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Daily Bucket: Winter at the Upper Newport Bay and Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserves. [1]
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Date: 2022-12-01
American Widgeon Hen bathing in the Bay
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.
View of Upper Newport Bay — visitor center is barely visible in the middle of photo just above the bay and beneath the row of trees. San Gabriel Mountains is the dark shadow in the background.
Right away I saw dozens of American Widgeons and a few Marbled Godwits.
American Widgeon drake
Marbled Godwit
Trio of black bellied plovers in winter colors
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.
Ducks, coots, and shorebirds of all types gather to feed during low tide. A snowy egret stands tall in the middle.
Here are a few closeup of the residents — they were very distant so some came out a little fuzzy:
Black Bellied Plover in winter colors
Great Blue Heron
Mallard in eclipse plumage
Green Winged Teals
American Coots
Willet with a catch
Cormorant drying his wings, shorebird poking the flats and a Ringbilled Gull on the flats.
Black Phoebe
Saw a whole lot of sparrows in the surrounding scrub. Some I could ID and some I could not.
White Crowned Sparrow
White Throated Sparrow (tan morph)
Song Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
?? Sparrow
?? Sparrow
?? Sparrow
?? Sparrow
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.
Greater Scaup
And then I saw another one.
Juvenile Brandt’s Goose
Adult Brandt’s Goose
Here are a couple of the year round residents:
Brown Pelican in breeding plumage
Ruddy Ducks in winter plumage
Black Bellied Plover in winter plumage
A California Gull sits among a flock of juvenile Double Crested Cormorants
California Gulls rest on a tidal flat
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?
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