Over these past thirty years, I’ve participated in Christmas Bird Counts in a dozen states and provinces–and in a dozen different weathers. I’ve been snowed on, rained on, and nearly frozen; blown off the road, submerged in ice water, and frostbit.

This year was different.

Molly, Rich, Will, and I met Thursday afternoon to start on the drive to Puerto Peñasco, that scruffy playground on the eastern shore of the Sea of Cortez. We took a few minutes to admire the two (two!) Violet-crowned Hummingbirds in Rich’s urban Tucson yard, then it was west, west, west to Lukeville and across the border into Sonora.

The usual birds on the three-and-a-half-hour drive down, but we arrived in town in time to check the inner harbor, where Rich discovered this nice-looking Western Gull.

(That’s a Heermann’s Gull behind it, and a gluttonous Yellow-footed Gull with its head in the rocks.)

Our hotel, the oddly named Viña del Mar, was a great place to watch the sunset

as Brown Pelicans, Blue-footed Boobies, and thousands of Heermann’s Gulls went to roost on the rocks.

A good dinner, a good night’s sleep, and we were ready for the next two days of birding–scouting on Friday, the CBC itself on Saturday.

As usual, larids accounted for most of the highlights. Highest of them all was a first-cycle Glaucous Gull Molly and Rich discovered at the new sewage ponds, a first for me for Sonora.

Look hard: it’s hunkered down just to the left of the salt cedar. This is a great bird for Mexico, but I have to say that I also enjoyed lingering look at a couple of Thayer’s Gulls and an apparent Glaucous-winged x Herring Gull or two. It was fantastic to be birding with companions who knew their gulls–I’d say that I was rusty after these years in Arizona, but that would imply, falsely, that I had ever been a well-oiled watcher of gulls. Our upcoming move to Vancouver should fix me up!

One gull that doesn’t require a sophisticated eye was, as usual, abundant and unmissable.

I may well be seeing some of these same individual Heermann’s Gulls in British Columbia this coming summer, when they move north along the Pacific Coast to follow the ferries between Washington and the islands of the Georgia Depression.

No depression for us, though, as we kept on tallying fine birds. Western Bluebirds were all over town, and there were a couple of Mountain Bluebirds scattered around the open desert, too.

This male was near the new sewage ponds, overlooking a barren spot that was filled with feeding House Finches, a Vesper Sparrow, and two Sage Sparrows. I’m afraid that I had to be called back to the business of the count after becoming engrossed in watching the Sage Sparrows–likely to be my last of the species until I see them next on their Great Basin breeding grounds.

We managed to spend some time seawatching, too (a grand word for sitting over a fine meal and watching from the restaurant’s balcony). The shrimp boats coming in to the harbor dragged a trail of gulls and other birds, including Brown Boobies.

A few Forster’s and Royal Terns patrolled the shore, and small numbers of Common and Pacific Loons dotted the waves.

It wasn’t quite dusk when we made our final stop at the dump.

Cattle Egrets and gulls abounded, and Rich discovered–for the second year in a row–a Rusty Blackbird on the back corner of the fence, a bird I managed to miss. And then it was farewell to the birds of the Gulf of California and back to Tucson, with fervent hopes that Alison and I can get back to Sonora someday.