Mike in the Wild

Starting with its dozens of mile of coastline, San Diego offers unlimited spots for seaside adventures and relaxation.  The city may be most renowned for the sandy beaches where Arizonans like me - we're not so affectionately referred to as Zonies - descend en masse during the hottest months of our long, baking summer.  Even COVID-19 didn't keep us away this year as we masked up in the large crowds visiting the coast.  But it turned out the masks would come in handy for another reason: the stench. A well-known area of the sprawling coastal city is La Jolla - Spanish for The Jewel - noted for being one of the most expensive communities in the United States to buy a home in.  But it's also famous for its geography, situated on a rising bluff over the Pacific Ocean where spectacular views of the sea are one of the reasons for the astronomical real estate costs.  Much of the neighborhood's coastline includes cliffs punctuated by cozy, sandy beaches.   ...

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 duc...