Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

2008 was a year I moved to a new state on the other side of the country, and a part of that state I’d only been to once before. It also featured trips to China and Louisiana. The net result was one of the biggest years I’ve had in a long time. According to eBird, my year total was somewhere over 300 species. I don’t know exactly because I don’t enter the China data there. Even more impressively, 2008 saw 61 life birds, 12 from China, 3 from Louisiana, and 46 from California. That’s not even counting some new exotics like this Red-whiskered Bulbul from Huntington Library and Gardens:

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I finished 2008 with 156 BGBY species, well behind the 200+ Neil Gilbert racked up in the same county, and he’s not as well situated as I am. In my defense I didn’t start until February, and was also dealing with a move to a new state. I didn’t even get my bike repaired from damage the movers did to it until April, and I lost a couple of weeks in the middle of Spring migration on a trip to China. With some effort, this year I might be able to crack 200.

However doing that is going to take some work. In particular:
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Off Dana Point, 2009-01-10

Saturday, January 10, I got up bright and early to catch the Ocean Institute’s Sea Explorer out of Dana Point that the Sea & Sage Audubon Society had chartered for a six-hour cruise starting at 8:00 A.M. The goal was just to see what we could find in Orange County Waters. January is a good month for pelagic birding in Orange County waters. Black-vented Shearwater is a lock, and lots of others are possible. According to the trip announcement, we might find “Rhinoceros Auklet, Xantus’ Murrelet, Cassin’s Auklet, Ancient Murrelet, Common Murre, Black-vented Shearwater, Pink-footed Shearwater, Sooty Shearwater, Northern Fulmar”. In fact, we got all but three of those. Weather wise alol you really hyave to worry about is fog, and it sure beats the hell out of January off Long Island.

The route was out a triangle. Steam from Dana Point about 14 miles out to the Sea Knoll, then north and inland to a point five miles out from Fashion Island where the sewer outflow pipe spews, then back to Dana Point.

Before we even got on the boat, the parking lot produced Rock Pigeon, American Crow, Red-tailed Hawk, Brewer’s Blackbird, House Finch, Allen’s Hummingbird, and Rock Pigeon. Before we left the harbor we had Double-crested Cormorant, Hermann’s Gull, Brown Pelican, Snowy Egret, Great Egret, Western Gull, and Ring-billed Gull. On the ocean side of the jetty we found four Black Oystercatchers and some peeps we never did identify. (Sanderlings? Western Sandpipers?)

(Yes, I know the photos are even worse than usual. You try taking pictures of fast moving birds far away from a rocking boat with a point-and-shoot camera.)

At first we mostly just saw more gulls and pelicans, but once we got a little ways offshore we picked up our first real pelagic bird: a Black-vented Shearwater, and my first life bird. Or it would have been if I hadn’t missed it completely. However a few minutes later three more flew by, and these I did get on. We would see many more throughout the day, and got much better looks at them.
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A MacGillivray’s Warbler has been hanging out in Huntington Central Park near the Gothard Street parking lot for probably a month or more now. I have repeatedly tried to find it, and repeatedly come up empty. MacGillivray’s Warbler is one of my nemesis genus: the Oporornis. Its cousin the Connecticut Warbler (Oporornis agilis) eluded me for years. I still have never found a Mourning Warbler (Oporornis philadephia) or a Kentucky Warbler (Oporornis formosus). These birds all skulk around in the underbrush, and are very hard to locate.

However, others have found this particular individual, including on the recently completed Orange County Coastal Christmas Bird Count, and yesterday Sea & Sage was running a special trip to relocate as many of the rarities found on that count as we met up at the Slater Street parking lot a little before 8:00 A.M., discussed the various rarities found on the count, and planned out a plan of attack.

A White-throated Sparrow had been found in the immediate vicinity, but it probably moves around with a flock of the related White-crowned Sparrows, and one of those were in evidence at the moment. We pished a few bushes, but got nothing but a Towhee for our troubles, so we began walking slowly between the edge of the park and the island, toward the amphitheater, scanning the treetops for a Yellow-throated Vireo that’s also been hanging around for the last month or so. Yellow-rumped Warblers were abundant, and near the amphitheater I spotted our first Townsend’s warbler, but otherwise No luck, and after about an hour we turned back and began pishing our way back to the Slater Street parking lot.

However, this time we walked further up, alongside the Gothard Street parking lot as we passed it, we fanned out through the bushes. (There are a lot of “trails” in between the bushes because at different times of day, this is also a popular cruising area, much like the Ramble in that other Central Park back East.) By this point, birds other than yellow-rumps were beginning to wake up, and we found Orange-Crowned Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Wilson’s Warblers, Bushtits, and finally in a bush? Could it be? No, it was a Song Sparrow.

But wait! What’s that that just skulked into that bush? Is it…? Nope. It’s a Common Yellowthroat. But then, as I’ve split off a little from the group and am scanning what i think has got to be my fifth Common Yellowthroat in the middle of a bush, I notice that:

1. It’s much brighter yellow than usual.
2. The yellow covers the entire lower half of the bird, not just the throat and undertail like on a female Yellowthroat.
3. Those sure do look like eye arcs on its drabber face.

By this point, the rest of the group that’s down on the sidewalk has also noticed the bird from the other side, and is gesturing wildly into the bush. Yep, it’s the MacGillivray’s. I never see more than about 3/4 of one side of the bird, for probably a minute as it hops around in the bush. Then it hops up from the bush into some overhanging vegetation and vanishes. No one can relocate it even though 20 people see exactly where it went. Oporornis are like this. Even when you see one, you don’t see it for long, and then they vanish while you blink. But that’s good enough for bird #455 and my first life bird of the year. No photo, I’m afraid. Finding these birds is difficult. Photographing one is nigh-on-impossible.
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The New Orleans area Christmas Bird Counts were organized too late for me to participate–I’d already made my plane reservations so I could be available for the Orange County Counts–but my brother Tommy offered to take me out to Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in St. Tammany Parish to look for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. This is an endangered species that depends on relatively rare stands of mature pine, much like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, only not quite as endangered/extinct yet.

Tommy told me that all we had to do was drive up to the parking lot, and we’d get one. yeah, right. It wasn’t quite that easy. However, we did find a Brown-headed Nuthatch in the parking lot so we got at least one life bird there, #452. We saw several of these throughout the day. Here’s one from a little later. Look on the left side of the tree near the top, above the Red-bellied Woodpecker:

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