Westminster Park, San Diego

We attended the San Diego Bird Festival at the beginning of March, like we do pretty much every year. It’s always fun to see all those familiar folks and get in some good birding time too. Recently, San Diego Audubon took over organization of this birding festival. They did a great job of maintaining the excellence of this long-running festival.

One of the logical changes they made was to keep the vendor booths closed in the early mornings when all the festival participants are out on trips anyway, which meant that, after arriving early to set up the booth on the first day, we had extra time in the mornings, which we of course used to go birding! This allowed us to pursue some of the interesting birds that were over-wintering in the greater San Diego Area, such as the Grace’s Warbler at a nearby cemetery, the Thick-billed Kingbird, back for its second year in Chula Vista, and so on.

Summer Tanager in Westminster Park, San Diego

Local Celebrity Birds

We searched for a Palm Warbler reported at nearby Westminster Park. This little neighborhood pocket park nestles in the north end of the Point Loma Peninsula. We parked in the empty lot and walked out onto a lawn fringed with red-flowering eucalyptus and sycamores. It didn’t seem at all like Palm Warbler habitat at first glance. Evidently, the warbler was of the same mind since it apparently left.

The place was just crawling with warblers though, mostly Yellow-rumps and Orange-crowns, with the occasional Townsend’s mixed in for excitement. We started pishing from a strategic location and soon had a crowd of irritated birds and one house cat interested. Seriously – we actually pished in a cat – it didn’t jump up on the fence until we started making noise! Anyway, the next thing emerging from the trees was this handsome young male Summer Tanager. He frustrated us by always staying in the shadows whenever he perched, but we still managed to photo-document him adequately.

Wild Parrots

Red-masked Parakeet in Westminster Park, San Diego

The next thing to arrive was a noisy flock of Aratinga parakeets. Small flocks of these birds roam all over Point Loma Peninsula. We’ve seen them in several other locations there. They seem to really like the red-flowering eucalyptus trees, as evidenced by this shot.

We identified these birds as Red-masked Parakeets, also known as Cherry-headed Conures. A book about the wild parrots on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco made this species made famous. Separate them from the similar Mitred Parakeet by the more extensive red on the head, crown and face. They also show more red in the leading edge of the wing, particularly in the wrist. It surprised us as always how well they blended into the trees once they made their typically loud entrance. They were actually hard to pick out in the scope even when rustling around right in front of us.

These pictures were all taken with a Nikon CoolPix P300 digital camera, attached to a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope with a Kowa TE-11WZ 25-60x Zoom Eyepiece using Sayegh Digidapter for Kowa TE-10Z and TE-11WZ.

Arctic Loon-acy

In January of 2012, birders at the Morro Bay Birding Festival discovered an Arctic Loon in San Simeon. Instantly, we knew we needed to chase it. You just cannot pass up a bird this good! So we started planning. We would leave before dawn, travel light, and take in a bunch of other spots on the way back… Which is why three of us met at 4 am on a Sunday morning. We stuffed a bunch of scopes and other gear into the back of an SUV and took off. Staying awake on the way there wasn’t hard. Rarity chases get the blood flowing! Hopes run high (this was a life bird for two of us) and the conversation never lags.

Arctic Loon in basic plumage

Arctic Loon!

When we got to the spot at 8:15 am, two of California’s best-known birders greeted us warmly: “What took you so long?!” The loon sat there right in front of us at close range, a total anticlimax! It fished in the same small lagoon at the mouth of San Simeon Creek. There it rubbed shoulders with the gulls, coots, cormorants and grebes, pretty much slumming it. This Arctic Loon was not at all shy, swimming about and preening unconcernedly while allowing close approach of multiple birders with their scopes, tripods and cameras with big lenses. We got stunning looks and took tons of pictures, some of which even came out!

