Salton
Sea & Imperial Valley
Nov
3, 2001
-
75-87
degrees
A trip around the valley with Jeff Hopkins to search for Yellow-footed
Gull, Lesser Nighthawk, and several others.
94 species total (list follows at end of page)
Click on
thumbnail pictures for full-sized shots.
Jeff Hopkins |
I picked up
Jeff at the Calipatria Inn at 6:30 on a nice cool, sunny
morning. Our first stop was Ramer Lake, where Jeff got one
of our better birds for the day--the Nashville Warbler.
After some chasing, we latched onto several Blue-gray and a
Black-tailed Gnatcatcher. |
|
Next to the
Ramer Lake sign-in booth we watched this Cooper's Hawk sweep into
the area and scatter the doves and sparrows. It landed in
this palo verde tree in the fenced-off area, and stayed there
quite a while. This picture was from the left side of the
kiosk. |
Cooper's Hawk
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Cooper's Hawk at Ramer Lake
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And this
picture was from around the corner, on the right side of the
sign-in kiosk. Other birds we saw there included a secretive
Cactus Wren, Abert's Towhees, Black Phoebes, Loggerhead Shrike,
Northern Flicker, and both Yellow-rumped and Orange-crowned
Warblers.
|
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Our next stop was
Finney Lake, where for the past five years one or more Lesser
Nighthawks has roosted in the Tamarisks. It was easy to
spot this fine specimen and get good scope looks (and photos) as
it blinked its eyes sleepily at us.
|
Lesser Nighthawk at Finney
Lake
|
|
| We only found one individual, and after excellent
looks, went in search of the Swainson's Hawk off McConnell
Road. We struck out on that one, so off we went back north
to the Sea itself. |
Lesser Nighthawk at Finney
Lake |
Brown Pelican at Obsidian Butte
|
Obsidian Butte was
good for pelicans, Ruddy Turnstones, and a number of other
shorebirds, but we missed the target Yellow-footed Gull. At
the shallow pond on the southeast end we picked up dozens of
Lesser Yellowlegs and several Bonaparte's Gulls.
|
Red Hill Marina turned out to be a hot spot on this day, with a
good collection of shorebirds, gulls, and a scattering of
ducks. The best bird was this Franklin's Gull, seen here in
front of a Herring Gull.
|
Herring, Franklin's & Ring-billed Gulls |
Caspian Tern at Redhill
Marina |
Also present on the shoreline were Caspian and
Forster's Terns, California Gulls, and both White and Brown
Pelicans. |
|
After a couple of fine sandwiches from the Niland Store, we searched
in vain for Sage Sparrows and Sage Thrashers as a storm front moved
in from the west. Jeff did get another good look at a
Yellow-headed Blackbird, and we located a few other sparrow
species.
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White Pelican at Redhill
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As the afternoon waned we called it a day, with Jeff heading on to San
Diego, and me heading back to Yuma.
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