2026 has been proving to be a productive year for additions to my Santa Barbara county list. Most of the more ‘gettable’ additions are seabirds, assuming I can stomach going on enough pelagic trips. Among the potential passerine vagrants I had yet to see, Philadelphia Vireo stood out as one that I should get sooner or later. However, after 26 years in the county with only one chaseable bird that I had missed, it seemed far from inevitable that I would see one.
Ironically, when I first moved to California in 1992,
Philadelphia Vireo was the first CBRC rarity that I found – a bird at Andrew
Molera State Park on the Big Sur coastline of Monterey County. A few years
later, the CBRC removed this species from their review list as it had proven to
be a fairly regular vagrant. However, Philadelphia Vireo occurs much more
frequently in the (San Francisco) Bay Area than they do along the southern coast
of California. During my time in the county, there had been only three records,
so about six or seven years ago, I hatched a plan to try to find one.
At least around the Bay Area, this species is often found in
willows. As riparian habitat there is also productive for vagrant fall warblers,
you don’t need to do anything special to look for the vireo. However, around
Santa Barbara, migrant warblers primarily occur in exotic vegetation such as
tipuana and eucalyptus trees. Along creeks, one pretty much gets an endless
diet of Townsend’s and Orange-crowned Warblers with a few Wilson’s. Yellow
Warblers are distinctively scarce in such habitat. Therefore, I needed to force
myself to start birding along creeks with good riparian to find the vireo. For
the first five years, I mostly focused my efforts along Atascadero Creek, which
offers the best riparian habitat in Goleta. A couple of years ago, using some
deductive reasoning Einstein would have been proud of, it occurred to me to also
start checking the last location one was seen in the county! This was along
Refugio Creek, just upstream of Refugio Beach State Park.
September 22 saw me start off at La Cumbre Peak, where the
montane bird invasion continued with 166 Clark’s Nutcrackers and over 40 Cassin’s
Finches. After I finished up there, I headed back down to the Hollister Tech Park,
where I hoped to catch up with a Prairie Warbler than had shown up the previous
day and had been claimed earlier in the morning. By the time I arrived there,
other birders had also seen a bright male Blackburnian Warbler. Unfortunately,
there was no sign of either bird and while trying to look for the Blackburnian,
another birder reported a Chestnut-sided at the other side of the park, which I
couldn’t refind either!
At that point, I decided to cut my losses and head up to Refugio Creek to make an attempt to find a Philadelphia Vireo. Once I arrived, I worked my way along the creek playing a mobbing tape to pull in birds from the extensive riparian strip. This didn’t prove all that effective but at my final stop, I did get a couple of Wilson’s Warblers and Western Tanagers to appear. I started to walk back to the car but had only gone about 50 yards when I noticed a Chestnut-backed Chickadee and a couple of Bushtits in willows above my head. Thinking there was possibly a feeding flock in the vicinity, I decided to try playing some Red-eyed Vireo alarm calls as a variation on the mobbing tape. This immediately brought in a couple more birds, one of which showed a yellow wash throughout the underparts and dark eyeline. I immediately thought Philadelphia Vireo but waited a couple of seconds to get a better look to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating on a bright Orange-crowned Warbler. The bird progressively came closer and I had really good looks for 30-40 seconds. I was able to see the yellow wash throughout the underpart that was strongest on the breast and very well-defined dark lores, both key distinctions from Warbling Vireo. I even had time to check the Tech Park again, this time missing a Blackpoll Warbler. However, I would trade missing those warblers for finding a major rarity like a Philadelphia Vireo every day.
It is very rare that I go looking for specific rarity and
then actually find it. Many of the remaining potential additions to my county list
are so infrequent that it is hard to have a plan to effectively search for them.
I thought the vireo might be hard to relocate in the
extension riparian strip, but it fortunately stayed for four days so most
caught up with it. The photos in this post were generously provided by Sophie
Cameron and Hugh Ranson.
Comments
Post a Comment