Greg in San Diego: January 2016

Thursday, January 28, 2016

A "No Photo" List?

On the New Years Day pelagic trip Nancy mentioned that a certain common bird was on her "no photo" list. Why would you choose NOT to photograph a bird anymore?

Well, hmm... in my online pBase photo gallery I do have 86 photos of Black-footed Albatross from Oregon alone... and 65 Northern Fulmar photos. But even though there aren't any plumages or poses that I don't already posses, that doesn't stop me from photographing them in California (albatross, fulmar).

And I am starting to build up quite a few photos of Black Phoebes and Phainopeplas now. But if there was one bird I probably don't need any more photos of it would be Snowy Egrets--no matter how photogenic and unwary they may appear. But just like a sunset, I just can't resist one more photo.

Snowy Egret. San Elijo Lagoon, Encinitas, California. January 2, 2016. Greg Gillson.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

2016 New Years Day pelagic trip from San Diego

The annual January 1st San Diego Field Ornithologists' pelagic birding trip departed under sunny skies and calm seas. This was the 32nd year this trip has been scheduled. There were about 55 birders on board.

We used a different boat and charter than I have before. The boat was the 75-foot "Legend" out of H&M Sportfishing.

My first bird photo was taken while I was walking out to the boat on the dock to board. A Black-crowned Night-Heron was perched on the railing of another boat only a few feet away.

Black-crowned Night-Heron

As we traveled down the bay we began a popcorn chum that attracted many gulls, including the photogenic Heermann's Gulls.

Heermann's Gull

We soon passed by the tip of Point Loma and entered the ocean proper, though it is not always easy to tell exactly when the transition takes place.

Point Loma. January 1, 2016. Greg Gillson.

Just offshore the shout of "Thayer's Gull!" went up and I managed to get a photo of this rather rare bird far back in the wake. I wasn't really sure I took a picture of the correct bird until I "digitally developed" my photos back home.

Thayer's Gull (left), Western Gull (center), Heermann's Gull (right)

Rather than head offshore right away, our trip turned north and we stayed about 5 miles offshore. A huge flock of Brandt's Cormorants were flying by closer to shore, estimated at nearly 2000 birds! When we were off of Mission Bay we spotted a Pomarine Jaeger.

Pomarine Jaeger

Black-vented Shearwater

This Brown Pelican rode on our wheelhouse for a while

As we made our way out and over the deeper edge of the Nine Mile Bank we encountered changes in birdlife. Notably, we picked up many Northern Fulmars and hundreds and hundreds of Bonaparte's Gulls.

Northern Fulmar

Bonaparte's Gull

As we turned back to port, but still out over the top of the Nine Mile Bank, a hard-to-identify Short-tailed Shearwater cooperated as it flew around and landed.

Short-tailed Shearwater

Glaucous-winged Gull

Back on the buoys near the mouth of the bay, we counted 23 Brown Boobies, compared with about 18 birds on the way out.

Male Brown Booby

Female Brown Booby

Pulling in to the marina to dock the boat we thought our trip was done. But, no! Our rarest bird of the day right in the marina--Marbled Murrelet!. That's the way it goes sometimes.

Marbled Murrelet

Here is the official trip report as it appears on Salia.com

Here is my brief report of birds seen last year on the January 2015 pelagic birding trip.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Metal Sculptures of Borrego Springs

As you drive around Borrego Springs you will notice some large shapes in the barren fields.

"What in the world could that be?"

Welcome to the welded metal sculptures of Ricardo Breceda. In the open desert areas surrounding Borrego Springs are over 130 huge sculptures. Most are historic in nature, showing ancient dinosaurs and mammals that once roamed the Anza-Borrego Desert region before it was a desert. Or perhaps you'll find more recent scenes of native Americans, Spanish monks, or even a big jeep--frozen in time--bounding over the rocky terrain.

Marlene and her pet Gomphotherium.

Some of the sculptures, though, are fanciful. Like the giant scorpion facing off against a giant cricket. Or the largest of the sculptures, a 350 foot long sea serpent that undulates right across the road!

Quite a few of the sculptures are at Galleta Meadows. Others are scattered around town... and I think I've also seen his work (or a copycat) elsewhere in the countryside closer to San Diego.

After a while one desires something other than "just another photo of a big rusty sculpture." So we got silly.

Creature feature: The Attack of the 1950's B Movie! ...Poor Marlene. She's a goner.

