Actually, I imagine we could live a sedentary life, but we do choose not to. So on the fourth of July this year we drove off to do some hiking in Idyllwild and then down low and southeast to do some birding at the Salton Sea. Pictures (and videos) of the whole experience can be found here: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157606014338686/.
We were going to do the South Ridge Trail to Tahquitz Peak in Idyllwild, but the road our trail guide called pot-holed turned out to be a roller-coaster-style-four-wheel drive-holed. Subsequently we chose to hike up to Suicide Rock instead to ameliorate our anguish in a final act of defiance to the world. Fortunately, we took the wrong turn and ended up a little bit short of Strawberry Junction on the Deer Springs Trail. That meant we gained quite a bit more elevation and went about a mile further than we expected, but it's good practice for our upcoming backpack trip.
We carried our binoculars, of course, but didn't use them a whole lot. The most exciting bird of the trip was a Mountain Quail family. Not only was this a totally new bird to us, but the babies were really cute. They were only about two inches tall, and scurried after their mother with astonishing rapidity. They were all very furtive, dodging in and out of Manzanita thickets and behind rocks, but it was loads of fun to watch the little striped babies, smaller than a mouse, dashing to and fro on the side of the trail. We also saw some neat mountain birds, like Pygmy Nuthatches, Oak Titmice, Violet-green Swallows, a Green-tailed Towhee, and a White-headed Woodpecker.
After our hike, we ate a late lunch and jumped into the car to drive to Brawley. Brawley is a small town in the middle of the Imperial Valley south of the Salton Sea. That means it's a hot place. We took Route 74, which is the Pines to Palms Highway (or is it Palms to Pines?) down from behind San Jacinto to Palm Springs, and then went over and drove way south past the Salton Sea to Brawley. It was hot. The high in Brawley that day had been 110, and it doesn't cool off all that much at night (the low was in the 80s).
The next day we birded our way along the southern end of the Salton Sea and then hit the road by about 10:00 am. We wanted to get out of there before it got too hot. The Salton Sea is a great place to go birding due to the diversity of wintering birds in the cool seasons, but it hosts rarer birds in the summer. It's the only place in the Western U.S. to host Laughing Gulls, Gull-billed Terns, Wood Storks and (only occasionally, now) Fulvous Whistling-Ducks. There is also a bird that comes there in the summer that you can find nowhere else in the United States at all - the Yellow-footed Gull, a very large dark mantled gull previously thought con-specific with our local Western Gull. The Yellow-footed Gull only breeds in the Gulf of California, but every summer since the 50s, an increasing number of them have been flying north to the Salton Sea during the summer.
We were fairly successful in our trip. We saw Laughing Gulls in breeding plumage - not a lifer, but the first time we'd ever seen a hooded gull with a hood. We saw Gull-billed Terns, which were lifers; Black Terns, another lifer that breeds fairly commonly in the inland parts of North America; and our Yellow-footed Gulls. There had been three Fulvous Whistling-Ducks reported this year, but we didn't see them, and eight Wood Storks had been reported two days before we birded the area. No luck on that front either, despite checking the spot they were reported twice and giving every distant American White Pelican a double look.
Fledgling Burrowing Owlhttp://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2640728978/in/set-72157606014338686/
Bird List:
Species in no particular order, but species seen in Idyllwild won't show up on the Salton Sea list. I'm just writing things down now, too, so I may forget some species.
Idyllwild:
