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.
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.
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.
Comments
Post a Comment