Tag: American White Pelican

Birding Ballona Creek #3 – Lincoln to Inglewood Blvd.

Birding Ballona Creek: Lincoln to Inglewood Blvd.

This entry in my guide to birding Ballona Creek covers the 1.6 mile-long section from Lincoln Blvd. to Inglewood Blvd. The creek remains tidal for this entire stretch, and the tide can make the difference between a wide creek with few birds and vast exposed mud and rocks with lots of birds.  The birds dwindle in number and variety as you move inland. At Centinela Ave., the creek becomes thinner, with a concrete bottom and almost no vegetation. The area is covered by three different eBird hotspots: one for Lincoln Blvd. to the 90 overpass; another for the section from the 90 overpass to Centinela Ave.; and a third covering Centinela Ave. to Inglewood Blvd. I’ve divided this post into 3 corresponding sections.

I have no idea what’s going on here

Lincoln Blvd. to the 90 Overpass

We’ll start at Lincoln Blvd., and head inland. This is the first section of creek where, at low tide, you get exposed mud in the middle of the creek. As a result, you can get decent-sized flocks of gulls and shorebirds here at a good low tide. This is especially true right near the 90 overpass, where the Centinela Creek channel joins Ballona Creek. Any time of year, 100 or more gulls are often roosting on the exposed mud. This is a good spot to see westside Herring, Glaucous-winged, and (less commonly) Short-billed Gulls for those who don’t want to spend $8 to park at Dockweiler Beach.  If I were a better birder, and patient enough, I might be able to find a rare gull in these parts, but that’s still above my birding pay grade. The best I can do is the occasional Iceland Gull. During the summer, the gulls are joined by about 100 Caspian Terns. In migration and winter, Black-bellied Plovers (plus the recently regular Pacific Golden-Plover) and Willets move in at low tide. Least and Western Sandpipers are often feeding along the creek edge. 

Occasionally, again at low tide, turnstones, Surfbirds, and Dunlin make it this far up the creek. Osprey diving for fish and Peregrine Falcons harassing the Bonaparte’s Gulls and small shorebirds have provided some entertaining bird watching here. Rarities include Cattle Egret, Wilson’s Phalarope, and Black Skimmer (almost always right near the 90 overpass). As you can see, the area just downstream of the 90 overpass is the best spot in this section of the creek.

Ballona Creek pano Lincoln

Looking north from Lincoln Blvd. to the 90 overpass at low tide

The fields north of the creek attract a few different species. In addition to sparrows and starlings and Western Meadowlarks, American Pipits can be found bobbing their rumps in the little league baseball fields in winter. I’ve been crossing my fingers for years that a Mountain Plover will show up one day, but no luck yet. Maybe the fields are too small. Kestrels, kingbirds, Loggerhead Shrike, and White-tailed Kite perch on snags out in the field. Swallows and swifts love the overpasses, with Barn Swallows and Northern Rough-winged Swallows nesting. 

Ballona creek sunset

Sunset from the Centinela Ave. bridge

90 Overpass to Centinela Ave.

This is the only section of the entire creek that is lined on both sides with vegetation. Amongst the reeds and bushes, you can find birds like Sora and Common Yellowthroat and Song Sparrow (I even saw a Virginia’s Rail here once in 2016). For some reason, the ducks like this section much better than the downstream section, so there are often a good number of Blue-winged, Cinnamon, and Green-winged Teal (depending on the season), Gadwall, Northern Shoveler, American Wigeon, Ruddy Duck, and Mallard here. Best I can tell, only Mallards breed on the creek. Greater Yellowlegs and Black-necked Stilt are the long-legged birds here, with some Dowitchers (mainly Long-billed) from time to time. Ospreys like to perch in the tall trees along the creek and can sometimes be seen diving for fish in these shallow waters. Thanks to the trees at the Milton Street Park near the Marina del Rey Middle School fields, you can find some warblers and songbirds here, too. I’ve also had Snow Goose, Egyptian Goose, and Canada Goose in the fields, and Ross’s Goose and Greater White-fronted Goose in the water. Every other January, a Common Gallinule shows up, usually close to Centinela Avenue.

Centinela Ave. to Inglewood Blvd.

The short, concrete-bottomed section between Centinela Ave. and Inglewood Blvd. (about 1/3 of a mile long) is completely devoid of creekside vegetation. It is reliable for, and rarely offers more than, Black-necked Stilts, American Coots, Crows and Mallards for most of the year.  For reasons I can’t quite explain, it’s an attractive spot for sandpipers during fall migration (September). Perhaps its tidal nature, and the shallow water, has something to do with it. I’ve had Western, Least, Semipalmated, Spotted, Baird’s and Pectoral Sandpipers here. In September, a couple of dozen Red-necked Phalaropes gather and feed as if on a conveyer belt. They’ll float down the creek feeding as they go, and when they reach the bridge at Centinela Ave., fly back up the creek to Inglewood, settle in to the water, and float back down again. Ospreys can’t dive for fish here, but they’ll sometimes be seen standing in the middle of the creek.

