Old coots visit Malibu Lagoon, 26 September 2021

[Posted by Chuck Almdale]

It was unseasonably cool from morning fog, still hanging low by the time we left. [Of course there is no such thing as unseasonably hot anymore.] Temperature was 63-70°F and I never took off my fleece. It’s SoCal, remember? At 65° in Beverly Hills, they’re bundling up in furry boots, getting ready for the Great Freeze of January, when it plunges down to 60° above. 

No stints this morning, not even a Long-toed Stint. But the large crowd of American Coots more than made up for their absence, 130 strong, their black bodies and white forehead shields checkerboarding the lagoon.

Ah…the lagoon! Never have I seen so much algae. Not just the channels where the current is slow, but about half or more of the lagoon itself is algae-covered. Most of the peeps were strolling on it, finding invertebrates. The water level has dropped about 6 inches.

A great deal of sandy beach up to about 6” above lagoon water level is now covered with a continuous, unbroken, dark brown-to-black blanket of deadish algae. It really does resemble a wrinkled blanket. You expect to see a head poke out from under it, wondering why you’re walking on their bed and rudely awakening them.

Speaking of checkerboarding, the next most common species at the lagoon were surfers on the waves. We knew there’d be a lot of them—jam-packed cars along the no-cost edges of Pacific Coast Highway, and surfers pay to park only as a last resort—but I didn’t expect to see this many. I had to count them, of course. (That’s rule #1 in The Compulsive’s Handbook.) I got to 110 surfers in the water waiting for a wave, on a wave, or paddling back out to catch another wave. They vanished from view around the curvature of the beach. More were on the beach, suiting up or resting.

The surf was very good. (No surprise there. If it wasn’t good, there would be no surfers. There is a clear causal relationship there.) They always check the surf reports which must be remarkably accurate. The waves were not windblown and ragged from a breeze. The big ones came in sets, nicely cresting, some even forming tubes. Every time the first one of a set arrived, the surfers who weren’t far enough out to catch it would paddle furiously to catch the next one. I used to body surf—a lot—so I know the frustration of deciding where to wait for a worthwhile ride, yet not missing them all by being out too far.

Pieces of dead birds lay all along the edge of the lagoon and the sand bar: lone wings, pairs of wings, tail, a pile of feathers, bones & feathers, a neck, a head, a neck & head and so on. The Merlin and Peregrine Falcon (perhaps several of each) had evidently found their happy hunting ground. Maybe that was why there were so few birds.

Especially the gulls and terns. The small flocklet of five Royal Terns ballooned to thirteen birds by the time we left, and the initial five gulls mushroomed to twelve. Four species. Back home, I checked my records and found that this was indeed a Very Low Number of gulls & terns. In fact, in 291 visits since October, 1979, the only lower count of gulls & terns was last year, October 21, 2020, when we had a walloping 22 birds in two species—21 Western Gulls and 1 California Gull. One can only hope they were all out to sea, stuffing themselves on vast schools of delicious mouth-watering fish. It’s either that or they got sick and tired of being dive-bombed by falcons and left for a more peaceful stretch of sand.

I spoke briefly to a young couple looking at the flock of shorebirds on the sandy island. They turned out to be volunteers—or maybe employees, I didn’t get that detail nailed down—for International Bird Rescue (IBR). They’d just spent a lot of time down at Long Beach Harbor, helping the Elegant Terns with their (the terns) wild & crazy idea of nesting on two (momentarily) unused barges. Nesting, I should add, over the objections of the owner who had previously made other plans for his barges, plans in which terns played no part. But he cooperated, so kudos to him.

If you recall (from prior blogs here), the Elegant Terns had been frightened off their nests down at Bolsa Chica Wildlife Reserve in Orange County. They relocated en masse to Long Beach Harbor. It was a decent spot to nest, until the chicks hatched and began wandering around the nesting area, as they tend to do. Normally Elegant Terns nest on sand flats where the chicks can’t get into too much trouble. But the barge edges were shear drop-offs to the water with no retaining walls, so the chicks continually fell off the edges into the harbor water, with absolutely no way to clamber back up to the barge deck and their parents, much less leap out of the water and fly up.

IBR to the rescue! Using small boats they’d pluck the floundering chicks from the water, take them to a safe place, and feed them. Some they banded, some they returned to the barge. About 6,000-8,000 Elegant Terns nested on the barges, and IBR rescued about 2,000 chicks from the water. Nesting season is now over and done. We hope that next year they return to Bolsa Chica and that the drone-flyers stay away. But Elegant Terns have a history of abandoning areas from which they’ve been frightened. We’ll see.

