Matt and I took a quick trip out to San Diego in September 2024. Our focus was on a pelagic birding trip on September 7 & 8, but we added a full day on either side to visit the Salton Sea and do some birding in the Cleveland National Forest. Over our 5 days (including San Diego birding the afternoon the day we arrived), we had 153 species. I added 21 life birds on this trip. Below are some of the pictures from the trip.
Pelagic Birding
The back-to-back days of pelagic birding took us about 30 miles off shore. We were on the boat for about 12 hours each day. Pelagic birding is quite interesting — I sometimes joke that it’s 45 minutes of birding crammed into a 12 hour day. There are long stretches of not much happening, then you hit an area where there are a ton of very interesting birds attracted to an area of the ocean nutrient rich, with fish, plankton, and other food sources attracting large flocks of birds. Here are some of the photos from our two day trip.
Pelagic Birds
We also had several sightings of dolphins. The first photo is a Short-beaked Common Dolphin, the second is a Risso’s Dolphin.
Salton Sea
Prior to the two days doing pelagic birding, we took a trip to the Salton Sea. Our target bird was the Yellow-footed Gull. This gull has a very restricted range around the Gulf of California in Mexico, but with small numbers venturing north to the Salton Sea. We did get a distant but decent look at one of them. What I found more enjoyable were all of the Burrowing Owls. Their burrows can be found along the edge of agricultural fields next to the many dirt and gravel roads on the way to the southern part of the Salton Sea. We also had a good, but still distant, view of a Parasitic Jaeger. Here are some pictures of the birds we saw during this part of our trip.
Other Birds We Saw
We visited other areas in and around San Diego. Here are some pictures of the birds we saw.
