The season and the weather will impact how birders plan their visit to the various habitats in this Hotspot. At any season, it is worthwhile checking El Estero Lake from the long parking lot that runs from Pearl Street to a skate-park. There is a resident day-roost of Black-crowned Night-Heron on the vegetated island in the north-central part of the lake, best viewed from the two fishing piers, and there will always be some waterbirds such as Double-crested Cormorant, various herons, bathing and roosting gulls, and sometimes Belted Kingfisher. In winter there are a greater variety of gulls, a chance for more ducks, and sometimes scarce geese (Greater White-fronted, Snow, or Ross's).

In spring and (especially) in fall migration, the emphasis usually is on looking for passerine migrants in the cemeteries -- searching for warblers, vireos, and flycatchers in the trees, with sparrows and blackbirds on the lawns, and sometimes tanagers and orioles along the eastern fence-line with its exotic plantings. Watch for raptors overhead. Flowering but tall eucalyptus along Pearl Street also attracts small passerines and rarities.

Western Bluebird, Acorn and Nuttall's Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse, and Dark-eyed Junco are resident in the cemeteries; Say's Phoebe is regular in winter, as are flocks of White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows. Look for the occasional Tricolored Blackbird among blackbird flocks. Many rarities have tuned up in the Hotspot, from unusual ducks and gulls on El Estero Lake; Bank Swallow among various regular swallows in spring; and a wide variety of Eastern warblers, vireos, flycatchers, buntings, and sparrows in fall. In addition, occasionally an ocean-going pelagic species, from scoters to Brant to Brown Pelican, will appear on freshwater El Estero Lake. These birds may common on the ocean off Del Monte Beach, north of Del Monte Boulevard, but expand the bird-list within this Hotspot. Please do confine your checklist to birds seen within or above this Hotspot.

This Hotspot includes El Estero Lake, the City of Monterey's El Estero Park Complex, and various cemeteries adjacent in downtown Monterey. It is centered around El Estero Lake, a horseshoe-shaped freshwater lake that was once an tidal estuary of the ocean, but is now entirely bordered by two major access streets -- Del Monte Avenue (to the north) and Fremont Street (to the south), both of which have connections to State Highway 1 -- and the side streets Camino El Estero (to the west) and Camino Aquajito (to the east). Pearl Street crosses through to middle of the Hotspot, providing access to the City's 45-acre El Estero Park Complex, to the north, and the cemeteries, to the south. The 'arms' of the Estero separate the cemeteries from the two Camino streets.The borders of the Hotspot are those streets: Del Monte Avenue, Camino El Estero, Fremont Street, and Camino Aguajito.

The City's Park Complex is a multi-use recreation area in the center of Monterey with a small ballpark, a recreation center, a skate park, a paddleboat concession, a group BBQ picnic area, an exercise course, and restrooms. There is a long parking area that fronts on the lake, with access off Pearl near Camino Aquajito that usually provides plenty of parking, and two fishing piers that extend into the lake. There is a small, heavily vegetated island in the lake north of this parking lot. Much of the Lake is bordered by trails, allowing one to make a longish circuit around much of the lake. There are also small parking lots off Del Monte Avenue that provide free access to the north side of the lake.

South of Pearl Street are a complex of cemeteries, including the City of Monterey Cemetery, Cementerio El Encinal (mostly east side), St. John's Cemetery (mostly central), and San Carlos Cemetery (mostly west side) that in adjacent to a fenced dog park. San Carlos Cemetery is an old (established 1834) Catholic Cemetery with many gravestones and monuments below a canopy of pines, cypresses, live oaks, and ornamentals, while the eastern portion has extensive mowed lawns among isolated pines and oaks. Birders tend to think of these as all one cemetery, as there are not barriers or borders between them; we usually call them "the Monterey cemetery" or the "El Estero cemetery." The east side of the cemetery is bordered by a fence-line with many trees [a City maintenance yard is east of the cemetery and next to the Aquajito 'arm' of the lake]. During daylight hours, one can drive on (mostly) paved but narrow roads throughout the cemeteries, but a gate is closed between the two halves of the overall complex from 3:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. the next morning, which hinders drivers but not birders on foot. During working hours (8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.) there are public restrooms at the central office in the center of the cemetery complex.