Returning to Southern California With Rain and A lot of Birds

In January, birding buddy Gordon Karre and I planned and put in reservations for a May 16th pelagic birding trip out of San Diego, California.  After my pelagic trip got cancelled last year due to dangerous weather conditions to make the ocean waters formidable, I was hoping for that chance to see some of the ocean and it's fantastic birds.  An Albatross was what I was wanting to see more than anything else out on the open ocean waters.  It didn't matter what Albatross it was, I just wanted an Albatross.  Black-footed is the expected Albatross on San Diego waters, while Laysan is accidental.  This post will not include the pelagic trip, but the focal point of the trip was to go on the pelagic birding excursion.  So now I have it all in your heads of what was most important about this trip.  Seabirds and more seabirds!  As Gordon and I are both hardcore birders who get along well, we of course made it an epic trip around the pelagic outing as well.  On Wednesday, May 13th, Gordon informed me about a storm that was coming into San Diego that would bring a lot of rain in on Thursday night and throughout much of Friday.  I was ticked off.  The same thing happened last year when I birded SoCal with Dominic Sherony.  We got drenched the first 2 to 3 days of our 5 day trip.  But it didn't let us stop our birding activities, and we still had a more-than-productive trip.  The winds were too high to bear at times, which is what made the ocean waters too dangerous to venture out on.  But this time was different for Gordon and me.  I looked at the forecast, and wind wasn't a problem, and the weather was to be cleared out by Friday night, the day before our pelagic.  We arrived into San Diego on Thursday night in the rain and we were brainstorming about what to do in the rain all day Friday.  Despite the weather when traveling, we are the rain-or-shine type of birders.  Let me introduce to you all a lifer birding tactic for the both of us-umbrella birding.

Umbrella birding allows one to be hardcore and it's not all that hard.  I found myself holding my umbrella in one hand and my binoculars/camera in the other had while observing and photographing birds during this freaky Friday of May 15th, 2015.  At first Gordon and I took turns holding the umbrella while the other would photograph the birds freely.  And then we graduated into hardcore umbrella birders and we did things ourselves.  The birds we were seeking out first and foremost on the day were two life birds apiece:  California Gnatcatcher and Gull-billed Tern for Gordon and Gull-billed Tern and Yellow-crowned Night-Heron for me.  Two locations would give us these birds, which were both in San Diego:  Mission Trails Regional Park and Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge.  Because California Gnatcatcher is a small songbird and is probably tougher to find later in the day, Gordon and I visited their haunts at Mission Trails Regional Park to start our day out.  We walked up the Deerfield Trail at the Park to look for the small SoCal specialties, which is where Dominic and I had our birds last year.  I felt as if I wanted to see them just as bad as Gordon did, because it was still a bird I had only seen once in my life.  As we walked up the trail, it didn't take us long to find a family group of five California Gnatcatchers.  They foraged around in dense habitat before a male eventually popped up and gave us great views, and Gordon great photo opportunities.  After we moved on, I didn't have any pictures.  And I wanted pictures.  So we went to the car, got our umbrellas, and went back as the rain started to come down hard.  We quickly found the California Gnatcatchers again and Gordon held up the umbrellas over my head while I got a few shots of this limited specialty.

After we were satisfied with Gnatcatcher birding, we headed south to the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge.  It was here that we were both targeting our lifer Gull-billed Tern as well as my lifer Yellow-crowned Night-Heron.  This location was very neat, and it had a wide variety of birds throughout the duration that Gordon and I hiked and spent six hours at.  The Slough had a visitor center and a wide variety of trails to hike on.  The first bird that we saw was a male Northern Harrier.  There was also a nice habitat selection at this location, but one of my favorites was the Tijuana River running through the area with in midst of the saltmarsh habitat.

After visiting with a friendly lady at the Visitor's Center in the Refuge, we started looking for Yellow-crowned Night-Herons along the water where she hinted for us to look.  And it didn't take us all too long to find one!

The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron is a very cool-looking bird, and it is one I have wanted to see for quite some time.  This area of San Diego has a local breeding population, and in this area of Tijuana Slough is a such example.  Yellow-crowned Night-Herons are mainly a southeastern United States heron, but there is this population in San Diego.  Arizona even has some vagrancy records.

