Yellow-Green Vireo

To get the day moving quickly, I ate leftover snack food from the pelagic trip, but of course washing it down with a cup of coffee from the urn in the Motel 6 lobby.  And then I was on my way east on I-10 to Desert Center CA, a small oasis community just off the interstate with a pond and golf course.  The water keeps the vegetation green and attracts migrants creating what is known to birders as a migrant trap.  I had good specific directions from Curtis Marantz who had found the bird and they worked to perfection.  I parked the car and walked to the corner where he had suggested I begin.  He had also said that if the group of Yellow and Orange-crowned Warblers weren't around, the vireo had probably also departed.  But there they were, the Yellow and Orange-crowned Warblers in a tall tree on the corner.  And into this group popped the Yellow-green Vireo (web photo by Tom Benson is of the bird I saw today).  But as with the previous two days the bird was seen, it disappeared behind some leaves and didn't reappear.  I never saw it fly, but after waiting and waiting, I can only conclude that it must have flown unseen by me.  I birded the area for a couple of hours and had fun doing it, but the vireo never came back.  Did have some Sandhill Cranes fly over as well as have a Prairie Falcon lift off from a palm tree with a prey item.  And did I mention the barking dogs?
I decided to spend the rest of the day at the Salton Sea looking for a Blue-footed Booby.  I know!  I know!  There's been no report of one, but I thought I'd get a jump on it.  Well, it was a lot of fun seeing hundreds of American White Pelicans, Caspian Terns, and Black-necked Stilts, plus Marbled Godwits, Long-billed Curlews, and a thousand Cattle Egrets and White-faced Ibis feeding in one field.  I could have looked for the Brown Booby which has been seen recently on the east side of the lake, but since I'd just seen two yesterday, that didn't really excite me enough to get it done.
So tomorrow I'll either bird some more around the Salton Sea area or check out some wooded areas in the Laguna Mountains for landbird migrants.  The vireo raises the year's total to 706.