Salton
Sea & Imperial Valley with Carol & Charles
Jun 27, 2003
Guide: Bob Miller
A day of birding and
exploration.
79
species (list follows at end
of page)
Click on
thumbnail pictures for full-sized shots.
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Charles and Carol
at Ramer Lake
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Desert Spiny Lizard
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We met the sun in Calipatria and set about filling in the few holes
left in Carol's CA list and pumping up her year list! The
temperature had been running below normal but the forecast was for
111 so we decided to hit the "outdoor" spots first and then bird the
Salton Sea from our air-conditioned bird blind!
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Lesser Nighthawk
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Least Bittern
ducked at the last second!!
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The first stop was our own backyard where we had
almost all of the doves, Costa's Hummingbird and Abert's
Towhees. Our nemesis for the day turned out to be the Rudy
Ground-Doves which we
did not find in 3 tries during the day!
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The rookery at Ramer Lake had babies everywhere. At Finney Lake we
had the best looks at Least Bittern that any of us had ever had!
Lizards, butterflies, damselflies and dragonflies.. all of the heat
lovers were out in force.
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Blue Dasher Dragonfly
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Western Grebe on nest
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Western Grebe on nest
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Western and
Clark's Grebes were on nests while some already had young riding
on their backs. White-faced Ibis were nesting here too.
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Forster's Tern
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Red Saddlebags Dragonfly |
Widow Skimmer
Dragonfly
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On to the
Salton Sea! The weatherman had miscalculated. We got out at
the end of Pound Road and heard Virginia Rail calling at our
feet. Suddenly we had two adults and three babies came out right next to
us like we were not even there and began feeding in the pools!!!
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Virginia
Rail
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BABY
Pictures!! Talk about big feet!
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Virginia Rail and baby
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We added
Yellow-footed Gull, Gull-billed Tern, Wood Stork and lots of
others to our list and headed for Brawley where we had Gila
Woodpeckers at a nest and a Bronzed Cowbird giving us his Darth
Vader impression. Mechanical problems caught up to us then and we
had to limp our way to mechanics and parts houses but were very
fortunate that it happened when it did and we were able to save a
few bucks in the process. The temperature hit a record 117 and it
was by far the hottest day we had this year but it was one of the
hottest days of birding too!
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