I have a problem with buying too many field guides. For local birds I have Sibley, NatGeo, Peterson, Kaufman, and Birds of Western North America (Sterry and Small). And then I have a bunch more that are specialty guides to family groups, Dunne’s “Field Guide Companion”, Pieplow’s guides to bird sounds, and assorted other whatnot.
And I still get stuff wrong disturbingly often. :-)
The final tally for the 11th annual Carpinteria CBC was 155 species found by roughly 75 humans. That’s 3 species short of our all-time high of 158, and quite respectable, I think, given that our pelagic excursion was cancelled due to gale warnings in the Santa Barbara Channel and the afternoon sweep-up-the-birds crew was hampered by the strong winds.
It was my second year running things, and I learned a lot (again). I’m kicking myself about some of the common species we missed: no Rock Wren, no Red-winged Blackbird, no Sanderling, no Dunlin. If I’d done a better job of organizing we could have beaten our record.
But there were some definite highlights. I hiked up Romero Canyon in the dark and recorded the vocalizations of our only Western Screech Owl, and then, just as it was getting light, made a recording of (mostly) wind noise through which you can faintly hear the toots of our only Northern Pygmy-Owl.
Mario hiked up the Franklin Trail before sunrise and got what I believe is only the second Green-tailed Towhee reported in the county this year. (I’m heading up there tomorrow to see if it’s still there.) Patrick, birding on private property on the northern edge of the Carpinteria valley, got the first Painted Redstart recorded in Santa Barbara County in years. Craig and Jenny delivered the Costa’s Hummingbird they’d had staked out for weeks, and Glenn got the Northern Waterthrush in Carp Creek.
And the compilation dinner was fun. My partner in crime organized catered Italian food, which was yummy, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
I’m glad it’s done for the year; organizing 75 birdwatchers to do a 15-mile-diameter big day is no joke, at least for an introvert like me. But it’s also kind of exhilarating to be part of a one-day effort on that scale. I’m doing two more CBC’s this cycle; Cachuma on 12/27 and Santa Barbara on ¼. But those are just birdwatching solo, which is pure fun; someone else has to do the work. :-)
okay but some of the things in this photo *are* birds
That’s true. I decided it was prescriptivist and wrong for me to strictly exclude birds from those posts. Sometimes interesting non-bird things were happening while birds were ALSO happening.
I got excited taking his picture because I was anticipating how you would appreciate the backdrop. The black mustard bloom was kind of out of control at the marsh yesterday.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy cow, lies, this is an AMAZING photo. So gorgeous. What a view!!!
It really was incredible. I’ve put some more detail after a cut, if anyone is interested.
Even though we lived in Mammoth Lakes for several years in the 90s, I’d never visited this particular spot before. But on our visit this time I chased the Grace’s Warbler that local ebirders had reported on Bald Mountain Road, and when I went there on Monday evening after work I not only got to see the warbler (yay!), I also realized what a neat area it was. So I took today off and set my alarm for 4 a.m. to go explore.
I’d wondered on Monday where the road the Grace’s Warbler was on led to. The maps showed an area labeled “Indiana Summit Research Natural Area”; some googling led me to the web page of the US Forest Service’s Research Natural Areas program.
The Research Natural Area (RNA) program is a nationwide system created to protect a network of federally administered public lands for the primary purposes of maintaining biological diversity, providing baseline ecological information, and encouraging research and university natural-history education. Areas selected exemplify minimally disturbed ecosystems representative of the range of widespread and unique natural vegetation types on federal lands.
The Indiana Summit RNA, it turns out, is the oldest RNA in California, having been established in 1932. The Eastern Sierra Jeffrey Pine forest is one of my favorite natural environments, and the Indiana Summit RNA preserves “a rare pristine example” of that forest. Most of the Eastern Sierra has been logged extensively over the years; mature Jeffrey Pines are scattered here and there, but in a lot of places you’re basically in a tree farm where all the trees are similarly aged “teenagers”.
But for whatever reason the land in the area just east of Indiana Summit (a low hill west of Bald Mountain) had never been logged, and after the RNA was established in 1932 no logging was allowed. You can actually see the boundary of the RNA in the Google Earth imagery below; the RNA is the area that’s darker, reflecting the presence of so many mature Jeffrey Pines:
The view here is looking north, with the eastern edge of Mono Lake in the background. I drove in via Bald Mountain Road, a well-graded dirt road that leads in from US 395. There are no roads in the RNA; I parked at the end of a dirt road near the southwest corner. The sun was just coming up, and the view was amazing.
If you look closely you can see in that Google Earth image how the southwest edge of the RNA ends at a steep cliff; I was standing on the edge of that cliff when I took the photo Sally commented on; here’s another shot from there:
The sun is just hitting the Eastern Sierra in the distance, though it hasn’t yet risen where I am.
