Yesterday I visited Heron’s Head in San Francisco. Heron’s Head used to be a pier, so it’s in the middle of an industrial area:
Heron’s Head was filled in with garbage and then flooded with water. Marshes started to form and a wildlife preserve was born!
The marsh is connected to the inside of the bay.
Much of the Bay Area is like this. The marshes are great. I have never seen so many different kinds of birds in one spot. There were Willets, Black-Necked Stilts, Mockingbirds, Lesser Scaubs, Mallards, Gulls, Plovers, a Great-Blue Heron, Crows, Sandpipers, Avocets, and Whimbrels.
This is a Long-Billed Curlew:
These birds look similar to Whimbrels, except their back is a more cinnamon color, they have a less distinct eye strip, and they lack a stripe on the tope of the head. In this picture of a Whimbrel you can really make out the head stripe:
Turning back to the Long-Billed Curlew, I like this picture because he was scratching an itch on his head.
The Curlew’s beak is seven inches long. They probe the mud for mollusks and are willing to stick their whole head in the water.
They are perfectly happy to hang out with other birds.
From this distance it’s hard to tell whether this picture that I took in Monterey Bay last July includes Whimbrels or Long-Billed Curlews, but it’s a nice closing picture.
Amazing what nature will reclaim. Yesterday, I was at at an estuary wedged between two freeways and Seaworld, and it was so alive!! Love the Curlews!
I bet estuaries are amazing for birding! I keep hearing about some choice birding along the coast in Marin County, but getting over the Golden Gate Bridge is such a pain!
Estuaries are wonderful. Right now, there are lots of migratory birds, some spend the winter here, which is pretty cool.
I’d like to see a Long-billed Curlew one of these days. Your photo of him is lovely. You’re lucky you have such a birding hot spot to visit!
Thanks Kelly! The Bay Area is such a great place for birding.