Posted: Aug 11, 07 9:56pm

The dog and I had a short but eventful walk this morning at Rockway Beach in Pacifica. That's about thirteen miles south of San Francisco's Land's End where I often bird along the sea. It was--surprise--a cool, foggy summer morning. So dark that one of the birds we ran into was a Barn Owl out hunting in a weedy field just about sixty yards from the Pacific surf.

On a rocky headland that faced the open ocean to the west and backed down onto that flat field we had a good vantage point. Just off the steep, black rocks of the headland was a flotilla of Pigeon Guillemot. Twenty-five by my count. They are small cousins of the puffin and murre. Sharp-beakede fish eaters, at home in the waves. Gathering for the winter migration to? Somewhere in the open ocean. Somewhere as yet undiscovered by humans. A few ounces of muscle, internal tissue, feathers and orange feet, afloat in the vast, frigid northern Pacific for months of the year. Even at twenty feet only the white wing patches would mark them as something other than a drab dark surface feature of the heedless Pacific.

Also along the shore were Western Grebe, Brown Pelicans beleaguered by their noisome companion Heermann's Gulls, Brandt's Cormorant and somewhere out of sight: a pair of calling Black Oystercatchers. In the field we found only a juvenile White-crowned Sparrow, so young it was still without any tail feathers. ..and a California Towhee in the path, chipping at our approach.

Ravens, a Red-tailed Hawk and the usual beachy band of Brewer's Blackbirds rounded out the list. It was so cool and dark that we encountered a striped skunk, still on night duty, checking the breakwater for edibiles. We gave him all due respect, backing away to an empty path in the other direction.

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Later along San Francisco's Ocean Beach we watched a snowstorm of Elegant Terns that have been loafing, feeding and periodically swirling into a white whirlpool of shrieking birds. They easily spook, sometimes for no apparent reason and then dozens or even hundreds of the medium-sized terns will give forth their shrill, two-syllable "cree-ack, cree-ack, cree-ack" calls.

On the sand you can see the first year birds with the black broken halo, the tonsure of the young Elegants born this past spring. Annoyed by the youngsters shoving and begging are the adults with full black crowns and rough frinhge at the back of each head. They all have the typically long and thing yellow beak. In flight their stark white wing-beats are swift but smooth,nothing jerky or erratic. Even in rapid circling flocks or when dropping beak-first into the surf for a fish, they are, as named, truly Elegant.

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I'd like to hear about your morning birds. Roadrunner? Meadowlark? Catbird? Cardinal?

Pigeon Guillemot on rock, photo by Calvin Lou