On a UCSB lagoon bird survey, large numbers of egrets and other birds were seen according to Lisa Stratton, one of the surveyors. She suggested I take my camera out to the lagoon, which I did on Sunday (and saw another local Flickr photographer while there). Even though I was there reasonably early, I did not see large numbers of egrets. But, there were many pelicans and most entertaining of all, over a dozen Forster’s tern. They are very fast and small, and difficult to capture because auto-focus on the camera goes a little nuts on the birds in flight and they are tough to track. However, a few images were captured when the terns were at a distance (stable focus), before or after fishing in the water. At times they looked like large butterflies flitting around on the other side of the lagoon.

(UCSB Lagoon – Tern – December 22, 2008)

(UCSB Lagoon – Egrets – December 22, 2008)

(UCSB Lagoon – Brown Pelican – December 22, 2008)

A number of other bird species were seen and photographed. The grebes (western, eared and pied-billed) were too far away or against the sun for decent pictures. I had a close encounter with a song sparrow, and came across a female belted kingfisher.

(UCSB Lagoon – Song Sparrow – December 22, 2008)

It was also a chance to see how the restoration projects were going. There is a great deal of ice plant to remove, which is being done by “burning” with heat and suffocation. It appears as though a different, re-usable type of black covering is being used.

A good number of the planted oaks were doing well, some even better than the one photographed below. These were planted in 2005 according to the CCBER newsletter “Acorns were collected in September and planted after the early rains in November and December at 1000 sites.” See http://ccber.lifesci.ucsb.edu/newsletter/CCBERVolume1/vol001_ecologicalres_2.html. In possibly ten years, there will be a very young oak woodland in the area, instead of eucalyptus – although the latter does provide shelter and perching to pelicans, egrets and cormorants, but mostly by dead trunks and branches.

There was a lot of bird activity, especially around the dune restoration areas. I had only ever seen blue-gray gnatcatchers on coyote bush; here I saw them on beach evening primrose growing on the dunes. I need to return later this season to photograph birds I missed and along the shore and add them to this “documentary” slideshow.

(UCSB Lagoon – Restoration area – December 22, 2008)

(UCSB Lagoon – One of many interpretative signs – December 22, 2008)

Slideshow

• UCSB Winter 2008