Monterey Bay Birding Festival 2010

Last weekend was the 6th annual Monterey Bay Birding Festival. Here are some photos I took while on one of the events, Elkhorn Slough Safari. This was done on a 27-foot pontoon boat, and the Captain was Yohn Gideon, owner and operator. The weather was great and my husband and I wish we could have gone for at least another 2 hours.

Sea lions hanging around the pier.

Cormorants - double-crested, pelagic, and Brandt's, hanging around the pier.

Notice the upper center cormorant with his beautiful blue throat-patch - a Brandt's cormorant.

Heermann's gull perched near the pier. He was hanging around with other gulls and cormorants.

A group of sea otters in the slough.

Close-up of some of the sea otters. The otter in the foreground with the whitish face is apparently the "grandfather" of the group. Actually, we were told that the older the otter gets the "whiter" or grayer their faces get.

Close-up of an otter eating a clam.

Harbor seals. Notice they are smaller than the sea lions, and they lack the "ears" that sea lions have.

Close-up view of a few harbor seals.

Brown pelicans along the edge of the shore.

Close-up view of a few brown pelicans.

A white pelican taking a snooze, and a couple of gulls standing guard.

Landscape of the Elkhorn Slough area. Notice the farming area in the background. This is a well-known agricultural area, especially known for artichokes, lettuce, cabbage, etc.

Brown pelicans watching the humans on the boat.

A brown pelican hanging around all those cormorants.

Captain Yohn took everyone's picture, or at least those folks who were sporting a camera. This Safari is highly recommended, and is available for various events/outings. There's also a special Photo Safari scheduled for Oct 23rd on a Saturday afternoon. I sure wouldn't mind going again.

Skywatch Friday # 34

Back in early January, my family and I visited Elkhorn Slough Reserve on a late Sunday afternoon. My daughter Red (aka Heidi) and I took a relatively short trail around the Reserve knowing it was close to closing time. This old "barn" looks like it had been used for storing grain. But it also shows that before this land became Elkhorn Slough Reserve it used to be private farmland.

As we got near the end of the trail the sun was setting, and as we looked westward we could see the PG&E stacks across the way in Moss Landing. At first we weren't sure it was going to be much of a sunset. But Mother Nature proved us wrong.

Below you can see in the far distance many birds flying around, probably getting ready to find a roost for the night.

All is quiet now, and we needed to hurry out of the Reserve, because it was past closing time.

Click on the link to see other bloggers' Skywatch postings.

Birding Festival - part 2

This is MoonGlow Dairy. Click on the link to read more about it. They are situated on the south side of Elkhorn Slough, just off of State Highway 1, near Moss Landing. This is my concept of what met us at the end of the road -- these cows are eating artichokes. I couldn't pass up this photo op with the tree and part of Elkhorn Slough in the background.

[Don't forget to click on the photos to see larger images.]

Another first that I saw was this nest. Any guesses what bird made this nest? I haven't a clue, but it was quite large, so my guess would be a raptor of sorts.
As we walked down the trail we saw several birds in the pond. They all looked like the bird in the photo below. This was the best shot I could get. I recommend going to Red's blog to see better photos. Anyway, Red has informed me that this is a red-necked phalarope. And there were at least 30 of these birds in the pond. This is apparently their winter plumage and definitely a lifer. Now I wonder if I would recognize these same birds in their breeding plumage.

A little farther down the trail we came to a clearing where we could see quite a bit of Elkhorn Slough. We saw some folks enjoying themselves kayaking. I sure hope I get to do it one of these days. It looks like a lot of fun, and you can certainly see a lot more wildlife up close and personal.

Great egrets abound, and so do brown pelicans. Here is a shot of a great egret that seemed to pose for me. In the background you can see pelicans (well actually they are too far away) about midway (horizontally) in the photo.

The grebe in the center of this photo is a Western grebe. The other two I couldn't ID. But we were told that both Clark's and Westerns are all around in Elkhorn Slough.

These two are pie-billed grebes -- more common birds found in the area. Nonetheless, I think they are cute.

And here is my shot of brown pelicans flying low over the slough. Red has better shots of the pelicans.

Here's another shot of more pelicans flying over the slough. It was funny to watch these birds because they chose to fly only over the slough. They would not necessarily fly over the land, only the water.

Here is another shot of grebes. This one I could better identify them. The farthest left and the farthest right are Westerns. The second grebe on the right is a Clark's. As you will note from a field guide the Western grebe's black cap extends over the eye and has a greenish-yellow bill. The Clark's grebe has a black cap that stops just above the eye and has an orangey-yellow bill. Now just to let you know, if you look closely at the grebe on the far left it has the cap that says "Western." But if you look at the color of the bill it's the color of a "Clark's." Could it be a hybrid? I've heard that it does happen.

Farther down the trail there were fewer birds, but different species we didn't see earlier on the trail. This bird is a long-billed curlew, another lifer.

Another solitary bird -- this is a marbled godwit. I think it's funny this bird was being a loner because I have seen marbled godwits before (at Palo Alto Baylands) and they are found in large flocks. According to Stokes Field Guide these birds are found among moist grasslands in the summer and they winter along the coast. They certainly have an interesting diet -- worms, mollusks, crustaceans, grasshoppers, and pondweed and sedge seeds and tubers.

Now this photo you'll have to take my word for it -- there are many Western Sandpipers in that sandy area. Apparently they have a similar diet to the marbled godwit. But I thought it was strange they were just laying around on the ground. Maybe they decided to sun themselves. They didn't look like they were searching for food. Any other thoughts to why they were on "land" rather than on a watery mudflat?

Monterey Bay Birding Festival

The third annual Monterey Bay Birding Festival will be Fri, Sat, Sun, Sep 21, 22, 23 this year. Go to their web site by clicking on the link above. Here is the checklist of birds seen last year during the festival. There are so many trips planned it is hard to decide which trip(s) I would like to attend. The Monterey Bay area, a large part of the central coast of California also known as the Pajaro Valley, is quite extensive and geologically diverse - such as wetlands, marsh areas, grasslands, woodlands, etc.

Various and numerous trips are offered and the cost is certainly more than affordable for each trip. Most trips seem to have a limit of 20 attendees - so the earlier one registers, the better the chance of getting your choice of activity.

Oh, so many choices! Watsonville wetlands, Monterey Bay, Elkhorn Slough, Pajaro Dunes, Big Sur, Santa Cruz, Carmel Valley and River, or Pinnacles National Monument. Two of the trips offered are pointing out that there is a possibility of locating a California Condor - those trips are full-day events - one to Big Sur and the other to Pinnacles National Monument. The Big Sur trip will also have bird banding demonstrations.

Can you imagine an opportunity to see more than a hundred species of shorebirds and songbirds?