Apologies for the long break since my last post, but the second half of July was uninspiring. The first two weeks of August were then very busy as I had 5 days of work, followed by my daughter’s wedding.
Bird wise, in late July the only minor highlight was a large
concentration of 700 or more Elegant Terns at the Santa Maria River Estuary
that attracted a few other tern species. I made a couple of visits there and
saw up to four Common Terns, mostly first-summers as well as a few Forster’s
and the breeding Least Terns. Unfortunately, a Sooty Tern that graced Arroyo
Grande, just a few miles to the north of the SMRE, did not put an appearance in
Santa Barbara County. I then found another first-summer Common Tern on the
beach at Devereux.
A couple of days later, I made another trip to Devereux with
Hugh Ranson and Mark Bright. Although we did not see the bird in the field,
Mark later noticed an apparently much smaller cormorant in a distant photograph
of some Double-cresteds, quite possibly a Neotropic. Hugh and I returned the
next day but could not find any sign of it and left it at that. Other than
that, I began to check Area K in Goleta Slough where the water levels were
dropping low and attracting a large concentration of Snowy (up to 120) and
Great (up to 45) Egrets along with some shorebirds, although water depth
limited the variety of species present.
Starting August 1, I had to make a number of visits up to
Lompoc to do my surveys on the wind farm there, giving me an opportunity to
check out the Santa Ynez River Estuary regularly. The initial trip yielded a
couple of Pacific Golden-plovers in the Black-bellied Plover flock. This
species is scarce but annual in the county. The local Least Terns had also
brought their young down to the SYRE to fish, allowing nice looks.
The next day, Tina Tan came up from Ventura to bird with me.
We walked around NCOS and Devereux Slough all the way to the beach. This turned
up my first Lesser Yellowlegs of the fall and as we were scanning the blocked
slough mouth from the beach, I noticed a distinctly small cormorant standing
along the edge. It was 70% the size of the nearby Double-crested and lacked a
well-marked orange or yellow supraloral stripe. The yellow skin at the gape
clearly ended in a point, which is another supporting fieldmark, although some
Double-crested can also show this. Another visiting birder, Derek Freese, was
out on the beach and I asked him to take some photos of the bird and send them
to me, to compliment those taken by Tina.
Although these photos were much closer than Mark’s original
one, they were still a little distant and distorted by heat haze. They clearly
showed all the features listed above, but some also seemed to show a hint of
darker lores and an indistinct yellow supraloral. Since Neotropic Cormorants
will quite often interbreed with Double-cresteds as they spread into new areas,
this raised the question of whether this bird might in fact be a hybrid. As one
of the local ebird reviewers, it was interesting going through the photos
submitted subsequently in the various checklists of the other local birders who
went to look at the bird. Some also show the hint of the Double-crested-like
loral pattern but all these suffered from suboptimal lighting. The bird was
finally found to be perching up in the dead trees close to second parking area along
Devereux Slough and Eunice Schroeder finally got really good photos, which
showed a typical Neotropic face pattern, as well as the long tail. I also went
through many photographs in the Macauley Library on ebird and found several
examples of Neotropic Cormorants showing some yellow in the supraloral area. Of
course, it is impossible to be sure if this is normal variation or a result of
some introgression of Double-crested genes. I did find a photograph of a bird
from Costa Rica, too far south for any hybridization to be likely, that was a
good match to our bird.
Monday, August 3, found me on a boat trip to one of my
favorite birding locations – Santa Barbara Island. For over a decade it has
been extremely difficult to visit the island and so when I learned of this
opportunity, I decided to get on board, even though the time of year was not
conducive to running into migrants out there. I was the only birder so that limited
pelagic birding possibilities as the boat didn’t stop or slow down for any
birds we saw for the most part.
Nevertheless, on the outbound ride, I saw a pair of
Craveri’s Murrelets and dozens of Black and Ashy Storm-petrels. A Leach’s or
Townsend’s Storm-petrel was a surprise given that we did not loop out into
deeper water. This individual had a fairly limited of white on the rump and was
perhaps most likely a Chapman’s Leach’s, although since Townsend’s has both
dark-rumped and white-rumped variants, I am not sure how that species can be
eliminated.
