Life and Death at Salton Sea

Date: December 28, 2012
Place: Salton Sea, Bombay Beach, California
Difficulty: easy

Salton Sea, a view to the north from Sonny Bono Salton Sea NWR

The water of Salton Sea bring life to a large desert area, where it had supported and still supports rich plant and wildlife as well as human settlements throughout its existence period. At Sonny Bono Salton Sea NWR we enjoyed viewing many of the bird species that make this sea their home, throughout the year or just for the winter, or make it a rest stop on their migration.
After leaving SBSSNWR we continued north along the eastern shores of Salton Sea, and in the little town of Bombay Beach we stopped and went for a walk on the beach.

A salt crusted field lies between the town and the beach

Salton Sea is a periodical lake. It is fed by washes from the surrounding mountains, but its main body of water originates from flooding of the Colorado River. The Salton Basin was formed and dried numerous times throughout its geological history. The latest flooding and the creation of nowadays Salton Sea happened in 1905, with unintentional human mediation, when an irrigation canal that diverted the water of Colorado River to irrigate fields was breached. This flooding was a major prompt for the Colorado River damming.

Someone went shopping for salt?

Being a basin with no outlet, the salts remain in Salton Sea and with the Colorado River under control, no more unexpected flooding are expected. Therefore, water level continuously drops and water salinity continuously increase. It still supports aquatic life so is not yet a dead sea, but it is going in that direction.

The white-crusted beach at Bombay Beach

There is no specific trail there. It was all about walking on the beach for however long we wanted. There were very few people there so we literally had the beach to ourselves.The chikas soon found an interesting play thing - some mummified fish stranded of the beach. There were plenty of them around. 

This was once a living Tilapia

The ground under our feet felt course and our footsteps made loud crunching sounds as we walked on the beach. It didn't feel or sound like a mere salt crust. At some point I knelt to check the ground more closely and discovered the disturbing truth: we were walking on a thick layer of fish bones.

A mat of bones

Not just in a small area. Everywhere!
Not the work of local fishers but evidence of a large-scale calamity that befell these fish.
That evening I searched online and found that the fish disaster had happened just a few month before. The mass death was attributed to the drop of oxygen levels in the water due to a prolonged heat wave in the area. The stench of the rotting fish, it said, was so strong that it could be smelled at Los Angeles.

A sea of dead

I was glad we had missed these odors. 

Not just dead fish: the mark of man.

We had stopped at Bombay Beach with the idea of looking for more birds but there weren't that many there. Just a few cormorants and gulls. The sun was already setting so we returned to our car and drove north to Palm Springs, for the third part of our winter vacation.

Seagulls at Salton Sea

Who's at Sonny Bono Salton Sea NWR?

Salton Sea, a view to the north from unit 2 of SBSSNWR

Date: December 28, 2012
Place: Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge, Calipatria, California
Coordinates, Unit 1:  33.0860, -115.7096   Unit 2: 33.1767, -115.6190
Difficulty: easy

In the middle of the Southern California desert there's a large body of water called the Salton Sea. It is a periodical lake of which I plan to write a separate post. Being a source of water and food in a vast desert area, it is also a big attraction to wildlife, primarily birds. Several areas along the Salton Sea shores were set aside as refuges, We visited to of these at its southern shores: Units 1 and 2 of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.

Snow geese in the fields. Unit 1 of SBSSNWR.

Unit 1 has an observation tower and a short foot trail of about 1 mile. We spent some time observing the birds from the tower and conferring with other bird watches who came by.
The fields to our south were filled with Snow geese but the ponds were relatively empty, save for a few ducks.

The water ponds at unit 1.

We did see a few raptors hovering in the sky and quite a few warblers who were quick to hide when we tried to photograph them, Even the Great Blue Heron we saw trotted away quickly.

The foot prints of a Great Blue Heron

We walked the foot trail and listening to the bush birds among the high and dry tules and cattails. Then we returned to our car and drove on to Unit 2.

Ring-billed Gull, Unit 1 of SBSSNWR

Beside a 1.5 miles hiking trail and an observation deck, Unit 2 also has a nice visitor center with a landscaped yard. This yard alone is an attraction for many animals. For example, this barn owl that we saw sleeping, tucked in one of the fan palms, just outside the visitor center.

Sleeping Barn Owl

On the ground, many cottontails were hopping around, to the delight of my chikas.

Cottontail rabbit

The high-pitched squeaks and the low-pitched buzzing of hummingbirds was in the air.

Anna's Hummingbird, female

And a species of dove we've never seen before. Those tiny little doves were very shy and kept to the bushes. Eventually, Papa Quail's patience and high zoom lens paid off:

Common Ground Dove

But I think that our nicest encounter was with my close relatives, the gorgeous Gambel's Quail :-) 

Gambel's Quail

Eventually we managed to collect the chikas from their activities and went on the trail. It is a very nice in and out trail along a canal and later along the Salton Sea shore itself. It is completely flat, except at the end where it climbs a small hill. From this trail we had a fantastic view to the northwest, where we could see the snowy caps of Mount San Jacinto (left) and Mount San Bernardino (right).

The canal and the bushes along it harbored several bird species. This Lesser Yellowlegs was one of them:

Lesser Yellowlegs

When we got to the Salton Sea shore we saw it was quite popular among seagulls. There were quite a few other birds there, from various ducks to some waders, and four or five large Great Blue Herons that stood still in the water, keeping respectful distance from one-another.

Gulls and friends

When we approached the shore the water appeared rusty red, as if soiled by a river of blood. I don't know what caused the coloration - probably just the ground underneath, I guess. Nevertheless, it was a strange sight. 

No Pharaoh here, no real blood.

From what we read about the place we learned that even deep ocean birds occasionally make it to Salton Sea. We didn't see anything unexpected. Here are some of the birds we did see:

Ring-billed gull

Black-necked Stilt

Western Sandpiper (adult, non-breeding)

We had a great time at Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. We hiked the trails and saw many birds. For any nature lover who travels in the area, this is certainly a good place to stop. Personally, I believe it is worth a special trip :-) 

Salton Sea, shining in the sun