Ornithology Lab: Upper Newport Bay

Today's lab was at Upper Newport Bay. The weather was gorgeous and we had a couple good sightings for our class. The first was a snow goose and the second was a clapper rail that came 0ut in plain view for a few seconds, and finally a Eurasian wigeon tucked in with a flock of American wigeons.

Purple flowers

Allen's Hummingbird

Notice the wigeon that doesn't match the rest...

Teal

Scaup

Birding @ UCI

Well today I walked back from my class in the school of engineering area - it's about a 35 minute walk if you keep a fairly leisurely but steady pace. There were orange-crowned warblers calling from a grassy ravine filled with arroyo willow, where a great blue heron stalked for prey, and plenty of American and lesser goldfinches along the pathway. 

A pair of northern mockingbirds outside the ARC were not pleased by my presence, and even less so when I pished a few times to see if they'd come any closer. A flock of bushtits were interested in the sound of my inhaler as I took a few puffs to quell the wheezing from walking uphill. (Leigh needs to get in better shape) A black phoebe called from the spokes of someone's television antennae as I turned the corner from California to Arroyo Dr.

Even now as I sit in my apartment typing this up, I heard a flock of goldfinches go stone silent as a red-shouldered hawk cried "keer keer keer keer" from somewhere nearby, another lovely day on campus at UCI.

Birding @ UCI

Today we had no class because of President's Day, so I went birding on campus with my friend Christina who is taking ornithology with me. Rather than walk through Aldrich Park like I always do on campus, we walked up California Ave, behind the ARC (anteater recreation center) where there is a lot of open grassy areas with natives like mulefat and and some yucky non-natives like mustard and artichoke thistle. We watched giant flocks of lesser goldfinch gorging themselves in the rosemary bushes bordering the street, and Christina was suprised as how responsive they were when I pished in a flock of bushtits.

We saw a single horned lark, which very much excited us, and fifteen minutes later there were 20 or more of them. One wandered very very close giving us great looks at him. A western meadowlark sang from a sycamore, and as we walked up to see it, a giant black-tailed jackrabbit (!!!) flushed away toward the ravine. It was a life mammal for Christina, and definitely a county species for me. The last time I saw them was when I went to Death Valley with my class at IVC.

We compared Anna's hummingbirds to an Allen's hummer we found on a branch, and saw both California and spotted towhees, and watched a murder of crows reacting to a red-tailed hawk that was circling the ARC soccer fields.

Ornithology Lab: Bolsa Chica

Well today our lab was at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach. It had rained for a few hours in the early morning prior to the lab, and many of us wondered if it would be cancelled. We showed up to the parking lot and found everyone bundled up and ready. We walked across the boardwalk where we saw plenty of double-crested cormorants, ruddy ducks, bufflehead, american coots, and a pied-billed grebe.

Belding's Savannah Sparrow

Good looks at both male and female surf scoters was a treat for me, especially when I managed to snap a shot of a female scoter eating some sort of mollusk.

Surf Scoter - male

Surf Scoter - female, she's got some sort of mollusk in her mouth!

Lesser scaup, both males and females were there in large numbers, as were northern pintails, and all three species of teal - cinnamon, blue-winged and green-winged. As we walked to the green fence, we saw a large number of shorebirds walking along the shoreline.

One-legged sanderling

Dulin, red knots, dowitchers, willets, and western and least sandpipers were all in there, and a lone one-legged sanderling picked its way along the shoreline alone.

Lesser Scaup

Northern Pintail - females

Northern Pintail - male

A greater yellowlegs in among the American avocets, marbled godwits, and dunlin, provided the opportunity to study this species' behavior.

Greater Yellowlegs

A horned grebe provided a great contrast to the eared grebes we had been seeing on our last few trips, and a western grebe represented the larger grebes as well.

Horned Grebe

Western Grebe

It was quite cold out, and every once in a while we would get droplets of cold rain spitting on our faces. A pretty rainbow cut across the sky while we birded, providing some brightness to an otherwise overcast morning. We cut the trip short despite the large amount of good birds, partly due to the weather, and partly because it's a good half hour drive back to campus.

