Birding Doran Regional Park

The day after we visited Spring Lake we drove to Bodega Bay and stopped at Doran Regional Park, a very busy beach though we got there early enough to beat the crowds.  

As we walked towards the beach we were greeted by this little guy and his friends.  I could immediately tell they were plovers, but I wasn’t sure what kind.  Judging purely from the size I speculated they were Semi-palmated Plovers, but when none of them had the strong, dark stripe around there neck and I looked at them on the computer I knew they weren’t.  

I was shocked when I finally realized they were Snowy Plovers

an endangered species that nests on the open beach.  

This one

even looked like it could be looking for a nesting site.  No wonder they are endangered if they can’t find a beach with a lot fewer people than Doran Park.  

It’s clear that the birds have had no choice but to learn to coexist with large numbers of people on this part of the coast.  The second species we saw was this beautiful Marbled Godwit.

When I see flocks of these in Westport they stay on the outside of the Marina and will fly away whenever anyone approaches.  This one continued to feed the whole time I watched it

until it caught this impressive (?) worm (?).  

3 thoughts on “Birding Doran Regional Park”

  1. Always good to see reminders of my old stompin’ grounds. Especially loved the shot of the marbled godwit and the wormy streak of water between his beak and the sand—magnifique!

  2. Godwit, beach nester- interesting. Sad to think humans can take over and displace animal species. Unfortunately, we are looking at climate change doing the same thing (displacing species), at a possibly higher rate than man caused habitat destruction!

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