The 'Nard

Did a full day of birding with Matt Grube and Pam yesterday.  We started off in Oxnard around sunrise and finished in Temple City with parrots just after dusk.  Between those places we hit up Ventura Harbor and Malibu Lagoon, and then we swung down to Peck Road Park in LA county.

Both new birds came from Ventura Harbor: Black Oystercatcher (394) and Elegant Tern (395).  We also saw a Black x American Oystercatcher Hybrid.

However, we missed our main target bird, which was a Yellow-Green Vireo that had been seen in Oxnard.

Thanks Matt & Beth / SB Birds

I spent the weekend in Hotel Cali in Summerland while Matt and Beth were on the East Coast.  It was good to hang with Matt from 4:45 - 5:10am on Saturday morning before they went to the airport.  I birded Saturday and Sunday mornings, and saw 78 species total (which brought me up to 109 species for Santa Barbara County this year).

No new birds for our list.  But I had a lot of fun hanging out at the drainage ditch at the end of Coronado road.  Lots of warblers there: Hermit, Townsend's, Black-throated Grey, Wilson's, Orange-Crowned.  It was also fun to work on my shorebirds in Goleta.

Connecticut Birding 10/23/12

I got a chance to bird with my high school English teacher yesterday.  It was a particularly gratifying experience for me, since this was the guy that shared basic birding language with me, even though I didn't care too much at the time.  The birding wasn't spectacular, but it was pretty fun.

We spent some time at Lighthouse Point in New Haven, known as the best Hawk Watch migration spot in the state.  The winds were down, and rain bearing down, so conditions were not ideal.  Still, we had a steady flow of COOPERS, SHARPIES, MERLINS, and even some BRANDT.

We also checked out a sewage treatment plant in New Haven and had a pretty good mix of active birds.  RED BREASTED NUTHATCH, tons of GOLDEN CROWNED KINGLETS, YELLOW RUMPIES, PALM WARLBER, and a HERIT THRUSH were highlights.

Best bird was BLUE HEADED VIREO (393)

Eurasian Wigeon and Other Birds

Hey dudes,

A bunch of new stuff to report.  I'll go chronologically.

Two days ago, I got my first Swamp Sparrow.  They are not too common out here, and very secretive.  It felt good to get this bird because I spent a lot of time trying for one last winter at SJWA, unsuccessfully.  It didn't take a lot of skill to find it.  I basically showed up (after it had been reported), and looked where the other birders were looking.

Yesterday I got my first UCR Golden-Crowned Sparrow.  The bird was a little early.  It is the first eBird record for county this Fall, although most years a few get reported by now.  It is also an uncommon bird for UCR.  They haven't had any records of the bird for about four years.

Today I decided not to go birding and get some actual work done.  But I checked the bird forum this morning, and saw that a Eurasian Wigeon was reported yesterday about 15 minutes from my house.  I made a trip out there, and the Eurasian Wigeon (392) was in the same spot as it had been reported.  This was going to be my Fall/Winter target bird, so I will have to pick a new one.  Any recommendations?

http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S11827621

Kevin

Parrots and Parakeets

We have a lot of fake birds flying around Pasadena.  Here are the species that I saw tonight.

Red-Crowned Parrot
Lilac-Crowned Parrot
Red-Lored Parrot
Yellow-Chevroned Parakeet
Red-Masked Parakeet
Mitred Parakeet

German Birds

So, I was pretty lazy on the birding front while I was in Germany.  At first, I really concentrated on my language studies.  When I went birding, I felt like I didn't have any room in my brain to memorize bird species.  But then I got the itch my last weekend there, and I birded that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

While I stayed local on that Friday, on both Saturday and Sunday I did some traveling.  Each day I took the train between 12-20km away, and then biked to the birding locations.  When I was done I biked home to save on train fare.  I was riding an old, undersized, women's bike without gears.

Saturday was my best birding day, in no small part because I ran into some other birders.  A guy gave me all the bird-names (in German) of the birds that we were seeing, which helped me ID the birds that I wasn't certain about.

My favorite birds were the Northern Lapwings.  I got to see about 40 of them fly into a pond on Saturday, making a bunch of noise.  Other favorites were Fieldfare, Red Kite, White-throated Dipper, and Common Kingfisher (the German name translates appropriately as "Ice Bird").

Full List Below (40 Species):

Graylag Goose
Canada Goose
Mute Swan
Egyptian Goose
Mallard
Green-winged Teal
Tufted Duck
Little Grebe
Great Crested Grebe
Great Cormorant
Gray Heron
Osprey
Red Kite
Common Buzzard
Eurasian Moorhen
Eurasian Coot
Northern Lapwing
Common Ringed Plover
Common Snipe
Common Kingfisher
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Green Woodpecker
Eurasian Kestrel
Merlin
Eurasian Jay
Eurasian Magpie
Barn Swallow
Marsh Tit
Great Tit
Eurasian Blue Tit
Eurasian Nuthatch
Short-toed Treecreeper
Eurasian Wren
White-throated Dipper
Eurasian Blackbird
Fieldfare
Western Yellow Wagtail
White Wagtail
Common Chaffinch
European Goldfinch

Jamaica Wildlife Refuge, August 5

I am back in the States now, and I am glad to see the blog rolling again.  But I am equally glad that everybody took a 2 month break while I was gone... it must have been to painful to go birding knowing I was so far away.

On my way to Germany, I had a stop in NYC.  But because my first flight was delayed, I was forced to overnight there.  That's not the worst place to be stranded for a night, if you ask me.  Fortunately, I had my binoculars in my carry-on and I did a little birding in the morning.  My morning birding was interrupted by a thunderstorm, but I was still able to see some East Coast birds, several of which were life birds for me.

The only Restoration Year bird was a Semipalmated Plover (391).  I am actually pretty surprised that none of us have picked up this bird yet on either coast.  But it is on the list now, and we are on good pace to hit 400 by the end of migration.

Here are some other birds:

Northern Waterthrush (lifer)
Glossy Ibis (lifer)
Eastern Kingbird
Laughing Gull
Forster's Tern
Cedar Waxwing
Green Heron
American Goldfinch
Osprey
Least Sandpiper

A 12-year old kid helped me ID the Least Sandpiper.

Birds?

Matt and Kev, its Ben, I plan to start birding again soon after my summer hiatus. I think I have missed a lot of the Warblers on their trek back south by now but there should be some good stuff still. Sorry for no birding or comments for the summer guys. Ill get back into it.
Recently though I have been seeing a lot of birds. Well actually the same 100 birds every day. We have 100 chickens! Red broilers in our greenhouse and are about to put them out in our movable coop in the pasture. Well slaughter em at 8ish weeks old. Saw flocks of hundreds of bluejays migrating this past weekend while we were harvesting the grapes. I have another crazy story to tell about what I first thought was a strange bird call but turned out to be bullets flying by my head....
But I should talk to you guys over the phone b/c it is an important story. Give me a call.
I cant find my phone right now.