Desert Spiny Lizard at Sonny Bono Salton Sea NWR Visitors Center elev. -220′
It seems like nearly every trip to the California deserts lately, I encounter Desert Spiny Lizards (Sceloporus magister). They are resident in desert habitats across the American Southwest and northern Mexico and can be anywhere in elevation from well below sea level to about 5000 feet.
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In this article, we’ll be covering best practices for using binoculars. Every birder has binoculars, but not every birder knows or understands how to get the best results from them: how to set them up, how to hold them, and how to wear them for optimal performance. Continue reading
Arriving at the Short-tailed Albatross.
Even on the most banal of days, birding is always an adventure. You often miss expected birds and see surprises. Sometimes, a rarity shows up and the chase is on. On Saturday, June 5th a few miles out of San Pedro, California, a fishing boat captain found a bird he did not recognize, so he texted a photo to a friend he knew could help. The bird turned out to be a Short-tailed Albatross!
While birding at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in southern California on 31-AUG-19, we found a plover with an unusually heavy black breast band. This bird was feeding on the mud of the ponds beside a handful of Semipalmated Plovers, and other shorebirds. Compared to nearby Semipalmated Plovers, this plover seemed slightly larger – just a tiny bit huskier and longer-winged. Further observation of the bird suggested we had found a wildly out-of-place Common Ringed Plover, Charadrius hiaticula. We sent word out to the local birding websites and hotlines, and at that point, the circus began!
The male Common Ringed Plover showing the heavy black breast band. Photo © Jeff Bray, 2019
Many features that distinguish Common Ringed from Semipalmated Plovers (Charadrius semipalmatus) are minute and subtle. They can be very hard to observe, let alone document. There were seven Semipalmated Plovers clustered around the pond where the mystery plover was foraging. All of them were either females or juveniles; not a single adult male Semipalmated Plover was present. This was, in itself, a little odd. The unknown plover male really stood out with its very wide, black breast band. Continue reading
The 2019 Painted Lady movements through Southern California were impressive. In a time when immense wildlife explosions of anything are almost unheard of, this colossal migration was distinctive. Thoughts of enormous arthropod (insect) invasions so often bring concerns of other hostile species to mind. The Painted Ladies were a magnificent blast of beautiful color.
In March 2019, the Painted Lady northward migration saw huge spikes in the number of butterflies over previous years. This was thought to have been their single largest migration since, possibly, the late 1960s. Remarkable waves of Painted Ladies flowed through the cities and deserts alike. Previous, yet smaller, movements of this butterfly happened in 1998 and again in 2005. The 2005 migration year was estimated at one billion butterflies. The spectacle of this movement was striking. The soft orange butterflies travel at fast speeds with direction, intent, and purpose. Continue reading
The Coati makes its entrance
On a recent birding trip to southeastern Arizona, I ran across a mammal I have long wanted to meet: the White-nosed Coatimundi, Nasua narica. Known as a coati for short, this attractive beast is a member of the raccoon family, Procyonidae, as suggested by its facial mask and faintly ringed tail. All of the world’s four coati species reside only in the Americas. Other species include the Eastern and Western Mountain Coatis, and the South American Coati. Only the White-nosed Coati occurs in the United States, where it is found from southern Arizona, across the southwest corner of New Mexico to south Texas from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico. The White-nosed Coati?s range extends all the way through Central America into northwestern Columbia. Continue reading
Adult Male in Cochahuasi Animal Sanctuary
While every corner of the globe brings its own plethora of bird species to the table, few countries attract such attention as Peru. Second only to Columbia in the sheer number of species, Peru’s vast array of climates house species from all areas of the birding spectrum. Perhaps the most intriguing species in the nation is the Andean Condor.
Heavier than all other flying birds and second only in wingspan to the Wandering Albatross, this giant scavenger has always struck awe in the entire birding community. I am certainly no exception, and I finally got to see some myself in August of 2018. Continue reading
Red-flanked Bluetail at the William Clark Library in Los Angeles, California
When word broke on a Monday of a Red-flanked Bluetail found at the William Andrews Clark Library, it caused a panic. We scrambled for our field guides to see what one even looked like, and then looked up the library hours of operation. The news wasn?t good: the facility only opened during the week when most of us are working instead of birding. This whole working-for-a-living thing really puts a damper on birding! We spent an anguished week watching the reports verifying the bird was still present. Fortunately, the bird hung around, so we drove to Los Angeles to chase it. A crowd of about 100 local birders milled around by the library gate, mixing with visitors from further afield. Promptly at 9:00 am, the gates opened and people started speed-walking towards the opposite end of the property. The grounds were beautiful: lush, with mature lawns, dense hedges, and concrete walkways shaded by huge ficus and magnolia trees. Continue reading
First view of the Wood Sandpiper
Recently, a report of a Wood Sandpiper (Tringa glareola) up in southern Humboldt County, California, sent our pulse jumping. The Wood Sandpiper is a Eurasian shorebird, related to our Solitary Sandpiper. There are comparatively few records of this bird for North America. Wood Sandpipers stray as far as New York occasionally, though most records come from Alaska. This bird is rare enough that some North American field guides don’t even illustrate it. When the photos came through, confirming the bird, we put together a whirlwind trip to go see it. It was a 12-hour drive to the Russ Ranch Wetlands where the bird was, so we set off the night before and drove through the night to reach the marsh the next morning. Continue reading
Barska Level ED 10×42 Open Bridge
One of the most popular low-cost binocular series in the history of Optics4Birding has been the Eagle Optics Rangers. The Ranger went through several incarnations and improved each time. So, when Eagle Optics closed, we were disappointed to lose the Rangers, and we started looking for a good replacement. In January 2018, we found the Barska Level ED Open Bridge binoculars. Even without a head-to-head comparison, we knew had found our replacement. So, we arranged an evaluation piece from Barska to try them out. Read on to find out why we feel so strongly about the Barska Level ED binoculars. Continue reading