The Goleta Birder

If you look at a map of California, you will notice that the coast performs a right angle turn from east-west to north-south in Santa Barbara county. The location where the right angle turn occurs is Point Conception. I live along the "south coast", which is the east-west running section. This section of the coast is protected from the prevailing NW winds by the Santa Ynez Mountains and the coastal waters are relatively warmer, although still usually requiring a wetsuit. The "north coast" has colder waters immediately offshore and is much colder, windier and foggier. Unsurprisingly, this leads to some ecological differences. From a bird perspective, the most obvious is the relative abundance of alcids off the north coast compared to the south coast. The cooler, foggier conditions also enable a number of more northerly butterflies species to occur. On July 23, I headed up to the north coast with Hugh Ranson, who generously provided the photos for this post. The main ...

If you have read some of the blog entries from June, you may recall that I saw Spanish Purple Hairstreak in Monfrague in Spain and Purple Hairstreak on the Bristol Downs in the UK. Spanish Purple Hairstreaks were easy to see with many nectaring on roadside plants or perching on low tree foliage. In contrast, Purple Hairstreak is a more difficult species to see as they spend the vast majority of their time high up in oak trees. With persistence, it isn't too difficult to see small dark butterflies flitting around in the oaks, but even with binoculars it can be hard to get a good look. I was fortunate that one chose to come down to a bramble bush for 20 seconds after a 45-minute wait. Santa Barbara County, in California, where my home town of Goleta is located, is very good for hairstreaks, with over 10 species. One of the hardest to see is the Great Purple Hairstreak. Although Great Purple Hairstreak appears to have quite a wide distribution in the county, it is remarkably difficult...

  In this post I am going to discuss a few fieldmarks for separating the two dowitcher species from each other. I will start with adults in alternate plumage and then discuss juveniles. The two species are extremely similar in basic plumage and given the rarity of Short-billed Dowitcher in the county in winter, I am not going to discuss the slight differences in detail. You should always try to confirm a winter Short-billed Dowitcher by call. To reduce the learning curve, I will be covering a subset of the available fieldmarks and focusing on ones I find especially useful or easy to use. Alternate Plumage When first viewing an adult dowitcher in alternate plumage, I start by assessing the overall tone of the reddish underparts and how extensive this coloration is on the underparts. In Long-billed the underparts tend to be more brick-red and this color extends all the way through the vent. Short-billed, on the other hand, has more orange-toned underparts and this coloration ex...

  Dowitchers occur in three distinct plumages – alternate (breeding), basic (winter or non-breeding) and juvenile (young of the year). Being able to determine the plumage of a particular dowitcher is essential as plumage features that apply to a juvenile, for example, may not be relevant for an adult. Dowitchers change between plumages by going through a molt. Molt is a process that takes some time and it should therefore come as no surprise that birds on migration are often in active molt from one plumage to another.   Since these transitional plumages resulting from active molt can cause identification pitfalls, I will also give some examples of them and how to recognize them. The photographs on this post and the next were kindly provided by Peter Schneekloth (PS), Brad Hacker (BH) and Lynn Scarlett (LS). Basic Plumage Dowitchers can be in in basic plumage starting from as early as August through to April/May. Note that young birds may retain basic plumage through the ...

  Over the years I have been asked about how to separate dowitchers by a number of local birders as well as seeing requests for help with dowitcher photos posted on local on-line forums. As probably the most active birder in the county with respect to looking at shorebirds, I wanted to put down some thoughts here on my process for separating these two species. Also, as a local ebird reviewer, I would like to reduce incidences of less experienced observers making obviously incorrect claims of the species. There is already a significant amount of published material available on how to separate these two species. This paper by Lee and Birch is pretty comprehensive: https://www.aba.org/birding_archive_files/v38n5p34.pdf I will cover a subset of the identification criteria presented in the above paper, so you can focus on learning a few key features. If you can effectively master these features, you should be able to identify 90%+ of birds correctly. Given that both species are re...

  After returning to Bristol, I have been spending some time looking at butterflies again on the Downs and in the Avon Gorge. After doing a little on-line sleuthing, I confirmed that Chalkhill Blue was still occurring in the Gully area, but Small Blue was no longer regular. In addition, I noticed that Essex Skipper now occurred. This is a species that has been expanding its range in the UK since I departed. Despite a lot of heatwave hype, a fair amount of cloud cover remained over Bristol keeping the temperature several degrees lower than the forecasts. However, temperatures were warm enough for butterflies to be somewhat active even when cloudy, with naturally more showing during sunny intervals. My hopes that a greater variety of butterflies would have emerged during the ten days I was 'up north' were met. Gatekeepers has clearly just emerged and became commoner each day I looked. Of the other 'browns', Meadow Browns were commoner, Ringlets at least as common, but Mar...