Participate in this year's Great Backyard Bird Count

My third and final checklist for the 2012 GBBC was based on my visit to the jetties of Playa del Rey where I had hoped to see some beach dwelling birds. I got what I came for, including literally over a thousand Brandt’s cormorants on the rocks in the harbor. I actually took several photos of the rocks and counted the birds in each disjoint segment to arrive at a final estimate of 1,300 birds, an impressive number to see the least. The highlight for me, however, was get some close-up views of a brant, a goose that prefers saltwater environments (see the photo I took). Here is my complete list:

Brant – 1
Surf Scoter – 12
Bufflehead – 1
Horned Grebe – 4
Eared Grebe – 8
Western Grebe – 20
Clark’s Grebe – 2
Brandt’s Cormorant – 1,300 Confirmed
Double-crested Cormorant – 20
Pelagic Cormorant – 2
Brown Pelican – 410
Great Egret – 2
Black Oystercatcher – 1
Willet – 30
Whimbrel – 1
Surfbird – 2
Sanderling – 340
Bonaparte’s Gull – 16
Heermann’s Gull – 30
Western Gull – 150
California Gull – 1
Glaucous-winged Gull – 1

My second GBBC list was based on my visit to the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, located in the Van Nuys and Encino area in the San Fernando Valley. This place is very close to where I live, and the place that I bird most frequently. In a sense, I consider it like my own backyard since living in an apartment I don’t actually have a backyard. Anyway the highlight of this visit was flushing out some Wilson’s snipes, which are very secretive sandpipers, from thick vegetation near the river. I’ve never been able to get good photographs of them as I never know they’re there until I’ve scared them away. My favorite of the ducks that were present was the green-winged teal (see the photo I took of a male in flight). Here is my complete list:

Canada Goose – 3
Gadwall – 8
American Wigeon – 60
Mallard – 30
Mallard (Domestic type) – 10
Cinnamon Teal – 1
Green-winged Teal – 2
Hooded Merganser – 2
Ruddy Duck – 1
Pied-billed Grebe – 30
Double-crested Cormorant – 30
Great Blue Heron – 1
Great Egret – 3
Snowy Egret – 1
Black-crowned Night-Heron – 1
Turkey Vulture – 1
Osprey – 1
Red-shouldered Hawk – 2
American Kestrel – 1
American Coot – 50
Killdeer – 2
Spotted Sandpiper – 1
Wilson’s Snipe – 4
Ring-billed Gull – 1
Rock Pigeon – 1
Mourning Dove – 1
Anna’s Hummingbird – 1
Allen’s Hummingbird – 1
Black Phoebe – 5
Common Raven – 2
Northern Rough-winged Swallow – 3
Bewick’s Wren – 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 1
Western Bluebird – 3
Northern Mockingbird – 1
American Pipit – 2
Common Yellowthroat – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) – 15
California Towhee – 2
Chipping Sparrow – 1
Savannah Sparrow – 1
Song Sparrow – 30
White-crowned Sparrow – 20
Red-winged Blackbird – 1
House Finch – 30
Lesser Goldfinch – 10
American Goldfinch – 2

Bonelli Park is located in the foothills east of Los Angeles near San Dimas. The park is large and includes a fishing lake and many hiking trails. I thought to stop here for my first 2012 GBBC list because I could get a large variety of birds given the diverse range of habitats that the park covers. I was not disappointed. The highlight was watching a bald eagle chasing an osprey carrying a rainbow trout in its talons. My photo didn’t come out so great though. My counts included birds I only heard but did not see (like cactus wrens), and some are estimates rather than exact numbers. Here’s my complete list:

Graylag Goose (Domestic type) – 20
Wood Duck – 1
Mallard – 30
Mallard (Domestic type) – 20
Lesser Scaup – 8
Bufflehead – 4
Ruddy Duck – 70
California Quail – 1
Pied-billed Grebe – 1
Western Grebe – 1
Double-crested Cormorant – 35
Great Blue Heron – 1
Osprey – 2
Bald Eagle – 1
Northern Harrier – 2
American Coot – 50
Killdeer – 2
Spotted Sandpiper – 1
Ring-billed Gull – 2
California Gull – 1
Mourning Dove – 2
Anna’s Hummingbird – 1
Allen’s Hummingbird – 1
Nuttall’s Woodpecker – 1
Northern Flicker – 1
Black Phoebe – 3
Cassin’s Kingbird – 1
Western Scrub-Jay – 2
Bushtit – 10
Cactus Wren – 8
Bewick’s Wren – 4
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher – 1
California Gnatcatcher – 2
Wrentit – 1
California Thrasher – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) – 20
California Towhee – 4
Song Sparrow – 10
White-crowned Sparrow – 10
Dark-eyed Junco (Oregon) – 5
House Finch – 30
Lesser Goldfinch – 10

