Bodega Bay

Not a lot of time to blog but I had to post some pics from the beach!

We went to Bodega Bay yesterday and again today, and I got some lifers and some new photos!

First off, I believe this is a Marbled Godwit!

The top photo shows the bicolored upturned beak; you can also see the dark eye-stripe and crown stripe. When I saw the bird, the cinnamon underwings were obvious, but I didn't get photos of it in flight. (I would have yesterday but for my dead camera battery!) The second photo shows (from left) another Marbled Godwit, a Willet, and another Marbled Godwit. LIFER! But I counted it yesterday, so I'm still at 341.

Next, I am pretty certain this is a Whimbrel!

In the first photo, you can see the striped crown, the decurved bill, and the smaller body size than a Long-billed Curlew, with which I am very familiar and which doesn't have the striped crown. In the second photo he has his wings up; here again, no cinnamon underwing patches, just brown, which is again unlike the Long-billed Curlew.

Do I have a Whimbrel? Is this lifer 342?

Speaking of Willets, check out these photos of them in flight!

Beautiful!

Next, I have photos of a loon that I'm not sure about at all:

There are parts that look like a Red-throated Loon, but the throat is wrong, isn't it?

His whole head is dark. What kind of loon is this?

Help!? Is it just a Red-throated? Then why is his whole throat dark?

Finally got a photo of Brewer's Blackbird:

 They're like starlings out here, everywhere!

I also saw some Elegant Terns on the left:

 and lots of Caspian Terns, which are HUGE.

We also stopped at the Bodega Country Store and I bought a cool hoodie with the Hitchcock profile cartoon and "The Birds" on it! Here it is, along with me and Hitchcock himself!

Thanks to Matty McMatterson for taking the photo!

We leave tomorrow for the first leg of our trip back home. We'll drive over the Sierra Nevadas over to Elko, NV, and then up to Twin Falls, ID. We'll stay the night there and then go to the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Note the great birding checklist! I'm hoping to get Red-shafted Flicker, Western Kingbird, Clark's Nutcracker, Rock Wren, Mountain Bluebird, Brewer's and Lark Sparrows, Western Tanager, Bullock's Oriole, and Violet-Green Swallow. I also found my Stokes birdsong CDs for western birds, so you can be sure I'll be listening to these calls in the car on the way there (much to AB's chagrin, but she's a good sport).