The Best Day at Arrowhead Marsh!
Wow, what an incredible day at Arrowhead! I went after work yesterday for a quick walk and managed to see sooooo many birds, including a few lifers… Brant, Spotted Sandpiper, and Cooper’s Hawk! This place is just so incredible… to be able to see all of these birds in less than an hour, hardly walking too far at all is completely mind-blowing!
Here are the birds I saw when I first arrived… standing at the edge of the parking lot looking at the water… usual suspects.
Things got exciting when I got near the curve and saw a huge gaggle of Canadian geese… I immediately noticed the little black one… my first brandt, so cute!
Brant’s are very cool, when I came home I read about them… they are from the northern Arctic seas and migrate down the coast in the winter… so lucky to see one!
The rest of my walk was spectacular, culminating with a Cooper’s Hawk right back by the car! It flew over my head and landed in this tree…it was hidden behind the branches but eventually moved into this visible spot.
I also discovered the pond on the other side of the owl sanctuary. I never noticed it before… so I snapped these shots from the little hill off the side of the main path. There were an insane number of ducks in the pond – sooooo many green-winged teals and wigeons!
Birds at Arrowhead Marsh (26):