After School Rarity Chasing

Yesterday I got out of school early, and seized the chance to go birding in Point Loma with Max (who had also gotten out early as well). In Point Loma a slew of rarities had been reported. Just in the past day, there had been Cape May Warbler, Bay-breasted Warbler, White-eyed Vireo, and just recently added that morning, Indigo Bunting. 

Our first stop was at Famosa Slough, to see if we could find the Indigo Bunting. The Cape May had already left after being a one day wonder sadly. We arrive and look through almost every patch of the willows to no avail. This was when I heard Max call out “INDIGO”, and I ran over there. Unfortunately the bird had jumped back into the bush and was not seen by us again. Thankfully it did call a few times, allowing me to count it on my lists. We also saw three juvenile and subadult Yellow-crowned Night-Herons

The next stop was where the Bay-breasted had been seen that morning, and despite much searching and warbler-necking, we did not find the bird.

​Our final stop that day was the White-eyed Vireo spot, which the bird had stayed at for two weeks. We first tried one of it’s favorite spots, but it wasn’t there, so we walked a bit to the second spot where it hangs out. And there it was. Jumping around just like the one I had seen in New York a little over a year ago. I managed to get one blurry photo

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (subadult)

White-eyed Vireo

Overall a pretty good day for only going after-school, hitting 2/3 of our targets.