Birding @ UCI

Today was our first exam in ornithology, and as I walked to class I was practicing orders and families in my head, but the birds around me kept distracting me - a gorgeous western bluebird in the grass, an oregon type dark-eyed junco. A black phoebe swooped across the path in front of me, and some american goldfinches noisily fed on sycamore seed balls. Birds distracting me from my last minute ornithology studying, how appropriate.

The test went well, I felt pretty good coming out of it, in case you were wondering ;)

Visit From the East Coast

Today I got to bird with a good friend, Scott Haber, and his girlfriend Susan Newman who visited last February as well. I picked them up from the train station in Irvine, and we headed inland to Silverado Canyon. We arrived there after driving through a very green swath of Orange County (hooray for rain) to find that it will be closed until November 2008, along with the rest of the Cleveland National Forest, due to fire danger/damage. A $5,000 entry fine didn't sound worth poking around, so we made a beeline for Irvine Regional Park to look for the Lewis's woodpecker being seen. No dice on that bird, or phainopepla, ironic considering I'd seen a few of them only two days prior at the same spot.

We birded rather lazily, then decided it was lunch time, as the gorgeous weather and heat had our eyelids drooping and our stomachs growling. I introduced them to Veggie Grill, one of my favorite restaurants, stopped by Cha for Tea to get some bubble tea, and then gave them a quick tour of UC Irvine before getting them back in time for their train to LA.

According to a friend, this is probably in the genus Layia, common name is tidy tips

On my way home I stopped at the open field next to my apartment building to snap some photos of the flowers that popped up because of the heavy rainfall we recieved over the last few weeks.

According to a friend, this is Phacelia parryi

Ornithology Lab 4: Irvine Regional Park

Today we birded Irvine Regional Park, and had quite a few good sightings. The usual oak woodland species were present, including oak titmice, acorn woodpeckers, and phainopeplas in the mistletoe. Wood ducks were one of our highlight species, as this is the place in Orange County to see them.

A belted kingfisher called elusively from across the pond but stubbornly refused to allow us good looks, which was unfortunate because I find them delightful. Double-crested cormorants drying their wings provided a good chance to study this behavior, and a single female lesser scaup was a neat find in among the dozens of mallards.

Sorry the quality is so bad, it was far off by the time I got my camera on it... note the squared-off tail.

The Lewis' woodpecker was an awesome sighting, as was a definite male sharp-shinned hawk, perched in a tree nearby, which flushed as we walked up on it. We also saw a merlin perched in a tree from across an open meadow, which is a bird I rarely see, and was delighted to find, even if distant.

The parrots at Irvine are a crack-up, I don't recall them being there in such numbers! Lilac-crowned and red-crowned parrots made a ruckus in the trees as we attempted to look at native species.

Today's trip list put me at 108 species for the year so far according to eBird.org where I keep my lists =) Next week's trip is to Bolsa Chica, which should be awesome...

Birding @ UCI

So today was such a gorgeous day that I decided to ride my bike to campus for the first time since summer. In the open fields by the ARC - anteater recreation center - there were crows and some western meadowlarks that flushed as I rode by. A great-blue heron was hunting in the field as well, no doubt looking for squirrels or gophers, it startled me when I saw it, so much so that I laughed out loud. Probably sealed my reputation as the crazy girl on campus, she stops suddenly stares and trees and bushes, makes strange noises at said bushes, and even laughs to herself seemingly for no reason. Oh well, normal is relative anyhow.

As I left ornithology to walk through the center of Aldrich park, the yellow-rumped warblers were raising hell in the trees, it's sure going to be quiet when they take off for the year. I'm also starting to hear orange-crowned warblers, which I admit had me stumped. Whenever you hear a species again for the first time in a season there's that, "geez that sounds so familiar but what the heck is it?!" moment.

