Last Day in Sunny California

We had the morning to kill before we returned our rental car and took the metro back to the airport.

We started out at the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, this time with a fully charged camera.

It was high tide so the shorebirds were all huddled together.

Mostly godwits, with their lovely tweedy wing feathers, and willets in their grey winter plumage

The Belding's sparrow has darker, more distinct markings than the standard savanna sparrow:

Lesser scaup:

This Curlew was putting its long curved bill to good use scratching its chest.

Our second stop was the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve which featured

upland habitat to Leo's left and salt marsh to his right.  So, in addition to waterfowl and shorebirds like this greater yellow legs

the uplands were full of terrestrial birds.  Northern mockingbird were singing from what seemed like every second bush

and hummingbirds like this Allan's

and also Anna's hummingbirds (sorry, no good photos) were protecting their territory.

And I'm going to declare this bird the bird of the day and the bird of the trip:

The black phoebe, the ubiquitous bird of coastal California. Its not rare, its not colourful, but it has a great personality, and it's one of my personal favourites.  To quote the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's excellent online bird guide:

The Black Phoebe is a dapper flycatcher of the western U.S. with a sooty black body and crisp white belly. They sit in the open on low perches to scan for insects, often keeping up a running series of shrill chirps. Black Phoebes use mud to build cup-shaped nests against walls, overhangs, culverts, and bridges. Look for them near any water source from small streams, to suburbs, all the way to the salt-sprayed rocks and cliffs of the Pacific Ocean.

But it was time to drive back to long beach to return the car and catch the metro to the airport.  This time it cost Leo just $.35 because non rush hour and he'd already bought his transit card!!

Surely there's no better way to end a retiree's travelogue than a reference to a great deal a nose snub to those hardworking younger people who can't get in it so I'll end this here.

Surf City, USA

When it became too rainy to bird, we headed to downtown Huntington Beach, the official Surf City USA (registered trademark).

Main Street is pack with giant surfing stores, and it's home to the Surfing Walk of Fame and the International Surfing Museum.

And this cool old station wagon:

We walked down the long pier and had lunch at Ruby's Diner.

Decorated with a surfer theme, of course:

They were playing swing music from the forties, but it turned out to be a chain from the 80s.  Burgers and shakes were good though.

In Huntington Beach the firetrucks carry surfboards.

We stopped to watch the surfers from the pier

WIPEOUT!

Bolsa Chica Wetlands

The reason we chose a motel facing a noisy highway (aside from we're cheap) was its location, minutes away from the best birding in the area.  Just north is the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge, but it's on a military reserve and only open to the public 2 Days a month.  The salt marshes behind our motel have been converted to marinas and condos.

Just south of us is the Bolsa Chica wetlands, rescued from development 20 years ago.  The Bolsa Chica was originally purchased by the Bolsa Chica Gun Club in 1899.  They blocked off the tidal flow from the ocean and allowed oil companies to extract oil from the marsh.

There's at least one Derrick still pumping.

In the 1960s the property was acquired by a development company to construct marinas and housing, but environmentalists fought to preserve the wetlands.  Finally, in 1990, the ecological reserve was established and the salt marsh was reestablished.

When we visited the reserve was packed with over wintering waterfowl, herons roosting in Palm trees, egrets and every kind of shorebird.  The birding was so good it took us 20 minutes to get out of the parking lot.

Later we headed to Huntington Central Park, which is adjacent to the reserve and also loaded with birds.  Here we saw three black-crowned night herons roosting in on tree, an osprey, a red-tailed hawk, and a great-tailed grackle. 

Just before dusk we returned to the Bolsa Chica, where we spotted this snowy egret shaking the weeds with its feet to scare up fish.

Bird of the Day: Belding's sparrow, the California version of the savanna sparrow that we've never seen before.

Farewell to Catalina Island

On our last day on the Island we finally made it up to the rooftop terrace of our guesthouse:

Pretty great view!  We were sorry we hadn't gone up earlier, when the sun was out.

Anyway we thought we would have the Island to ourselves once the weekend was over, but instead a cruise ship arrived with three shuttle boats continually bringing passengers to shore.  Clearly it was time to get out of Dodge.

Leo got  good shot of this osprey hanging around the pier

Heck, why don't we call him the Bird of the Day!

Our last task as we waited for our ferry was to try to get a picture of Clifornia's State marine fish, the Garibaldi damselfish

Which was swimming around the dock.  Fun fact:  the Garibaldi is named after Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi's red shirt though the fish is clearly bright orange.  Fun fact 2:  California has both a marine state fish and freshwater state fish (the golden trout, clearly golden) while Canada has only recently got its act together and nominated a national bird, and the wrong one!  (The whiskey jack, not the loon which is our real national bird . . . Its on a coin already for heavenssake, like the beaver!)

So long Catalina Island with cruise ship in background 

On the trip over the ferry was packed, every seat was taken, but on the return we pretty much had the outdoor seating to ourselves.

Connie scanning for shearwaters

From the ferry terminal in Long Beach, we walked a few blocks to the Enterprise office to pick up our rental car and drove 8 miles to Sunset Beach and our optimistically named motel, the Oceanview. It turned out to be more like the Pacific Highwayview, but in fact, fom our window, in a gap between the buildings across the highway, I could see some blue water.

