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.