1. Spotted Towhee
2. Band-tailed Pigeon
3. Mourning Dove
4. Red-tailed Hawk
5. Oak Titmouse
6. Violet-green Swallow
7. White-throated Swift
8. Western Scrub Jay
9. Steller's Jay
10. Mountain Quail (Lifer)
11. Western Bluebird
12. Common Raven
13. Northern Mockingbird
14. Mountain Chickadee
15. Acorn Woodpecker
16. Turkey Vulture
17. Lesser Goldfinch
18. Green-tailed Towhee
19. White-headed Woodpecker
20. Pygmy Nuthatch
21. Hummingbird sp.
22. Western Tanager
Salton Sea:
23. Ruddy Duck
24. Marbled Godwit
25. Long-billed Curlew
26. Black-necked Stilt
27. American Avocet
28. White-faced Ibis
29. Killdeer
30. Brown Pelican
31. American White Pelican
32. Clark's Grebe
33. Eared Grebe (these were almost certainly Fall migrants)
34. Double-crested Cormorant
35. Great Blue Heron
36. Great Egret
37. Snowy Egret
38. Green Heron
39. Cattle Egret
40. Black-crowned Night-Heron
41. Northern Harrier (rare in summer at Salton Sea)
42. American Kestrel
43. Gambel's Quail
44. American Coot
45. Common Moorhen (a small family with very ugly little babies)
46. California Gull
47. Laughing Gull
48. Yellow-footed Gull (lifer)
49. Willet
50. Ring-billed Gull
51. Gull-billed Tern (lifer)
52. Black Tern (lifer)
53. Caspian Tern
54. Forster's Tern
55. Common Ground-Dove
56. Rock Pigeon
57. Eurasian Collared Dove
58. White-winged Dove
59. Greater Roadrunner (always very fun to see - crossing the road in front of us)
60. Burrowing Owl (41 - fun to play the "count the Burrowing Owl" game)
61. Black-chinned Hummingbird
62. Gila Woodpecker (one seen in flight was a little unsatisfying)
63. Black Phoebe
64. Western Kingbird
65. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
66. Cliff Swallow
67. Verdin
68. Cactus Wren
69. European Starling
70. Abert's Towhee
71. Red-winged Blackbird
72. Western Meadowlark
73. Great-tailed Grackle
74. House Finch
75. House Sparrow
Species in no particular order, but species seen in Idyllwild won't show up on the Salton Sea list. I'm just writing things down now, too, so I may forget some species.
Idyllwild:
1. Spotted Towhee
2. Band-tailed Pigeon
3. Mourning Dove
4. Red-tailed Hawk
5. Oak Titmouse
6. Violet-green Swallow
7. White-throated Swift
8. Western Scrub Jay
9. Steller's Jay
10. Mountain Quail (Lifer)
11. Western Bluebird
12. Common Raven
13. Northern Mockingbird
14. Mountain Chickadee
15. Acorn Woodpecker
16. Turkey Vulture
17. Lesser Goldfinch
18. Green-tailed Towhee
19. White-headed Woodpecker
20. Pygmy Nuthatch
21. Hummingbird sp.
22. Western Tanager
Salton Sea:
23. Ruddy Duck
24. Marbled Godwit
25. Long-billed Curlew
26. Black-necked Stilt
27. American Avocet
28. White-faced Ibis
29. Killdeer
30. Brown Pelican
31. American White Pelican
32. Clark's Grebe
33. Eared Grebe (these were almost certainly Fall migrants)
34. Double-crested Cormorant
35. Great Blue Heron
36. Great Egret
37. Snowy Egret
38. Green Heron
39. Cattle Egret
40. Black-crowned Night-Heron
41. Northern Harrier (rare in summer at Salton Sea)
42. American Kestrel
43. Gambel's Quail
44. American Coot
45. Common Moorhen (a small family with very ugly little babies)
46. California Gull
47. Laughing Gull
48. Yellow-footed Gull (lifer)
49. Willet
50. Ring-billed Gull
51. Gull-billed Tern (lifer)
52. Black Tern (lifer)
53. Caspian Tern
54. Forster's Tern
55. Common Ground-Dove
56. Rock Pigeon
57. Eurasian Collared Dove
58. White-winged Dove
59. Greater Roadrunner (always very fun to see - crossing the road in front of us)
60. Burrowing Owl (41 - fun to play the "count the Burrowing Owl" game)
61. Black-chinned Hummingbird
62. Gila Woodpecker (one seen in flight was a little unsatisfying)
63. Black Phoebe
64. Western Kingbird
65. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
66. Cliff Swallow
67. Verdin
68. Cactus Wren
69. European Starling
70. Abert's Towhee
71. Red-winged Blackbird
72. Western Meadowlark
73. Great-tailed Grackle
74. House Finch
75. House Sparrow
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