The Yellow-crowned Night-Heron feeds highly on crustaceans and is active mainly at night but is also active often during the day.  With this individual being active, perhaps it was because of the dark clouds and rain.  Gordon and I were able to get up close with this neat bird.  I sat back and enjoyed this lifer for close to twenty minutes, and it was also Gordon's second time ever of seeing the species.  It's almost like we reversed roles with this bird and the California Gnatcatcher.  

And as you all know be by now, I love to get in pictures with birds.  Here is my latest selfie.

After enjoying the Heron, Gordon and I continued south through the Refuge along trails that eventually took us to the mouth of the Tijuana River.  A LOT of birds were out at this productive mouth of the river, and this was the location where someone had reported eight Gull-billed Terns two weeks earlier.  We were hoping there would be at least one of them there.  At this point, the rain had started to pour, and despite having umbrellas, Gordon and I were soon drenched.  From the start of scanning the river mouth, terns were in obvious abundance.

I carefully placed my scope under my umbrella and scanned the terns on the banks of the river mouth.  It didn't take me long to find our lifer Gull-billed Terns, and I had three of them in our scope view.  Gordon and I ended up being reasonably close to the mouth of the river and we were right by a bench overlook.  There was some water and saltmarsh near us, and many terns started to come over and feed by where we were standing.  Several of the Gull-billed Terns came on over and hunted over the saltmarsh near us, giving us good looks.  The pouring rain was evident in this photo as the tern was hunting over the marshy area.

The rain made it rather challenging to fully enjoy this lifer, but we tried our best, and some reasonable shots were obtained out of it.  This tern is the whitest out of North America's tern species and it was once driven to nearly being extinct because of a high demand for their feathers to be used on women's hats.  These terns often still and eat recently hatched chicks from other birds nests and also utilize fields and marshes for hunting rather than open water.  It's main diet consists of insects but it also takes worms, frogs, and crustaceans.  

The Gull-billed Tern show was a neat thing to see, and five other terns in Royal, Caspian, Least, Forster's, and Elegant Terns really made things interesting with six different terns seen in one spot.  Here is a Forster's Tern that hunted over the water nearby us as well as a smaller group of Elegant Terns.  Many Elegant Terns flew over the area throughout the walk.

After Gordon and I headed back to the Visitor's Center we continued to get drenched by the rain.  We made one more pass by the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron who continued to hang around the same spot.  After looking over the rest of the area at the Visitor Center, we headed to a section of the Refuge that went along the coast.  At this point, we were after two endangered targets:  Snowy Plover and California Least Tern.  These two species nest in sensitive areas along the coast and the refuge has built fences around this area to preserve the two species.  As long as people don't go in the fenced area, they are allowed to walk along the outskirts of the area.  This still gives birders good chances to view these species while they are nesting, mating, and raising young.

When we got here, something awesome happened.  The rain stopped and the sun was finally shining through.

Snowy Plovers and Least Terns are both tiny in both of their own family trees.  As Gordon and I walked along the boundaries, we were on the lookout for both species.  Movement in the sand resulted in our first California Snowy Plovers.  

Because Snowy Plovers have young nearby or are about to have young, they have to constantly be on the lookout for predators.

The pictures of the Snowy Plover above is of an adult male, who has dark sides.  The picture below is of a female Snowy Plover, who doesn't have as striking of features.  Gordon found a Snowy Plover nest with eggs on it and this female eventually went over and sat on top of it.  Once she sat down, I didn't want to get any closer than to where I was.

The funnest part of the walk for me came when we started to come upon the Least Tern colonies.  Least Terns were everywhere along the stretch.  They were noisy, hanging out in pairs, fishing, males were feeding females, and they were plain awesome!

Gordon also spied a Least Tern nest.  At times females would leave the nest and go elsewhere, and a lot of times males would come in to feed the females small fish while they were sitting on the nest.

As you can all tell by now, I think the Least Tern is an awesome bird.

