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. Even though this bird is likely to not be accepted by the Orange County Bird Records Committee due to questionable origins, 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. There had to be at least 200 Cedar Waxwings calling from the parking lot as we got 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. Our walk was interrupted by a nice male Sharp-shinned Hawk who posed obligingly in a sycamore some 200 feet away. Next up was what seemed like 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.

While that bird was being photographed, one of us noticed what appeared to be a Brewer’s Blackbird, walking along the shore of Pond D in the stubble of sedge stalks. Closer examination revealed that this bird had a tremendous amount of cinnamon plumage on the crown, nape and saddle, 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, a first for San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary and only about the third for Orange County. Further observation revealed 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, where its population has been in precipitous decline in recent years.

All images were taken with a Kowa TSN-884 spotting scope with 20-60x zoom eyepiece and a Nikon CoolPix P6000 camera attached using a Kowa TSN-DA-10 digiscoping adapter. The optics were mounted on a Manfrotto 701HDV,055CXV3 carbon fiber tripod with digiscoping head. The two Rusty Blackbird photos are of the same bird - one in direct sun at 160 feet, the other in shade at about 40 feet. The difference in these two photos illustrate how much lighting can alter the appearance of a subject.

Bruce Aird, who had birding clients in from Eastern Tennessee, 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 and 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 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 is 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.

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, and eventually got great looks at one bird perched within 20 feet of us. Western Screech-Owls are very vocal and territorial and so fairly easily heard, though not necessarily easy to see without some practice. I have posted on Western Screech-Owl in this blog previously so did not take pictures of this owl. 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.

Although a permanent resident in some of our Orange County canyons, Northern Saw-whet Owl 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 and often only seen here as some small owl whizzing by in the night. Add a dark moonless evening in our owling equation and this bird was going to be a difficult find so I had warned the group that this was a long shot. 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.

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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.

Local cell towers were set vibrating early last Saturday morning with the news that Brian Daniels had found a Lesser Sand-Plover at the extreme south end of Bolsa Chica Preserve in Huntington Beach, Orange County, California. The 11^th state record, this bird was a first for the county, and a life bird for many potential viewers. What followed was the usual scramble as people who could, dropped everything and barreled towards the spot. Those of us who couldn’t (and we sympathize as we were among them) watched the email boards in agony, as news of the Peregrine Falcon incident broke (the moan was almost audible county-wide) and the search for it in Bolsa’s inner bay began. At 10 AM, the bird was refound briefly, then flew off again and disappeared. And then late that afternoon, confirmation arrived that it was back near where it was first discovered, pushed south by the rising tide.

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At that point, the three of us at Optics4Birding were finally able to do something cogent about it, so we each packed a different digiscoping rig and headed for Harriett Wieder Regional Park, a spot overlooking the mudflats the bird was frequenting. The location presents a challenge as there is no close approach to the birds, which are almost 150 yards out, and the light was more or less behind the bird at that hour of the evening. It wasn’t a question of taking publication-worthy photos; in this case, that was never a rational possibility. What we hoped for was documentation quality shots, and to that end, we were all gratified with some success.

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People ask why you would bother with digiscoping; the Lesser Sand-Plover was a perfect example of why you would. Only distant views were available, well beyond the ‘reach’ of a superzoom camera or a DSLR with a conventional long lens. No closer access was available to anyone without a special permit to enter that section of the park. Only the 1000-4000 mm equivalence of digiscoping allowed even passable images to be obtained under these circumstances. The bird spent long periods of time unmoving, allowing us to take many exposures, with adjustments in between to compensate for the challenging lighting. When the bird came forward from its resting spot among the pickleweed to chase flies on the mudflats, the noise of camera shutters going off was impressive. And everyone there was digiscoping. When we were done shooting, we went back to just scoping and enjoying this spectacular bird.

Judge the results for yourselves. Using three different cameras and spotting scopes from two different manufacturers, we took a great many shots. A little digital editing, and this is what we got: shots that more than suffice for documentation. No, these won’t grace the cover of any glossy magazines, but they are plenty good enough to ID the bird from and adequate proof we were there at the same time the bird was. And what a bird!

Friend and expert photographer David Nelson and I traveled to Costa Rica to do some research on Vermiculated Screech-Owl. While there, we also photographed several other owls including two species that I had never seen before. We flew into San Jose and then headed west to the Carara Biologica Reserva area (1). This area had the first new owl for me: Striped Owl. I have missed this species on previous trips to southern Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica. It is a really beautiful bird. We found four Striped Owls and multiple birds of four other owl species this first night and the next morning.

