October 7 Part 1 - Pescadero State Park, CA

I wanted to do something different with my last birding day before going home. In 2013 and 2015, I birded only on the East Bay. This year I decided to visit the West Coast and try to see some different birds. There was species one in particular that was reasonably common over on that side that I'd never seen.

Getting from east to west sounds easy but there are limited options for doing so. There are two available routes that both involve crossing the Santa Cruz mountain range. These are two lane highways with lots of traffic on the weekends.

Google gave me two options and the GPS elected to send me on the grey route through Half Moon Bay.






From there I turned south and first stopped at Pescadero Beach.



As mentioned in previous posts, the first bird of the day was a White-crowned Sparrow.


White-crowned Sparrow - Pescadero State Park Beach, Pescadero CA

There were some large rocks on the beach which were accessible by foot. On top of them I found some Black Turnstones, a common Pacific shorebird.

Black Turnstone - Pescadero State Park Beach, Pescadero CA

Usually when you see one of these birds there are others nearby.

Black Turnstone - Pescadero State Park Beach, Pescadero CA

Further out on the shore there was a huge rock formation that was home to numerous Pelicans, Cormorants and Gulls.

Brown Pelicans, Pelagic Cormorants and Heerman's Gulls -
Pescadero State Park Beach, Pescadero CA

There was one other rare species on the rocks, the Rock Pelican!

One of the main reasons I made the trip west was the chance to see a White-tailed Kite. This is a smallish raptor that is mostly white with black shoulders and a pure white tail. This and similar species are called Kites because of their hunting technique; they hover in one spot and then pounce on their unsuspecting prey.

I went inland following directions I'd printed. After parking I walked along an entrance road into a forested area in a creek valley. As I neared the valley bottom I spotted the bird in flight.

White-tailed Kite - Pescadero State Park, Pescadero CA

Life List #423 - 2017 Bird #208

Here's the kiting behaviour.

   White-tailed Kite - Pescadero State Park, Pescadero CA

My only regret is not getting clearer photos of this bird. It was only present for a few minutes and quite far away. 

When I got to the valley i met a couple of local birders and we swapped stories about the kite and other local birds. The only other bird we saw was a Black Phoebe.

Black Phoebe - Pescadero State Park, Pescadero CA

We parted company and I headed back to the East Bay for some afternoon birding. This had been a colourful outing with White-tailed Kite, White-crowned Sparrow, Brown Pelican, Black Turnstone, and Black Phoebe.