Winter 2006 - Salton Sea Birding

A short 140 miles brought us from Quartzsite, AZ to El Cento, CA. In exchange for an extra hour as we moved from Mountain time to Pacific time, we went from $2.28 gasoline to $2.58. Welcome to California! After getting set up, we shipped the satellite internet computer back to the manufacturer. They finally agreed to repair it. We then picked up almost three weeks of mail. We had ordered a bunch of stuff as well so we got a big box at the post office. On the way back to the campground we stopped at Costco. This place is always a challenge for people living in a motorhome. Great prices but where will we put 12 cans of tuna, 170 paper plates and a gallon of Windex! We spent the evening reading mail and magazines.

We started the day with a run around this large campground with a nine hole golf course in the center. After a brief tour of the new El Centro Mall, we drove to the Birding Festival Headquarters for our registration packets. This is the ninth year of this festival and it is well organized. Busses are provided for all of the birding trips. The afternoon tour was to Fig Lagoon. There were lots of birds but the wind picked up and it was hard to watch distant birds while being buffeted by gusty winds. We did catch a glimpse of Least Bittern and Western Grebe, both life birds. Back to the coach for an early bedtime. Tomorrow’s tour leaves at 5:30 AM.

We love birding but getting up at 3:45 AM is a bit much!! It turned out to be a long but fun day. The morning trip (5:30-12:00) visited several spots along the south end of the Salton Sea. We saw a total of 68 species including three life birds, the rarest of which was the Yellow Footed Gull. (No the bird we saw was a juvenile and did not have yellow feet.) After a quick lunch at a local burrito shop we attended a fascinating presentation by one of the principle discoverers of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, thought to be extinct. After years of traipsing through swamps and leaving remote cameras and recorders in the bayous they compiled sufficient evidence that the bird still exist in several places. The short piece of video that was captured was shown on all of the national news shows last April.

Soon after the Ivory bill presentation there was a social for festival participants with snacks and a bird call contest. Carl entered, doing his best Feruginous Pygmy Owl call but finished out of the prize money. As soon as the social ended we were back on the bus to go owling. Although we saw several Burrowing Owls along the roadside, all of the other owls proved elusive. Even places where Barn, Great Horned and Western Screech owls had been seen and heard within the last few days, were unproductive. Such is birding. We got back to the coach about 9 PM and went almost directly to sleep. Tomorrows tour starts at 5:45!

We dragged ourselves out of bed and made it in time for the 5:45 birding tour. We visited the new wetlands area in Brawley, CA and a couple of small lakes. These habitats offered a variety of bird species which brought our birding festival total to 86 species and our trip total to 247 species. After lunch we attended an entertaining presentation about birding by ear (identifying the bird by it’s song or call). We then drove back to the coach for a nap before the festival banquet in the evening. It was an excellent birding festival.

Instead of the festival birding tour starting at 5:30, we elected to do some birding on our own, starting at 8 AM. We visited Fig Lagoon and the Brawley Wetlands, two of the places we went with the festival tours over the weekend. It was far more peaceful with two rather than 40 birders and we got to see several reclusive species including American Bittern, Virginia Rail, Sora and Marsh Wren. On the way home we loaded up in Wal-Mart for our trip to Mexico. After a late lunch we cleaned up the coach and got all of the laundry done. We are ready for our solo Mexican adventure in Baja California.