A Lark Bunting and some raptors

 

One of the great things about the Pacific states of the USA is that the presence of high mountains, and their associated rain shadows, creates significant changes in habitats over short distances. In Santa Barbara County, we have three “traverse” ranges, which run east to west. North of the third range lies the Cuyama Valley, which hosts some semi-desert scrub and grasslands. A number of bird species are more frequent here than elsewhere in the county and it is a good area for wintering raptors.

When I first moved to Santa Barbara County, a Rough-legged Hawk showed up by the freeway about 50 minutes of Goleta and hung around for a few weeks. Since my recently purchased “Birds of Santa Barbara” described the species as an irregular winter visitor, I never got around to chasing this bird. I later discovered that it was the first in the county for almost a decade and that the species had become much more difficult. In the 25 years since, I have visited good wintering raptor areas in the county over 50 times searching in vain for a Rough-legged Hawk. Given the massive on-going decline in the US wintering population of Rough-legged Hawk, I have pretty much given up hope of seeing one in the county. However, this species is still seen most years on the Carrizo Plain (in San Luis Obispo County), which is only about 25 miles north of the Cuyama Valley. Since this winter is proving to be an above average one for Rough-legged Hawks in northern California, Wes Fritz and I decided to head out to the Cuyama to look for raptors in the hope of finding one (spoiler alert – we did not!).

I left my house at 5.30 AM and arrived at Wes’s just after 6.00 AM. After moving my gear into Wes’s car, we headed off on the 90-minute drive to the Cuyama. Our strategy was to look for raptors early in the morning, prior to any thermals developing. At that time of day, hawks and eagles are perching and easier to accurately count than later in the day when they are soaring over wide areas.

We spent about four hours focusing on raptors and totaled an impressive number: 41 Red-tailed Hawks, 9 Ferruginous Hawks (including a dark morph), 2 Golden Eagles, 2 Northern Harriers, 7 American Kestrels, 5 Prairie Falcons and 3 Merlins. We also totted up 13 Loggerhead Shrikes.

After that we began to look for some other species that occur here regularly but rarely on the south coast and saw a Roadrunner, Tricolored Blackbirds, a Rock Wren, Bell’s and Vesper Sparrows.

To end the day, we drove out to the end of Wasioja Road to follow up on some reports of American Crows from there in recent years. Ravens are very common in the Cuyama but crows are rare and irregular. In fact, I had just seen them once ever – a flock of 22. We had got almost to the end of the drivable section of the road when I heard the ‘caw’ of a crow. We got out of the car and found a group of at least 45 crows that flew off shortly after. Other than immediately finding three crows interacting with a few Ravens nearby, we never saw another crow again.

Heading back past a small farm, we heard another corvid species – this time the California endemic Yellow-billed Magpie. Santa Barbara County represents the southern extent of the range of this species. After enjoying good looks at the magpies, we started to check out a sparrow flock that was feeding along the roadside. The flock was mostly Lark Sparrows but I then saw a larger bird on the fence that lacked obvious white outer tail feathers when it flew into the field. I relocated the bird and immediately confirmed my initial suspicion that it was a Lark Bunting. This was the first time I had found this species on the mainland of the county, although I had previously found it twice out on Santa Barbara Island.

Lark Bunting

Although always irregular, Lark Buntings have declined considerably in California over the years. However, at least in some years, a few may winter in areas of extensive grassland in the state interior. In fact, Wes had found three in the Cuyama the previous winter and the species also occurs irregularly in the Carrizo Plain to the north. All-in-all, it was a great ending to a satisfying day of birding.