Soaking Up the California Sunshine

After heading north from San Diego it was nearly time to head back home where snow would await us, but first we had just enough time for a pit stop in sunny Laguna Beach, where we got married almost two years ago. The weather couldn't have been more perfect and with winter storm warnings forecast for our drive home, we had extra incentive to soak up our last couple days of California warmth. Even for California, it was amazing to me how many flowers were in full bloom in February!

 

I of course have extra special memories from here, but I think it would be one of my favorite places in California anyway. It's a smaller, funkier beach town with much more dynamic landscapes; I just love it there.

There wasn't as much variety of bird life on the beaches as in Mexico, but we still got some nice birding in.

Heermann's gull - a species we won't be seeing at home until late June

As we enjoyed our last sunset in Laguna Beach, we just had the feeling that would be the end of our warm weather, as indeed it was. The next morning there was a new chill in the air even in southern California.

For a few moments the golden light just looked magical on the waves!

The next day we stopped at a neat little preserve called Madrona Marsh in Torrance. The harsh lighting made birding a bit difficult, but we did get a quick look at what would be my last life bird for the trip - an ash-throated flycatcher.

We spent the night in Santa Maria and then made a stop at the butterfly grove in Pismo Beach early the next morning. The birding was great, as we added another handful of year birds in the hour we were there.

Nuttall's woodpecker - the only place I had ever seen one of these before was....also at the butterfly grove in Pismo Beach!

California scrub-jay

It was still too early in the day/cold for the monarch butterflies to be flying around, but after some careful searching of the trees we did find a cluster of them huddled together looking like a branch of dead leaves.

On our continued drive north we stopped at a little city park in Sacramento where a worm-eating warbler has been seen. (It was funny: as we passed by a couple of Frisbee golf players and they saw our cameras they knew we were probably looking for "that little bird".) We didn't have any luck finding it, but did get our best look of the trip at a red-shouldered hawk.

And just like Batiquitos Lagoon, I can't pass Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge without making a stop. It's 6-mile auto tour loop always provides some great birding and was not a disappointment!

Greater white-fronted geese

White-faced ibis

Western meadowlark

American coot

And I don't think I have ever seen so many black-necked stilt in one place! A conservative estimate was 250 of them. I'm not sure what was going on in the second photo - attempted mating?

We saw nearly 40 bird species in just over an hour there - pretty impressive! Oh, and one mammal species:

California ground squirrel

For our last two days of the drive up we hit the snow and it felt like our vacation was over! Thankfully we managed to dodge the worst of the weather and the biggest snow didn't hit home until the day after we got back. That actually made for a cozy return and some nice photo opportunities! The last birding of the road trip, however, occurred at the Anacortes ferry landing where the most impressive sight was the more than 30 great blue herons roosting on the old dock pilings:

It was a great trip that provided both the birding and some of the warm weather we had hoped for. In conclusion, here are a few statistics for our nearly two and a half week trip:

Miles traveled: More than 3800

Number of states traveled through: 7 (including Sonora, Mexico)

Number of bird species seen: 187

Number of photo year birds added: 120

Number of life birds for me: 19 

Number of life birds for Jason: 42

Number of mammal species seen: 15 - ranging from yellow-bellied marmot to bottlenose dolphin!

 

Birding Around the Phoenix Area

Once we woke up and started birding in Arizona, it was very apparent we were in a different climate with a whole new host of birds! While we had started seeing new things along the way, here it felt like every species we saw was different from back home. 

Time to look even more closely everywhere! No longer just yellow-rumped warblers flitting around in the trees, but verdins as well

Our first stop of the day was to Zanjero Park in Gilbert where there is a burrowing owl nesting habitat. I knew this was a city park and had seen from people's photos they got quite close to the owls, but I wasn't prepared for anything like this! The owls were using the pipes just off the sidewalk as burrows, visible here as the little lumps on the left with poles marking and numbering each one (click to see a larger view) - maybe 30 feet off the path at most? It's amazing to me that they just sit there and watch while people, bikes, and dogs go right on by!

People have reported as many as 14 owls there before, but we were thrilled to see 2.

Next stop was the Riparian Preserve at the Gilbert Water Ranch, which has a series of ponds you can walk around. It's not surprising that this oasis attracts a lot of wildlife, including not just waterfowl but all kinds of birds! For starters, it was a great place to get photos in the sunshine of many species we've only seen in the gray weather this year back home.

