Avocet Landing

Today we went back south for more birding. We started at the San Joachin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine with a number of pools and marshy areas, where we had been last Tuesday.  One of the pools again had a number of shorebirds, most notably Black-necked Stilts and  American Avocets. They didn't fly as much as they had last week, but I did manage to catch this shot of one avocet joining two compatriots.  N.B.: These three no longer have the ruddy neck which is their breeding plumage, and which tends to be the main coloration shown on the internet and which you see in  this blip  of mine from Saskatchewan in 2010.

We ended the afternoon back at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.  The rare rail which we saw last week did not appear again, but there were above all plenty of Royal Terns.