Link to a IBR 9-28-21 posting about Long Beach Harbor and Elegant Terns.

(L) Whimbrel (Ray Juncosa 9-26-21) (R) Marbled Godwit (Chris Tosdevin 9-26-21)

So this couple had a few hours or days off, and decided to visit Malibu Lagoon and see if any of “their” birds were around, and if they could find any with bands. Unfortunately—not just very unfortunately but astonishingly unfortunately—for them, they picked the second worse day in over 40 years to look for gulls and terns at Malibu Lagoon.

So it—as Kurt Vonnegut often wrote—goes.

We had an interesting Great-tailed Grackle at the lagoon, a shiny blue-black male. It looked a lot like a member of a small family of African Warblers known as Crombecs. If it’s a new species, I suggest it be named Black-faced Crombec-Grackle.

Long-tailed [Black-faced] [Crombec]-Grackle (Ray Juncosa 9-26-21)
Red-faced Crombec (Glen Tepke Birds of the World)

We had yet one more of the Long-billed Curlews that have been recently dropping by the lagoon. Sandy beach or lagoon edges are really not their preferred habitat, so their presence is infrequent and of short-duration. 60 birds on 17 occasions, including this one, is the grand total since October 1979, and 39 of them were on 8/16/80.

The Snowy Plover count was 34 birds. No bands were seen, but then we didn’t make them all stand up for inspection. This seemed to me to be a higher-than-usual number of birds for September, but when I got home and counted them up for the ten year period 2011-2020, the average was 41 birds. So much for memory! That’s why we (humans) invented writing.

Birds new for the season: American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, Long-billed Curlew, Long-billed Dowitcher, Ring-billed Gull, Osprey, Merlin, Peregrine Falcon, Say’s Phoebe, House Wren, American Pipit, Western Meadowlark, Orange-crowned Warbler.

Many thanks to photographers: Lillian Johnson, Ray Juncosa, Grace Murayama & Chris Tosdevin

The next SMBAS scheduled field trips: Maybe January 2022. Wear your masks, get your shots, and maybe someday we can have organized trips again.

The next SMBAS program: Zoom Evening Meeting, Birds of Northeast Brazil & the Atlantic Forest, with Chuck Bragg, 5 October 2021, 7:30 p.m.

The SMBAS 10 a.m. Parent’s & Kids Birdwalk remains canceled until further notice due to the near-impossibility of maintained proper masked social distancing with parents and small children.

Links: Unusual birds at Malibu Lagoon
9/23/02 Aerial photo of Malibu Lagoon

Prior checklists:
2021: Jan-July
2020: Jan-July, July-Dec  2019: Jan-June, July-Dec  
2018: Jan-June, July-Dec  2017: Jan-June, July-Dec
2016: Jan-June, July-Dec  2015: Jan-May, July-Dec
2014: Jan-July,  July-Dec  2013: Jan-June, July-Dec
2012: Jan-June, July -Dec 2011: Jan-June, July-Dec
2010: Jan-June, July-Dec  2009: Jan-June, July-Dec.

The 10-year comparison summaries created during the Lagoon Reconfiguration Project period, remain available—despite numerous complaints—on our Lagoon Project Bird Census Page. Very briefly summarized, the results unexpectedly indicate that avian species diversification and numbers improved slightly during the restoration period June’12-June’14.

Many thanks to Lillian Johnson, Ray Juncosa, Chris Tosdevin and others for their contributions to this month’s checklist.

The appearance of the list below has changed slightly. I’ve added a column on the left side with numbers 1-9, keyed to the nine categories of birds at the bottom.
[Chuck Almdale]

