You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and we didn’t need a calendar to see that Spring has arrived. All the bird groups and most species have dropped in numbers from February (see chart below). Breeding plumages are beginning to appear. (Pictures get bigger if you double-click them.)

Brown-headed Cowbird (C.Bragg 3/10)

I had to keep recounting the Elegant Terns as their numbers continually climbed.  (No Royal Terns among them. Of course not. They wouldn’t dare.) All the Pacific Loons were flying west along the shoreline. The Double-crested Cormorants are developing their bushy white eyebrows (crests, actually). The Say’s Phoebes and White-crowned Sparrows were gone, as were the adult Heermann’s Gulls;, Song Sparrows were singing everywhere, Brown-headed Cowbirds were following all the other birds around, probably hoping to find an unattended nest in which to dump an egg or two, and Black Phoebes kept vanishing under the footbridges, no doubt busily building nests.

Symbolic Fence 28 March (C.Almdale 3/10)

A brisk wind at the beginning fooled us into thinking it would be cool, but that soon disappeared,

forcing us to start removing clothing (jackets, no fear.) The lagoon outlet is still peculiarly configured, leaving a sand island parallel to the beach, with the outlet as far to the east as it can possibly

be, nearly undercutting the fence at the southeast corner of the Adamson property. Waves were nearly non-existent, yet a few bored surfers clung to hope like barnacles to boat bottoms. Judging by many of the conversations carried on about me, nous parlons français.

How many Snowy Plovers can you find in this picture? (C.Almdale 3/10)

We were delighted to see that the parks people had erected the “symbolic fence” enclosure as promised, and the sand inside was strewn with seaweed wrack, supplying plenty of food for the little invertebrates which in turn are food for our beleaguered Snowy Plovers. We counted 25 of them, none banded.

The stubborn little Snowies were ignoring their private reserve and sitting on the sand outside the seaward “fence”, but our passage by convinced them they ought to move back inside.

Further along the beach we found a pair of Caspian Terns, probably the tern with the largest breeding range in the world, and, as you may have guessed, named for that inland sea near Iran.

Caspian Tern pair (C.Bragg 3/10)

A lot of Brown Pelicans were still around and one lone 1^st-year Glaucous-winged Gull was among the Western Gulls. In the middle side channel a small flock of Least Sandpipers were well on their way into their breeding (alternate) plumage. All-in-all, it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

We found out that the Adamson House is now closed on the weekends – no doubt a victim of the omnipresent budget cuts – so we couldn’t check its grounds for orioles and warblers as planned. We Californians seem determined to pinch our pennies until Lincoln screams and I sometimes wonder if we won’t end up with everything, everywhere shuttered for good.