Mission Bay San Diego bird watching - Day 1

We went to Mission Bay around sunset. We looked more closely at the birds than we had in the past and tried to identify as many as we could. The light wasn't good so we had to look really hard. We gonna go back with better optics.

We identified mallard, little blue heron, snowy egret, American coots, long-billed curlew, California gull, Rock pigeon, marbled godwit, brown pelican, Heermann's gull, western gull, black-bellied plover, willet and an unidentified tern which need to go back and look again.

We used to always call all the gulls 'seagulls' until last week a ranger told us there was no such a bird called 'seagull'.

Today we identified 'Heermann's gull', 'California gull' and 'Western gull'.

Below is a photo we took has all the three types gulls together.

All the black duck-looking birds with white bills are American coots. The gull  in the center with dark body, white head and red bill is Heermann's gull. The one on the right of Heermann's gull is Western gull. Western gulls are normally larger, with pinkish legs instead of black or yellowish. They have black tails with very white spots on it.

Same as Western gulls, California gulls have white spots on their tails too. But they are smaller size ( around 21 inches long), smaller head and smaller bill compared to their body.

Next photo is an interesting photo. There were a bunch of birds eating some food that people left. We started to get between them and the water. They didn't like this and all took flight at the same time.  Most of those already in the air were mallards and pigeon. Those on the ground running were American coots.

We didn't really get good picture of black-bellied plover. The ones we saw are non-breeding adults. In Winter they migrate to southern California from Northern Alaska. That's why you are not going to see breeding adults in Southern California. One important thing to identify this plover is the length of bill. It's almost same size as their head.

The one on the left is a non-breeding black-bellied plover. The one next to it on the right is marbled-godwit. The breeding adult can look very different from non-breeding ones. See http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/black-bellied_plover/id

Talking about marbled-godwit. To identify this bird, first they show up around shores or marshalls; they dig out foods from sands or muds by their very long, up-turn bill.

To identify mallards are easy, especially males ones. These ducks have a very distinguishing white neck ring with bright green head.

We'll stop here. Continue tomorrow...
Tomorrow we'll try to identify the tern and go to another natural reserve in San Diego area.