On arrival at the island, I noted a Wandering Tattler in the
landing cove and, once ashore, I hiked up to the North Peak to look for any
migrants before looping back south down into the canyons. I was interested to
see if I could find any Song Sparrows, which might have returned to breed on
the island a couple of years ago as I found at least five back then in a fall
trip. There was no sign of any Song Sparrows, but decent numbers of House
Finches suggested that this species does in fact breed on the island. I
eventually found a migrant – an Ash-throated Flycatcher – but otherwise just a
few resident breeding species, the most interesting being a couple of Barn
Owls.
Like many other birders, I have a tendency to switch off on
the return leg of pelagic trips, unless I am a leader. On this particular trip,
I felt that this was actually justified as the direct route from SBI to Ventura
is notoriously bad for seabirds. We had already got within several miles east
of Anacapa when I was jolted out of my dozy state by the captain calling out an
albatross. I dashed outside and quickly picked up a Laysan Albatross. This is
the first albatross I had ever seen on the SBI route, one that I have done
dozens of times. Black-footed Albatross are regular in the summer just around
25-30 miles west of SBI, but Laysan is decidedly not. However, this species has
become markedly more frequent along the California coast in recent decades as
it has a rapidly growing colony on Isla Guadalupe, off Baja California. I did
give the bird a good look to make sure it wasn’t a vagrant Salvin’s or Chatham
Albatross. Although pretty much all the folks on board got out on the deck to
look for the bird, a Cocos Booby happened to be flying by and most appeared to
end up looking at that.
There were (for a normally dead area) a surprisingly number
of shearwaters and even a few storm-petrels around, although I was still too
lazy to resist going back into the cabin. Within a couple of minutes, the
captain announced a booby was flying by the boat and I looked out the window to
see a near-adult Masked or Nazca Booby flying right besides the boat.
Unfortunately, it then flipped over to the other side of the boat and with all
the other folks getting up to look for it, I was only able to manage one quick
but very good binocular view. I have found that it is often difficult accurately
determine the bill color of these boobies, which is the key distinction between
these two. Classic Masked is supposedly greenish-yellow while textbook Nazca is
orange or pinkish. In the real-world off California, the bills seem to be mostly
“yellow” with a duller base. So it becomes a case of is it more lemon-yellow or
golden or orange-yellow? As ever, everyone (including me) hates putting down a
fairly rare bird as Masked/Nazca Booby so there is a tendency to force fit the
identification. I was leaning towards Masked on my sight view as the bird
certainly lacked obvious orange or pink tones, but unsure as I hadn’t seen much
evidence of greenish tones either. I solicited some photos from a couple of
folks on the boat to circulate with other experienced seabirders. This failed
to elucidate the situation much further as they felt that they could not
eliminate a dull Nazca or Masked x Nazca intergrade, although we were all
leaning Masked. So a “/” it was. Yuck. Time for these two to be re-lumped,
along with the Bean Geese!
The next few days yielded a pick-up in shorebird migration.
As Area K continued to drop, shorebird variety increased with two or three
Lesser Yellowlegs often around and a juvenile Solitary Sandpiper appearing. The
first time, I only heard it calling but two days later got good looks. Peep
numbers were also increasing as more exposed mud appeared, so it wasn’t a
massive surprise when I found a juvenile Semipalmated Sandpiper there. The
first three weeks of August are by far the peak time for this species. A couple
of days later, I found a second juvenile on the SYRE, along with a juvenile Red
Knot, and then a different juvenile Semipalmated at Area K.
A final minor surprise was a juvenile Yellow-crowned
Night-Heron at the SYRE. This species is now quite regular at estuarine
locations along the south coast with a recent maximum of 22 seen at Carpinteria
Salt Marsh. In contrast, it remains a major rarity along the north coast, with
this sighting being only the second record.
I would like to thank Tina Tan, Derek Freese, Dennis Houghton
and Tyler Hobbs for providing photos for this entry. I am now heading up to
visit my half-brother in interior British Columbia – a drive of 1500 miles. I
will be birding a fair bit in Washington State on the way up and down, as well the
Oregon and NW California coast.
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