One of these was in Goleta last fall, but I was all into scouting the Carp Christmas Count circle at the time and never got around to seeing it. Another one was reported a few days ago at the Andree Clark Bird Refuge, and I stopped by to look for it on my way home from my crack-of-dawn La Cumbre Peak trip yesterday. No luck. (Turns out I was looking in the wrong place.)
Then, late yesterday afternoon, word went out that a local birder had refound the bird, and with her help several of us converged on the scene and eventually managed some quick looks. Such a cool bird! My first waterthrush ever. š
So, Iām out in Oregon in the H.J Andrews Experimental Forest for the summer to do bird point counts and to band birds. Today was our first day of netting and we came up with this HEWA!Ā
#229
I was finishing up at La Cumbre Peak, feeling pretty happy about adding two birds to the list, when two Hermit Warblers appeared. Yay!
December 13, 2017 – Rufous-crowned Sparrow (Aimophila ruficeps)
Found in a spotty range across the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico, these sparrows spend most of their time on or near the ground. During the summer they mostly eat insects, switching mainly to stems, shoots, and seeds during the winter. Females build nests on the ground from dried grasses, rootlets, twigs, bark, and hair. Both parents feed the chicks. They may perform broken wing displays to draw predators away from the nest.
#228
If I had aĀ ānemesis birdā in my attempt to run up my county year list this year it would probably be Rufous-crowned Sparrow. I found a cool place to see them not far from home last year and thenā¦ it burned. So far this year every time Iāve gone somewhere to try to see them Iāve failed. I described my plight to a helpful birder a few weeks ago, and he instructed me to go to xeno-canto and get familiar with their songs.
Good advice! This morning while I was walking around at La Cumbre Peak listening to Mountain Quails I caught a faint song from the chaparral hillside above me, and a few seconds later I was looking at no-longer-a-nemesis county year bird #228. I didnāt get a particularly good look; it was pretty far away and Iād been lazy by not bringing the spotting scope with me, but I could see the plain breast and the rufous crown, and that plus the song was good enough for me.
Mountain Quail Gouache on 10×14ā hot press Olivia Warnecke / 2012
#227
Iād tried for Mountain Quail twice, driving up to Figueroa Mountain and walking appropriate roads listening. But it was too windy, or I was there too late, or hunters shot out the covey eBirders had reported too widely (!). And Figueroa Mountain is kind of a haul from where I live, so I was only able to get there if I was willing to use a full day for antisocial birding activity.
But now that Spring has sprung and the male Mountain Quails are crowing at the crack of dawn theyāre easier to find, and local eBirders have been reporting them pretty reliably from La Cumbre Peak above Santa Barbara. So I set my alarm for 4:30 and hauled myself up to La Cumbre Peak just as it was starting to get light. Andā¦ yup. Weāve got quails. (The super-cool sound of them calling, at least. Which is good enough to count them, given how distinctive their voices are.) š
The Costaās Hummingbird (Calypte costae) is native to the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of Arizona and California.Ā
#226. This one showed up when I totally wasnāt expecting him. I was brushing my teeth after lunch today and glanced out the bathroom window at the apple tree in our backyard. Itās a hotbed of hummingbird activity, because the bare limbs make a good perch with ready access to the various flowers and feeders. And there he was: Perched 10 feet away. Even naked-eye I could see the extended gorget and the prominent white patch on the side of the neck behind it. I watched him for a few seconds, then went to grab my binoculars for a better look, but one of the local Rufous Hummers chased him away.
No matter. He was back several times over the course of the afternoon. Such a cool little dude. š
Besides Prairie Falcon (which I ended up not seeing on this trip), Mountain Bluebird was the other species I was really hoping to see in the Cuyama Valley. Itās hard to find them anywhere else in the county, but small numbers of them winter there. Paul Lehmanās essential book Birds of Santa Barbara County says they have āmostly departed by mid-Marchā, but a user in eBird had reported a number of them on Wasioja Road a few days before, so I was hopeful.
I pulled onto the road in mid-morning, found a spot with bluebirds and started checking them out, but they were all Westerns. Nothing wrong with that, though; Iāll watch Western Bluebirds any chance I get. So I watched them, and the Horned Larks that were around (they were everywhere), and a few early migrant swallows that were swooping overhead, when I heard a bluebird calling from a nearby fence post, and there it was: my fifth and final county year bird of the day: Mountain Bluebird.
After working so hard to try to turn the Western Bluebirds into one it was exciting to see a bird with all the distinguishing features: pale blue and gray without a hint of red, narrower beak, and an overall longer, thinner profile with longer tail and wings.
