Salton
Sea International Bird Festival
Page One
Feb
14-17, 2003
Bob Miller
"What a great
weekend!", or.. how we endured the "Blizzard of 03"
For Page Two click
here , Page Three click
here
166
species (list follows at end
of page)
Click on
thumbnail pictures for full-sized shots.
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Sunset Tour
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The Imperial Valley received a desperately needed
two day soaking rain and then the sun came out Friday morning for
four days of "chamber of commerce" weather!
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Muddy roads meant a few changes in planned routes but the festival's
Sunset Tours kicked off a great Presidents Day Weekend of birding
and discovery on Friday evening.
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Sunset Tour
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Cattle Egrets,
Northern Pintails...
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Obsidian Butte, Fig Lagoon, Sandhill Cranes,
pelicans, thousands of ibis and egrets and a million gulls going
to roost as the sky turns colors. Typical Imperial Valley sunset!!
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Nearly 350 people showed up to share the wonders of the Salton Sea
and the Imperial Valley with us.
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Brown Pelicans,
Ring-billed & California Gulls
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Ray's pontoon boat
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Every
morning tours were headed out early in every direction.
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The pontoon
boats ran continuously out of Red Hill Marina, past the Alamo River
Delta, around Mullet Island and back.
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Alamo River Delta
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Mullet Island |
Red Hill in
the distance, from Obsidian Butte
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This
Zone-tailed Hawk at Cattle Call Park in Brawley was one of the
rarities seen as were Sprague's Pipits and LeConte's Sparrow in
other locations. The Owl Prowl turned out to be extremely popular
on Saturday night. Henry Detwiler and I were concerned about
how we would show our three expected owls......
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Zone-tailed Hawk
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Barn Owl
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..to
116 people!?! Some
heavy scouting gave us a spectacular game plan to view owls in
action...Imperial Valley style!
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Barn Owl was our first
target but 100+ people had to wonder what was in store as we lined
them up against a very long hay stack in the middle of the night
like a firing squad! I walked out into the field in front of the
group, laid down and began squealing like a rabbit. A Barn
Owl was over me almost instantly!! Mud took some of the
"spectacular" out of our next two stops but we did get
to see our Burrowing Owls and a Great Horned Owl on the prowl.
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