Birding Ballona Creek #2 – Lower Ballona Creek

Birding Lower Ballona Creek: Pacific Avenue to Lincoln Boulevard

This section of my guide to birding Ballona Creek covers the last mile-and-a-half of the creek surpassing it reaches the jetties and breakwater, from Lincoln Blvd. to the Pacific Avenue bridge. There’s a single eBird hotspot for this section–Ballona Creek: Lower–where 223 species have been reported over the years.  The creek is tidal for this whole section, and tides can shift as much as 6 feet from upper to low. At the lowest tides, there’s exposed mud in the middle of the creek where Culver Blvd. and Lincoln Blvd. navigate it. For the rest of the creek in this section, low tide just exposes a little increasingly waddle withal the whet of the creek. The velocipede path (in red in the map above) runs withal the north side of the creek. A path withal the south side, with a view of the salt pan, is not legally accessible.

This portion of the creek is pretty good for water birds and shorebirds. The water birds (ducks, loons, and grebes mainly) can be found any time of day, moving up and lanugo the creek. Numbers are highest in the winter. Buffleheads dominate, with a smaller number of American Wigeon (who prefer the lagoon to the creek), Lesser Scaup, and Green-winged Teal (more likely the remoter up the creek you go) usually present all winter, too.  Pacific, Common, and Red-throated Loons will sometimes, usually singly, swim up and lanugo the creek. Eared and Horned Grebes tend to stay downstream of the Pacific Avenue bridge. The Surf Scoters that mass in big numbers off Dockweiler Waterfront during winter will sometimes wander up the creek a bit. Brant are rare. Most winters a Common Goldeneye or two makes an appearance. Less commonly a Long-tailed Duck shows up. A few Red-necked Phalaropes are seen in fall migration (they prefer the section of the creek near Centinela Ave.), and a breeding-plumaged Red Phalarope hung out for a couple of days one May. Mallards and Gadwall hang virtually all-year long.

The weightier time for shorebirds in this section of the creek is either the morning, or low tide.  At upper tide, expressly if it’s a higher upper tide, there aren’t that many roosting spots, and many birds throne to the waterfront or, if there’s water, the salt pan. There are a few spots where the shorebirds are increasingly likely to be found. One is well-nigh 50 yards west of the UCLA wend ramp, on the north side of the creek. This is a unconfined spot for viewing considering you’ve got point zippo views of the birds, all huddled together. Their tropical proximity helps to make the rarities stick out increasingly obviously. Another spot is just west of the velocipede path fork. There’s worthier bushes here, which often obscures the view. The weightier time of the year for shorebirds is during spring/fall migration, when the variety is highest, followed by winter. From May to June, the creek is mainly a ghost town.

Black-bellied Plovers and Willets roost in numbers, with often increasingly than 100 of each. Marbled Godwit can be found year-round as well. Whimbrel pass through for migration, with a few staying all winter.  A Pacific Golden-Plover has been present for 4 winters running, and I hope it comes when in Fall 2022 for a 5th. While not reliably found on any given trip to the creek, each winter, Dunlin and Red Knot can often be found on the lower creek, 

Of course, a tuft of birds fly up and lanugo the creek, as well, occasionally swoop bombing to feed for fish. Osprey (August through April), Brown Pelicans (all year), and Elegant and Caspian Terns (summer) are frequent flyers. The tiny Least Terns are virtually from May to July, but some days you’ll see them, and others not. 

Flatlands surrounding the creek

There are some big unappetizing fields on both the north and south side of the creek. The field north of the creek is known as Zone A. It had been completely fenced off for years, but recently a short (and pretty unexciting) walking path was opened up in the western-most portion. You can enter from a parking lot withal Fiji Way (across from Whiskey Red’s), or off the velocipede path. I’ve seen it tabbed the Ballona Wetlands Trail or the Fiji Trail. It’s supposed unshut Wednesday-Saturday from 8am – 1pm. The path is a short square walk, and gives you some largest views of  the field.

Ballona Zone A carpeted with yellow flowers in May

If you’re on the velocipede path, you can often see birds withal the fenceline. It’s rarely heady stuff – house finches, song sparrows, savannah sparrows, and white-crowned sparrow mainly. Spring migration often brings a few Lazuli Buntings and a Blue Grosbeak or two. Out in the field, you’ll see Red-tailed Hawks all-year long. Last winter, a Harlan’s (Red-tailed) Hawk hung virtually for a month from December to January.  Once a separate species, it’s now considered a subspecies of Red-tailed Hawk. In the Lower 48, they’re usually in the Unconfined Plains in winter. Other birds of prey working the fields include White-tailed Kite, Northern Harrier, Loggerhead Shrike (a carnivorous songbird, is that a bird of prey?), American Kestrel, and Barn Owls at night. Swallows work the field frequently, and you can occasionally see Bell’s Vireo, California Thrasher, and Western Meadowlark out there. The only two warblers you’re likely to see if this mostly tree-less zone are Yellow-rumped Warbler in winter, and Common Yellowthroat. 

