This little coastal community affords excellent vantage points from which to watch seabirds on spring and fall mornings, before the sea gets too glary and the winds pick up.
Directions. At the north edge of town, park at the wide pullout where the railroad tracks cross Hwy 1 (milepost 29.03); this is 9.0 miles from Western Dr (3.1 miles from the Laguna Creek parking area). From here one can walk to the (treacherous!) bluff top for a seawatch. Just south of town, Hwy 1 dips to cross San Vicente Creek. A large dirt pullout on the highway’s ocean side at milepost 28.41 allows a birder to park and carefully cross the road to look at coastal scrub and a willow-lined pond on the inland side of the highway.
Birds. At the north edge of town, a short walk to the bluff (warning again: very dangerous and eroding edge!) will reveal the remnants below of an old pier. Only the cement pilings now remain, supporting a colony of nesting Brandt’s Cormorants. A few Rhinoceros Auklets have joined numerous Pigeon Guillemots in nesting in the cliff face north of the pier, but have only been erratically present since the 1998 El Niño event. The best chance to see them is early morning from late March to July. Also look for foraging Marbled Murrelets and rafts of Western and Clark’s grebes. In April and May, and again in November, an early morning hour or two spent seawatching from here may yield thousands of migrating Pacific Loons (lesser numbers of the other loons) and flocks of Brant and scoters streaming past. Look, too, seasonally for Red-necked Grebe, Black-footed Albatross (rare, in spring), shearwaters, phalaropes, jaegers, gulls including Black-legged Kittiwake (spring), Sabine’s Gull (rare, in May), terns (including Common and Arctic), and Ancient Murrelet (winter). Band-tailed Pigeon often forages in nearby agricultural fields in spring, and White-crowned Sparrow and American Goldfinch nest in the coastal scrub. The bluff-top cypress grove just south of the railroad crossing has occasionally had vagrant landbirds, and in the morning Band-tailed Pigeons often roost at its south end.
The scrub and willows at San Vicente Creek just south of town should be checked for migrant landbirds and wintering Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Black-crowned Night-Heron, Green Heron, Belted Kingfisher, and a few wintering ducks visit the pond. Be sure to stand safely off of Hwy 1 while birding there.