Blinking Arctic Loon

These shots were all taken with a Nikon CoolPix P300 camera, attached with a Sayegh Digidapter for Kowa TE-10Z and TE-11WZ to a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope equipped with a Kowa TE-11WZ 25-60x Zoom Eyepiece. That’s it. Just point and shoot. The loon did make things challenging occasionally by diving – loon watching is frequently an intermittent occupation. With the bird as close as this, sometimes it was hard to actually keep it in frame, but who’s complaining?! And of course sometimes there’s a bit of luck involved. Here, the camera accidentally caught the bird blinking the nictitating membrane after coming up from a dive. The only difficulty here was in picking which of the hundred photographs to use for this post!

Yellow-billed Magpie

Other Local Attractions

You would think it would be all downhill from there. However, on this fabulous whirlwind birding trip, hits just kept coming. Chestnut-backed Chickadee – probably a dirt-bird to the locals, but we don’t get to see those very often in Orange County. In the day, we saw 4 of the world’s 5 loon species, all three scoters and 6 of our 7 grebe species.

Tracking inland from there and making our way back south, we saw a pair of Golden Eagles and a brilliant male Lapland Longspur in the company of about a hundred Horned Larks. We also saw one of California’s two endemic bird species: Yellow-billed Magpies. This provided a showcase for what digiscoping can do by way of photo-documentation. This magpie was easily 75 yards distant and crawling through obscuring grass on a hillside beneath live oaks, yet the camera still did a passable job with it. In the end though, the best bird of the day was still that magnificent loon.

San Jacinto Wildlife Area, Winter 2012

Burrowing Owl in San Jacinto Wildlife Area

We went out to San Jacinto Wildlife Area looking for the Gyrfalcon… again. We went prepared with hot drinks, hats and gloves to keep from freezing. In that, we were mostly successful, but in finding the jeer-falcon, not so much. The greater San Jacinto Wildlife Area has had a fabulous winter for raptors. In addition to the ‘mythical’ Gyrfalcon, the four basic falcons, American Kestrel, Merlin, Prairie and Peregrine were all present. Everywhere we looked,we found either a Northern Harrier or a White-tailed Kite. Red-tails seemingly outnumbered even American Crows.

Along Gilman Springs Road was an overwintering dark-phase Swainson’s Hawk that was rather shy. The fields around Alessandro and Davis Roads harbored many Ferruginous Hawks, including several dark-phase birds. We saw quite a few along with both Bald and Golden Eagles. At least two Rough-legged Hawks wintered there that year. Even a Harlan’s Hawk (not a common morph in California) regularly hung out there. Both Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawks were also present, and if you hung around until evening, it wasn’t hard to find 3-4 Short-eared Owls flying over the marshes along Bridge Street. Other birders alerted us this Burrowing Owl hunkered down right next to the levy road. Evidently, it did not want to see us!

Mountain Bluebird at San Jacinto Wildlife Area

San Jacinto Wildlife Area Regulars

After two or three hours of watching, we packed it in to go look for other birds. Down by San Jacinto Creek, we found a small flock of Mountain Bluebirds. Not a rare bird here, but certainly a pretty one. Further up Davis Road in an area of dry grasslands and sage chaparral, we found hundreds of sparrows. These included many White-crowned Sparrow, a few bright Savannah Sparrows and the occasional Vesper Sparrow mixed in. Canyon and Rock Wrens were both singing from the tops of boulders along Davis Road and a distant Greater Roadrunner was moaning out his love song from further away.

Sage Thrasher at San Jacinto Wildlife Area

Dozens of Sage Thrashers

The real star of the show up there was the Sage Thrashers. When we first heard reports of upwards of 30 thrashers in that location, it didn’t sound real. But there they were! Everywhere! For a while, we had half a dozen sitting on fence posts like meadowlarks. Others ran around like robins in the grass behind them. We watched more than a dozen right in front of us. Meanwhile others sang from perches in the sage behind us. It was really spectacular!

