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.

Elephant Butte Lake State Park

Our first Festival of the Cranes event took place away from the Bosque del Apache. After picking up our luggage at the Sunport International Airport in Albuquerque we drove south to Truth or Consequences. We stayed there overnight so we could arrive at Marina del Sur at Elephant Butte Lake State Park the next morning by 8:30. The first half of our 5-hour event was to enjoy the birds and landscape on the lake via a houseboat. Our leaders were Steve Green and Tamie Bulow from the American Birding Association. Steve was our houseboat pilot, and Tamie was the hostess who pointed out the various birds around the lake. Grebes (both western and clark's) were probably the most numerous we saw on the lake, but to get a decent photo of them was most challenging. This event proved to be quite chilly, especially on the lake. I dressed in layers, but I was still cold, and spent a lot of my time in the back of the houseboat where the wind was not whipping around me. This event was still lots of fun; it was limited to 14 people. I love small groups; you get to associate with fellow birders on a more intimate level. And this was one event that constantly provided lots of food! While on the houseboat we were given all kinds of pastries and locally grown produce along with plenty of coffee/hot cocoa. Elephant Butte is located near Truth or Consequences -- about 65 miles south of the Bosque del Apache.

To get a better view of the photos you can click on them to enlarge them. This was a place where we saw several double-crested cormorants, and one lone white pelican in the midst of them.

This particular "island" is called Rattlesnake Hill. Steve, while piloting the boat, explained how it was named, but I missed a lot of what he said.

Elephant Butte Lake is the largest and most popular recreation spot in New Mexico. Historically speaking, a dam was constructed (which created the lake) here in 1916 in order to provide irrigation and flood control of the Rio Grande River. Much of the landscape is the result of an ancient non-active volcano.

Here is another photo of the landscape which includes Tami's back. She was looking at and identifying a number of water birds in and around the lake.

Here is the area where white pelicans were spotted.

There is an island on the lake that has goats living on it. This photo shows two goats we saw. Kind of cute -- one white and one black.

And here are a couple shots of the "ram." Look at those horns; what a handsome looking animal. How cool is that?

When we got back to Marina del Sur we enjoyed a delicious box lunch before heading out on land to observe other types of birds. I don't have any photos of our afternoon outing which was walking a trail around a riparian area on the other side of the dam. The few photos I took are not worth posting -- they came out too dark and far away. We saw a lone great blue heron. Another large bird we saw was an osprey. Other smaller birds were the more common birds one would see in a drier climate, such as sparrows, finches and titmice.

Terns and swallows at Shoreline

Heidi and I re-visited Shoreline, Mountain View on the first of June. We had not been there since last fall. We had no idea of what birds we would see this time of year. So we were pleasantly surprised by what we ended up seeing. One of the birds we had fun watching as well as being challenged to photograph them in flight were the Forster's terns. They are loud and gregarious birds, and certainly a challenge to photograph. Below is probably my best shot of a tern in flight, flying over a flock of gulls. We think the gulls were California gulls. In the distance you can see what looks like a couple of white circus tents. That is the amphitheater where quite a few musical artists perform every summer.

Here's a second shot of a tern in flight.

While watching the terns we also saw a pair of gadwall swimming in the channel. From what I can tell, it looks like a pair of females. I think the males would be more "flashy" than this, and both of these ducks had orange and black bills, which is prevalent on the females, and not necessarily on the males. Besides, I would think that the males should have been in breeding plumage by the first of June. Anyone care to affirm this or correct me on this?

When the gulls got tired of the terns flying over them, they decided to "take off." Here's my shot of several of them in flight.

Shortly afterwards, Heidi and I decided to walk a little farther. And in another location that, at first, looked like there wasn't anything to see, she spotted in the distance a small "flock" of white pelicans. How cool! If you click on the photos you can probably get a larger image.

Shortly after the pelican experience, we thought we would head out. At first I was telling Heidi about barn swallows that have nested around a building there at Shoreline, and I was disappointed that I didn't see any flying around. Last year, my husband and I visited around this time of year and saw many barn swallows, all in flight. And I was never able to get a picture of them. No sooner I had mentioned this to Heidi, then we saw a few swallows flying over to a concrete wall, more like a culvert. The area had a large chainlink fence around it, to keep people out of it for safety reasons. Here are a few shots I took; you can see part of the chainlink fence in these two photos.

Ooohh! Love those wings!

There was a wooden stairway and railing nearby where more of the barn swallows were perched. I find these birds almost as beautiful as bluebirds. And I was certainly surprised that this many birds sat still long enough for me to get a photo of them.

On our way back to the car, we could hear a few song sparrows. It sure wasn't easy to locate them until Heidi pulled out her "trusty iPhone" (which has the iBird app on it) and called a song sparrow close enough that we could get a shot. How cool is that? Just an FYI: we don't do that very often. I'd rather try pishing before using the iBird to call the bird(s).

Needless to say, it was a good day for different species I hadn't seen in a while.