A Big Montane Year Arrives

 

Although a few bird species that require coniferous forest are resident in the highest peaks of the San Rafael Mountains in Santa Barbara County, these mountains need special access permissions and require multi-hour drives on poorly maintained dirt roads. As a result, it makes more sense to drive a slightly longer amount of time to the California Sierras or other high mountain ranges in Southern California to see these species and several others that do not breed or winter regularly in the county.

In my case, you may have read here that I just had driven a lot further to see many of these species in Washington and British Columbia. However, in some years the failure of cone crops can trigger irruptive behavior in many montane bird species when they can appear in areas far from their normal range.

On the morning of September 5, I visited the Hollister Tech Park, which is sometimes a productive site for migrating warblers. I found very few warblers but was surprised to turn up three Red-breasted Nuthatches. This species is irregular in its occurrence and can be almost absent some years but fairly widespread every two or three years. This was a week of two earlier than I would normally expect them in normal good year and perhaps hinted at something bigger. A much bigger hint popped up on the local ebird RBA shortly afterwards with a report of four Clark’s Nutcrackers at La Cumbre Peak. At least in the more accessible parts of the county, this species can go five to ten years between appearances. I had seen my first at Figueroa Mountain in the fall of 2000, shortly after I first moved to the county. There was another winter when a few birds hung around Figueroa and then a long gap before some wandering groups showed up around La Cumbre Peak three years ago. Significantly, the incursions during my 25 years in Santa Barbara County had all started in October or later. Therefore, a record in early September indicated that something really big might be brewing, perhaps on the scale on the 1996 montane invasion along coastal California, much of which I had missed due to some long birding trips to Japan and Korea at the time.

Having lived in the county for over two decades, I had managed to see all the montane species that had occurred in the county with one exception – Pinyon Jay. This species is very localized in distribution and occurs in more desert-like montane habitat dominated by Pinyon Pines or Junipers. My birding buddy, Wes Fritz, who monitors seemingly ever RBA in North America, called to tell me that had been an incursion of Pinyon Jays into San Diego and another extralimital record further north, indicating that this species was also on the move.

There had been some Pinyon Jays in the NE of the county during the fall of 2000. However, having just moved to the county and very focused on my new job, I had not attempted the three-hour one-way drive to look for them. Wes had not gone for them either so both of us needed the species for our county list. After a LONG wait, a few extralimital Pinyon Jays showed up around Southern California in 2023 and Hugh Ranson had two fly over La Cumbre Peak while looking for nutcrackers up there. However, there were no subsequent records and some research on ebird revealed that since 2000, extralimital records of Pinyon Jay in the state were most common in September and dropped off after early October. This was contrary to my experience of other montane species, which often don’t even start moving until October. I therefore determined that once there was any evidence of Pinyon Jay movements I needed to put in the time to find one.

An added complication is that records of wandering Pinyon Jays are very random. In fact, they are mostly from lowland areas and are not concentrated in the mountains like Clark’s Nutcrackers. However, given how few previous records there were to go on, I decided to make some repeated visits to La Cumbre Peak in the hope of repeating Hugh’s sighting of 2023. I also made a visit to Figueroa Mountain in hope of finding jays or nutcrackers but had no luck and had to cut the visit short due to rain – an even rarer event in September than seeing a Pinyon Jay! A sighting of a flock of 50 jays from Ventura in the coastal lowlands under 40 miles to the east decidedly upped the ante and the morning of September 9 saw me up at La Cumbre Peak, constantly scanning to the east from various positions. There was no initial sign of any nutcrackers but a few Red-breasted Nuthatches were around and I eventually found a Pygmy Nuthatch, which was more evidence of a montane bird irruption. After a long wait, I eventually picked up a distant flock of about 15 birds heading towards us from the east. I was pretty confident they were nutcrackers but lost them as they went behind a ridge. Fortunately, a couple of other observers got brief looks at the flock as they passed closer to confirm the identification.

Clark's Nutcrackers

Other observers saw more nutcrackers the next day and I headed up again on September 11 to try again. Making sure I stayed at different watchpoint on La Cumbre Peak with a better view of the ridgeline, we recorded a seemingly incredible 184 Clark’s Nutcrackers, but no Pinyon Jays. At one point a Merlin appeared and proceeded to strafe some of the nutcrackers.

Merlin

Almost 400 nutcrackers were seen the next day, the highest count ever in the state, while I was out on a pretty good pelagic trip (more on that in another post), and quite a crowd of birders was present the next morning, including several out-of-county birds who were interested to see the phenomenon. We eventually counted 500 nutcrackers before I decided to call it quits. The other observers hung on a little longer and reached over 600 birds.

My decision to leave a little early proved fortuitous. I was driving down East Camino Cielo about two to three miles west of La Cumbre Peak when I saw a jay fly across the road and perch on a dead agave stem. Even though it was sure to be a California Scrub-Jay, which are common along the ridge line, I thought I had better stop and check. I put my binoculars on the bird as it took flight and I got a decent look as it flew up and then turned to climb up the ridge. The uniform blue plumage, relatively short (for a jay) tail and long, pointed bill made the bird an obvious Pinyon Jay! Wow, two county birds in two days (see the pelagic post) and no need to have do speculative long drives out to the Cuyama Valley or San Rafael Mountains in the hope of finding one there.

Postscript: The next day birders at La Cumbre Peak saw over 1100 Clark’s Nutcrackers, the highest count ever listed in ebird.

Thanks to Sophie Cameron for the photos in this post.