For my third and final checklist for this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count, I spent time Sunday afternoon birding the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve near Encino, California. It is situated along one of the few sections of the Los Angeles River that has been left in its natural state and not made into a giant concrete drainage ditch. Yet, it is in the middle of suburbia within walking distance of where I live and close to one of the busiest freeway intersections in the country. Currently living in an apartment building with no yard, I have sort of adopted this place as my backyard. This Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve is where I bird the most frequently, making stops here at least two or three times every week. I thus have a very strong feel for what could be expected here at any given time of year. At this time, spring seems to be coming into full swing and the mating season is well underway. I could see it in many species like the hummingbirds, red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows. It’s kind of a neat and entertaining time to observe bird behavior. Swallows, particularly the violet-greens and the northern rough-wingeds, arrived this week in numbers. A few of the wintering birds are still around like the American wigeons, yellow-rumped warblers and white-crowned sparrows. In less than two months they will be gone.

The highlight of my visit this particular afternoon, however, was seeing an ash-throated flycatcher (see the photo I took of the bird flying to pick an insect out of a pod), an unusual winter visitor to California. Ash-throated flycatchers spend the winter in Central America and typically don’t return to the United States until late March at the earliest. Seeing ash-throated flycatchers here during the summer is rather ordinary, but to see one at the end of winter is an awesome treat. Of the thousands and thousands of birds reported to this year’s GBBC, only 14 ash-throated flycatchers were reported, and the bird that I saw was one of those 14.

Start Time: 4:00 PM
Total Birding Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Number of Species: 40
All Reported: yes
Checklist:

Canada Goose – 55
Gadwall – 3
American Wigeon – 39
Mallard – 29
Cinnamon Teal – 4
Ruddy Duck – 3
Pied-billed Grebe – 22
Double-crested Cormorant – 95
Great Blue Heron – 3
Great Egret – 12
Snowy Egret – 2
Green Heron – 1
Black-crowned Night-Heron – 7
Turkey Vulture – 1
Osprey – 1
Red-tailed Hawk – 1
American Coot – 8
Western Gull – 1
Mourning Dove – 1
Anna’s Hummingbird – 4
Allen’s Hummingbird – 2
Belted Kingfisher – 1
Nuttall’s Woodpecker – 1
Black Phoebe – 6
Ash-throated Flycatcher – 1 Confirmed
Cassin’s Kingbird – 1
Northern Rough-winged Swallow – 20
Violet-green Swallow – 10
Bushtit – 10
Bewick’s Wren – 2
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 2
Western Bluebird – 4
American Robin – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) – 12
Common Yellowthroat – 2
Spotted Towhee – 3
Song Sparrow – 1
White-crowned Sparrow – 1
Red-winged Blackbird – 30
House Finch – 20

The second list I contributed to this year’s Great Backyard Bird Count was based on observations I made at Malibu Creek State Park near Calabasas, California. Saturday morning was kind of weird because one storm had just passed overnight and another was on its way. After I left Malibu Lagoon to compile my first GBBC list, I decided to take my chances and stop here for a while even though clouds were starting to fill the sky. With its oak savanna and woodlands as well as chaparral-covered hills that are typical of the open areas of this region, this is an excellent place to locate some California specialties. The usual suspects included western bluebirds, red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks, and California towhees (see the photo I took). There were lots of swallows swarming around, and it was hard to identify them because they move so darn fast. I could pick out tree swallows and northern rough-winged swallows, and I think there may have been some violet-green swallows as well but I didn’t record them because I wasn’t positive. I was unlucky in that regard but lucky in another way. Because of the threat of rain, the steep canyons, which are normally among the most popular of attractions in LA for rock climbers, were mostly abandoned. Amid the unusual weekend tranquility, I was able to spy upon a canyon wren, which is a rather large dark reddish-colored wren with an unbelievably beautiful song. I tried to photograph it, but it noticed me and flew into a crevice. I did some boulder-hopping, trying to follow it for a while but lost sight of it. I heard it singing from some place I couldn’t get to, and even if I couldn’t see it, it was nice to enjoy its song.

