The Goleta Birder

  After waking up at dawn, I tidied up my sleeping gear in my car and headed over to Sun Mountain Lodge near Winthrop. This location has acquired a reputation as the go-to spot for Dusky Grouse in Washington. While the pressure was off since I had just finally seen one in BC, it would still be a ‘Washington bird’ for me and only the second time I had seen the species. Arriving at the parking lot, it was immediately apparent that the hotel grounds and immediate vicinity were very birdy, with numerous Pine Siskins, Cassin’s Finches, Mountain Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches evident. I was surprised and skeptical to see what looked like a female Purple Finch in with the Cassin’s but eventually had at least two birds and heard their characteristic ‘pik’ flight calls. Multiple flyover sightings of Red Crossbills and Evening Grosbeaks rounded a nice set of montane finches. The hilltop position and irrigated green lawns and lush tree foliage likely made the location a minor migr...

  My original plan for Monday had been to look for Dusky Grouse with Gary and start the drive back to Washington State around lunchtime. However, with the morning now freed up and Stuart scheduled to visit the doctor, I decided to make a longish detour to bird the Salmon Arm, north of Kelowna. Salmon Arm is the premier shorebird location in interior BC and I had originally intended to include it on my itinerary. However, due to schedule constraints in returning to California, I had dropped the idea. Now that I was a couple of days ahead of schedule, I decided to go there. Similar to E WA and NE OR, the interior of BC is more on the shorebird flyway that passes through the Great Plains and Texas than the Pacific Coast. As a result, species such as Baird’s, Pectoral, Solitary, Stilt and Semipalmated Sandpipers are proportionately much commoner than on the Pacific Coast. Given the Salmon Arm probably offers more extensive habitat than any other location in the interior Pacific North...

  I had planned for a four-day stay in Burton, British Columbia, where my brother Stuart lives. I spent the time there socializing and doing some casual birding and butterflying in the immediate vicinity. I had arranged to meet a local birder – Gary Davidson – to drive up some logging roads near Nakusp to look for Dusky Grouse on my last morning. I had done this on my previous two visits and was hoping it would be 'third time lucky'. Gary also suggested that we meet the previous morning at Burton Creek mouth, along the shore of Arrow Lake, a spot that can be productive for shorebirds when the lake level is low. Unfortunately, the lake level rose immediately before I arrived and there was very little shorebird habitat present. The creek mouth had good numbers of Canada Geese and Common Mergansers and small numbers of other ducks, including three Hooded Mergansers, three Pintail and six Green-winged Teal. A Solitary Sandpiper was the main shorebird highlight. Common Loons, Ospr...

  On August 17, I began the 1500-mile drive north to visit my brother, who lives in Burton in interior British Columbia. I was planning to do some birding in Washington State to get a few new state birds on the way up. My initial goal was to see the three remaining shorebirds that occur at more or less annually in the state that I had not seen, followed by a visit to the boreal forests in the extreme NE corner of the state. I arrived in WA around 4 pm on Aug 18 and proceeded to check out some ponds near Pasco for shorebirds. The water levels and viewing angles were not that great and the best were four Solitary Sandpipers I saw flying off.   At that point, I decided to drive to another set of ponds about an hour away that had some good recent ebird lists. Upon arrival, I saw no fewer than five Solitary Sandpipers in a single scan, as well as a Semipalmated Sandpiper in with the Leasts and Westerns, both yellowlegs and Black-necked Stilts. All very nice but not what I was hop...

Apologies for the long break since my last post, but the second half of July was uninspiring. The first two weeks of August were then very busy as I had 5 days of work, followed by my daughter’s wedding. Bird wise, in late July the only minor highlight was a large concentration of 700 or more Elegant Terns at the Santa Maria River Estuary that attracted a few other tern species. I made a couple of visits there and saw up to four Common Terns, mostly first-summers as well as a few Forster’s and the breeding Least Terns. Unfortunately, a Sooty Tern that graced Arroyo Grande, just a few miles to the north of the SMRE, did not put an appearance in Santa Barbara County. I then found another first-summer Common Tern on the beach at Devereux. A couple of days later, I made another trip to Devereux with Hugh Ranson and Mark Bright. Although we did not see the bird in the field, Mark later noticed an apparently much smaller cormorant in a distant photograph of some Double-cresteds, quite po...

The morning after the excitement of the White-rumped Sandpiper at the SYRE, I had arranged a bird survey at Laguna Blanca – a freshwater lake in the upscale Hope Ranch area of Santa Barbara. The lake is surrounded by a golf course, but it is shut for maintenance every Monday morning and the La Cumbre Country Club has kindly given us access to survey the lake for birds during those periods. Since water levels were still too high for any extensive mudflats to have formed, my main purpose was to look for breeding records for the on-going California Bird Atlas project. I was joined by Hugh Ranson and we also kept an eye open for dragonflies and damselflies but were disappointed to only see very common species. There were plenty of (American) Coot and Pied-billed Grebe families in evidence and some well-grown Ruddy Duck ducklings confirmed breeding for that species as well. Otherwise, a summering Bufflehead was really the only bird of note. Eclipse Male Bufflehead The edge of the lake h...