Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

These photos were taken at Bolsa Chica today (May 26, 2008), at the first pulloff from PCH, where the boardwalk is. This was looking away from the ocean just past where the bench is that overlooks the tern colony (at a different time of year). I’m pretty sure the bird with lots of rufous on its chest is a Red Knot. What are the others? Red Knots? Dunlins? Curlew Sandpipers? Ruffs? Something else? There may be more than one species present.

The photos you see on this page are reduced in size. Click on each photo to see it at full resolution. The images are cropped but otherwise unretouched.

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Sometimes you have to work for a bird, and sometimes it shows up in your backyard. In this case, it showed up in the backyard of my office, which happens to be an area of the UCI Arboretum that’s not open to the public. However, you can still stand on Fairchild Road and peer over the fence. That’s what Robert McNab did on May 7 as he recounted on the OrangeCountyBirding mailing list:

I was leaving work today (~ 3:45P) and decided to look at the blackbird flock in the high dry grass near my work that I had been glancing at all day. Turned out to be 36-50 YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS with nearly the same number of Mourning Doves (and Nutmeg Mannikins) feeding in a field adjacent to the UCI – closed marsh area west of Campus drive. The flock was inside the black cyclone fence area at the north end of the FDA building, 19701 Fairchild Drive, Irvine, CA. Fairchild is a connector road between MacArthur and Jamboree Roads at the Irvine/Newport Beach boundary near Upper Newport Bay. Many birds were on the fence itself nearest the marsh and farthest the street and should be visible to non-FDA employees if you look from Fairchild Drive. Parking may be a little tricky, but where there is a will, there is a way!.

I was out of town and didn’t get the message until Thursday evening, May 8, so I didn’t get out to look for them until Friday, May 9. I checked in the morning before I went to work, but no blackbirds were to be found. I checked again in the afternoon after lunch. I walked from the FDA complex down to MacArthur and then down MacArthur pretty much all the way to San Joaquin Creek and back. I was about to give up but then just past the FDA complex in the other direction I spotted these two lovely ladies perched on a chain link fence:

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It took so long for me to finish writing up my China trip that I’ve fallen behind in reporting other sighting closer to home. After returning from China I missed the Audubon trip to Crystal Cove State Park because I wasn’t sufficiently recovered yet. However the next weekend (Sunday, May 4) I headed off to Linette Lina’s monthly walk at Santiago Oaks. It wasn’t the warbler explosion you could expect on the East Coast this time of year, but it was a very interesting trip nonetheless.

The usual suspects were out: Common Raven, Acorn Woodpecker, Red-shouldered Hawk, Western Tanager, etc. However the prize of the day was this Lazuli Bunting, #417. This is a small bird that has the sme basic plumage as a Western Bluebird, but different shape. It was fairly far away. This is the best picture I managed:

Then, shortly after we saw that one, we spotted a Hermit Warbler. I thought I’d seen one of these before, but after getting home and checking my records, I didn’t see it listed so that makes it #418. This was even smaller and less cooperat5ive than the Lazuli Bunting, so no pictures of that one. However it was very distinctive with its round yellow face, black throat, and black eye.
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Greater Roadrunner, Geococcyx californianus
Desert Hot Springs, California, 2008-05-17

Green Heron, Butorides virescens
Dana Point, 2008-05-10

Wooly Darkling Beetle, Eleodes osculans
Bolsa Chica, Orange County, CA, 2008-03-30, dusk