It's an interesting area of cheap motels, dive bars, diners and liquor stores.  But if you cross th highway and go one block, there's the beach, empty in January, and stretching from Oregon to the tip of Baja California.

Let's end this there, with a sunset on Sunset Beach.

Catalina Tiles

From 1927 to 1937 the Wriggleys operated a pottery that made tiles and vessels from local Catalina clay.  It was used to decorate the stores on Main Street

and benches along the waterfront.

This modern mural decorates a wall with scenes from the island,

and this bank machine is also decorated with tile.

TIles are used on memorial monuments:

And this mosaic greets visitors coming off the ferry:

Recuperation Day - Avalon, Ca

Typical Avalon Street lined with golf carts

We had a relaxing start to the day as Leo recovered from his race.  Our room is on the second floor up a narrow, steep stairwell, and it was intensely amusing to me (though not at all to Leo) to watch him hobble up and down the stairs.

In the afternoon, I promised Leo I could show him a new bird he had never seen before, so we very slowly retraced my previous day's route to the botanic garden.

Halfway up is a subdivision called Bird Park, after an aviary built by the Wriggleys that once held exotic birds.

Across from the old aviary was a house that brought to mind another retirement town, Bisbee, Arizona:

The sculpture is made of animal skeletons (bison?)

And here we found the Bird of the Day:

The spotted dove, native to South Asia, escaped and formerly common in the Los Angeles area, but now declining, though still thriving on Catalina Island.

Avalon Ultramarathon

Our Guesthouse

Leo got up at 4 am for his 50 mile race start at 5 am while I slept in.  When I left our room at 10 am, the streets were deserted.  

I walked up the hill to the Holiday Inn for a view of the ocean and the town of Avalon below.

View from the Holiday Inn

By the time I walked back downhill again the town had woken up and everyone was driving around in golf carts.  Vehicles are severely restricted on the island.  There's a 12-year waiting list to bring a real vehicle onto the island.  And for good reason; there's really no place to park them.  And the carts are restricted to just the town of Avalon.  There's a locked gate to the road that leads to the airport and the other smaller town of Two Harbors.  So the only way to see the rest of the island is to take a tour or sign up for a 50 mile ultramarathon.  (Or a 4-day backpacking trip.  Hiking is free but camping in a developed campsite is $60!)

In the afternoon, I walked up to the Wrigley Memorial and botanic garden.  The garden concentrates on cacti and succulents from around the world and also endangered plants that exist only on the island.

Endangered endemic Catalina Island Mountain Mahogany

This endangered mahogany is the only one I could get a decent picture of.  The other plants were completely enclosed in chicken wire (see lower left of photo) to prevent browsing by feral animals that have wreaked havoc on local species.

Pigs and goats have been removed, but mule deer and bison brought in for a western movie remain.

View from Wrigley Monument

The Wrigley Monument was built to commemorate William Wriggley of chewing gum fame, who once owned the island and developed for tourism.  It's a typical folly.  I was sitting on the bench on the lower right of the picture when a Catalina Island fox (endemic) casually trotted down the curving staircase, sauntered over to pee on a metal post and slipped into the bushes.  They were almost wiped out by distemper, so they have been captive breeding them and releasing them in the wild.

Leo did well in his race finishing in under 10 hours.  He's often the oldest person running in his trail races, but this race has lots of oldsters.
There's an 82 year old who's run it for 35 consecutive years (he started a day before everyone else and took 26 hours), but he's retiring this year and will only run the 50 km next year.

Leo chased a fellow in his age group downhill the last 3 miles but couldn't catch him and finished 17 seconds out of third place, so he's he's a little bummed out, and suffering mightily today from the pounding he gave his legs.

We had fun at the banquet, an excellent meal and we sat at a table with a runner from Dallas, Texas, a teacher who moved from Minnesota to San Francisco to escape the winters, a young local born in Mexico who came second in his age class on his first long distance race, and a young Minnesotan woman who moved to Los Angeles to escape the winters.  But her boyfriend Dmitri, outright winner of the 50 k race, won the "one time I ran in weather so cold I . . ."  bragging rights. He's originally from Irkutsk, Siberia!

Bird of the day:

There's tons of these adorable acorn woodpeckers flying around the palm trees.

The Island of Romance

While we were waiting to catch the bus to the ferry terminal, we were puzzled by an odd group of inappropriately youthfully dressed middle-aged people walking by.  Then we remembered that the day before we went through the Long Island Convention Centre and saw a skateboarding convention in progress.  They were most likely a group of totally appropriately dressed middle-aged skateboarders!

When we got to the ferry terminal, we found another group of inappropriately youthfully dressed seniors.  These turned out to be ultramarathoners headed for the same race as Leo.

Leo waiting for the ferry to leave

The ferry ride took about an hour.  We were hoping to see some interesting pelagic birds, but there were not many birds, and the ferry was moving so fast they were hard to identify.  We did see two different species shearwaters, the sooty and probably a black-vented or manx. They are really beautiful to watch, as they fly rapidly just along the surface of the water, almost as as fast as our ferry.

We went out for a carbo-loading meal of pasta, before turning in early, as Leo's race started at 5 am the next day.

Catalina Island with the private Tuna Clubhouse in the foreground, and the landmark Catalina Casino in the background