We took these photos with a Nikon CoolPix P300 digital camera attached to a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope, using a Vortex PS-100 adapter attached to a Kowa TSN-DA10

Unusual Birds for San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

Lesser Yellowlegs at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

We visited San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine to participate in the Southern California Audubon Coordinating Council meeting. Sea and Sage Audubon graciously hosted this event. At a location like that, arriving early allows you to go birding before the meeting starts. Naturally, we did! With winter giving way to spring, and many birds molting into their nuptial plumage, a lot of the species look really beautiful. The American Avocets all sported their peach-colored heads.

There were many Tree Swallows hawking insects overhead, with the occasional Northern Rough-winged to keep us honest. Incidentally, San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary hosts the southernmost breeding colony of Tree Swallows in the western U.S. Marsh Wrens and Common Yellowthroats were yelling at us from the sedge beds. And as it turned out, several unusual birds provided happy surprises. A dainty little Lesser Yellowlegs gave us great looks here. It fed with characteristic rapidity in the shallows of Pond D. Consequently, we ran into problems photographing it: it kept sprinting out of the frame! Notice the delicate beak, whose length is less than 1.5x that of the head.

Common Teal at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

Common Teal

On Pond C, we found the one unusual visitor to the marsh that we knew from previous visits: Common Teal. Formerly recognized as a distinct and unique species, this Eurasian sub-species of Green-winged Teal visits us occasionally. Readily recognizable males lack the vertical white bar on the anterior portion of its flanks. Instead they sport a horizontal white bar on the scapulars that ours lacks. Another more subtle identifying feature of the drake Common Teal is the more prominent white striping in the face. Conversely, male Green-winged Teal lack this altogether, or show only a little bit. Thus, birders should watch this space for future developments. The International Ornithological Union already re-split Common Teal out from the Green-winged Teal. Hence, when the American Ornithological Union may follow suit. Either way, it’s a snazzy looking bird!

All pictures were taken with a Nikon CoolPix P300 digital camera attached to a Kowa TE-11WZ 25-60x Zoom Eyepiece and Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope, using a Sayegh Digidapter for Kowa TE-10Z and TE-11WZ.

A New Bird Species for San Joaquin WS

On a routine weekend in late November, we went to look at a Harris’s Hawk reported recently at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine, California. The Orange County Bird Records Committee is unlikely to accept this bird due to questionable origins. Even so, you just can’t miss a bird that cool in a location like this. We arrived at about 8:45 on a sunny Saturday morning. At least 200 Cedar Waxwings were calling from the parking lot as we set up and headed out. We walked to the end of the boardwalk, and there was the hawk, sitting regally in a bare branched tree.

After taking numerous photos of him, we headed back towards the main pond area. A nice male Sharp-shinned Hawk interrupted our walk. It posed obligingly in a sycamore some 200 feet away. Next up was at least 7-8 Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, all fussing away like tiny, angry felines. As we got back to Pond D, one of the birders with us asked “Isn’t that the Vermilion Flycatcher?” He was right! It was, and a nice bright male at that.

Unexpected Blackbird

While we photographed that bird, one of us noticed what appeared to be a Brewer’s Blackbird, walking along the shore of Pond D. Upon closer examination we noticed that this bird had cinnamon plumage on the crown, nape and saddle. It also had a bright pale supercilium extending well behind the pale yellowish eye, and pale gray between the wings and on the rump. This was an apparent female Rusty Blackbird. It was a first for San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary and only the third for Orange County. As we observed further we noticed the handsome rufous edging to the flight feathers contrasting with the shiny black wings. The bird showed a paler brownish gray chest with faint, short vertical streaking across the chest and belly, all consistent with a female Rusty Blackbird.

Rusty Blackbird is a species of special concern in the United States at large. Its population has been in precipitous decline in recent years.

