White-throated Sparrow and Summer Tanager glut, scoters,

On Wednesday, there was a new Summer Tanager and two White-throated Sparrows together at Point Loma Nazarene University. Today, Thursday, another new Summer Tanager is at Sunnyslope Park in Otay Mesa along with continuing Western Tanager, and a continuing Bullock’s Oriole is at Montgomery Waller Park, and a continuing Western Tanager and a couple Lark Sparrows are at Howard Lane Park. A first-cycle “Thayer’s” Iceland Gull is in the Tijuana River Valley. Large numbers of scoters continue in the ocean off Imperial Beach and up the beginning of the Silver Strand, and south of the Imperial Beach Pier as viewed from the end of several of the little cul-de-sacs off Seacoast, there is at least one White-winged Scoter, a completely very dark headed young male, and at least one female Black Scoter. The sea surface is smooth but there’s still a moderate swell and so the scoters are bouncing up and down in the breaking waves and can take quite a while to sift through. Almost certainly there are additional white winged and black scoters if one was to carefully look through the slug of birds farther north as well.