Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

I had New Year’s Eve off so I decided to see if I could add a few final birds to my BGBY list. I could have tried for the Northern Waterthrush at San Joaquin or a possible Yellow-throated Vireo at Mason Park. However, those sites are just too familiar. I’ve been to each of them many, many times over the last year; and they hold few surprises any more. Instead I decided to get on my bike and head down to the beach; more specifically to Robert E. Badham, where a lot of the rocky shorebirds and pelagic birds hang out. I hadn’t yet been out to the shore on my Bigby travels this year, and thus there were at least two guaranteed new BGBY birds on almost any trip–Heermann’s Gull and Brandt’s Cormorant–and another dozen or so were possible. so I pumped up my bike tires, packed my scope and a lunch in my backpack, and took off down the Mountains to Sea trail.

The morning was incredibly foggy, not the best climate for viewing birds. Plus high tide was coming at Badham about 10:00 AM and low tide at 4:30 AM. On any other day, I would have called it off, and gone back to Mason or San Joaquin; but this was really now or never for the beach in 2009. When I started I could hear a few birds but visibility was severely restricted. I was very glad that most of the trip would be on bike paths and very low traffic roads since I wasn’t sure cars could see me. I could hear some Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Crow or two, and just barely make out a couple of Mallards in San Diego Creek. I heard Canada Geese honking long before I saw them fly down the creek. I hoped the fog would lift quickly, but by the time I reached Upper Newport Bay, it was still thick on the ground:

I could make out the American Coots in the water, a few Lesser Scaup, a noticeable group of Redheads, and a few shorebirds including a Long-billed Curlew and a Spotted Sandpiper. However, I didn’t even bother pulling my scope out of my backpack since I couldn’t see far enough to need it anyway. Searching for the Loggerhead Shrike or Short-eared owl would have been hopeless. Sidenote: Willet calls from out of the fog are really eerie.
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Saturday, December 20, I got to Starr Ranch bright and early at 6:30 AM for the San Juan Capistrano Christmas Bird Count. I was assigned to a team walking the Juanino Trail in Caspers Wilderness Park. The rain earlier in the week had played havoc with the plans for the count since multiple areas were no longer accessible. We car-pooled over from Starr Ranch, and I joined up with Candace and Steve, a couple of park rangers, at the Nature Center.

Stefan dropped the three of us off at the trail head and we hiked back approximately 3.4 miles. Overall the trail was quiet. Yellow-rumped Warblers were by far the most common species, but Turkey Vultures also put in a respectable showing with at least 15. We only picked up about 20 species, but several of them were singletons nobody else in our section of the count circle spotted: California Gnatcatcher, Phainopepla, and Orange-crowned Warbler. I also found a Golden-crowned Sparrow at the Nature Center’s feeders. Technically it was outside my area, but the folks covering the nature center area had missed it, so we added it to their list.

My total list for the morning wasn’t so impressive but we did get some individual species no one lese in casper’s found including Phainopepla, Orange-crowned Warbler, and California Gnatcatcher:
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I’ve gotten so used to finding pretty much everything with either Wikipedia or Google, that sometimes I’m a little shocked when there’s something I can’t find. On Friday I found myself trying to puzzle out the exact location of the UCI Ecological Preserve, allegedly one of the best sites to find Cactus Wrens in Orange County. It’s also a good picture of just what most of Irvine would look like if it hadn’t been irrigated and suburbanized beyond all recognition.

I was able to establish that the preserve was probably on the main campus, and not a remote site, but nothing I found anywhere said more than that; and I’ve been told that UCI has the second largest campus in the U.S. Only Stanford’s is larger. However after looking at Google Maps satellite pictures, I did manage to narrow it down to only a couple of possible undeveloped locations. And with a little on-site reconnaissance I found it. So here’s how you get there:
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Saturday Jon Dunn led about a dozen volunteers from the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy on a field ID trip to Bolsa Chica. Dunn’s a noted expert on California birds in general and gulls in particular, so we found some birds I never would have picked out without him like this first-year Thayer’s Gull:

Notice the skinny, all-black bill, pink legs, dark tail, and dark eye on a coffee-colored, scaly gull that’s the same size as the California Gull in the background. Not so obvious in this poor digiscoped photo (I just held up my camera to the scope eyepiece and prayed) is the white striping along the primaries.
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There’s a big difference between “What else could it be?” and “That’s what it is!” When Kelsey Gonzalez spotted a roughly mockingbird-sized grayish bird with a streaked breast and a downward curved bill between Ponds 2 and 3 at San Joaquin this morning, I was really tempted to call it a Sage Thrasher. After all, nothing else even came close. American Pipit, seen earlier in the day, was probably the second best, but the bill was completely wrong for that. In fact, everything else even remotely possible with that streaked a breast had a straight bill, and the bill was the most distinctive feature. Still, Sage Thrasher would be a very unusual bird for that location, and one thing stood in the way: according to the field guide, the iris should be yellow, and this bird’s wasn’t. It wasn’t completely dark, but it was what I called a hazel brown.

Thank God for the Web! When I got home, I used Google image search to look for Sage Thrasher photos, and sure enough: even if the field guides don’t mention it, lots of Sage Thrashers have a noticeably hazel brown irises! That clinched it for me: it was a Sage Thrasher, life bird #449 and my 250th bird in California.
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I haven’t done a lot of rarity chasing this year. Coming from Brooklyn, there’s not a lot of excitement in finding a Yellow-breasted Sapsucker, an American Redstart, or an American Tree Sparrow, all of which are common park birds back east. Instead I’ve been focusing on local western birds that are still lifers for me such as Black Turnstone and Surfbird. However when I heard about a Painted Redstart over in Bonelli Regional Park, that seemed worth chasing. It’s a common southern Arizona bird, but doesn’t show up much elsewhere. However this one seems to be pretty reliable, and it’s less than an hour away from Irvine.

I got to the park about 8:30 this morning, and after getting a little lost–I think I was driving down a horse trail–I eventually located the correct parking lot. I luckily stumbled on the monthly bird walk at Bonelli park, and they helpfully pointed me to the correct tree in which to look. They’d already seen the Redstart. I drove to the other end of the parking lot, and scanned the tree. House Finches were singing noisily, but no Redstart. I walked across the road and picked up Hutton’s Vireo, and then came back to the Oak. About 10 minutes later, the redstart flies in with a quick “Che-wee. Che-wee”.

I got a brief look at it, before it disappeared again into the middle of the foliage. It’s a striking and unmistakeable bird though. Then, about a minute later, it burst out again with a lot more calling and activity, and I was able to grab some pictures and study it a bit.

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