Wildlife!

It was only my second ever blogger meet-up. I was so giddy! I was especially excited because she is the first blogger I ever emailed offblog and the first to whom I became unanonymous. (Is that a word?)

She wisely suggested we do something outdoors. It was an excellent suggestion, and there's so much to do here in SoCal that it would be a shame not to. Besides, we all know good and well that otherwise we'd just center everything around the event of eating. (Isn't that what all good former-Baptists do?)

We decided to go to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, which is a fabulous restoration project here in SoCal. POM and I had been several times in the past, and it was really cool, but it had been some time since we'd been back. Last year they did a huge expansion project, and the newspaper just published a story indicating that it had proven extremely successful and that the animal population was undergoing a huge explosion. Awesome! We were so there!

The newspaper story didn't lie; it was better than we had remembered it. The bird population had extremely multiplied. We saw more life in the water than ever before. This is an amazing project!

This egret was the first up-close wildlife we saw as we crossed the boardwalk. (We think it's a Great Egret, but we could be wrong.)

This is the nesting ground of the tern population. (I think most of these are Least Terns. Again, I could be wrong about that.) These guys were noisy noisy noisy! They're hilarious. They constantly talk to one another as they fish the waters, totally giving away any stealth they may have hoped for. They dive -- splat! -- into the water, sometimes unexpectedly, with great splashes. When they fish, they fly in loose groupings; when they fly up high, it's in pairs, in perfect precision, with acrobatic speed and liquid skill. Their babies are grey fuzzpoofs, most of whom are learning to fly just about now.

(How much more quintessential SoCal does it get?)

We saw so many different species -- small sharks, round stingrays, unknown fishes that jumped and rippled the waters, terns, black skimmers, pipers of various sorts, sparrows, brown pelicans, egrets, a blue heron, and others whose names we did not know. Several of these species are endangered or threatened.

The black skimmers proved to be our consensus favorite. They fly over the water, then swoop down directly above it, open their beaks, and literally skim the water open-mouthed for food, lining a trail behind them in the water's surface. It is amazing, quiet, beautiful -- it is mystical and holy somehow. When they fly in twos or threes, their calls to one another are deeper and more resonant than the raucous soprano terns. The skimmer's call calms, pacifies.

We spent the time strolling leisurely, snapping pictures, talking, ogling nature, and marveling at God's creativity and sense of humor. We mused about the various behaviors and thought-processes of the birds we beheld. (The egrets who kept their faces in the water for literally ten minutes at a time surely must be depressed and suicidal, we speculated. The fish who were brazen enough to jump in the faces of all these hunting birds must surely know they are too big to fit in the gullets of these bird breeds and so flaunt their freedom. The piper with the ridiculously lengthy beak flew away when we joked and commented on it, so we were sure he was sensitive and offended about our remarks on the size of his...appendage.) The plonking-diving-splashing terns never got old and never failed to elicit a laugh. The skimmers evoked either low exclamations of amazement or reverential silence.

Just as the sun sank below the horizon, we left in search of sustenance and further conversation, which we were successful in finding. By the way, those three shadows on the island there are me, Linda, and POM...and an apparently depressed egret, poor dear.

We're hoping for breakfast tomorrow before she leaves our sunny clime, and you can be sure you'll see additional pictures of this event soon. There's more where that came from!

P.S. Click to embiggen any of these to ridiculous sizes for more detail.