#223. Mine werenāt this easy; they were mixed in with the Red-winged Blackbirds and Brewerās Blackbirds at a couple of my Cuyama Valley stops. But eventually I managed to pick out a few ātrikesā. A nice lady came out from her house along State Highway 33 to ask if I needed anything after Iād spent about 20 minutes walking up and down the road in front of her house looking at the blackbirds in her trees and in the fields on either side. She didnāt mind me birdwatching, but apparently I was making her Jack Russellās bark constantly, so I moved further away from the house.
#222. A juvenile bird was perched in a distant cottonwood, and I spent a long time trying to make it be a Prairie Falcon (which is one of the species I really wanted to see on my Cuyama trip). The bird had relatively long wings and tail; not falcon-long, maybe, but longer than the buteos Iām used to.
Fortunately it eventually flew off, letting me see it soaring as it headed north and allowing even my sketchy raptor-identification skills to kick in. Swainsonās Hawks are rare in Santa Barbara County; it felt special to see it.
#221. I was excited to see a Sage Thrasher on my Cuyama trip; theyāre easier to find up there than in the south county, but theyāre not necessarily easy.
#220. I got tired of trying and failing to see Horned Larks in the Santa Ynez Valley, so I said screw it; Iām going to Cuyama, the wide-expanses cattle-grazing valley in the northeast corner of Santa Barbara County. Set the alarm for 4 a.m., got to Cottonwood Canyon Road just as it was getting light, and boom! First birds I saw were a pair of Horned Larks that flitted up to check me out (as some curious cows were already).
#219. I saw the first of what ended up being eight of them that I counted, flitting from log to log on the beach in the flotsam that came down Carpinteria Creek in the storm. It had been all Cassinās Kingbirds around here since the beginning of the year, and at first I assumed thatās what the bird was, but then it flashed its white outer feathers, and that made me look closer at the throat, and yup; it was gray without the contrast-y malar patch of the Cassinās.
#218. A male, creeping along the limbs of a big sycamore this morning at the 8th Street footbridge, right where Eve reported it before the storm. Yeah!
#217. I heard one of these yesterday just outside Santa Barbara County, and then again this morning while birding southeast of Carp. Finally, on my way home I decided to drive slowly down Lillingston Canyon Road with the windows down to see if I could hear an unambiguous SB-county bird. And I did! šš
Saw my first of the season after work today at the Bates Road bridge, right on the Santa Barbara / Ventura county line. The bird was helpfully foraging in a willow tree on the Santa Barbara side of the bridge.
I also heard a FOS Pacific-slope Flycatcher a couple of times, but the only time I could unambiguously locate where the call was coming from it was on the Ventura side, so I didnāt count that one in my SBA list. But it would have been #216.
And _then_ late in the afternoon I briefly thought I heard a FOS Hooded Oriole in the palm trees a few doors down from our house. The oriole chatter didnāt continue, and I wasnāt able to find the bird after I grabbed my binoculars, so I didnāt list it. But in conclusion itās a very exciting time to be obsessing about oneās county year list in SoCal.
August 26, 2017 – Bonaparteās Gull (Chroicocephalus philadelphia)
These small gulls breed in Canada and Alaska, migrating through much of the United States to winter in parts of the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean. They eat small fish and large invertebrates, often catching insects in flight during the breeding season. Unlike most gulls, they frequently nest in trees, building open cup-shaped nests from branches, twigs, bark, moss, grasses, and lichens. Both parents probably incubate the eggs and feed the chicks.
#213
We saw 5 of them on the return from the pelagic trip on March 10. At first we thought they were in Ventura County, but subsequent analysis by Peter Gaede showed they were west of the line. SBA FTW! š
The other day I went birdwatching at the Bluffs. Rain was failing in the hills behind town, and as the clouds moved off toward Ventura I got a surprise.
Being a Brief Account of My Participation in Island Packersā Pelagic Birding Trip to Santa Cruz Island, 2018-03-10
With specific reference to birds I saw that were new additions to my Santa Barbara County year list
After a cut because no one has room for that in their dash
It was so much fun! It only rained on us a little on our way over, and then when it rained a fair amount on our way back it didnāt matter because I was warmed by the inner glow of all the cool new birds Iād seen. š
It was all quite awesome, but Iām just going to list the birds that were new for my county year list. Here they are in the order in which I saw them. The eBird lists, which were kept by the trip guides, havenāt been finalized yet, so this is from memory.
These little alcids are so adorable itās ridiculous. And the Santa Barbara Channel was full of them today. We started seeing them on the way to Anacapa, and after we crossed the imaginary line between Anacapa and Santa Cruz we saw more almost immediately. By the end of the day I felt pretty solid about picking them out, even through rain-spattered binoculars as they skittered away across the water.