When I walked in from the north, crossing that ruler-straight boundary line you can see in the Google Earth image, it was breathtaking to suddenly be surrounded by so many mature Jeffrey Pines:
The Indiana Summit RNA burned in August 2016, after a lightning strike ignited the Clark Fire. In some areas along the western edge where I explored earlier in the day most of the trees had been killed, but in the interior of the RNA it was mostly the understory and the bottoms of the trunks that had burned, while the upper parts of the mature trees appeared to be okay:
As I saw when I birded the area around Jameson Lake for the Carpinteria Christmas Count after the Thomas Fire, woodpeckers were abundant in the burn area. My woodpecker total for the morning was:
1 Lewis’s Woodpecker
1 Williamson’s Sapsucker
18 Hairy Woodpecker
3 White-headed Woodpecker
4 Black-backed Woodpecker
4 Northern Flicker
I may have counted a few birds more than once as they moved around, but even so, there were a lot of woodpeckers. :-)
Besides the mature Jeffrey Pine forest, another feature the Indiana Summit RNA seeks to preserve is the archaeological record:
The Paiute Indians harvested larvae of piagi (Pandora
moth [Coloradia pandora]), which cyclically attack Jeffrey pine, by digging
trenches encircling the trunks of mature trees. These piagi trenches may still be
seen surrounding some of the larger Jeffrey pines, although their evidence has
been largely obliterated by logging and other disturbance in adjacent areas.
I found a number of those trenches in the RNA; here are two of them:
I’d told Linda I’d be back by noon; I ended up being only 20 minutes late, which is pretty good for me when I’m birdwatching. I’d like to go back again, though. I want to check out the eastern side of the RNA, where there are some more mesic White Fir stands on the north slope of Bald Mountain.
Also, I would like to say that I like to think Point Sal is named after me. Is it short for something?
I don’t know the name’s origin. A lot of the place names in California are from the era of early Spanish exploration; hence all the saints (San Francisco, Santa Catalina, Santa Clara…) because it happened to be that particular saint’s feast day when they came across that island or river or whatever.
There are a number of Salsipuedes Points or Point Salsipuedeses, which I don’t have to translate for your impressively polyglot self. Those often refer to places that were prone to becoming a dangerous lee shore, which was a big deal when you were exploring in an 18th-century sailing ship that didn’t go to windward very well. So they sometimes gave those places scary names as a safety tip to future mariners. I wondered at one point if “Point Sal” was just a shortened version of one of those. Though thinking about it some more that seems unlikely.
Point Sal might be a reference to salt? There are some high dunes just north of it; maybe they looked salty from the sea? Or maybe there were salt deposits in the area?
I’m going to headcanon it as named after you, though, if that’s okay. Because that’s cool. And because you “moo”ed at the cows. 🐂👍😀
I only follow this through your posts but now I am very curious how it will play out!
Me too!
MAPFRE has re-taken the lead in the western group; Brunel is less than a mile behind them (with the no-longer-in-the-running-for-the-overall-win AkzoNobel in between). Dongfeng is chugging down the coast with about 2 miles more to sail to the finish, though they’re also sailing about 3 knots faster over the bottom, with part of that being because they’re at a faster sailing angle and the other part because they’re closer to shore with less adverse current.
I still have no idea who’s going to win. But I’ve cancelled my birdwatching plans for the morning. 😜
Yeah. The original was pretty close to that already, and then I went ahead and desaturated it the rest of the way in iPhoto. It’s the inside of a burned tree from the Zaca Fire.
Here’s another patch of flowers (Black Mustard, I think, in this case) that I saw during my hike in the burn area. They made me think of you. See if you can guess why! 😜
Good luck. I hope you’ll see something… Also, that’s a gorgeous photo.
Thank you! And thank you! That’s a tree that I’m pretty sure isn’t there anymore. I took that photo on the scouting trip that produced the eBird list below, two weeks before the fire. Supposedly the riparian corridor in the base of Romero Canyon only has “moderate” damage, with the understory burned but a lot of the trees only slightly scorched and hopefully surviving. But the hillside above, where this fire road runs… Well. I haven’t been back there yet. But like I said; pretty sure this tree is gone.
Romero Canyon, Santa Barbara, California, US Dec 1, 2017 8:01 AM – 10:03 AM Protocol: Traveling 1.709 mile(s) Comments: Looked for, but failed to find, Rufous-crowned Sparrow. Hiked the canyon, then up the Old Romero Canyon dirt road a half mile or so up the hill and back down. 25 species (+2 other taxa)
California Quail 2 Red-tailed Hawk 1 Band-tailed Pigeon 16 hummingbird sp. 1 Northern Flicker 2 Black Phoebe 1 Hutton’s Vireo 2 Steller’s Jay 1 California Scrub-Jay 3 Oak Titmouse 2 Bushtit 9 Canyon Wren 2 Great views foraging in an oak limb. Bewick’s Wren 1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet 3 Wrentit 5 Hermit Thrush 4 California Thrasher 1 Orange-crowned Warbler 1 Yellow-rumped Warbler 8 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) 2 Fox Sparrow 2 Believe they were Thick-billed, but I didn’t see them long enough to confirm that. Dark-eyed Junco 1 California Towhee 4 Spotted Towhee 2 House Finch 6 Purple Finch 1 Female Lesser Goldfinch 2