Our second day we went back across to the Caribbean lowlands to stay for two nights in Veragua (2), a developing ecotourism and educational reserve. This was one of the most interesting places we went, even though not yet developed for anything beyond a day visit. The reserve is about a 45-minute drive off the main highway and then another hour on rough dirt roads. We stayed in very basic quarters, setup for the construction crew that had built the reserve’s educational center. At 6:00 each night, everyone left the reserve and we were alone, locked-in and far from anyone. It was quite an experience to be in such a remote Caribbean jungle all alone. All the generators were turned off at night so there were no lights, fans or even water, and no phones or cell phone coverage. It was a really amazing place to be at night with incredible nocturnal wildlife from jaguars to vipers. The diurnal wildlife was equally impressive and we saw many types of interesting birds, mammals, and two species of poison dart frogs. Owls we found there included Vermiculated Screech-Owl, Crested Owl and Central American Pygmy-Owl, the other owl species new to me. The main reasons for visiting Veragua were to record Vermiculated Screech-Owl (for a research article on systematics of the Vermiculated Screech-Owl complex) and to photograph Central American Pygmy-Owl. We photographed both red and brown phase (morphs) of Vermiculated Screech-Owls and Central American Pygmy-Owl, and recorded the voices of both species along with Crested Owl. Our short exploratory venture here was both fascinating and breathtaking.

After Veragua, we went north to La Selva Biological Reserve (3) to get additional recordings and photos of Vermiculated Screech-Owl there. We spent the fourth and fifth nights at this location. Although we got what we went there for, we struggled with rain. In both Veragua and La Selva, we had multiple rain storms that made it difficult to achieve our goals - cameras and recording equipment do not do well in rain! Despite the weather trouble, we got done everything we went there for. La Selva is a beautiful place and a popular birding destination. The day we left, a large NBC crew (200+) arrived to shoot some new reality show that is being taped in Costa Rica. They wouldn't tell us what it was about. We were glad not to be not around for that.

The sixth day found us south again, this time in the San Geraldo de Dota area, a lush, secluded canyon region in the mountains below San Jose (4). We were hoping to photograph a rare red phase of the Costa Rican Pygmy-Owl that I knew was nesting in this canyon. Our stay was very pleasant and we saw lots of new species of birds and wildlife. We found the pygmy-owl we went for, but it stayed very high up in the canopy so our photos were poor. I have photographed and recorded this species before but have to try to get pictures of this color morph another time in the future. It was still nice to get out of the lowlands into the cooler mountains and an interesting change of birds, wildlife and habitat.

On our seventh day we moved to the volcano Irazu to the east of San Jose (5) to look for Unspotted Saw-whet Owl, a very rare species in Costa Rica. It was a long shot and access into the forests along the side of the volcano proved to be just too difficult without more time to explore the area. We did find and photograph Bare-shanked Screech Owl, another mountain species, while searching the area. Late that night we decided to return to the Carara (6) area on the west coast where we began our trip. That way, we could try for better photos of Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl in the early morning before catching our flight home the next afternoon.

Our last morning went just as planned. We found at least four different Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl individuals and got better photos than we had previously. Even with the unseasonable amounts of rain at this time of year, it was a productive trip and we saw lots of wildlife. Costa Rica is a very beautiful country and always a pleasure to visit.

Enjoy the photos,
Dan Lockshaw

CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS

Sunday, I drove by El Toro Marine Base - now "Orange County Great Park" and found a Ferruginous Hawk perched out on one of the trees. I decided to try and take a photo of the bird despite the fact that just about everything was against getting a good photo of it. The day was mostly cloudy with intermittent rain and the lighting was very poor. As this portion of the "Great Park" is not open to the public, the closest I could get to this bird was off Irvine Ave. To make things worse the area is enclosed by an 8-foot chain link fence that would mar any picture taken through it. A range-finder confirmed the perch of the hawk to be 218 yards away.

Climbing through the sunroof of my car and standing on the center console got me an unobstructed view over the fence. Standing the tripod fully extended on one leg on the car seat, allowed me to see the bird with a spotting scope. This was a very unsteady position, so trying to take a picture from this position in poor lighting was going to be interesting! I wondered how many of the cars whizzing by on Irvine Ave understood that I was another of those crazy bird watchers taking a picture. At least the Irvine police who patrol the base didn’t find me! These sorts of things can be difficult to explain in the post-911 era... .

The Leica D-Lux4 camera and digiscoping adapter is so easy to slip over the eyepiece of the Apo-Televid 82 spotting scope that taking quality pictures is trivial. I am no digiscoping pro, nor am I expert at photography with a pocket camera. The Leica digiscoping outfit is simple, fast and yields impressive pictures..

Is it worth the trouble?? What trouble?

The recent occurrence of a Taiga Bean Goose (Anser fabalis middendorffii) at Unit 1 of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge has sparked some discussion about speciation and vagrancy of geese. Like most southern California birders, we went out to see the bird. As rarity chases go, this one was somewhat underwhelming. A 180-mile drive brought us to Vendel Road at about 6:20 a.m. to where a group of birders had already assembled. The bird was in view as it quietly fed with the three Greater White-fronted Geese that form its posse. As it was a good 200 yards away in a field full of deep furrows, we seldom saw more than its head and neck. Once, it walked up on top of a furrow, and showed off the bright white feather edging in its back and wings. But that was about it.