All images were taken with a Kowa TSN-884 spotting scope with 25-60x zoom eyepiece and a Nikon CoolPix P6000 camera attached using a Kowa TSN-DA-10 digiscoping adapter. The optics were mounted on a Manfrotto MT055CXPRO3 carbon fiber tripod with a MVH500AH pro fluid digiscoping head. The Rusty Blackbird photos are of the same bird. One is in direct sun at 160 feet. The other is in shade at about 40 feet. The difference in these two photos illustrates how much lighting can alter the appearance of a subject.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

It’s fall in southern California, so birders keep busy looking for the odd vagrants that show up in pocket parks. Some might stay long enough to become Christmas (count) presents. Fall is the time to look for sapsuckers here. In Orange County, CA, it’s possible to see all four species of sapsucker. Red-breasted Sapsuckers predominate here; locating a Williamson’s presents a challenge. We found an unreported juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in Canyon Park on Saturday, 20-NOV-11.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker versus Red-naped: the Difficult Species Pair

Yellow-bellied and Red-naped Sapsuckers resemble each other in appearance for much of the year. Typically in fall, a juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker stand out, due to a major difference in molt patterns between the two species. Juvenile Red-naped Sapsuckers molt into their first basic plumage prior to migrating while young Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers retain their juvenile feathering all winter, not beginning to look like adults until late March or even April. Thus, any primarily brown sapsucker in winter is likely a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Still, you might want to take a close look at it just in case. If it has a paler brown head, or no prominent white wing coverts, it might be a female Williamson’s Sapsucker.

Juvenile Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Veteran’s Park

We drove up to Veteran’s Park in Sylmar to look for a male Williamson’s reported there. After a long search, we found many trees bearing obvious evidence of sapsucker workings, but only two birds. A shy Red-breasted kept company with another unreported juvenile Yellow-bellied. This bird shows the characteristic stiff tail feathers that help the bird perch more stably on the trunk. The pale red fringe on the crown is not a photographic artifact. This bird hid red buried in the crown feathers, hints of color it will show more boldly later. We took this photo with a Canon S95 digital camera on a Kowa TSN-883 spotting scope using a DA-10 adaptor.

Cooper’s Hawk

A Cooper’s Hawk checks out the Pancake Breakfast

At a recent Sea and Sage Audubon Pancake Breakfast, we found this Cooper’s Hawk right on top of us! This year?s event on got off to an inauspicious start with the rain pouring down at 6:15 am. Fortunately, the rain mostly stopped by 6:45 and a little later, dramatic clouds gave accent to beautiful blue skies. Evidently enjoying the warmth, this Cooper’s Hawk chose a sunny perch for itself. Since we already had the Leica Apo-Televid 82 spotting scope set up, it was a matter of 10 seconds or less to drop the Leica D-Lux4 digital camera into position and begin snapping away. As it turned out, haste was unnecessary as the bird sat quite obligingly for some time.

Cooper’s Hawks are relatively common resident raptors here in southern California. Though at this time of year, there is potential for confusion as Sharp-shinned Hawks migrate through the area.

A Tricky Identification

Cooper’s Hawk, dorsal view

Unfortunately, a picture like this conveys little idea of scale, but there are a few clues. First, this bird has a relatively large head; Sharp-shinned Hawks have proportionately smaller heads. Second, this bird exhibits a mostly-rounded tail. While not an infallible field mark, generally “Sharpies” show more squared tails. This is because their tail feathers have more uniform length. This bird is clearly an adult, as attested by the rust-red barring on the chest. Note the bluish-gray color of the back and upper tail and the bright red eye. Juveniles are warm brown in their upperparts, with brownish streaking against a pale chest, and a yellow or yellow-orange eye.

When the hawk flew to the top of the sycamore before leaving, it presented exposure problems for photography. He sat only briefly, peering this way and that. After compensating for the bright background, I squeezed off a few more shots. This Cooper’s Hawk provided a lovely demonstration subject for the speed and versatility of this Leica digiscoping outfit, and when I showed off the photos, more than one person said “Wow!” That’s what we like to hear!

