little sedan. We even went down some bizarre little turn-off that just ended, but it was so narrow and overgrown, that you couldn't turn around. So I had to back up a couple hundred feet around a turn through bushes so tight you couldn't see10 feet! I also took our car up a little hill through sand about a foot deep. I tell you, our Saturn is tough. It will not be beat or get stuck.

Ramer Lake did have a big Egret roost, which was impressive, and we got our trip's Black-crowned Night Herons.

It was getting late by this time, so we headed down to a field south of Brawley on Keystone Rd, east of Spreckel's Sugar, to watch the Sandhill Cranes come in to roost. We had some trouble locating the field, until we were able to follow in flocks of Ibis. The Ibis fly in big liquid flocks, shifting and moving around. We could see them coming, mostly from the South, as the sun set, and they'd slowly dip down and skim the reeds, pop back up, and then circle around to the north before landing on the ponds. It was really fun, and gulls were constantly streaming by, too, on their way up to the Salton Sea. But no Cranes! Finally the sun had set all the way, and we were getting ready to go, when I heard some strange gutteral trills. Cranes! A small flock of maybe 20 or 30 finally arrived and dropped into the roost. We got out the scope and watched them as the light faded the rest of the way. I thought it looked kind of prehistoric. Cranes have a weird vibe about them, tall necks, large bulky tail feathers. We didn't get any pictures, but here's one from always helpful Wikipedia:

Lesser Sandhill Crane, courtesy Wikipedia

Then we headed home, from our furthest point south. We left at 5:00, and got home at 9:30. There was some holiday traffic on the 10, and we stopped for dinner at In-N-Out near Palm Springs. So it's a pretty long trip! All in all, we had about 66 species for the day.