Start Time: 9:30 AM
Total Birding Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Number of Species: 33
All Reported: yes
Checklist:

American Wigeon – 10
Mallard – 8
Ring-necked Duck – 2
Ruddy Duck – 1
California Quail – 1
Turkey Vulture – 1
Cooper’s Hawk – 1
Red-shouldered Hawk – 1
Red-tailed Hawk – 1
American Coot – 4
Nanday Parakeet – 6
Acorn Woodpecker – 1
Nuttall’s Woodpecker – 1
Black Phoebe – 3
Western Scrub-Jay – 4
American Crow – 7
Common Raven – 3
Northern Rough-winged Swallow – 20
Tree Swallow – 40
Oak Titmouse – 10
White-breasted Nuthatch – 1
Canyon Wren – 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 2
Western Bluebird – 3
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) – 2
Common Yellowthroat – 1
Spotted Towhee – 2
California Towhee – 6
Song Sparrow – 3
White-crowned Sparrow – 25
Dark-eyed Junco – 20
House Finch – 10
Lesser Goldfinch – 1

Last year when I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count (“GBBC” for short), I had just gotten into the habit of making a note of each species I saw during my birding trips but hadn’t at that point made much of an effort to count and record how many of each species I saw. After participating in last year’s event, I was hooked on counting. Through one of the links on the GBBC website, I found out about eBird, an associated website maintained by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology that allows for the daily submission of birding checklist observations which scientists then access to study bird population and migration trends. Over the past year, I have put in literally hundreds of hours of time into birding and have amassed quite a database of observations with clearly discernible trends regarding the seasonality of bird occurrence at my favorite birding spots. Essentially, through eBird I have been doing the backyard bird count all year long on almost a daily basis! My skill level in terms of finding and identifying birds is tremendously better than it was last year at this time, and not only that, the quality of my photographs has also improved greatly (just compare against my prior entries from last year under this goal). Getting a new camera was definitely worth it.

Anyway, my first stop this weekend was at Malibu Lagoon State Beach in Malibu, California. This is a location that I have visited at least once every week since last August. Species that I was targeting for this location included shorebirds, ducks and gulls. It had been raining the night before, and the sea was still very choppy and it was kind of windy. These conditions may have contributed to the lack of certain shorebirds present, like for instance there were no whimbrels or marbled godwits and only one willet. Fortunately, there were still a decent number of snowy and black-bellied plovers. Impressive in volume but not unusual, there was a nearly uncountable number of California gulls (see the photo I took). By counting a subsection of the huge flock and extrapolating, I arrived at a conservative estimate of 800 birds. There may have been individual members of other gull species within that flock that I might have missed. Actually, I was a little disappointed in the variety of gulls present. Besides California gulls, I only noted a much smaller number of western and ring-billed gulls and five mew gulls (which was admittedly decent since I had previously only seen single mew gulls here during prior visits). Probably the most interesting part of this trip was seeing three species of wrens.

Gadwall – 15
Mallard – 2
Green-winged Teal – 25
Bufflehead – 4
Ruddy Duck – 1
Double-crested Cormorant – 30
Brown Pelican – 8
Great Blue Heron – 1
Great Egret – 4
Snowy Egret – 10
American Coot – 130
Black-bellied Plover – 59
Snowy Plover – 49
Killdeer – 1
Spotted Sandpiper – 1
Willet – 1
Ruddy Turnstone – 3
Sanderling – 110
Least Sandpiper – 13
Mew Gull – 5
Ring-billed Gull – 30
Western Gull – 100
California Gull – 800
Black Skimmer – 3
Anna’s Hummingbird – 1
Allen’s Hummingbird – 4
Rufous/Allen’s Hummingbird – 2
Belted Kingfisher – 1
Black Phoebe – 2
Cassin’s Kingbird – 1
American Crow – 5
Bushtit – 2
Bewick’s Wren – 1
House Wren – 1
Marsh Wren – 1
European Starling – 3
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) – 1
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) – 2
Common Yellowthroat – 2
California Towhee – 1
Savannah Sparrow – 1
Song Sparrow – 8
White-crowned Sparrow – 3
Red-winged Blackbird – 1
House Finch – 10
Lesser Goldfinch – 2

I visited Veterans Park in Sylmar, which is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. This is the place I go when I want to see woodpeckers and nuthatches. I was not disappointed today. The highlight of the trip was spotting a Williamson’s sapsuckerthe yellow-bellied sapsucker that has been known to be residing here for the past several weeks and that I have been trying to find to no avail. This is an east coast bird that is very unusual in the west. Another highlight was seeing a Lawrence’s goldfinch, a bird I had never seen before.

Anna’s Hummingbird – 2
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker – 1 ConfirmedWilliamson’s Sapsucker
Nuttall’s Woodpecker – 1
Northern Flicker – 1
Black Phoebe – 2
Western Scrub-Jay – 1
American Crow – 5
Common Raven – 1
Oak Titmouse – 1
Bushtit – 1
White-breasted Nuthatch – 1
Bewick’s Wren – 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 1
Western Bluebird – 6
European Starling – 2
Yellow-rumped Warbler – 8
California Towhee – 1
Dark-eyed Junco – 19
House Finch – 12
Lesser Goldfinch – 5
Lawrence’s Goldfinch – 1
American Goldfinch – 8

The photo, which I shot during the trip, is of a northern flicker. I’ve posted a photo of a flicker before under a different goal, but they’re one of my favorite birds so I don’t apologize… :)

EDIT:I was just too excited about seeing a rare species when I spotted an unfamiliar woodpecker with a bright, yellow belly. I was reviewing my photographs and cross-checking them against my guidebooks when I discovered that the yellow-bellied sapsucker I thought I saw was actually a Williamson’s sapsucker. I should have known better about confronting a new species. I should have immediately double-checked against my book rather than jump to conclusions. Fortunately, I was able to request that the yellow-bellied be deleted from my list, and I was able to make a correcting entry for the Williamson’s… I’m still optimistic that one day I really will see a yellow-bellied sapsucker!

