The Buena Vista Lagoon and a Swallows Video

Today was the monthly bird count at the Buena Vista Lagoon.  A very exciting bird we saw was the hermit warbler, which I had never seen before.  Sadly, I wasn't able to take a photo, because it was flitting around in a thick tree and I didn't have a good camera.  It was very pretty though.  They have bright yellow heads, black throats, and gray backs with white below.  They are usually found in coniferous forests, but the one we saw was in a conifer in a parking lot.

We also saw northern rough-winged swallows, which are not common.  They are found throughout the United States and southern Canada in the summer, though in southern Florida and Texas, they are around all year.  Compared to other swallows, they are very dull colored.  They are brown with white below.  They aren't found in big groups like other swallows, though they do mix with flocks of other swallow species.  Many swallows do this.  One of the northern rough-winged swallows was sitting on a telephone wire in the same parking lot the hermit warbler was in.  Below is a photo of it.

Northern Rough-Winged Swallow

 

We saw tons of brown pelicans flying over the lagoon.  Below are two photos of some of them.

Brown Pelicans

Brown Pelicans

 

Besides going around the lagoon, we went down to the beach to look for shorebirds.  Today was a very gray day, and the ocean was about the same color, so it looked like the ocean just blended into the sky.  Below is the beach.

 

 

At the beach we saw willets, whimbrels, a least sandpiper, and a killdeer.  Unfortunately, because of my camera, I was only able to get a photo of the whimbrels, and it isn't a great one.  Whimbrels are found only in the coastal areas of the east and west coast.  They summer in northern Canada and Alaska and winter in the southern United States and Mexico.  They are large sandpipers similar to long-billed curlews (both are in the curlew family), though they are smaller with shorter beaks.  They are streaked brown overall with brown stripes on their heads, and have bluish-gray beaks and legs.  Below are two of the whimbrels.

Whimbrels

There were an incredible number of cliff swallows at the lagoon today- over two hundred.  There are cliff swallow mud nests under a bridge by the lagoon that have been unused and decaying for a couple years, but today the swallows appeared to be using them again.  Every time the swallows flew out of the nests, it seemed like the whole sky was full of birds.  Below is a photo of some of the swallows flying.  Below the photo is a video of the swallows flying in and out of their nests (I'm sorry the video quality isn't the same as my other videos.  It's because of the different camera).

Cliff Swallows