#368-369 at Santa Cruz Pier
After leaving Neary Lagoon, I drove down to the waterfront. After a brief stop for some tacos, I arrived at the Santa Cruz Municipal Pier. This is a great place to bring non-birding spouses. You can drive right onto the pier, have lunch, and bird from the comfort of an indoor restaurant table while sipping margaritas. The birds here were really stunning. I’ve never seen so many ocean birds packed into such a small area. There must have been thousands of pelicans, cormorants, gulls, and others. Common Murres were actually common in a variety of plumages. There were probably hundreds of seals too.
The first life bird I saw was Brandt’s Cormorant. There were also some Double-crested Cormorants, though Brandt’s were far more numerous.
Strolling down to the end of the pier, I picked up numerous other species including this banded Western Gull, #2406. It must have been fairly accustomed to people because it let me get close enough to read its leg band.
Just at the end of the pier I found my second life bird of the day, 2 Pigeon Guillemots.
The seals were also out in force:
Total species count at the pier was only 13, but two were lifers and several were year birds.
- Surf Scoter
- Red-throated Loon
- Common Loon
- Brown Pelican
- Brandt’s Cormorant
- Double-crested Cormorant
- Bonaparte’s Gull
- Ring-billed Gull
- California Gull
- Western Gull
- Common Murre
- Pigeon Guillemot
- Rock Pigeon
Most impressive was just the sheer numbers of the birds that were present. I’ve really never seen anything like this site before. This picture doesn’t begin to do justice to the rafts of cormorants, pelicans, gulls, alcids, and other sea birds that extended for hundreds of meters in every direction.
2007-03-20
