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.

Comments

Belated Mexico: The Bat Cave and Quintana Roo

To break up the long drive to Cancun, we planned to stop at Xpujil, near the eastern edge of the Calakmul Biosphere for a couple of days. Starting on the eastern edge of Calakmul and continuing east towards the coast, the forest becomes wetter and many of the species that occur in eastern Chiapas also occur there, although their status is much less well-known. Given that we had limited knowledge of how to access the various sites and we knew that at least some of them were on ejido lands, we hired Claudio Lopez (+52 983 182 6203 on Whatsapp) as a birding guide to maximize our efficiency and avoid potential problems. Claudio turned out to have exceptionally sharp vision, which made both Paul and myself keenly aware that our age was catching up with us! Before we reached Xpujil we decided to stop off at the bat cave near the entrance to Calakmul. After arriving there, we discovered we had to wait until a guided tour in the evening before we could go in. After waiting about an hou...

Belated Mexico: Eastern Chiapas

I had missed some species during my first trip to eastern Chiapas a few years ago. These mainly fell into two camps: Straight-up misses and a group of easy-to-hear but difficult-to-see species such as tinamous. I was hoping that the latter group might be a bit more responsive to playback than in the winter but that proved to be a vain hope. Realistically, I need to return in the rainy season, when breeding activity peaks. When I had begun to plan the trip, I discovered that the classic birding locations at Bonampak and Xaxchilan were not currently accessible to tourists because cartels were operating heavily in the area to detain would-be-USA immigrants and force them to pay for passage to the USA. As a result, I focused my trip on a visit to Naha, where the local birder, Miguel Garcia Cruz (+52 916 164 3094 on Whatsapp), said things were OK. Naturally, after making all the arrangements and bookings, there was a change in the presidential administration in the USA. The new Tr...

A Visit to “Booby Island”

When I first moved to Goleta in 2000, boobies of any species were barely annual in coastal southern California. Starting around 2013, that situation began to change and significant numbers of Cocos (formerly the brewsteri race of Brown Booby) began to occur on Sutil Rock, off Santa Barbara Island. These subsequently began to breed along with odd pairs of Blue-footed Booby. A period of warm water also greatly increased records of Masked, Nazca and Red-footed Boobies with the result that sometimes four or five species of booby might be seen in a single boat trip and all five have been observed roosting on Sutil Rock. Since the booby colony represented a significant detour from the preferred routes of pelagic birding trips out of Ventura harbor, we recently started running some dedicated trips out to Santa Barbara Island. Since Santa Barbara Island is over 40 miles offshore, the journey out and back is in itself quite good for pelagic bird species, providing the optimalroute is t...

The Goleta Birder

Search This Blog