San Diego Birding, on Land and at Sea

I see lots of what I call water birds in Arizona. Also called waterfowl, these creatures spend most of their lives on or near bodies of water, where they depend on a lake or river for their primary habitat. But there are many other general names for the ever-present mallards and the winter-visiting ring-necked ducks, to name just a couple of the species that are easy to spot in Phoenix.

Ducks are frequently described as either dabbling or diving, with the fowl in the first category (e.g. mallards) feeding closer to the water's surface and the second (e.g. ring-necked ducks) hunting deeper below. And depending on your source of information, dabbling ducks are very often referred to as marsh ducks, and divers as bay ducks. Now you may be starting to understand why I just call them all water birds.

But I became even more enlightened when on a recent trip to San Diego I discovered yet another group of these birds: sea ducks. These animals are indeed ducks but they're known mostly for occupying habitat near salt water versus fresh water. As a result, you'll usually see them along the ocean coast as I did when I photographed my very first surf scoters. However these dabblers (or are they divers?) were technically floating on San Diego Bay, and are not grouped as bay ducks, which is yet another category mentioned in my thirty year-old Peterson Field Guide.

Ornithologists and geneticists have probably made complete taxonomic identifications for every known bird by now, giving each species a specific order, family, and genus. These scientific labels are certainly more accurate than the cultural and descriptive - and maybe confusing - names we use when talking about our subjects. But isn't it much more fun, not to mention easier, to refer to a surf scoter as a sea duck than as an anatidae melanitta perspicillata?

Of course it's fascinating when you discover that this particular bird spends its winters in the waves off the coasts of much of North America, like in San Diego. Its summers are occupied with breeding much farther away in Alaska and northern Canada, on freshwater lakes near boreal forests that open up to tundra. So maybe the surf scoter is technically a lake duck? Or maybe even a tundra duck? I can at least propose the argument that it's only a sea duck part of the year.

Nevertheless it's impossible to encounter a first-time bird and not get excited about its unique appearance and individual life history. And lucky for me, my short trip to San Diego opened my eyes to yet another new bird find: the American pipit. Like the surf scoter, it was wintering in the area, but on dry land a few miles inland on the lawns of Mission San Luis Rey. So clearly it's not a fellow seabird, which is yet another word to describe a bird living in the marine environment. But it is a lot like that sea duck in another way, as it mostly breeds in open tundra close to the Arctic during the summer.

Of course San Diego and the rest of California are also an attractive winter destination for human travelers, especially an Arizona birder like myself. While I was originally on the lookout for seabirds, water birds and waterfowl, in the end just about any 'ole bird would do.