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.
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