Local Owls with Optics4Birding

Great-Horned Owls

Great-Horned Owl

Bruce Aird had birding clients in from Eastern Tennessee. He asked if I would guide them for an evening of local owling. Participants David Johnson and Jean Alexander had a list of four local owls they wanted to see. Great Horned Owl, though common nationwide, happened to be one of their owls of choice. This is our largest owl in Southern California and a very beautiful bird. They are fairly common in the city suburbs. Bruce spotted one very close to Optics4Birding sitting on a light post. I’ll bet a hundred people drove by that owl and no one even noticed it sitting there. Great Horned Owls are probably more often noticed in the city at night because of their typical owl “hoot”. Most people associate the hoot with an owl. It also tends to be fairly bold and is more commonly seen on an exposed day perch.

Barn Owls

Barn Owl

The Barn Owl is certainly our most prevalent Southern California “city owl”. We had driven right down the road from here (the Optics4Birding Store), along Irvine Blvd, and immediately spotted a Barn Owl sitting on the perimeter fence of the El Toro MCAS (the “Orange County Great Park”). Getting out of the car and squeaking a little bit brought in two more individuals.

Barn Owls are not common in Tennessee so it was an appropriate target owl while here in So Cal. They are probably more frequent here in CA than any other state. If you watch the vineyards along the Central Valley they frequently have Barn Owl boxes in the fields for rodent control. We see and hear them here in the city all the time. Since they screech rather than hoot, their calls are often not recognized as sounds made by an owl. Barn Owls have a distinctive ghostly white appearance in flight and a unique heart-shaped white facial disk.

Western Screech-Owls

Northern Saw-whet Owl

The next two target owls would take us into Silverado Canyon to get into forested habitat. The first of these was Western Screech-Owl. In oak woodlands from lowland to mid elevations, this is certainly the most common owl in the west. We had three or four individuals calling at the first location we stopped. Eventually we got great looks at one individual. The owl was within 20 feet of us. The highly territorial Western Screech Owl is very vocal so it is relatively easy to hear. Yet this owl may not be so easy to see without some practice. I have posted on Western Screech-Owl in this blog previously so did not take pictures of this one. We had one final target we hoped to show our visitors, and that bird, shown in the picture at the left was one that I would never depend on finding in mid September.

Northern Saw-whet Owls

Northern Saw-whet Owl

The Northern Saw-whet Owl is a permanent resident in some of the Orange County canyons. Yet it is totally quiet at this time of year. They are small (blackbird size), uncommon, strictly nocturnal, and live in a thick habitat. This makes them almost invisible at this time of year. Even when you can locate them by sound during their vocal/breading period, they are still shy. Most often you only see some small owl whizzing by in the night and never get a good sighting.

Add a dark moonless evening in our owling equation and this bird was going to be a difficult find. I had warned the group that there was not much chance of finding this owl. Never-the-less, in a very short period of looking, we found a beautiful little Saw-whet Owl. This one was less than 20 feet away just sitting on an exposed branch for us to admire. The owl is just too cute and certainly a favorite amongst our local owls! It made for a stupendous ending to our night of owling.

Season of Shorebirds – Summer 2011

The summer of 2011 is shaping up to be a fabulous season of shorebirds in California. The season kicked off with the appearance of the Lesser Sand-Plover in Orange County, CA, a cooperative bird that stayed a total of 8 days in late June, delighting many observers.

Shorebirds to the North

Little Stint

July has been even better with the appearance of two Little Stints, both in northern California. On the 23rd, Kimball Garrett discovered another one at Piute Ponds on the grounds of Edwards Air Force Base in northern LA County. On the same day, a Wilson’s Plover was found at the Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve in Carpinteria. Unfortunately it was in a restricted area where only a limited few could get access.

The Little Stint was too good to pass up, so a group of us got up before dawn the next day and made the trek north, arriving on the site by 7:15. The bird was re-found within minutes of our arrival and we began watching this rather reddish adult shortly after. After about an hour of digiscoping pictures and video, one of the observers got a phone call saying that Guy McCaskie had found an adult Curlew Sandpiper on the salt basin at Imperial Beach, south of San Diego. You could look at the birders around you and just see the wheels turning as they all began calculating time and distance, or perhaps gauging spousal approval.

