San Diegutio River

Long Billed Curlew

Goldfinch

Anna’s Hummingbird

Quail

Osprey

Killdeer

Great Blue Heron

Lesser Yellowlegs

Great Egret

My mom and I showed up on Saturday for the Buena Vista Audubon’s monthly San Diegutio River walk. I had heard from several people at the BV bird count that John is an excellent teacher and birder so we were excited to see how it varied from the BV walk in both birds and in teaching style. We saw Bill there, whom we had met at the BV bird count and we stood around chatting for a while. After 30 minutes, it was clear that the walk wasn’t happening after no one else showed up.

Disappointed but not deterred, my mom and I walked around the river spotting and identifying what birds we could. All we were seeing were hummers and finches, both of which we can see in our backyard, so we decided to head over to the other side of the river thinking we would see more shorebirds closer to the ocean. With it being the height of tourism season, there are too many people to ever see any birds at the ocean. I was hoping that that would mean they would all flock to the lagoons/rivers but alas, there doesn’t seem to be any more than normal. I can’t figure out where they head off to.

Anyways, back to the story. We hit the jackpot at the overlook on the other side, but struck out pretty much everywhere else (we even headed over to San Elijo Lagoon on the way home). Pretty much all of the pictures above are from that outlook, except we saw a kingfisher but I didn’t get a shot of it. My favorite were the Killdeer, but I’m a sucker for any sandpiper because they are so entertaining to watch. The Osprey was pretty awesome too.

I can’t wait for summer to be over and there to be more birds…. and less tourists!