Visiting family for Thanksgiving, I set aside a day to visit Upper Newport Bay and Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserves. I wanted to see who migrated all the way down the coast to Orange County.
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I headed to the Newport Bay first. It was a bright beautiful day about 75 degrees which is above normal and not a cloud in the sky.
Right away I saw dozens of American Widgeons and a few Marbled Godwits.
The low tide exposed plenty of mud for the birds to poke and scratch for small sea critters. Dozens of all types of birds scattered on the broad flats eating and resting.
Here are a few closeup of the residents — they were very distant so some came out a little fuzzy:
Saw a whole lot of sparrows in the surrounding scrub. Some I could ID and some I could not.
We then traveled north on the Pacific Coast Highway through the beach towns of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach to the Bolsa Chica Reserve.
I spotted a new bird right away in the tidal lagoons that border the highway.
And then I saw another one.
Here are a couple of the year round residents:
Had a lot of fun checking out the reserves. Despite my best efforts some birds were so far away that I couldn’t get a shot. I think I may have photographed snow plovers but all I got were white specks on the photos that I couldn’t get to anything distinct.
Same situation with the Bolsa Chica I thought I saw some western grebes but they were too distant.
Yeah!! Most of California including both Northern California and the LA area are getting rain today with snow at the higher elevations. What’s up in your neck of the woods?