Black-vented Shearwater (#206)
PhotoĀ by Flickr user (and regional eBird editor and all-around swell person) Jamie Chavez
These are on the small side (for a shearwater). Theyāll be moving on from our area fairly soon, so I was glad to have the chance to see them. We picked them up early in the trip, and kept seeing them as we crossed from Anacapa to Santa Cruz.
How could you not love a bird like that? We were surrounded by them once we started motoring along the north side of Santa Cruz. Theyāre nesting in the sea caves there, and there were some in view pretty much the whole time we were close to shore.
There should be a law against a bird having this much personality. We saw a couple on the detached breakwater as we were leaving Channel Islands Harbor, then saw several countable ones along the north shore of Santa Cruz.
North Americaās only island endemic. On some level it seems surprising that such a boisterous, apparently fearless bird is such a weak flyer that the few miles of ocean between the mainland and Santa Cruz are enough to isolate the population, but here we are. Something I noticed this time that Iād never appreciated before is how much bluer they are than their mainland cousins.
They showed up as soon as we walked off the pier at Prisonerās Harbor.
I was a little nervous about these. Another adorable little alcid, we started seeing them on the way to Anacapa, but they donāt hang out close to shore, and as of lunchtime we hadnāt seen any in Santa Barbara waters. As the trip back started I wondered: Would we we be able to get any while still on the Santa Barbara side of the line?
I neednāt have worried. The people running our trip knew what they were doing. On the way back we headed north into deeper water, and shortly thereafter I got to add these sharp little alcids to the list.
We actually saw one of these early on the trip back before the countable Scrippsās Murrelets, Iām pretty sure. I raised my binoculars to check out a bird flying a short distance from the boat; through the raindrops on my lenses I saw dingy gray plumage and thought it was yet another Cassinās Auklet. But as I was following the bird a couple of the better birders on the upper deck where I was hanging out (including trip guide Peter Gaede, one of the best birders Iāve ever been lucky enough to bird with) said,Ā āRhino!ā The bird disappeared into the rain, and they explained that it had looked considerably bigger than a Cassinās Auklet. I was spared having to wrestle with whether or not to list it (over-analyzing listability is something that comes with a list obsession) when a second, much closer Rhino showed up and put my mind at ease.
It wasnāt in breeding plumage, so it didnāt have the cool rhino horn and head tufts, but I got good views of its big beak and āanvil-shapedā head.
I knew these were out there for the finding since weād seen several in Ventura County on the way out, but we hadnāt seen any on the Santa Barbara side, and I was starting to worry we wouldnāt when a couple more flew past. Yay! County year bird #8 for the day!
Fulmars are so cool.
There actually was one more bird that would have been #9, Bonaparteās Gull; we saw several just a few minutes after the announcement that we were back in Ventura County. But itās possible the announcement was just a tad premature, and I believe the trip guides are taking a closer look to see if one or more of those fulmars might actually have been on the Santa Barbara side. So weāll see about that.
119. Common Murre (Uria aalge), with spectacle/bridled markings (the white marks around the eyes.) In a recent fake survey, bridled common murres were considered more intellectual by their peers than non-bridled conspecifics.
Hopefully the highlights on its beak donāt make it look too much like a thick-billed murreā¦
Itās an odd thing for me personally, having grown up sailing, and also birdwatching, that Iāve never really doneĀ āpelagic birdingā, in the sense of going to sea for the express purpose of looking at birds. Iāve checked out seabirds opportunistically, but when youāre sailing (as distinct from powerboating) and especially when youāre racing, opportunities for focused bird study can be hard to come by. At least thatās been my experience.
So tomorrowās kind of a big deal for me. Iāve booked one of the last available seats on Island Packersā spring pelagic birding trip, which (weather permitting) will be heading out from Channel Islands Harbor tomorrow morning. The plan is to follow Hueneme Canyon toward Anacapa, then motor past Anacapa checking out the nesting birds. Then weāll cross the Anacapa Passage to Santa Cruz, where weāll go ashore at Prisonerās Harbor to see the requisite Island Scrub Jays before returning to Oxnard late in the day. The forecast is for some rain, but relatively light winds.
Iām especially interested in the part of the trip when weāll officially be in Santa Barbara County (basically, everything west of a north-south line bisecting the passage between Anacapa and Santa Cruz). Thatās because Iām doing a ālittle big yearā in which I identify as many species as I can in Santa Barbara County. (I blame @quickthreebeers.) Iām hoping to add 5 new species tomorrow, and think I have an outside shot at 10. Mostly, though, Iām looking forward to a fun day of birdwatching with other obsessives. And if Iām lucky, my first-of-the-year Common Murre. š
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