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Season Finale at Scorpion

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 late in the season, sparrows make up the main volume of migrants, so I was carefully checking all the sparrows. At the far end of the main campground, I found a small White-crowned Sparrow flock that contained a second Clay-colored Sparrow. A few of the sparrows flew over to a dry creek bed a short-distance away and I wandered over there to see what else was there and to my surprise, I flushed a largish, long-tailed passerine that was bright rufous-brown above – a Brown Thrasher. The bird perched in a low bush to give me a decent look at it. This was my first new “self-found” county bird of the year and only the third Brown Thrasher I had seen in over 30 years in California.

Intriguingly, a Brown Thrasher had been seen a couple of times in this very area the previous October-November but had eluded me and others who searched for it after the second sighting. I contacted Paul Lehman who told me that wintering Brown Thrashers have a very poor rate of returning for a second winter. So it may be just coincidence that this bird was in the same area.

Clay-colored Sparrow

I moved on to the group campground, where I found a large flock of White-crowed Sparrows that contained two each of Chipping and Clay-colored and an associated junco flock. The junco flock contained two birds with dark lores that were candidates for “Pink-sided” Junco, a more interior race that is rare in coastal Southern California. Given the difficulties associated with junco identification, I got some photos and had them reviewed by Paul Lehman and Peter Gaede. The conclusion was that neither was a pure “Pink-sided”, although one was getting close. After looking at some photos on-line, I found that several photos of apparent Pink-sided x Gray-headed Junco matched my bird well. I had seen this hybrid once out on Santa Barbara Island, although that individual was closer in appearance to a Gray-headed.

Not quite a Pink-sided Junco

I did a couple more back-and-forths between the campgrounds and the beach and had some success on the last one. First, a male Merlin swooped in to catch an unfortunate junco in the group campground and then I turned up a tan-striped White-throated Sparrow in the main campground. Although not a big fall-out, the saying "it only takes one bird" very much applied in this case.

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