But it didn't take much looking to start seeing species we don't get back at home, like one of my personal favorites, the black-necked stilt.

And for some reason these two species often seem to go hand in hand, as another pond also had the American avocet. So fun playing with reflections in sunny blue water!

There were many places to sit near the water partially obscured by vegetation where, if you were patient enough, even the more skittish species would start to approach.

Long-billed dowitcher

I wouldn't expect to have added in the neoptropic cormorant as a life bird in the middle of the desert, but there they were!

And while watching these guys, a juvenile black-crowned night-heron flushed from the bush above them!

To the careful observer it was more than just birds enjoying the water ranch, too; occasionally darting across the paths were these desert cottontail.

After a break for lunch we headed to the Desert Botanical Gardens, where even this time of year the heat of the afternoon was enough to make the birds more scarce. We thought it was hot, though it was probably cool to the locals - maybe close to 80? It was bizarre for us to see butterflies pollinating flowers in February!

We did end up finding a few avian species, but it would have been worth the trip just to see one of my desert favorites - the cactus wren.

It had been more than 10 years since my last trip to Arizona, but it used to be at least an annual trek when my grandparents on my dad's side were alive. While originally from Germany, they ended up spending much of their lives in Scottsdale, which is also where my dad graduated from high school and, later on, my parents would meet and live for the first few years of their marriage. So, somewhat unexpectedly, there are some Wieland roots in Arizona, and was a bit nostalgic to be back. It felt fitting to make a visit to my grandparents' memorial which I hadn't seen in person before.

When I made a similar trip for my grandparents on my mom's side a few years ago, I got a life bird, and I was surprised when the same thing happened again here - after visiting the memorial a vermilion flycatcher flew into a nearby tree.

Thank you for the life bird, Omi and Opa!

Perhaps it was due to the cooler late afternoon, but the birding was actually better here at the memorial gardens than it had been at the desert botanical gardens! A couple of mute swans have apparently made their home here for many years; the light and everything else was perfect for this photo - except the feather on its beak!

When you get a roll birding, whether it's seeing lots of new things or trying to reach a target number of species for the day, it's easy to get a bit trigger-happy. A memorable moment my dad and I often recall is when we were doing a Big Day and light was fading and we were just short of our target and we thought we saw a western screech-owl that turned out to be a robin. I was guilty of the same thing when the last bird we saw of the day flew from a tree and I called out, "Zone-tailed hawk?!" No - the photos would prove later it was "just" a dark morph red-tailed hawk. That's part of what makes birding so fun, though, is the never knowing what you'll see. In a new area you're likely to see all kinds of new things, but it was a good reminder that some of the regulars are still around, too.

Spring Migrants Arrive in Force

I had an amazing moment yesterday at British Camp where I just stood in one section of the trail for about 10 minutes and saw/heard more than 15 bird species. There were downy, hairy, and pileated woodpeckers. Warbling vireos, rufous hummingbirds, orange-crowned warblers, Townsend's warblers, and black-throated gray warblers. I've come across pockets of birds before - they're always exciting to see - but what made this especially amazing was that I also got three year birds there, all newly arrived spring migrants. The Pacific-slope flycatchers (172) were singing, and I saw one pair chasing each other around a tree. A western tanager (173) sat amid the blossoms of one tree, while a Cassin's vireo (174) sang its questioning song from the brush. It was awesome.

Pacific-slope flycatcher ~ Prints of this photo available here

A little further up the trail I found both Pacific and house wrens, more vireos and warblers, and chestnut-backed chickadees, dark-eyed juncos, and white-crowned sparrows. I also saw a single chipping sparrow (175), my fourth year bird of the day.

Their nest blew down over the winter, but the resident pair of osprey at British Camp returned and rebuilt it, and when I went by one of them was sitting on the nest (you can just see its head in the middle). I saw the second one fly in with a fish a little later on.

Golden-crowned sparrows are only winter residents here on the island, but there sure still seems to be a lot of them around, including this one, who blends in amazingly well to the tree bark except for his yellow forehead:

I ended up finding 33 species during my hour at British Camp - not bad!

Next up, I'll be turning my attention (and my camera lens) towards wildflowers - I hope the weather cooperates!