I'm on campus all day today because I have classes spread during the day and into the evening, and then tonight is the Orange County Society for Conservation Biology's meeting at 6:30pm in the Natural Sciences II building. It's open to the general public and many community members attend, more even than students I think. Tonight's guest speaker is actually my ornithology professor, so it should be a great meeting.

Ornithology Lab - Crystal Cove

This morning's lab was at a favorite beach birding spot of mine, Crystal Cove. It's a great place to see the species that frequent shorelines, like sanderlings, black-bellied plovers, brown pelicans, and gulls galore, as well as coastal sage srub habitat featuring the "California" trio - towhee, thrasher, and the endangered gnatcatcher.

It was a gorgeous morning, sunny (almost to the point of glare) and breezy. We peeled off layers as we walked in the sunshine along the waterline. It was a great day for shorebirds, the usual suspects like willets, whimbrel, marbled godwits, and sanderlings all showed, as did some other coastal species like both ruddy and black turnstones, a black oystercatcher, and surfbirds. I leaned and observed a new field mark for black-bellied plovers - a black armpit visible in flight. Exciting. Another great find was a red-breasted merganser that flew by, and was encountered again on the walk back.

Double-crested and Brandt's cormorants were present in the surf, and brown pelicans cruised along the waves. Some tidepools gave a good opportunity to get some gull I.D. practice in, as ring-billed, Heerman's, and western gulls all probed the crevasses for food. A royal tern sat in among them, and a caspian flew overhead, providing those quick enough to see them with a contrasting view of the species.

A single osprey was our bird of prey for the day, flying overhead south along the shore to Laguna. As we walked up into the sage scrub, white-crowned sparrows were hanging out in the bushes, and twice a California thrasher provided us with good looks of it perched and singing. The Cal gnatcatcher called its raspy mew much to my delight (they happen to be one of my favorite species). A solitary raven flew over as we headed back to the cars, with a low guttural croak.

Birding @ UCI

Southern California has been getting a large amount of much needed rain. This morning, as I walked to ornithology, the yellow-rumped warblers were calling from the dripping eucalyptus trees. The rain didn't seem to bother them one bit, not that it bothered me either, I had my raincoat and duck-handle umbrella ;)

At leas two Anna's hummingbirds also seemed to be enjoying the rainy weather, calling and actively flying low in front of my path. Right before I turned to my building, a gorgeous Townsend's warbler caught my attention as it picked in among the low branches of a pine tree.

I hope this rain will make for a great wildflower bloom in a few months... we certainly needed it, even if it makes walking to class a soggy expedition.

Birding @ UCI

On my way to class this evening I walked a little slowly to get a touch of birding in. I encountered the same family of American robins that I'd seen under the same tree the week before. Feeding on the ground with them were juvenile and adult white-crowned sparrows.

In Founder's Court there was a mixed flock of bushtits and yellow-rumped warblers, with a lone townsend's warbler mixed in. He was a handsome fellow, and called a cute pip-like call note.

Also calling was a nuttall's woodpecker, and the whirring flight of an Allen's hummingbird signaled his presence in the fading light.

I sat and enjoyed the townsend's little flock for a few minutes, and then I walked to my class.

Ornithology Lab 2: SJWS

Today was the second ornithology lab, this time to some familiar stomping grounds, San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary. I was a little worried last night, as the wind was rattling my windowpanes and scratching tree branches past the walls of the apartment. This morning however, the wind seemed to have died down enough to allow us some good birding.

The ponds were pretty birdy, with cinnamon, green-wing, and one potential blue-wing teal. There were bunches of swallows, tree, barn, and even a few northern rough-winged swallows. As far as raptors go, we had a very cooperative Cooper's hawk, a female northern harrier, and a red-tailed hawk.

Saddleback Mountain

January Visitor!

I went birding today with my friend Daryl who is visiting Orange County from Humboldt where he is currently attending Humboldt State. We started at Estancia Park, where we chased and saw a gorgeous Pine Warbler which was a state bird for Daryl and a year and county bird for me. A Red-naped Sapsucker was a treat as well. We ran into Tom Worster, who I originally met a few years back at the Pine Warbler at El Dorado Park in LA county.

