I took my daughter to school this morning (Cambria) and decided I might as
well look around a little while since I was up that way. It was nice to see
that the northern creek mouths had broken, thought what is left of the
lagoons won't interest as many birds. There was a good group of gulls on the
beach at the mouth of Santa Rosa Creek that had 164 Mew, 82 California, 20
Western, 3 Heermann's, 2 Glaucous-winged, 2 Herring and a single Ring-billed.
Further north and just south of San Simeon Acres in a cattle grazed field
west of Hwy 1 was a flock of 11 ROSS'S GEESE. On my drive south I saw them
flying to the north. Just south of San Simeon Cove I stopped to scope
offshore for murrelets without luck. I did see four White-winged Scoters
(fairly scarce this winter) and 80-100 Red-throated Loons spread along the
coast, which is more than I would have expected. A tight group of 5 Pacific
Loons were also in the area. North of Hearst Castle an adult FERRUGIONUS
HAWK was on a telephone pole adjacent to Hwy 1. I drove north as far as the
elephant seal parking area where I stopped to look through the gulls. I was
up this way during the Winter Bird Festival and found an assortment of birds
partaking in the feeding opportunity provided but the ongoing puping. There
were far fewer gulls than I expected and nothing of note. Always interesting
to watch and listen to the seals squabble though.

Tom

Tom Edell
Cayucos, CA
tedell@...