The Blue-footed Booby Show in Arizona

Once again, I have to admit that living in Arizona really has its perks as far as chasing our fine avian friends.  The state is situated close to Mexico and also to some bodies of salt water.  With the proximity of these features, the state does get its share of casual and rare birds.  Such is the case this August.  A juvenile Blue-footed Booby made an appearance at Patagonia Lake, in southeastern Arizona.  This bird is an ABA code 4 bird and is very rarely seen in the United States.  I have actually seen this bird in Puerto Penasco, Mexico before, and it is quite at home in that location as they breed close by on Bird Island in the Gulf of California.  This bird seems to have lost its compass and flew off course by about 185 miles and ended up at this remote, but very popular lake in Arizona.  Once again I had the privilege of  birding with a couple other excellent birders, my good friends Tommy DeBardeleben and Muriel Gordon Neddermyer.  We decided to make a weekend of it and our target bird was this Blue-footed Booby, which was a new life bird for both of them and is one that was really great to add to my Arizona and US list.

Since this bird is a juvenile, it has not yet developed the striking bright blue feet that it will attain as an adult bird.  Our first viewing of this bird was a distant fly over to the beach and visitor's center area.  Once we worked our way to the visitor center, all we had to do was stand on the small dock and watch the show.  It would fly up and down the lake making many dives for fish.  One time it hit the water not more than 15 to 20 feet from our little dock area.  We can truly say it put on quite a show for us.  Definitely not overly concerned with the humans all around.  This post is centered on this magnificent bird and I will let the photos speak for themselves.

 The beginning of a dive for fish

 Starting to fold in the wings before hitting the water

Would have loved to be in the boat with this close fly-by.

Puerto Penasco, (Rocky Point), Mexico - Part 1

I was privileged to have the opportunity to travel to Puerto Penasco, Mexico this past weekend with some dedicated birders.  This small resort town of about 50,000 lies about 1 hour south of the Arizona border with Mexico on the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Gulf of California.  The Sea of Cortez is a long extension of the Pacific Ocean that is enclosed by Baja California on the west and mainland Mexico on the east.  My traveling companions were Claudia, Susie, Pat, Jeanne, Sue, and Marilyn and together we got to see and observe many birds and ourselves dined on some great cuisine.  Personally, I came away with 7 new life birds and I know a couple others that scored more than that.

The first day we concentrated our search near downtown and the fishing docks.  For me one of the most exciting finds were the Brown and Blue-footed Boobies.  These birds are known for following the fishing boats into the harbor and the distance out in the water was a bit of a challenge for my camera, however I managed to at least capture photos of the 2 species for identification purposes.

Blue-footed Booby

Brown Booby

Brown Booby

One of the most numerous birds, other than gulls, were the Brown Pelicans and some were even showing their very colorful breeding plumage.  One of my photos captured a Brown Pelican, a Blue Footed Booby and an unknown gull taking part in a feeding frenzy.

Unknown gull, Blue-footed Booby, & Brown Pelican

Brown Pelican - adult

As mentioned earlier, the gulls out numbered all other birds and the most common gull was the Ring-billed Gull, which is shown below.  Also along the docks we were able to locate a Yellow-footed Gull, and a juvenile Heerman's Gull, most likely a 2nd year bird.  Gulls can be extremely difficult to identify for various reasons, which I don't have space for on this post.  But they sparked many a lively discussions among us.

Ring-billed Gull

 Yellow-footed Gull

Heerman's Gull

In the afternoon we found our rental house which was situated on Cholla Bay and immediately started seeing shore birds.  Some of those that we found before dusk were Long-billed Curlews, Marbled Godwits, Whimbrels, Black-bellied Plovers and a lot of Willets.  The tide schedule greatly influences where birds may gather.  Notice the extreme differences of the bill shape of the first 3 species below.

 Long-billed Curlew

Marbled Godwit

Whimbrel

Willet

Black-bellied Plover

Part 2 will consist of more incredible discoveries that were made on Sunday.