The Goleta Birder

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There’s No Place Like Nome

The afternoon of June 1 we flew to Nome for 6 days of birding prior to heading out to Gambell. After picking up our vehicle and settling into our accommodation, we had a couple of hours of daylight to head out to the nearby Nome River Mouth, where a Red-necked Stint had been reported the previous day. As we were driving along the coast road, Andy noticed a flock of geese heading west over the ocean. These were mostly Brant but contained seven Emperor Geese, one of our key targets for the Nome Area. On arrival at the river mouth, we saw another goose flock coming into land there, which included two Emperor Geese. These gave excellent views and ended any concerns about not getting good enough looks. Emperor Goose There was a small mudflat exposed in the river mouth with a good selection of shorebirds. A couple of Bar-tailed Godwits were immediately obvious and scanning through a flock of about 80 peeps quickly revealed the Red-necked Stint – a very bright alternate-plumaged bird – a...

Return to the 49th State

Over 30 years ago, I made my first visit to Alaska. Several more followed over the next few years and culminated in me publishing the state’s first bird-finding guide. I eventually sold 3000 copies before passing the rights on to the American Birding Association as the basis for a new guide. Since the mid-90s, I have only visited the state once, with my family in 2008. That trip was memorable for the wrong reasons as young son and daughter spent the long drives to Denali and the Seward Peninsula constantly fighting and bickering in the back of the car. Fortunately, they grew out of this after that. A return visit was always in my plans because of my goal to see again the great majority of western USA and European bird species. Two of my old UK birding friends, Paul Thompson and Andy Silcocks, were keen to join as they had never been to the Arctic or the Bering Sea area. After a fair amount of planning and booking, we arranged to meet up in Anchorage on May 30 and from there mak...

End of a Nemesis

Every birder has a few nemesis species that they keep on failing to see. From a Santa Barbara County perspective, I have a few. Of these, Crested Caracara has been the most vexing. About 10 months after moving to the county, one showed up on Vandenberg Airforce (now Space) Base in July 2001. At the time, my understanding was that there was no access to the base for the generic public. However, after learning several birders had gone into to see the bird, I found out that you could get a day permit to access the area it was in. I got a permit but the bird was no longer around when I looked. Since then, there have been a couple of periods where individual caracaras have visited the county several times over a period of multiple years. They have been extremely mobile and I have always been too late to catch up with one. In the last three years, there has been a caracara moving up and down the coast between Santa Barbara and San Diego. Several local birders have seen fly-by views o...

Catching up with some spring migrants

In my previous post, I alluded to a number of species that are distinctly commoner in spring migration than at other times of the year in Santa Barbara County. In between doing bird surveys up on the Strauss wind farm, near Lompoc, I have been making regular visits to Refugio Canyon, Goleta Slough, Campus Point and the Santa Ynez River to try to catch up with them. I also did a couple of seawatches at Point Conception Lighthouse, part of a volunteer migration monitoring program I organize each spring. The photo above is courtesy of Jamie Chavez. Initially, I failed to have much luck with the best being a few Blue-winged Teals arriving at Area K in Goleta Slough and the Santa Ynez River Estuary. Both my seawatches at Point Conception were not blessed with favorable weather for large movements, but we did have both a male Black Scoter and a breeding-plumaged Rhinocerous Auklet close-in on the water on April 5, while a White-winged Scoter flew by on April 12. Fortunately, things...

The “Morning Flight” at Refugio Canyon

Some 40 years ago, birders at Cape May in New Jersey discovered a ‘morning flight’ during which warblers and other “nocturnal” migrants migrated from the Avalon Peninsula back towards the Delaware coastline in the first two to three hours of daylight. A similar flight was discovered around that time at Butterbredt Spring in Kern County in the Mojave Desert of California. For a long time, the phenomenon was believed to be confined to a few locations but the discovery of another large morning flight at Bear Divide in eastern Los Angeles County heightened interest elsewhere in southern California and birders began to discover additional sites. Starting In spring 2018, I began spending more time in Refugio Canyon, about 13 miles west of Goleta, during periods of strong northwesterly winds as local birders had become aware that larger numbers of western migrants sometimes occurred in such conditions. One motivation of course was to find rarities but there are many western migrants, i...

Some Bristol Birding

I generally do very little birding when visiting my relatives in Bristol. On a visit a couple of years ago, I made the effort to see Tawny Owl, which is resident by my aunt’s flat where I stay during my visits. I also saw a few Firecrests. This cracking little gem – an upgraded version of the New World’s Golden-crowned Kinglet – is one of those species benefiting from the warming trend in northwest Europe and has become a regular winter visitor in the city in suitable habitat. I always regular visited Sea Mills, close to my mum’s home. The River Avon is tidal here and it has always been a regular location for wintering Common Sandpipers, which are rather local as winterers in the UK. Common Redshank occurs here as well in reasonable numbers, although the other regular wintering shorebirds appeared to have declined over the years. I made a couple of visits this time and saw no Curlews, Lapwings or Dunlin. I have not seen the last two for some years and they are not as regular as...