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A truly astonishing day at La Jolla Cove, July 17, 2019

Spent 2 hours at the Cove this morning. Overcast and gray skies, not much wind.

As you know, for the past several weeks there have been 3–4 thousand black-vented shearwaters feeding off the edge of the canyon in La Jolla. And anywhere from 100–2500 black-storm petrels.
300–400 brown pelicans; hundreds of gulls and terns
All following large pods of common dolphins.
Steady small numbers of common murres and small numbers of other alcid species.
And on Monday, thousands of black-venteds 6 miles and more off of Pt. Loma.

Even so, I was hardly prepared for today’s spectacle: while the dolphins were everywhere I looked today [no Patches], there were virtually NO birds of any kind.
A total of 9 black-vented shearwaters.
22 black-storm petrels [and 1 further out, heading south, dark-rumped Leach’s storm-petrel).
30 Western gulls; 4 Heermann’s gulls. [still have not seen a juvenile Heermann's this summer]18 terns of various species.
26 brown pelicans.
No alcids.

Also, I forgot on Monday, July 15 to mention the most interesting sighting on the Hornblower trip that day.
An adult yellow-crowned night-heron was along the shoreline of the Naval Air Station North Island, hunkered down next to a bush just to the north of the BCBs.
Offhand, I don’t know of any sightings of this species in north San Diego Bay, or elsewhere in the bay for that matter [but I haven’t checked eBird records to see].

Stan Walens, San Diego
July 17, 2019; 12:00 pm
Source: SanDiegoRegionBirding Latest Reports