Subject: Baja Birding
Date: May 5 23:10:10 2002
From: Jeff Swift - swift at xsat.com


Tweeters,

I was in Central Baja, on the Sea of Cortez side, where desert meets the sea. The town in the vicinity was called Bahia de Los Angeles. The area is a 1 km wide strip of desert one side is the bay and the other is a steep 5000' mountain range. Good birding and grat fishing. The dominate Flora in the desert is the towering cardon (Pachycereus pringlei), worlds tallest cactus, often confused with the smaller saguaro, they are visually similar. From a distance the desert resembled a forest of cardons. Here is a list of the highlights, not in order these were all seen with in a 3 km radius:

Black-throated Sparrow
Cactus Wren
Verdin (lots)
White-winged Dove
Purple Martin (one pair)
Violet-green Swallow
Barn Swallow
White-throated Swift
Raven (several local pairs)
Gila Woodpecker (lots)
Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Ash Throated Flycatcher (lots)
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
California Gnatcatcher
Brown Pelican (lots)
Magnificent Frigate birds (several, one male had a yellow wing tag)
Heermann's Gull (lots)
Elegant Terns (lots)
Yellow-footed Gull (lots)
Coyote
Gecko
Osprey (lots) weird seeing them eat fish perched on the
cordon cactus.
Anna's Hummingbird (all females, lots)
Costa's Hummingbird (all females except one male)
Turkey Vulture (lots)
Great Blue Heron
Reddish Heron
Long-billed Curlew (foraging flock of 5 in an estuary at the end
of the bay)
Snowy Plover
Wilson's Plover
Eared Grebe (flock of 100 collectively diving for bait fish
right off the beach, 1 to 1.5 feet of water)
American Oystercatcher (Flock of 7, several noisy flybys)
Vermillion Flycatcher
Gilded Flicker
Curved-billed Thrasher (very vocal)
Lesser-Nighthawk

Happy Big-days

Jeff

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