Click on the photos to see closer views of these images

We then birded at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw the American Bittern that has been seen for a few days now, and got gorgeous looks at it in broad daylight due to the high water levels in the pond making the bullrush into floating reed beds.

Red-naped sapsucker

American Bittern

Besides that, there were bufflehead, shovelers, green-wing, blue-wing, and cinnamon teal, as well as white-tailed kites, red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks, and whimbrel mixed in with the black-necked stilts. One poor stilt's feathers looked utterly bedraggled, and on closer inspection, we could tell it had come out for the worse from an encounter with some oil. It kept flapping and preening to no avail, trying to straighten up. I sure hope it's able to pull through...

Anna's Hummingbird

(click these to get closer looks)

It was otherwise pretty quiet, and after walking through the back area for a while, we decided to call it a day from there.

Whimbrels bathing (click to see closer)

Northern Shovelers

First Lab: Ornithology

This morning at 7am we met at Mason Park for our first ornithology lab. It was quite frosty and cold and my toes were numb, I guess rainbows were a poor choice of footwear...

It was an introductory lesson, and most of the group had never been birding before. Coots galore provided a good opportunity to get practice with binoculars, and get used to looking at birds.

We had a total of around 32 species - including Cassin's kingbirds, a spotted sandpiper, and a say's phoebe.

(As always, you can click on the photos to get a closer view, some are much easier to see that way)

Ornithology Class

Well today was my first day of classes for the winter quarter back at UC Irvine. Both of the classes I attended today seemed promising, and none more so than ornithology!!! I'm so excited to be taking this class. My professor is John Avise, a distinguished geneticist, evolutionary biologist, and author who had been teaching ornithology for 30 years.

You can bet I'll be putting updates about all the wonderful information I'm learning up here from time to time. I'm also enrolled in the lab which is composed essentially of field trips to go birding, gee I can't believe I get credits for this ;)

Kick-Off January 2008

Hello to all. Hope you made it through the holidays no worse for the wear. Yesterday I went birding with Drew at Sea and Sage. He has a great eye for raptors (seeing as they're all he's interested in bird-wise). We saw 4 species in all - northern harrier, red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks, cooper's hawk, oh and vultures if you count them ;)

Click me for a closer look!!

Besides the hawks the birding was good but not earth-shattering. Plenty of yellow-rumps still around, and a gorgeous and camera-friendly gnatcatcher was a welcome surprise. The northern shovelers made great camera fodder, but I think it's time to get a new UV cover and general get some maintenance done on my cannon, it's looking a little beat up lately...

Click me too!

Well, I'm going to try to get out birding a bunch this month, but classes are starting up again Monday (eeek) and I've got some great ones to look forward to like Environmental Law and Ornithology!!!!

Top 10 Birding Memories of 2007

Well I ended my year list at 242 species - with 228 of those in my home state of California - and 203 of those in Orange County. My last bird of 2007 was a gorgeous northern flicker, flying overhead as Drew and I took a walk around my parent's neighborhood. (according to eBird.org)

Geology trip to Death Valley, CA - April 2007.

I liked Amy Hooper's meme on her favorite birding moments of 2007, so here are mine:

1. In November the Central Valley Birding Symposium is an annual delight.
   
2. The PRBO birdathon in October was a great day, and yielded my life sage thrasher.
   
3. The unexpected day-chase of the arctic warblers in Kern was an awesome day.
   
4. Having an old birding friend -Sean Fitzgerald - visit from out of town in August provided me the opportunity to view my own patches through new eyes. 
   
5. My entire July was spent on the road with my boyfriend, and the lifers and birds I saw made it quite a memorable trip.
   
6. Memorial weekend I missed out on the annual trip out to the California deserts - but I saw my life bay-breasted warbler in Huntington, which was a fair exchange in my eyes.
   
7. In April I participated in a Big Day in Orange County, and I hope that I will be asked back to the team again in years to come.
   
