Just Because: Birds by the Long Beach Bike Path

I think these are swallows, and I think the nests are in progress rather than finished. They're under the extremely busy, extremely loud Long Beach Boulevard, and there are hundreds of them. They seem to like the scrubby area around the river and the bike path quite a lot:

The Other Blue Heron

This is the heron whose nest I spotted a couple of weeks ago, over near our church. The palm trees are over by an apartment complex, and it occurred to me today that the people on the upper floors probably have a very good view of the nest from above. I hope they're taking advantage of it.

The upper picture shows how very well the herons camouflage themselves, even though they are very big, blue(ish) birds.

Peekaboo

I finally caught the baby blue heron in his nest! That's him, peeking up through the leaves there.

I was hoping to record a bit of the noise they make, but people kept stopping by to ask what I was looking at, so all I got was series of jumbled recordings of grass, sky, and tag-ends of conversation.

I can't complain; as I recall, that's how I found the herons myself, the first time, by asking someone what they were looking at.