"Drive faster!"

Monday, January 18, 2016

Five recent additions to my San Diego County bird list

I used some vacation time at the end of the year to take several trips and got in some birding time. This resulted in seeing and photographing several birds I hadn't found before in San Diego County.

Here they are, in the order I saw them.

#314 Le Conte's Thrasher

This was my 4th visit over two years to the Old Springs Road Open Space Preserve near Borrego Springs, looking for this rare local resident. I had also looked for it without success twice at the nearby Clark Dry Lake area. I credit my success this time to arriving right at sunrise. You'd think it hard for this rather large bird to hide amid the thin creosote bushes scattered widely among the sand. But hide it does, and runs rather than flies.

This is only my 3rd sighting of this species, with one record previously in California in 1980 and Arizona in 2007.

Le Conte's Thrasher. Borrego Springs, California. December 28, 2015. Greg Gillson.

Le Conte's Thrasher

#315 Reddish Egret

Two or three of these birds spend each winter in the south end of San Diego Bay--the extreme northern edge of their range. There's a lot of shoreline here, and not all of it publicly accessible. These birds move around quite a bit as the tides change. For their first year of life these birds are white, thus easily hiding amid the larger Great Egrets and smaller Snowy Egrets. One of the characteristic actions of this bird is the hyperactive hunting style, running and flapping as it chases fish in the shallows.

This is my first record for the ABA area (North America north of Mexico); my only previous sighting was 5 birds in Rocky Point, Sonora, Mexico in 2007.

Reddish Egret wades among American Wigeon. Chula Vista, California. December 31, 2015. Greg Gillson.

Reddish Egret

#316 Thayer's Gull

Thayer's Gulls are quite rare this far south, not reported annually. Formerly they were more common, but changes in landfill practices have eliminated gulls from these areas. The bird photographed below was about 5 miles offshore San Diego on our January 1st pelagic trip. Larger gulls are hard to identify, and this is especially true with immature gulls.

Thayer's Gull (left, with Western and Heermann's Gulls). Off San Diego, California. January 1, 2016. Greg Gillson.

#317 Short-tailed Shearwater

Up to 20 million of these birds migrate back-and-forth between the breeding grounds in New Zealand and the non-breeding range in the Bering Sea. But usually only a few non-breeding birds are found in winter at sea off southern California. In some winters there is a larger influx. One was seen on our January 1st pelagic trip.

This is also my first record for California.

Short-tailed Shearwater. Off San Diego, California. January 1, 2016. Greg Gillson.

Short-tailed Shearwater

#318 Marbled Murrelet

While beginning to dock our boat at the end of our January 1st pelagic trip, the cry of "murrelet!" went up. We changed course to investigate this bird in the marina. Imagine our surprise to find the rarest bird of the day only a few hundred feet from the dock! There were only 3 county records of this species up to the 2004 publication date of the San Diego County Bird Atlas. There was a Marbled Murrelet for several days last winter at Mission Bay, but I didn't take the time to chase it down.

This is only my second California record; the first was way up north in Humboldt County in 2002 where they breed.

Marbled Murrelet. San Diego Bay, California. January 1, 2016. Greg Gillson.

Marbled Murrelet

Friday, January 15, 2016

Overnight at Lake Henshaw

Marlene and I decided to spend the first night of a 3-day vacation trip at the picturesque Lake Henshaw. We'd driven past several times, but there isn't free public access to the lakeshore. There were some cabins available overlooking the lake (Lake Henshaw Resort). I guess you'd call them "sportsman cabins." One bed, one tiny bathroom, one tiny kitchenette. It was clean but not in perfect repair. It had worn wood floors and dark wood paneling, as expected. After a frosty night we also found it was not insulated. It was... adequate.

Dawn at Lake Henshaw, California. December 28, 2015. Greg Gillson.

It is $7.50 per person to access the lake, but it was free with our stay at the cabins. And one can rent a motorboat for $35 per day to explore the large, shallow lake. That's about it. There's an RV park here. But unless one likes fishing, not a whole lot to do here.

The lake sits in a grassland valley, surrounded by mountains. It reminds me of Joseph, Oregon, which sits among the Blue Mountains at the Idaho/Washington border--dry, rocky pastures with scattered cattle. I have to remind myself that it would be fruitless to look for northern rare winter birds like Tree Sparrows, Bohemian Waxwings, and Snowy Owls. It may look like Idaho, but it's not.