Shorebirds to the South

Curlew Sandpiper

For us, it was a no-brainer: we were going! Even with a stop or two along the way, we made it to the site just a bit before noon. We pulled together the cameras, scopes, tripods and binoculars and made the ¼-mile trek out to the site. As we arrived, we could tell something was off from the assembled crowd of birders. Strange and angry mutterings like “!*^$&% Peregrine Falcon!!” and worried bits of encouragement like “It’s got to be here somewhere!” suggested the nature of the problem. With over 20 birders searching, no one found the bird for at least an hour.

At that point, we decided to break for lunch and come back later, so we drove off in search of fast food. As it turned out, the food wasn’t fast enough: it had just been delivered to the table when the phone rang. The bird was back! Unlike the stint, this wasn’t a life bird for either of us, so we opted to hurriedly finish our sandwiches before charging back out there. Apparently everyone had heard. The crowd of birders had more than doubled, and the mood was ebullient. The bird itself was calmly feeding on the near edge of the water, evidently oblivious to the mob of admirers mere yards away. It put on quite a show, feeding and preening and occasionally lifting its wings.

Season of Shorebirds Continues

Since then, two more great shorebirds have shown up, although both are way further north again. On the 26th, a Red-necked Stint appeared in Coos County Oregon. On August 5th, Ryan Merrill found a Wood Sandpiper at Samish Flats, WA. For those of you on the left coast, you might want to hit any marsh, lake, bay or beach with any kind of suitable habitat. And for those of you from more distant locales, you might want to check your opportunities for standby flights. Who knows what could show up in a year like this!

Digiscoping with Zeiss

Digiscoping with Stephen Ingraham of Zeiss

Great Blue Heron swallowing a small eel

In preparation for the upcoming Zeiss digiscoping classes to be offered through Sea & Sage Audubon in October 2011, we were lucky to be visited by Zeiss’ own digiscoping expert, Stephen Ingraham. Stephen taught us how to use the adaptor and optimize the camera and scope for photography. We took Stephen to the mouth of the Santa Ana River on a gray and overcast Sunday morning in June. Stephen reviewed with us how to best align the camera and scope and then we were off.

Visiting Talbert Marsh

At Talbert Marsh at relatively low tide, we found strangely little to look at initially. A few Western Gulls lounged on the beach and some Killdeers screamed warnings to no one in particular. A somewhat ratty Double-crested Cormorant looked neither crested nor double… Then a Great Blue Heron showed up and started fishing in a mat of eel grass within 30 feet of us. Rather appropriately, the heron captured a green eel. Even in that grayish light, the Zeiss Diascope 85 spotting scope equipped with a Diascope Digital Camera Adaptor II and a Canon PowerShot S95 camera, picked up frame-filling detail as the heron subdued and swallowed its meal.

Juvenile Least Tern at Santa Ana River mouth

Least Terns

Our next stop was at the river mouth, near the California Least Tern and Snowy Plover breeding enclosure. Most of the adult Least Terns were way out on the beach, or out to sea fishing. However, we found this juvenile bird well on its way way to independence. Mom and Dad still fed him though. He luckily evaded the coyotes and Peregrine Falcons thus far. They would happily make lunch of him! You can see how the camera picked up subtle details in the shading of his feathers.

A Black-crowned Night-Heron

Returning to the car, we found this adult Black-crowned Night-Heron fishing right next to the path. With one of the broadest distributions of all birds, Black-crowned Night-Heron is hardly rare. But what a handsome one! This one still had one pale filoplume dangling from its crown and looked quite snazzy. Stephen says that when the gods of bird photography throw a suitable subject your way, never turn it down. So we worked at filling our memory cards a bit more. Two different users tried out this digiscoping rig for the first time. And both got decent quality shots even under less-than-ideal conditions.

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