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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...
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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...
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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...
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Spain, Winter 2026: Belchite, Lleida and the Pyrenees

 While I had ‘got back’ one of the misses from the 2025 trip in Moustached Warbler, I still needed to catch up with Eurasian Eagle-owl and Dupont’s Lark. The eagle-owl was a lower priority as I had seen and heard one in Germany relatively recently about eight years ago. In addition, it was found throughout Europe so I might well catch up with it somewhere else. In contrast, I had only ever seen Dupont’s once – Morocco in 1988. I was unlikely to return to Spain again just to see this one bird, so I needed to score now. Although the weather was forecast to be overcast with occasional light rain the final two mornings, there was critically no wind. I was optimistic I could find the bird despite having spent some time researching advice on-line on how to find them, which was replete with horror stories of birders finally lucking into one after multiple days of searching. One interesting piece of information was that the larks would quite often perch up on small rocks to sing from. I ...
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Spain, Winter 2026: The Mediterranean Coast

 While the front half of my late winter Spain trip had been focused on seeing species I had not even tried for in my visit in May-June 2025, the back half was targeting the three species I had missed on that trip: Eurasian Eagle-owl, Moustached Warbler and Dupont’s Lark. I had put in a lot of effort but the timing was poor as they are more active earlier in the season. I drove through the rain after my stop near Belchite and ended up in a hotel a little north of Valencia. This was further south than I had originally thought I would go prior to the trip but put me in a good area for Moustached Warbler. In fact, it seemed I could probably walk to an area near to hotel if I was so inclined. I settled on the Marjal dels Moros about 10 KM to the north that had a greater variety of other wetland birds and had some viewing hides that I thought might be handy as a respite from the regular rain squalls passing through. The better news on the weather front was the lack of strong winds. I...
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Spain, Winter 2026: Before the Rain

  Some months ago, I happened to be reading an article about Cardiff Airport in Wales Online and one of the reader comments mentioned how poor Cardiff was in flights compared to Bristol Airport. This was news to me, having left the UK before the explosion of low-cost airlines. I immediately checked into the situation and found that there were flights to many cities in Europe from Bristol and that these were typically a bit cheaper than flying from Heathrow. In fact, if you were prepared to fly with no change of clothes, as my birding friend Chris Lamsdell amusingly put it, the flights were much cheaper. I decided to take advantage of this during future trips to see my relatives in Bristol and hatched a plan for a late winter trip to Spain to catch up with the three species I had tried for and missed the previous year, as well as add various woodpeckers, Lammergeier and Wallcreeper. I allowed for nine full days because of potential issues finding the woodpeckers and, of course, Du...
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Some Local Birding in early 2026

  Birding activity in Santa Barbara peaks in the last four months of the year. Birders are very active in September and October looking for migrants and then the arrival of winter visitors and scouting for the Christmas Bird Counts keeps things going until the end of the year. However, after a brief burst of activity in the first week or so of the year as people look for birds found on the Christmas Counts or get started on year lists, activity dies down. Santa Barbara County lacks large concentrations of wintering waterbirds or gulls, so one can’t really hope that something good was missed earlier. I spent most of my time   in January and February searching along the Gaviota Coast looking for loons (divers in UK parlance) and grebes and, to a lesser extent, seaducks. I am always hoping for an Arctic or Yellow-billed Loon (Black-throated or White-billed Diver) and on one of my visits I did observe a seemingly-Pacific-like loon with a white thigh patch and an apparent bump on...
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