	Malibu Census 2021	4/25	5/22	6/20	7/25	8/22	9/26
	Temperature	58-63	59-68	63-69	66-74	68-73	63-70
	Tide Lo/Hi Height	H+4.83	L+1.57	H+4.89	H+4.20	H+4.55	L+2.52
	Tide Time	0843	0736	0627	1148	1034	0556
1	(Black) Brant	1
1	Canada Goose	8	6	10
1	Gadwall	25	18	65	48	12
1	American Wigeon						7
1	Mallard	18	22	40	37	9	18
1	Green-winged Teal						1
1	Red-breasted Merganser	3		1	1	1
1	Ruddy Duck					2	1
2	Pied-billed Grebe	1	1		2	1	3
2	Western Grebe	4
7	Feral Pigeon	9	15	9	15	6	8
7	Mourning Dove			2	4	3
8	Anna’s Hummingbird	1	1	1	1	1
8	Allen’s Hummingbird	4	2	1		3	1
2	American Coot	75	6	9	8	2	130
5	Black-bellied Plover	22	5	13	43	90	103
5	Snowy Plover				9	29	34
5	Semipalmated Plover	29			1	4	3
5	Killdeer	1	6	4	9	20	10
5	Whimbrel	3	19	9	51	17	8
5	Long-billed Curlew						1
5	Marbled Godwit					4	30
5	Ruddy Turnstone			2	2	8	3
5	Red-necked Stint					1
5	Sanderling					12	20
5	Dunlin	1				2
5	Baird’s Sandpiper					5
5	Least Sandpiper	1			8	35	12
5	Western Sandpiper	20			12	65	2
5	Short-billed Dowitcher					3
5	Long-billed Dowitcher						1
5	Spotted Sandpiper	1				2	1
5	Willet	2	1			40	14
5	Red-necked Phalarope				1	4
6	Heermann’s Gull	28	280		2	1	1
6	Ring-billed Gull	6					1
6	Western Gull	40	35	45	52	55	10
6	California Gull	35	10	4	1	4
6	Glaucous-winged Gull	1	1			1
6	Least Tern					1
6	Caspian Tern	20	13	3		2
6	Royal Tern	6		2	5		13
6	Elegant Tern	395	107	1	240	1
2	Double-crested Cormorant	12	26	26	52	27	35
2	Pelagic Cormorant	1				1	2
2	Brown Pelican	105	235	27	58	30	11
3	Great Blue Heron		3	2	5	4	3
3	Great Egret	1	1	4	11	4	1
3	Snowy Egret	2	1	6	22	24	14
3	Green Heron		1
3	Black-crowned Night-Heron				9	3	3
4	Turkey Vulture		1
4	Osprey	2	1				2
4	Cooper’s Hawk				1	1
4	Red-shouldered Hawk		2			1
8	Belted Kingfisher					1
4	Merlin						1
4	Peregrine Falcon	1					1
9	Black Phoebe	8	6		3	4	5
9	Say’s Phoebe						1
9	Western Kingbird		1
9	California Scrub-Jay				1	1
9	American Crow	4	4	3	4	4	4
9	Violet-green Swallow		2
9	No. Rough-winged Swallow	2	3			2
9	Cliff Swallow		8	4		4
9	Barn Swallow	25	30	18	40	25	3
9	Oak Titmouse		2		1	2
9	Bushtit	1	8	4	1	20
9	House Wren						1
9	Wrentit					1
9	Northern Mockingbird	4	5	2	1	1
9	European Starling	5		8		30	40
9	American Pipit						1
9	House Finch	6	6	6	6	18	7
9	Lesser Goldfinch	2				2
9	Spotted Towhee	1				1
9	California Towhee		3			1
9	Song Sparrow	7	8	4	5	3	5
9	White-crowned Sparrow	2
9	Western Meadowlark						1
9	Hooded Oriole	1	1
9	Red-winged Blackbird	2	4		25
9	Brown-headed Cowbird	1		1
9	Great-tailed Grackle	6	6	8	20	5	1
9	Orange-crowned Warbler						1
9	Common Yellowthroat			4		2	5
9	Yellow Warbler		2
9	Yellow-rumped Warbler	1
	Totals by Type	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep
1	Waterfowl	55	46	116	86	24	27
2	Water Birds – Other	198	268	62	120	61	181
3	Herons, Egrets & Ibis	3	6	12	47	35	21
4	Quail & Raptors	3	4	0	1	2	4
5	Shorebirds	80	31	28	136	341	242
6	Gulls & Terns	531	446	55	300	65	25
7	Doves	9	15	11	19	9	8
8	Other Non-Passerines	5	3	2	1	5	1
9	Passerines	78	99	62	107	126	75
	Totals Birds	962	918	348	817	668	584
	Total Species	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep
1	Waterfowl	5	3	4	3	4	4
2	Water Birds – Other	6	4	3	4	5	5
3	Herons, Egrets & Ibis	2	4	3	4	4	4
4	Quail & Raptors	2	3	0	1	2	3
5	Shorebirds	9	4	4	9	17	14
6	Gulls & Terns	8	6	5	5	7	4
7	Doves	1	1	2	2	2	1
8	Other Non-Passerines	2	2	2	1	3	1
9	Passerines	17	17	11	11	18	13
	Totals Species – 89	52	44	34	40	62	49