The Goleta Birder

  If you have been following the news, you may have seen that Southern California had a pretty much unprecedented amount of rain for November. In fact, the EIGHT inches that fell over a spell of just four days and may have been a record for almost any time of year.  Although the winds associated with the storm were weak, they were enough to bring some phalaropes and gulls ashore. After seeing Red (Grey for any UK readers) and Red-necked Phalaropes and Bonaparte’s Gulls at the Santa Ynez River Mouth, I returned there on November 21 to lead a Santa Barbara Audubon field trip there. The heavy rains had caused the river mouth to blow open the day before so the extensive flooding on the saltmarsh had largely receded and there were now some intertidal sand flats right at the mouth. Red Phalarope Since it was already a couple of days since the last of the rain, I was worried that all the birds might have left so I was very relieved to see some close-in Red Phalaropes right by the...

On November 5 th , I had arranged to meet up with Brad Hacker to go birding. We had decided to drive out on the Jalama Road to look for sparrow flocks as there are often large flocks of White-crowned Sparrows along the roadside. Traffic on the road is fairly light and it is easy to stop and check them out for something better. We would then head over to the Santa Ynez River mouth to look for waterbirds. On the drive towards the turn to Jalama Road, Brad complained about the total lack of sparrows coming to feeders in his year so far this fall. Unfortunately, this proved to be prescient for our drive as it soon became apparent there were fewer and smaller sparrow flocks along the road compared to years past. At one spot, we were able to coax out a “Sooty” Fox Sparrow and three Golden-crowned Sparrows, both species that tend to be commoner up in montane chaparral in our area, especially the Fox Sparrow. We later found about 10 more Golden-crowneds in a large but somewhat distant White-...

Shortly after returning from Baja, I noticed that a heatwave was about to hit the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. These heatwaves are caused by offshore airflows that bring hot air from the interior and push the cool marine air away from the coast. One of large fall-outs that had previously occurred at Scorpion Anchorage (on Santa Cruz Island) was associated with such a heatwave, so I decided to roll the dice and head out there on Oct 29. The winds associated with the offshore flow were very light, so I didn’t get my hopes up too high. On arrival, there did initially appear to be a bit more activity than usual with several Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers zipping around and I quickly found a couple of Western Tanagers and a Clay-colored Sparrow. However, as I proceeded further towards and into the campground, it quickly became apparent that there had been no significant arrival and some expected migrants like Fox Sparrow were not around at all. This lat...

  The next morning we exited Guerrero Negro at dawn and headed over the state line to its airport, which lies in Baja California (BC) rather than Baja California Sur (BCS). Wes was anxious to get photographs of the local race of Bell’s Sparrow as he is trying to photograph as many subspecies of North American birds as possible. We found a track that led to some low vegetated dunes, suitable for both the sparrow and the local race of LeConte’s Thrasher, the latter bird being a potential addition to my BC list. Once we reached the correct habitat, we found both species fairly easily and got excellent views and photographs. I have seen LeConte’s Thrasher less than 10 times in my life, so it is always a treat to see them, although I have seen all three populations this year! Bell Sparrow's We then moved on north to Villa Jesus Maria, a farming settlement known as a good location for grassland species such as longspurs, pipits and Horned Larks. Although we found several good-looking...

  We spent a few hours in the morning checking various areas in Guerrero Negro. This proved to be fairly dull although we saw our first Northern Waterthrushes of the trip, along with some gulls, shorebirds and herons. We next headed out towards Vizcaino Junction, where we checked out the sewage ponds. Once we averted our gaze from all the floating diapers, we found several birds of interest, including a flock of 19 Aleutian Cackling Geese, 3 Pectoral Sandpipers and a few Yellow-headed Blackbirds as well as all three species of teal. We next headed out into the Vizcaino proper. It was very evident that the desert had received a fair amount of rain from the hurricane and when we stopped at the pumping station at Bombeo, Kurt remarked that he had probably never seen so much water there. The small pool there was alive with drinking White-crowned and Brewer’s Sparrows and Wes turned up a couple each of Green-tailed Towhee and Clay-colored Sparrow, which eluded me. We then headed out...

  After I returned from my previous trip to Baja, a combination of work commitments and a pelagic trip ate up most of my time. The pelagic trip gave good looks at a nice selection of birds, including Black-footed Albatross, Flesh-footed and Buller’s Shearwaters, Long-tailed Jaeger, South Polar Skua and Sabine’s Gulls. However, nothing was new for my county list and bad weather caused our last trip to the Santa Barbara Island booby colony to be cancelled. Birding around Santa Barbara County remained distinctly dull but I had already arranged a nine-day trip to Baja. Wes Fritz joined me and we drove down Friday evening to Bajamar to meet up with Kurt Radamaker. Kurt is a multi-decade veteran of Baja birding and was going to take us down to the legendary Vizcaino Peninsula where the proximity of the arid desert to the coast maximizes concentration of vagrants. There are numerous good spots on the way down. Saturday morning started with a check around Bajamar and Rio Descanso, but ...