I visited the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, which is two blocks from where I live and the closest thing I have to a “backyard” considering I live in a drab apartment building. This is the place where I do most of my birding, so I know it very well. The highlight of this trip was a very large flock of 150 Canada geese on the pond. I don’t usually see so many geese here in the afternoon though it’s not so unusual early morning. Also, I saw an osprey flying while clinging to a fish and being chased by a red-tailed hawk. The osprey got away and kept his lunch.

Canada Goose – 150
American Wigeon – 33
Mallard – 7
Pied-billed Grebe – 11
American White Pelican – 4
Double-crested Cormorant – 32
Great Blue Heron – 1
Great Egret – 1
Snowy Egret – 3
Black-crowned Night-Heron – 10
Turkey Vulture – 1
Osprey – 1
Red-tailed Hawk (Western) – 1
American Coot – 4
Mourning Dove – 1
Anna’s Hummingbird – 2
Allen’s Hummingbird – 1
Northern Flicker – 1
Black Phoebe – 1
White-breasted Nuthatch – 1
Ruby-crowned Kinglet – 1
Western Bluebird – 5
Yellow-rumped Warbler – 4
California Towhee – 3
Chipping Sparrow – 9
Lark Sparrow – 1
Song Sparrow – 1
White-crowned Sparrow – 1
Western Meadowlark – 1
House Finch – 5
American Goldfinch – 1

The photo, which I shot during the trip, is a pied-billed grebe eating a tilapia fish.

I left Ventura County after completing an exhausting morning hike and the first part of Saturday’s count via the Pacific Coast Highway. I stopped on the side of the road by Mugu Lagoon, which is on federal military land. The place is strictly off-limits except viewing is allowed from afar from behind a barbed wire fence facing the marshes and the ocean. I couldn’t take quality photos, but it was still a lot of fun just observing with binoculars. The highlights of this trip were a very large (>170 birds) mixed flock of willets and marbled godwits and also a northern harrier flying low over the marsh. After leaving the Mugu Lagoon, I continued down the PCH stopping at a few locations, including Leo Carrillo State Beach, to see gulls, brown pelicans and Brandt’s cormorants.

Cinnamon Teal – 2
Northern Pintail – 23
Brown Pelican – 8
Brandt’s Cormorant – 9
Great Egret – 2
Northern Harrier – 1
Red-tailed Hawk – 1
Willet – 34
Long-billed Curlew – 4
Marbled Godwit – 140
Sanderling – 4
Wilson’s Snipe – 1
Heermann’s Gull – 1
Western Gull – 22
Rock Pigeon – 4
Anna’s Hummingbird – 2
Black Phoebe – 1
American Crow – 4
Northern Mockingbird – 1
European Starling – 1
Song Sparrow – 2

The photo, not the best quality, which I shot during the trip, is of a red-tailed hawk flying over the marshes at Mugu Lagoon.

I went hiking at the Rancho Sierra Vista and Satwiwa Native American Indian Natural Area in the Santa Monica Mountains near Thousand Oaks. I had never been to this place before but thought it would make for an interesting hike. It was an interesting hike though in retrospect not the optimal environment for birding. This place is grassland and arid scrub (i.e. dry land with short, dense vegetation) so although there are birds around they’re mostly hidden. Anyway, the highlight of the trip were the many California thrashers I encountered. I think they have the most beautiful song of any that I’ve heard. Below is the count which reflects, according to the rules, the largest number of each species that I saw together at the same time:

American Wigeon – 4
Red-shouldered Hawk (California) – 2
American Coot – 1
Anna’s Hummingbird – 3
Say’s Phoebe – 1
Western Scrub-Jay – 2
American Crow – 2
Bushtit – 5
Bewick’s Wren – 1
California Thrasher – 7
Yellow-rumped Warbler – 4
Spotted Towhee – 1
California Towhee – 4
Rufous-crowned Sparrow – 1
Chipping Sparrow – 1
Lark Sparrow – 1
Golden-crowned Sparrow – 5
House Finch – 27

The photo, which I shot during the trip, is a California Thrasher.