One of the cool things for me, being a Midwestern girl is that when I go to the coasts, just walking out the door of my hotel room brings exciting birds for me like the young Heerman's gull (it was foraging on the lawn and pandering for a handout). Have you ever seen an adult Heerman's gull? Check out this link, it's a pretty classy lookin' bird.

Okay, mallards are not the most exciting bird on the planet but I did think it was funny that a pair was hanging out at the heated pool at night--yes the pool was heated, it did get down to 40 degrees at night. This male must have quite the line going with the hens, "Hey, baby, I know a place we can relax. It's fenced, far from predators, we can get some snacks, and nothing but class all the way."

Okay, this I thought was very cool. At first, "I though, are those cell phone receivers tacked onto palm trees?" Then I realized that the trunks were wide and realized that they were fake palm trees. Cell phone towers disguised to blend in with the landscape--and no guy wires to kill birds. Check it out, there a bird perched on top of one of the trees.

Thanks to the magic of digiscoping, we can see that it's a Cassin's kingbird. That must be a great place to watch for insects.

My buddy Clay chuckled when I got a photo of a Brewer's blackbird. "You can tell those Easterners gettin' a photo of a Brewer's blackbird." What can I say, it's different.

Black skimmers were roosting in the afternoon on a beach near the convention center where the San Diego Bird Festival was held at Mission Bay.

A pleasant surprise for me was seeing brant swimming around near shore. This is one of those birds I could never see, but once I finally saw them, I see them everywhere now. They were on their northward migration.

Willets were all over. I took this photo off the San Diego river, it was foraging and when another willet walked nearby, it stopped feeding and then sat down and was still until the other willet passed. Was this some sort of submissive behavior?