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While we viewed the Bean Goose, behind us in a nearby pond was a large mixed flock of Snow and Ross’ Geese (ignoring the Four Horses of the Apostrophe in favor of better English) containing one obvious blue-form goose, which was a Ross’ Goose. This prompted local bird expert, Bob Miller, to observe that, globally speaking, a blue-morph Ross’ Goose is rarer than a Middendorff’s Bean Goose. Sure. Okay. Wait a minute… What?! Well, the world population of Middendorff’s Bean Goose is roughly 5000 birds. According to McLandress & McLandress (The Auk, 1979, vol. 96, 544-550), blue-morph Ross’ Geese constitute approximately 0.02 % of the total population, which at about 1,000,000 birds means there are maybe 2000 of them. So, globally speaking, a blue-morph Ross’ Goose is actually rarer than a Middendorff’s Bean Goose. Then again, in recent years, blue-morph Ross’ Geese have been annual at the Salton Sea in winter whereas Taiga Bean Goose is usually a bit less reliable there, a reminder that in listing (and not just for real estate agents) it’s location, location, location! Which brings up another subject: there is a hunting season out there and it’s on now, so if you’ve a mind to, you might want to go see this goose sooner rather than later since it could end up cooked!

Ivory Gulls normally stay close to the Arctic Circle and are quite comfortable in that harsh environment. Their long claws are adapted for traction on the ice and are of little use on a beach where people wade barefoot in the ocean. The availability of multiple seal carcasses along the beach certainly helped keep this Ivory Gull fed. While we were there, it spent most of its time feeding. Vagrancy among juveniles can be attributed to a successful breeding season, but among adults, it is more difficult to explain. Perhaps because Ivory Gulls rarely see humans, they are often relatively tame. At Pismo Beach, the gull was often surrounded by dozens of birders, joggers and dog walkers but seldom flew in response to close approach. The dramatic changes in vagrancy patterns may be cause for concern about this already endangered population of Ivory Gull. Seeing one this far from the pack ice was incongruous, but delightful.

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Black-tailed Gulls are native to eastern Asia but are casual visitors to coastal Alaska and northeastern North America. They are accidental in California. Neither of the two previous record could be chased. The first was a bird collected in San Diego Bay in 1954; the second was seen and photographed by a visiting birder at a public beach in Half Moon Bay (12/29/2008), but the bird was never seen again despite considerable searching. Black-tailed Gulls are between Ring-billed and California Gull in size. Adults are distinguished by a bright yellow bill with a red spot followed by an uneven black ring and a bright red tip. Bright white eye crescents are visible above and below the yellow eyes with their red orbital ring. They also have yellow legs and feet. Despite the name, the tail is not completely black, featuring a broad black sub-terminal band between a white rump and narrow white terminal band. The mantle is slate gray, and their wing tips have much smaller white mirrors than other medium to large white-headed gulls.

The Long Beach Black-tailed Gull remained through at least the afternoon of the 10th. It stayed in its general location all day, moving only between the beach, the water, and some buoys. The bird was absent when we arrived pre-dawn on the 9th and only a few gulls were on the beach, but it flew in at 6:15 AM to the delight of about 30 birders, some of whom came from as far away as the Sacramento area. While on the beach, the Black-tailed Gull spent much of its time preening in the midst of a flock of Ring-billed, California and a few Western Gulls.

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In 2007, the AOU split Bean Goose into Taiga Bean Goose and Tundra Bean Goose, based on breeding habitat: forest bogs in the subarctic taiga or on the arctic tundra. The Taiga Bean Goose has a black bill with a yellow-orange tip. It lacks the white at the base of the bill of the Greater White-fronted Goose (which has an orange bill) and is distinguished from Tundra Bean Goose by its bill being longer and narrower at the base. Bean Geese are named for their habit of grazing in winter bean field stubble. Bean Geese are native to Eurasia, and the Taiga is the largest species. This individual was found at the south end of the Salton Sea at Unit 1 of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge on Vendel Rd. This Taiga Bean Goose was determined to be of the Middendorf race from eastern Siberia, which may merit separate species status itself. There are only about 5000 Middendorf's Taiga Bean Geese. This goose associates with a huge flock of mostly Snow and Ross's Geese that also includes three Greater White-fronted Geese. Other North American Bean Goose records were mostly from coastal Alaska, along the Aleutians or in the northeast (US and southeast Canada) with two 2003 records from the state of Washington. So far, it has been seen through the 11th.

The question many California birders ask is: why are we seeing these mega-rarities all in southern California in early November? Could these occurrences be due to climate change? While some evidence may support that conclusion in the case of the Ivory Gull, there is as yet no causal connection between the fact of climate change and the vagrancy of the Black-tailed Gull or the Taiga Bean Goose. Regardless of the reasons, it sure is an exciting time to be birding in southern California!