Humboldt County (or, Awesome ducks!)

I drove up Route 1, then 101, to get to Arcata yesterday. I stopped by the Arcata Mash & Wildlife Sanctuary, which is a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility. The marshes here were full of ducks as well as BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON. The GREEN-WINGED TEAL and AMERICAN WIGEON males were in their breeding plumage. Then I noticed a CINNAMON TEAL male, which was incredible!


This was mostly all I saw, besides MALLARD and GADWALL, so I headed to the outer lagoon. I ran into a local birder with a scope who let me take a look into the saltwater lagoon at the LONG-BILLED CURLEW, LEAST SANDPIPER, and DUNLIN. He mentioned that someone yesterday saw a male EURASIAN WIGEON in the ducky marsh I had been scanning. He told me a better place to look from light-wise, and within 5 minutes, I found the vagrant!


I met up with Kevin Damstra's friends Liz and Lou at their house in Arcata. We went to a pizza shop downtown, where I got a 6 Rivers IPA and some slices. These two were really cool, and incidentally went to college in the small town of Athens, OH where I had been earlier in the trip. We had some great conversations about Arcata's designer homeless, constructivism in education, and the amount of marijuana that is around Northern California. We talked about other stuff too.


This morning I called the Arcata Birdbox to get an idea of where I should go, and there was good stuff listed at "North Jetty". Since I didn't know where that was, I went to the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I stopped at the office first to ask some questions, where a young birder dude was working and was willing to talk me through where to go to see birds. He wrote out directions to a handful of places, which I ended up checking out including the south jetty, where he said I may be able to find the same things. He was right. I came across many SURF SCOTER, and 2 male and a female HARLEQUIN DUCK. On the shorebird trail near the headquarters, I saw quite a show put on by the resident WHITE-TAILED KITES. There were also an abundance of Aleutian CACKLING GOOSE.


Satisfied with the NWR, I headed up to some of the more northern places he suggested. Trinidad Headlands and Bay, as well as Big Lagoon were unbelievably beautiful. Now I'm heading into Redwoods National Park, which might be pretty.