Apologies for the long break since my last post, but the second half of July was uninspiring. The first two weeks of August were then very busy as I had 5 days of work, followed by my daughter’s wedding. Bird wise, in late July the only minor highlight was a large concentration of 700 or more Elegant Terns at the Santa Maria River Estuary that attracted a few other tern species. I made a couple of visits there and saw up to four Common Terns, mostly first-summers as well as a few Forster’s and the breeding Least Terns. Unfortunately, a Sooty Tern that graced Arroyo Grande, just a few miles to the north of the SMRE, did not put an appearance in Santa Barbara County. I then found another first-summer Common Tern on the beach at Devereux. A couple of days later, I made another trip to Devereux with Hugh Ranson and Mark Bright. Although we did not see the bird in the field, Mark later noticed an apparently much smaller cormorant in a distant photograph of some Double-cresteds, quite po...
This blog covers my sightings of birds and other wildlife, mostly from the Goleta area, on the southern Central Coast of California, but also from my regular travels elsewhere, primarily to North America, including Mexico, and Europe. You can contact me via: nlethaby@gmail.com if you have any questions.