Day 19.253: Moss Landing State Beach (visit 2)

As you may have gathered from yesterday's post title, I returned to Moss Landing State Beach before driving back to San Jose at the end of my work duties. Before we get there, here is another life bird I forgot to add to the previous post:

Heermann's gulls

I'm not sure how that happened. Now onto my late afternoon visit:

I heard various birds in the scrubby bushes on the dunes during my first visit, but they were hard to spot in the early morning light. I didn't have much more joy in the afternoon, but a couple of birds made themselves visible - starting with this - I might have taken it for a Carolina wren, but my "every bird could be a life bird" mantra allowed me to first get some decent photos: 

and then identify it as a Bewick's wren.

Brewer's blackbird - another first sighting

Apparently, the often feed on the ground

And a couple of other perching birds - these ones turned out to not be life birds.

House finch

White-crowned sparrow

Bold little fellow

Many of the shorebirds from earlier were looking rather sleepy in the reeds near the water, but there were a few being more active - and easier to photograph in this light.

Long-billed curlew

Western gull

Brown pelicans

Least sandpiper

And then, one last life bird flew in (several of them):

Black-necked stilts

Time to say goodbye to the marbled godwits

Willets and godwits

Willet

And then one more bird - for some reason the first sighting of the year of an American kestrel a couple of miles away as I prepared to head back up to San Jose:

American kestrel

So final life list tally: Mountain View: 3 and Moss Landing: 9 to round out an even dozen.