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Flocking
Noises
Numbers and names are flying around about bird data to be released at Lagoon Day on Sunday, April 19! Early reports of birds, resident and rare, flocking to the new wetland restoration project in the San Dieguito Lagoon raise hopes for a real success story. “Our expectations were to find small numbers of local and migratory birds inhabiting the wetlands after a few months of the new mudflats being open to daily tides, but the numbers and varieties of birds have impressed us with the fact that, at least in this small part of the world, nature is really responding positively,” one of the Lagoon Day speakers, Dr. Steve Schroeter, said recently. Dr. Schroeter, an environmental scientist and an expert on coastal lagoons, is under contract to the California Coastal Commission to independently monitor the recently constructed wetland. During a recent site visit, I also heard that the number of different types of species has doubled over the last five years to over 158 species now documented on site with several endangered rare migrant birds and year round species colonizing the wetland. Ed
Mirsky, local vertebrate
biologist and birder,
agreed that the first
signs are promising.
First of all, Southern
California Edison has
aided nature’s
recovery by clearing
the river channels of
silt and obstruction,
he commented, and then
added that he specifically
praised how the mud
flats were developed
on the east side of
I-5. “No
vegetation was planted
in these areas. That’s
good! Tidal flow will
bring in necessary organisms
and the mudflats will
be used by migratory
shorebirds.” Click here for more photos.
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