As we headed back to the vehicle, we walked along the River and found a Little Blue Heron.  In San Diego, Little Blue Herons are somewhat local and are present in small numbers like the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron.  This is a species I have seen once in my life prior to this day so it was interesting to cross paths with one again.

While watching along the River, two more Little Blue Herons flew in.  One was another adult like the one photographed above and the other one was a younger bird who is molting into adulthood.  

Another highlight along the shore was this Whimbrel.

After spending six hours at the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, we headed to the headquarters where we'd kick back before the next day of our pelagic trip.  I took Mark Och's advice and had a spaghetti dinner before the big day.  I was anxious, and I was highly anticipating and hoping for a pelagic.  A pelagic that was free of seasickness and any crap that would go along with it.  After a jaunt we took at looking for Red-crowned Parrots, we called it a day for birding.  We did walk across the street to look at the boat we were going to be taking out on the pelagic, which was the highly talked up Grande.  This 85' boat seemed to be awesome, but that opinion wouldn't be completed until I rode on the boat.  After taking medications for motion sickness, the night came to an end and when I'd wake up, it would officially be pelagic time.  Hopefully Grande pelagic time....

Birding Orange County, California

On this fourth day of our trip, March 2nd, 2014, Dominic and I were headed to Orange County, California to bird the Huntington Beach Area.  The plan was to bird Orange County for the first half of the day and then we were going to head to the San Jacinto Mountain Highlands to stay in a cool high elevation town called  Idyllwild overnight.  We were highly anticipating this fourth day, and were in pursuit of a very strange bird.

The Nutmeg Mannikin is established in Orange County, California all the way south to San Diego, and is a countable ABA bird.  This is similar to my Phoenix Rosy-faced Lovebirds.  Dominic and I chose to bird a park that is a good bet for the Mannikin, which is called Huntington Central Park.  We chose to bird that for a few hours early in the morning in search of the Mannikin, which would be a lifer for both of us.  When we arrived, we weren't having much luck with the Mannikin, but I did hear my first lifer of the day....a Nuttall's Woodpecker.  The Nuttall's Woodpecker is very similar to the Ladder-backed Woodpecker, but has several visual differences and is vocally different.  The two species have ranges that don't strongly overlap, and also have different habitat preferences.  In the Nuttall's Woodpecker, the bird has solid black on it's upper back, which is one of the best field marks.  As we walked over to where we heard the bird calling, we quickly found it!  It was my 19th lifer of the birding vacation.

Huntington Central Park is huge, and has had a lot of birds over the years, including some remarkable rarities.  One could easily spend a day birding this large park.  Another cool highlight we had was this singing "Sooty" Fox Sparrow.

The trees were dripping with common warblers.  One of them included this nice Townsend's Warbler.  Although the picture is blurry, it was a great memory of seeing this bird.

A rare Rusty Blackbird was also being seen at the park.  Dominic and I looked for it, but came up empty.  Two hours later, we were still walking through the park without any Nutmegs.  We decided to give the nearby Seal Beach a shot at a few recently reported Black Oystercatchers before coming back to the park to try once more for the Mannikin, which we thought would be very easy.  Regardless, the park was a very beautiful place and was fun to walk through.

We then headed shortly west to the Seal Beach area to look for three previously reported Black Oystercatchers.  Dominic and I checked numerous jetties without any luck of finding that striking and large black shorebird.  At least we tried, and it's hopefully a bird I can see on a future birding trip.  But we did have some incredible highlights during the time at Seal Beach, starting with several Surf Scoters in breeding plumage.  What a striking duck this is!

We then started to walk out and about at Seal Beach.  This was the first place I ever looked at birds briefly on the coast when I was with my church youth group in 2003.  The impressive deck goes out to a nice restaurant.  Back in 2003, I walked that entire deck.

On the beach we found a nice-sized flock of terns.  We were glad to pick out an Elegant Tern in midst of the flock, which was dominated by Royal Terns.  Over the next 15 minutes, Dominic and I had a great chance to study terns.

There are three large terns in this area.  Since the Elegant Tern was the one we got excited about, I'll start with that one.  In the tern flock, there ended up being 3 Elegant Terns.  As you can see, the Elegant Tern in breeding plumage has a long, droopy bill, and a very long crest.  Royal and Caspian Terns don't have nearly as long of a crest (Caspian hardly has a crest at all) as Elegant does.