Access Points to Bike Path in this area

  • Lincoln Blvd. (no parking nearby)
  • McConnell Ave. (street parking; nearest spot to gull roost)
  • Milton St. Park (at Marina del Rey middle school)
  • Centinela Ave.

101-species day in the 5MR

Painted Bunting Inglewood California

This beautiful Painted Redstart has wintered in the very same tree for 3 straight years

An unplanned Big Day in the 5MR

The new year is a fresh start for birders. All the lists we’ve been keeping–year list, county year list, 5MR year list–reset to zero. And since the new year is usually a day off of work, many of us head out on January 1st to start the new lists. I did a little birding on January 1st. But the next day was the Los Angeles Christmas Bird Count (CBC). I live in the LA CBC circle, and my 5MR is within the LA CBC circle. I’ve often been out of town when the LA CBC happens (which is usually held on a Sunday around New Year’s day). But I was in town this year. And I was assigned by the amazing organizer, Dan Cooper, to bird some local parks. Up just after dawn,  I headed out to my assigned parks. By noon, I’d completed my rounds and was at 47 species. It was hardly an impressive list. But I did see Painted Redstart, Band-tailed Pigeon, and Western Tanager (though I struck out on a pair of Red-lored Parrots that have been hanging out in a nearby park for months). 

One benefit of having a CBC overlap with your 5MR is you get a bunch of good birders into your circle, and they find some good wintering birds. That certainly happened, with birders producing an impressive total of 185 species found in the count circle. Curiously, many of the top listers (from eBird) were nowhere to be seen in the LA CBC circle on count day. Maybe it’s because L.A. is so big (there are, I believe, at least 10 different CBCs that take place at least partly in L.A. county) and they’d participated in CBCs closer to home. It certainly wasn’t because they were out of town, because many of them were out birding L.A. on January 2nd.

Common Goldeneye Ballona Creek

A sharp-looking Common Goldeneye has been on the creek since Thanksgiving

But instead of birding the LA CBC circle, LA’s top listers were chasing Lucy’s Warblers at the Huntington Botanical Garden (outside the LA CBC circle), or Laughing Gulls at the Rio Hondo Spreading Grounds (outside the LA CBC circle) or Lesser Black-backed Gulls at Bonelli Park (outside the LA CBC circle) and Black-throated Green Warblers in Long Beach (outside the LA CBC circle) and Greater Pewees in the Pacific Palisades (outside the LA CBC circle) and American Redstarts in the Sepulveda Basin (outside the LA CBC circle). Those are cool birds for LA birders. But they were also birds the listers had seen in 2021. Some of them (like the Laughing Gull) were birds they’d seen the week before. And they were all known wintering birds that all were likely to be hanging around past Jan 2nd. In fact, if I’m right, not a single birder who saw 300 species or more in Los Angeles County last year went birding inside the LA CBC circle on count day. To each his own. And any birding is probably better than no birding. But it would’ve been great to have more folks participating in the wonderful tradition of the LA CBC.

After I was done with my assigned parks, I got the fancy idea that I could maybe make it to 100 species by the end of the day if I headed to the marsh and the beach, and got a little lucky. So I went to Playa del Rey, where I picked up some ducks (including Greater Scaup and Northern Pintail) at the lagoon, snagged a quartet of gulls at the beach, and a couple turnstones (Black and Ruddy) and some surfbirds at the jetty. Then I took a walk around the freshwater marsh, where I added more ducks (including Canvasback and Redhead), some white birds (American White Pelicans, White-tailed Kite, White-throated Swift) and a Belted Kingfisher, among other things. By this time, I was starving for lunch, and sitting at 91 species.

Pacific Golden-Plover Ballona Creek

This Pacific Golden-Plover, back for its 4th winter in my 5MR, brought my count to 99 species for the day

I went home, planning to fuel up and figure out what I needed to see to get to 100. But I was also tired, and fell asleep on the couch. When I woke at 3:30pm, I had a little over an hour of sunlight left. There was no time to plot out some stops. Instead, I headed to the creek and crossed my fingers.  At the 90 overpass, I added Greater Yellowlegs, Osprey, and Lincoln’s Sparrow.  Between the 90 and Lincoln, I added a Common Goldeneye, Long-billed Dowitcher, a Great Blue Heron, and Savannah Sparrow.  It was 4:30, the sun was getting close to the horizon, and I was at 98 species. But the creek wasn’t done yet. I kept walking west, and found the wintering Pacific Golden-Plover, along with a Herring Gull and a Glaucous-winged Gull. I was at 101 species for the day! I could’ve stuck around and probably snagged a Barn Owl, but my legs were tired from being out most of the day.   

101 species is not bad for an unplanned big day. If I was strategic about it, I think I’d have a chance at 150 species (Darren Dowell saw 140 species on the CBC count day, and he did all his birding, as far as I can tell, in my 5MR). Speeding around while ticking off species is not really my cup of tea–I’d rather enjoy a walk and see what I see. But it was a fun little experiment.

American White Pelican Ballona Creek

This yawning American White Pelican was unimpressed by my tally for the day