An Overdue Garden Surprise

Although I have never really been into my 'yardlist', we have intermittently maintained seed and hummingbird feeders in our backyard, usually at the initiative of my wife, Remy. Since we moved to our current address, we have made a bit more effort and have had a few birds of interest, including six species of hummingbird and occasional visits by one or two White-winged Doves. However, we have had very little out of the ordinary with respect to seed-eating species, despite backing on to agricultural fields and having a regular flock of White-crowned Sparrows.

This fall, I have put more effort into making sure the feeder is filled regularly and also scattering seed around on the ground so the sparrows can easily access it, without having to wait for the House Finches to displace seed from the feeder.

This proved effective as I quickly built up a small flock of White-crowned Sparrows and juncos, as well as attracting the usual suspects to the feeder itself. Interestingly House Sparrows may be heading the same way in my part of California as they have back in their native UK as they have become distinctly less common locally, with just a couple showing up at the feeder.

After a few days, I noticed a Song Sparrow appearing among the sparrows and a further day or so later I saw a Lincoln's Sparrow. This was the first time there had been one in the yard for a few years. After seeing a high frequency of Lincoln's Sparrows sightings, I began to suspect there might be two. I upped my watching efforts a bit more and confirmed this. While doing so I noticed a largish sparrow that apparently had a fairly well-marked supercilium but with underside streaking much less well-defined than that expected for a Song Sparrow. Suspecting a young White-throated Sparrow, I went off to grab my binoculars and was able to confirm it indeed was. The bird hung around for the next couple of hours and I was able to get some pretty nice photos through the window.

White-throated Sparrow

White-throated Sparrows are uncommon but widespread winterers southwards from SW Washington State along the west coast. However, they thin out considerably as one heads further south in California. There are several other birders in Goleta and Santa Barbara who have them visit regularly but I suspect their yards are in areas with more trees and bushes. White-throated (and Golden-crowned) Sparrows definitely prefer more densely vegetated habitat to White-crowned Sparrows and I suspect this is why I have never seen one in the yard before. Golden-crowned is also a very occasional visitor, usually in late winter or early spring when natural food sources are diminished. As far as I can tell, the White-throated Sparrow just dropped by for the day.

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Catching up with some spring migrants

In my previous post, I alluded to a number of species that are distinctly commoner in spring migration than at other times of the year in Santa Barbara County. In between doing bird surveys up on the Strauss wind farm, near Lompoc, I have been making regular visits to Refugio Canyon, Goleta Slough, Campus Point and the Santa Ynez River to try to catch up with them. I also did a couple of seawatches at Point Conception Lighthouse, part of a volunteer migration monitoring program I organize each spring. The photo above is courtesy of Jamie Chavez. Initially, I failed to have much luck with the best being a few Blue-winged Teals arriving at Area K in Goleta Slough and the Santa Ynez River Estuary. Both my seawatches at Point Conception were not blessed with favorable weather for large movements, but we did have both a male Black Scoter and a breeding-plumaged Rhinocerous Auklet close-in on the water on April 5, while a White-winged Scoter flew by on April 12. Fortunately, things...

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Spain, Winter 2026: Before the Rain

Some months ago, I happened to be reading an article about Cardiff Airport in Wales Online and one of the reader comments mentioned how poor Cardiff was in flights compared to Bristol Airport. This was news to me, having left the UK before the explosion of low-cost airlines. I immediately checked into the situation and found that there were flights to many cities in Europe from Bristol and that these were typically a bit cheaper than flying from Heathrow. In fact, if you were prepared to fly with no change of clothes, as my birding friend Chris Lamsdell amusingly put it, the flights were much cheaper. I decided to take advantage of this during future trips to see my relatives in Bristol and hatched a plan for a late winter trip to Spain to catch up with the three species I had tried for and missed the previous year, as well as add various woodpeckers, Lammergeier and Wallcreeper. I allowed for nine full days because of potential issues finding the woodpeckers and, of course, Du...

The Goleta Birder

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