Joan Lentz and I spent a little over an hour at LLC today, birding around Stow House. The best find was hearing the continuing Summer Tanager in the Big Eugenia tree southeast of the house, then again very close in the small tree on the southwestern corner of the house. I caught a glimpse of it as it flew out of that tree and went back behind the house.
Later, Steve Colwell and I walked the Beach at Coal Oil Point at low tide. At least, that was the plan! To our surprise, it was very windy there and the numbers were down in comparison to the similar tide conditions a couple of weeks ago. Most of the shorebirds had moved to the exposed rocky flats well east of Coal Oil Point where they were out of the worst of the wind. We found just about every shorebird species that would be expected here this time of year except for Dunlin and Black Turnstone. Gull numbers were way down as well. We looked for but did not find the Kittiwake that was reported here yesterday. Probably the best Gull was a single Short-billed Gull (most SBs have departed.). We tired to bird the beach west of COP, but it was very windy and there were few birds. However, the beach conditions have been improved for Snowy Plovers and we found 57 of them hunkered down in little hollows in the sand.
When we came up from the beach, we found Linus Bloomquist on the lee side of Cliff House, where he was doing a sea watch. We continued back toward the parking lot, but soon received a call from Linus that he's just had a Kittiwake. Steve headed back to see if it could be refound while I headed home, so I don't know if they were successful.
There were a few ducks in the slough along with a large Mute Swan.
Florence Sanchez