8. In February, a rarity chase around Orange County with some of my favorite birders was a great day for me, with worm-eating, yellow-throated, black and white warblers on the list for our day.
9. A long-time friend, Scott Haber, came to Los Angeles, and I got a chance to finally meet face to face and do some LA county birding with him and others.
10. An impromptu day of birding at Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary, with my mentor and friend, Trude Hurd, was an unexpected treat.
11. Like Amy I'm going to cheat and add one more - the entire month of January 2007 was a great month for birding - with visits from Caity R.S. from the midwest, Jim Lomax and John Luther from northern California, as well as Frances Oliver, and Oscar Johnson.

Here's to hoping that 2008 is as filled with wonderful birding experiences as 2007 was! 

Happy New Year - see you all in 2008!

CBC: Starr Ranch/Caspers

Today was my first CBC of the season - the Starr Ranch circle, run by Justin Shew. For the second year in a row I counted at Casper's Regional Park. Unlike the misty rain that fell last year, today was clear and sunny - and even bordered on warm during parts. It was a very quiet day, and we had no remarkable species beyond a dark-morph red-tailed hawk - which I could just barely make out had an aluminum band on its right leg.

Here's my crappy shot of the dark morph RTHA.

My companions were great this year, like last year, and included ten-year old Kraylor - who I will personally track down if he doesn't attend Marsh Camp this summer! We had a great time picking out wrentits, flickers, and acorn woodpeckers by ear, and he even got a sense for using my camera.

Here's Kraylor's excellent shot of an Acorn Woodpecker.

I had to leave a bit early to get to my LSAT practice test today, but I thought it was a successful, if quiet, morning of birding.

He even caught us doing our final tally.

Christmas Bird Count Season!

It's that time a year again, Christmas Bird Count time!

Here's my post from last year about the history and running of CBCs.

And here's the post from the count I did at Casper's Regional Park.

This year I'm planning to do Casper's again on the 15th, as well as a count circle in south county that's in need of some help o the 16th. Then finally on the 30th I'll be counting at Mason Park like I did a few years back with my friend Alex.

Anyone else doing a count this year?

County Birding: Roseate Spoonbill

I took a break from studying for my finals to chase the Roseate Spoonbill being reported from Anaheim this weekend. I was afraid I missed my chance to see it, as after the first day there was a brief period of time where it was not being found, but then I got an email last night saying it had been seen, so this morning I waited to hear if it was being reported as I worked on an essay for one of my finals, and the instant I saw Joel Weintraub post Vic Leipzig's report, I dragged my boyfriend out of bed and got on the road.

I didn't have my camera with me, so here is Trude Hurd's gorgeous shot of the ROSP!

After a quick run to Starbucks to placate Drew, we marched out along the Santa Ana River to find the bird. We kept passing birders coming back from seeing the bird. As we rounded a bend, a group of birders came into view, and we scanned for the bird. It was behind a cement wall, and a photographer flushed it up. It circled out over the water, giving both Drew and I broadside views of it, before headed upriver and away, appearing to drop down at the very limits of our sight. 

We walked out another 15 minutes to see if we could re-locate it, but it had either kept going, or hunkered down because we could not see it. I had to get back to go to an LSAT prep class, so we decided to be satisfied with our brief views of it, after all, it doesn't take long to get a look good enough to identify that bird! So hooray for another county bird, smack dab in the middle of finals =)

Wildbird

Keep an eye out for the upcoming issue of Wildbird magazine, I was asked by Amy Hooper to model clothing for birders in a section titled "Beyond the Vest". It was quite fun to try on all the duds from companies like Patagonia, REI, and Land's End (a few of which I was able to take home!!). Should be a neat addition to a great magazine, and I'm thrilled to be involved with it =)

Hawk Watching

I am excited to be getting involved in an ongoing study of hawks in Orange County. Scott Thomas and Pete Bloom have been banding hawks for 30 years, and now as a part of Pete's Ph.D thesis. They are looking at natal dispersal - or the known life history of chicks from nest sites - as well as breeding success.