While both Caspian and Royal Terns tend to have noticeable black on their under primaries in flight (Caspian way more than Royal, Royal mainly in non-breeding), the Elegant doesn't have much of it at all in flight.  Elegant also has a much more graceful flight, almost like that of a small tern.

And now, I'll display my pictures I took of the Royal Tern.  The Royal Tern has a much larger and thick bill than Elegant does, and it is noticeably bigger than Elegant, and slightly smaller than Caspian.  Both breeding and non-breeding plumaged Royal Terns were present in front of us.

Royal Terns have a very powerful and direct flight, which doesn't really have the graceful appeal to it like an Elegant Tern does.  Regardless, if these birds are distant and are flying over the ocean, they do take some time to learn about.  I found myself in question over a lot of the distant terns I have been seeing on the trip.

To me, Royal and Elegant Terns aren't as distinctive in flight and perched as the Caspian Tern is.  This experience really gave me my first chance to ever study these two species side-by-side and in comparison with each other.  Before this trip, I had only seen one rare-in-Arizona Elegant Tern, so this was a great chance for extended study of these two species.  Here are a few comparison shots of the Elegant and Royal Terns.

As Dominic and I were looking at the Royal and Elegant Terns, we didn't realize there were two of the largest terns standing there at first!  It took us awhile to notice, but we gave Prince Caspian a nice welcome.

As one can see, the Caspian Tern is much heavier and has large and very dark red bill.  In non-breeding plumage, the Caspian Tern retains most of it's dark cap, despite the fact it looks more washed out.  

In flight, the Caspian Tern has noticeable and extensive black on it's under primaries.  It also has more of a large gull-like appearance to it when it is in flight.  In other words, it's flight is very gull-like, and not very tern-like.

Terns aren't the easiest of birds to identify when they are in distant flight or are in non-breeding plumage on top of that.  Perched birds up close are much easier, and I feel like I learned a lot by studying this flock up close.  This experience was a great start.  As I look through my photos, I realized I have all three of these larger and somewhat large terns in one frame.  The Caspian Terns were there all along, even before we walked up.  Try to find all three in this shot!

Now, where are we?  Oh yeah, we are still at Seal Beach.  A sealless Seal Beach.  We then went up to the shore, and had a mixed up and incredible frantic flock of feeding shorebirds.  The flock contained Marbled Godwits, Sanderlings, Black Turnstones, and Willet.

Seeing this raft of Surf Scoters out at sea was very awesome too!

As rain was soon moving in, we left Seal Beach to try one more time for the Nutmegs at the Central Park.  After another hour, we came up empty on the Mannikins :(.  However, I'm almost positive I heard them at one side of the park.  As we walked over to that area, we were unable to find them.  The Nutmeg Mannikin was recently added to the ABA list in 2013, and is the 981st ABA bird.  We did see a few birds though also on the second time around Huntington Central Park.

Northern Pintail

 Red-shouldered Hawk

As we left Orange County, we drove for almost two hours until we reached the San Jacinto Mountains, to stay in a mountain town called Idyllwild.  This area is extremely beautiful, and the town has nearly 4,000 residents!  It is kinda like a sky island range in a way.  We arrived later in the afternoon, and it was raining, and most of the mountain was foggy.  Dominic and I were highly in pursuit of two birds in this range, the elusive Mountain Quail and the striking White-headed Woodpecker.  We visited a nature center, where both species have been seen.  White-headed Woodpecker often comes to feeders here.  Nothing really came to the feeders, but I did hear a White-headed Woodpecker calling.  The bird disappeared right when we were about to get to it's location.  I heard a couple more of them in the hour or so we looked in the rain without seeing one, so I knew our chances were higher in the morning in hopes of it being more clear outside.  Dominic and I were anxious about starting the search in the morning.  After a delicious mexican meal at Arriba's, we stayed in a neat cabin overnight in Idyllwild.  The San Jacintos were bound to have great birding in the morning!  As for tonight, we had to enjoy it in the rain.