returning Baltimore Oriole, goose selection

Saturday morning, the 24th, the female BALTIMORE ORIOLE has returned for its SIXTH winter to Rohr Park in Bonita. (By the way, also the 6th winter for the Black-thr Green Warbler at Greenwood Cemetery.) As in previous years, the oriole is pretty faithful to the bottlebrush trees alongside the basketball courts for a while starting around 30-45 minutes after dawn (so, for example, today it flew in at 7:12). In the western section of the park there was an adult male VERMILION FLYCATCHER and a White-breasted Nuthatch. At the adjoining Bonita golf course, next to the clubhouse along Bonita Road, the multi-year, tame, adult Greater White-fronted Goose continues to hang out with the "funny ducks."  At Sweetwater Reservoir there were 26 "real" GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GEESE, 2 CACKLING GEESE, and 75 Canada Geese, as well as 1000 Western Grebes, 500 N. Shovelers, 25 Am. White Pelicans, 2 Bonaparte's Gulls, and a Loggerhead Shrike, plus pretty good numbers of some shorebirds for this time of year at an "inland" lake: 10 Dunlin, 200 Western Sandpipers, 140 Long-billed Dowitchers.  Sixty Herring Gulls at Lower Otay Lake, but no gull species there of interest.

–Paul Lehman,  San Diego
Source: SanDiegoRegionBirding Latest Reports