High tide at the Carpinteria Salt Marsh
It was a 7′ high tide, which is about as high as it gets around here, so I did another CBC scouting trip this morning.
Photos:
- The western end of the marsh completely full of water, with a cute Pied-billed Grebe in the lower right. It was awesome to set up the spotting scope and be able to see everything; at lower tides the birds tend to hide down in the channels.
- Crappy digiscoped view with a male Shoveler in the lower left, a Royal Tern toward the right, and Willets and Long-billed Curlews in the middle. In the back are some smaller shorebirds: a Black-bellied Plover on the left, and some harder-to-identify (at least in this shot) birds on the right.
- What I’m calling a first-year Glaucous-winged Gull. I’ve forwarded the photo to the count organizer for a second opinion, but I think it looks pretty solid.
- The lagoon at the marsh entrance. You can’t tell from the photo, but the tide had turned and there was about a 2-knot current setting out the entrance.
- Another crappy digiscoped photo, this time of a mixed flock at the edge of the marsh lagoon. Lots of Black-bellied Plovers, a handful of Semipalmated Plovers, a couple of Sanderlings, and (because I identified them visually, not because you can tell in this shot) some Western Sandpipers. Also, toward the left side of the photo, there’s a bird that’s a little bigger than the Sanderlings and considerably smaller than the Black-bellied Plovers; I’m calling that a Dunlin (one of three I identified visually, though I didn’t take the time to get a good photo).
The full list via eBird:
Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve (restricted access), Santa Barbara, California, US
Dec 13, 2016 8:22 AM - 10:47 AM
Protocol: Traveling
1.0 mile(s)
Comments: Tide 7’ max.
55 species (+2 other taxa)
Brant 2
American Wigeon 2
Mallard 32
Northern Shoveler 1
Green-winged Teal 4
Bufflehead 15
Red-breasted Merganser 2
Pied-billed Grebe 4
Double-crested Cormorant 33
Brown Pelican 1
Great Blue Heron 3
Great Egret 6
Snowy Egret 8
Osprey 1
Northern Harrier 1 Female hunting near south side of marsh
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Black-bellied Plover 45
Semipalmated Plover 6
Killdeer 18
Whimbrel 3
Long-billed Curlew 19
Sanderling 4
Dunlin 3
Least Sandpiper 4
Western Sandpiper 6
peep sp. 15
Spotted Sandpiper 1
Greater Yellowlegs 6
Willet 115
Ring-billed Gull 1
Western Gull 1
California Gull 1
Glaucous-winged Gull 1 1st year
gull sp. 1
Caspian Tern 2
Forster’s Tern 1
Royal Tern 1
Eurasian Collared-Dove 9
Belted Kingfisher 1 Female
Black Phoebe 1
Say’s Phoebe 1
Loggerhead Shrike 1
American Crow 23
Bushtit 1
Marsh Wren 2
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Northern Mockingbird 1
European Starling 3
American Pipit 25
Yellow-rumped Warbler 1
White-crowned Sparrow 32
Golden-crowned Sparrow 1
Savannah Sparrow 24
Song Sparrow 1
Western Meadowlark 7
House Finch 3
House Sparrow 2
View this checklist online at https://ift.tt/2hC0hKW
This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (https://ebird.org)
Reposted from https://ift.tt/2gxMwaU.
Tags: carp without cars.