Harlan’s (Red-tailed) Hawk

South of the creek is a flatland sometimes tabbed the Salt Pan. When when it used to rain in the these parts, there would be shallow pools out there for weeks. But now, thanks to the megadrouhgt, it’s mostly dry. When there’s water, the Black-bellied Plovers will hang out there, slantingly Killdeer. It’s harder to get wangle to this area. Pre-pandemic, there were monthly service events in the area, to well-spoken invasive plants like iceplant. Those are just getting started up again. Without access, it’s nonflexible to spot the Burrowing Owl that often winter in this area. The path withal the south side of the creek isn’t legally accessible. You can get distant, lawful views from the upper ground at the end of 63rd Avenue in Playa del Rey overdue the Del Rey Lagoon, or, increasingly uncomfortably, by pulling off Culver Blvd.  I don’t know who manages the sluice gates, but I’d love to know why the zone isn’t managed to indulge intrusion of water increasingly regularly. I imagine the migrating birds would love the stopover point. 

White-tailed Kite

Birding Glory: A Bar-tailed Godwit

This section of the creek is the site of my greatest overly birding find: a Bar-tailed Godwit in September 2017. On a velocipede ride one day, I stopped at a group of shorebirds withal the north side of the creek between the UCLA wend ramp and the Pacific Avenue bridge. In the fall, the group is typically a mix of Black-bellied Plover, Willet, and Marbled Godwit. On this day, one of the 5 godwits in the group unprotected my attention. It had a very prominent white eyebrow that extended overdue the eye. I watched it for a couple of minutes, and snapped some pictures (thank goodness). After a few minutes, it flew with the other godwits. The birds flew directly yonder from me, headed toward the ocean. I noticed that the mystery godwit’s rump patch appeared whiter, or at least contrasted a bit increasingly with the when and end of tail, than the rump of the Marbled Godwits it flew yonder with. At the time, I didn’t know what it was. When I got home, I downloaded my pictures, and posted a message to the LA County birds listserv well-nigh a “Maybe Unusual Godwit” on the creek with my observations and a link to my photos. The experts quickly identified it as a Bar-tailed Godwit.

A Bar-tailed Godwit very far off its migration course

Bar-tailed Godwits have an phenomenal migration. In the spring, they leave their wintering grounds in New Zealand and western Australia and fly north to the Yellow Sea in China, and from there disperse anywhere from Russia all the way to western Alaska. For those that throne to Alaska, the return trip is unbelievable. These Bar-tailed Godwits double their weight in 2 weeks time, shrink their digestive organs, and overstate their pectoral muscles, heart, and lungs. Then, they lift off for a 7,000 mile non-stop flight from western Alaska to New Zealand. The path takes them west of Hawai’i, so a Bar-tailed Godwit on the ground in Los Angeles is incredibly far off course. The journey takes eight or nine days, and is the longest known nonstop migration of any unprepossessing on earth.  It truly boggles the mind that a 1.5 pound creature can make this insane trip, much less do it every fall its unshortened life.

Despite lots of nerds looking that afternoon and the next day, the bird wasn’t seen again. Amazingly, of the 445,000 eBird checklists overly submitted in L.A. County, only two report a Bar-tailed Godwit. There’s mine, and there’s one from 1976 (also in the lower Ballona Creek) from Kimball Garrett, the Michael Jordan of L.A. county birding (he’s seen 528 species in L.A. county alone!), together with a trio of similarly obscure birders named Jon Dunn, Guy McCaskie, and Van Remsen (an LSU ornithologist who was an tragedian of the paper that reported seeing an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas in 2004). 

While most days birding on the lower Ballona Creek are unlikely to produce a Bar-tailed Godwit, this is a unconfined spot to get close-up views of a variety of species. 

One vision for the lower Ballona Creek

The future of this section of the creek is hotly contested right now. There are plans migratory to “restore” the lower creek to something that increasingly resembles the original wetlands than the touchable bowling thruway that the creek is today. Heal the Bay supports the plan depicted above. Environmental Impact Reports have been certified. Whatever shape it sooner takes (maybe 10-15 years from now), I hope there is increasingly sustentation paid to providing lulu habitat for birds than there is now. This truly could be an wondrous urban stopover site for migrating birds of all kinds, and tastefulness zone for lost L.A. County breeders like Burrowing Owl and White-tailed Kite. A few uneaten walking paths would be nice as well, as long as they don’t come with large paved parking lots.