CINDY, INCIDENTALLY:

Huntington Beach is home to beautiful beaches, a raucous surf culture and is also a happening locale for birds in search of a place to rest their wings and maybe get a little breeding on.

Now, I am not a birder. I place birds in two categories: pigeon or seagull. That’s it.

But every day as I speed past the Bolsa Chica Wetlands on Pacific Coast Highway, I slow down to watch the community of birds that circles this coastal conservancy.

My favorite species is a stunning gray and white bird with great big wings that it stretches out just moments before it shoots up to the sky. It then uses the wings as parachutes to free fall toward the ocean and almost land on the water, but it really just gets close enough to scrape the water.

It’s pretty spectacular to watch even if you aren’t a so-called birder.

Curious about the conservancy and always striving to be a better humanitarian, I went over to chat with Claire Grozinger, a board member at the wetlands, who explained the bird I thought was a seagull (or pigeon) is actually an elegant tern, a species that makes its home along the coast in Southern California and Mexico.

The wetlands itself is a 1,200 acres home to a variety of bird species, insects, reptiles, fish and plant life.

When I asked her what birds did at the wetlands, she was able to break it down for me in clear non-birder lingo.

“Birds come here to chow down, breed and then go on their way,” Grozinger says. “It’s like a truck stop for birds.”

Gotcha.

On a Saturday morning, I headed over to the conservancy to walk through the trails and maybe get a closer look at one of these Elegant Terns who are living it up in “The O.C.” for the summer.

While there, I discovered the last Saturday of the month is Conservancy Day, which allows businesses, locals or visitors to come by and help with the restoration and maintenance of one of California’s largest wetlands.

On this particular day, a local manufacturing business had shown up with some of its employees to help out. People raked, pulled weeds and removed non-native plants with the help of staff who guided volunteers.

Staff from the conservancy would come out and talk about plant life, pointed out different birds flying up above and when someone found a dead gopher snake it was placed on display for everyone to see how it had died and how you could still see the bump of a mouse the snake had eaten a few hours before its death.

Truthfully, that was a bit too much outdoor nature for my taste, but still, informative nevertheless.

When something like this is in your backyard, it’s important to head over and see what you can do to help out every now and then.

I have passed it for years, but never stopped, mainly because I was always on my way to do something else.

But now, how can I not stop, even if just to watch the elegant tern launch into the sky?

CINDY ARORA is a freelance writer for the Independent.