27 December ’09 – Malibu Lagoon Trip Report & July – December 2009 Results

The few, the happy few, the band of brothers & sisters on St. Crispin's Day (C.Almdale 12/09)

Cool and cloudy weather greeted those who ventured out, but the birding was great and the weather warmed up to be quite pleasant. Loads of gulls, shorebirds and ducks. Surfers were out in force as the waves were great (storm warning issued for 3 p.m.) but the water was very cold. I found this out when I waded across the outlet stream to count Snowy Plovers – 59 birds, including the banded bird “brown, orange : white, white” now spending his/her 3rd month at the lagoon. The tide was far out with more rocks showing than I can previously recall.

Adult Heermann's Gull (C.Almdale 12/09)

They were mostly covered with California Gulls but 4 Black Oystercatchers were among them, only the 8th time we’ve had them at the lagoon. (They’ve been there since Christmas Day, apparently.) One Glaucous-winged Gull among the Western Gulls. Those who stayed to the end got scope views of the distant Long-tailed Duck (aka Oldsquaw) hanging out with a small flotilla of Surf Scoters over by the Malibu Pier. This was a life bird for some and a new bird for the lagoon area. After counting plovers, I headed towards the pier to photo it, but it headed out to sea. Altogether we had 2,638 birds in 63 species. See the chart below for the details.

Here is a record of the period July-December for the lagoon. Six visits, 105 species total with 6,791 individual birds counted. Not too shabby!  Link to January-June 2009 sightings.