This red-tailed hawk circled overhead as I got my life Harris Sparrow at El Dorado Park in LA county.

Their target species is the red-tailed hawk, but they also collect data on red-shoulders, barn owls, and less often coopers and sharp-shinned hawks, and great-horned owls.

This red-tail was perched at Bolsa Chica, I think its funny that it looks almost the same size as the men behind it.

The research will mainly involve going birding a minimum of three hours a week (oh such a chore) and while out, documenting all hawk sightings, taking care to note any and all bands, including the regular aluminum bands, as well as color bands. 

This red-shouldered hawk caught my attention as I was driving to classes at Irvine Valley College.

Other aspects of the research project include trapping and banding birds, both adults, as well as juveniles in the nest, when the season comes.

I caught this red-shoulder fluffed up for warmth in Santiago Oaks  while I was on a Big Day.

If you bird Orange County regularly, you can help out by reporting in any sightings of birds of prey, particularly red-tails, with bands on their legs to Scott Thomas - who you can reach via email: redtail1@cox.net

He requests that the report include the following:

1. Your name, address, phone number and E-mail address
2. The date and specific location of the sighting
3. The species of hawk, if possible
4. Which leg the aluminum band is on
5. The letter or number and color of the band, as well
as any marks before the letter or number
6. The location and proximity to any known hawk nests
7. Any information about breeding behavior, such as courtship, nest building, territorial behavior and/or repeated vocalizations

Example: A Red-shouldered Hawk was spotted with an aluminum band on its right leg, and a red band with "J" on the left leg. The bird was soaring with another hawk near a nest site at the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary on 12/31/01. (info from the Sea and Sage Audubon Society's Website)

Nix Nature Center

Yesterday I went down to the newly opened Nix Nature Center. It is a part of the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park - a large parcel of land set aside, I think by Donald Bren's Irvine Company, to be left wild. I've only been there two times before, and on both occasions, I was there less than 20 minutes birding the parking lot, as both were Orange County big days.

Unfortunately, with all my pre-Thanksgiving errands, I didn't make it there until 3pm only to find out they lock the gates at 4pm... darn. So I quickly peeked into the center to see what it was like, then stuck close to the parking lot and birded the sycamores. I had wanted to get back further in, since two of the research projects I'm interested in working on are conducted at the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.

As always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them for a better look.

It was a monoculture of yellow-rumped warblers - and every one I saw was the Audubon's variety. There were a few golden-crowned sparrows, and some white-crowned sparrows, juveniles and adults both, feeding in the buckwheat. There were lesser goldfinches saying their downward slurred "peeewww" and wrentits with their bouncing ball call.

The area was a perfect example of why those wildfires a few weeks back raged out of control, it was bone dry. They did a good job on the native vegetation around the center, there was laural sumac, buckwheat, stream monkeyflower, coyote bush, encelia, and some others I recognized, but couldn't recall a name for. A red-tailed hawk circled over the parking lot, signaling my time to leave, it was nearly 4, and I don't think my family would appreciate me being locked in the parking lot all night since I'm the one cooking our dinner tonight!

Another photo you should probably click on to see the birds atop the buckwheat...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Click the phrase above to see my post from last year with all sorts of facts about Thanksgiving's mascot, the turkey...

Birding @ UCI

For the first time on my walk to my class this morning, I brought my binoculars.  It was overcast and mild out. There were yellow-rumped warblers calling their drippy "chips" from the trees. Along the way I passed at least two different black phoebes fly-catching from light posts or tree limbs.

Mostly I bird in Aldrich Park - that circular area in the center of campus - bordered by Ring Road

The empty field across from my apartments had a huge flock of crows on the ground milling around and eating something, in among the California poppies. A house wren called from the bushes as I passed the business school.

On my way to lunch, a red-shouldered hawk buzzed low along the eucalyptus trees that line the campus =)

Since it worked nicely to bring my bins with me, I'm going to try and make semi-regular posts of the birding on campus during my class hours, and title them "Birding @ UCI".