Tijuana River Estuary National Park, March 30 - AMAZING DAY!

  Today we spent the bulk of our day at the Tijuana River Estuary National Park which we visited 4 years ago. We got a little turned around getting there, but managed to find it eventually.
   We saw at least two "life birds" which means a bird you have never seen before. The first and rarest is the light-footed clapper rail, an elusive and shy bird and also endangered. The ranger told us which walk to take and, sure enough, we spotted one or two. We did not manage to get a photo because the one we were watching kept disappearing into the long grass. But, we each bought t-shirts with the rail on the back.
    We walked about 3 1/2 miles total, strolling and sitting and watching.

    The second life bird was the Marbled Godwit, another bird with a long bill which has two colors, a nice identifying marker. Again, we could not get a good photo, but got good looks at several.
     Another cool bird for us was the western meadowlark which we saw on the military airfield. We saw the meadowlarks with some killdeer, birds we get on Nantucket that we really love.
     [Note: As we were next to the southern-most base to the Mexican border, the noise of continually-flying helicopters was pretty intense. It seems like a colossal waste of fuel, not to mention all the pollution, to constantly be in the air. Why not some high-tech cameras and sensors?] Fortunately, the wild life did not seem to mind.
     We saw: amazing curlews (such long bills), lots of willets, several whimbrels, ruddy ducks, blue-winged teal, greater scaup, red-wing blackbirds, cormorants, great and snowy egrets, brown pelicans and amazingly huge white pelicans. We also saw a hummingbird and a hawk that we could not identify, as well as sparrows and terns and I am sure others that we don't know.

Unidentified bird of prey in flight....harrier?

Unidentified hummingbird. It had red florescence that cannot be seen

Whimbrel

Willet

Whimbrel

    We also saw a wonderful jack rabbit with long ears amongst the cactus. Cactus in a wetlands?!

    We ate a late lunch at Imperial Beach at a taco place by the side of the road and had delicious fish tacos.
     Then, we found a Costco and filled up our almost-dry fuel tank. (Gas is expensive in California. It was $2.59 a gallon at Costco. In Palm Springs it was in the $2.40 range. We were paying $1.40 all across the south.) We also bought some chicken for dinner and a pineapple.
    We had planned to go to Balboa Park to hear some jazz, but....we had a full enough day and opted out.