We arrived in early afternoon and I walked the shoreline taking photos, which I present below. We departed for Borrego Springs soon after sunrise. So we didn't stay long. We'll have to come back again sometime.

Western Grebe

Bonaparte's Gull

Spotted Sandpiper

Great Blue Heron

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

A visit to San Clemente and Dana Point

Just north of Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, and just north over the county line into Orange County, are the towns of San Clemente and Dana Point. Marlene and I visited here as the first part of our end-of-the-year vacation.

San Clemente Pier, California. December 25, 2015. Greg Gillson.

We first walked out the pier at San Clemente. Then we drove up on Dana Point and walked some of the cliff-top trails. We ended the day at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point. There were thousands of gulls here, evidently seeking shelter from the cold winds offshore.

Looking down on Dana Point Marina. December 25, 2015. Greg Gillson.

Red-throated Loon

Glaucous-winged Gull

Heermann's Gull

Snowy Plover

Huge gull flock

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Star Trek technology that's even better today!

The 1966 TV series Star Trek depicted human space travel and technology in the 23rd century (the year 2265). Many of the futuristic items depicted as in use 200 years hence have already been invented in the past 50 years. In fact, some of what we have today is better than that imagined for 150 years from now!

Beam me up
No, we don't have any means of travel where we're disassembled, atom-by-atom, and then reassembled instantaneously somewhere else. Thank goodness! And, while faster-than-light travel may theoretically be possible according to some theories of the nature of the universe, it is equally likely that it is truly not possible. This, of course, ruins instantaneous space travel and communication across vast distances that is necessary for space opera fiction.

But nearly every other technological advance envisioned by Star Trek 50 years ago has already come true, at least in part.

Photo credit: treknews.net

Tricorder, communicator, universal translator, computer, all rolled into one
Your cell phone in 2015 with its myriad of apps has far more features than the Enterprise crew members had available in the year 2265. In fact, your cell phone is smaller, more sleek and useful than the communicator depicted in Star Trek in 1966. The first cellular telephone came out in 1973 and weighed 2-1/2 pounds!

In 1966 computers took up entire rooms. Star Trek depicted tablet computers with stylus! In 1977, Radio Shack released the TRS-80 personal computer. By 2010 tablet PC's were becoming ubiquitous with many more features than those envisioned in Star Trek.

A humorous scene in the 1986 movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home had the Enterprise crew go back in time to 1986. There Scotty tried trying to talk to an Apple Computer, "Hello, Computer." Talking to our computer no longer seems silly. Today, we command the computer in our "telephone" by voice or keypad.

There is a Google voice search bar on Android phones (Siri for iOS). You speak to it, it answers back in voice and text. Try asking (speaking) these Google queries of your phone:

How far away is Wolf 359?
How do you say 'Where is the spaceship?' in Spanish?
Who is Mr. Spock?
Where am I?

Navigation computer on the Enterprise? Map apps on our phone or in our vehicles have spoken navigation. And they are getting better at accurately directing you. One of my early map navigation app's favorite phrase was: "In 600 feet make a U-turn." Not the same? There are free apps for your phone that allow you to point your phone at the night sky and the app will identify the stars, planets, and constellations for you.

This is true science fiction: not only predicting possible future technologies, but actually helping to define them. I'm not saying that we wouldn't have cell phones without Star Trek, but that 1966 TV show and subsequent shows and films helped people visualize what could be. In that way, I believe Star Trek "hurried" and refined these future devices, creating acceptance and even demand. Today's cell phones would likely be different without Star Trek.

Friday, January 8, 2016

A visit to Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

At the end of November Marlene and I drove from San Marcos up to Redding, California, a distance of about 650 miles. This was the half-way point for meeting up with Marlene's sister from Randle, Washington, and transferring Jean, their mother, who had been visiting us for 6 weeks.

On the return journey the next two days we took a couple of detours. One was to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge near Willows, California, about 85 miles north of the city of Sacramento and right on Interstate 5.

We first stopped at the visitor center and hiked a short bit of trails. Then we drove the 6 mile long auto tour route. You are not allowed outside of your vehicle on the auto tour. Birds are not afraid of people driving in vehicles. Thus, we spent over 2 hours driving slowly and parking to photograph waterfowl in astounding numbers at close range.