Birding
Where I've been/What I've seen
With almost my entire family sick somehow, I decided to try to escape the house and chase a nearby Grace’s Warbler at one of my patches (San Dieguito Lagoon/Crest Canyon OSP), which happened to be maybe a 15th county record according the CBRC. So anyway, I arrive at the canyon and travel up a nearby side street for maybe an eighth of a mile until I come to the house with three pine trees in the back, perfect looking habitat for a Grace’s. Sure enough, I hear the distinctive Grace’s chip note before long and try to pish for it to come nearer. This bird, despite being plenty vocal, made an appearance only once before I had to go back to the car and head home (it was starting to get a bit dark with it being overcast). Here’s a very low-quality picture of this incredible warbler:
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I woke up late yesterday and checked my email, just to make sure I had not missed anything important overnight. I looked in the eBird RBA thread, and it appeared to be just the usual continuing birds, Tricolored Heron, a White-winged Dove, a late staying Pacific-slope Flycatcher, until something caught my eye. So rare in fact, I had to blink twice to make sure that it was not my still half-sleeping eyes playing tricks on me. A Groove-billed Ani had been reported only fifteen minutes north of me (found by out-of-town birder Claudia Dias), and pending acceptance, a first San Diego record. I immediately told my parents who told me that we could go in a few hours. Waiting for these hours to pass felt extremely long, and there had been no reports since the initial finding. About an hour before we left however, the bird was found again, and there were twenty birders on it. The time finally came where I could go after the bird, and I hopped in the driver’s seat of the car for only the second time and drove with my mother to the park where the bird was being seen. The drive felt like forever, and when we got to the park I grabbed my gear and ran about a quarter mile to where the bird was being seen. The location was not too hard to find, considering about twenty birders were surrounding the bird when I arrived. I walked over a little bridge to the side where it was being seen, and there it was, perched right out in the open, not minding the numerous cameras clicking away at it. The bird disappeared in the bush several times and emerged with a grasshopper, which seemed to be its primary food source. The was never a period of more than five minutes where the bird was not seen, and it must be the easiest bird I have ever chased. I personally believe that this bird really looks like a dinosaur. A really, ugly yet cute, floofy velociraptor. Honestly this is one of my favorite birds that I have ever chased and as a result I spent about an hour just watching it, and showing it to people and birders who stopped by. The bird continues at the same spot as of today, and some people are giving it a 50% chance at staying the winter.
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.
Overall a pretty good day for only going after-school, hitting 2/3 of our targets.
After rendezvousing with Max and Alex at Villa La Jolla park, we immediately headed down to the Tijuana River Mouth, to see if we could get some good looks at the wintering Tricolored Heron. After getting out of the car we immediately noticed three Little Blue Herons, and two Light-footed Ridgway's Rails. We continued and ran into some other birders, who also happened to be looking for the Tricolored Heron. We we scanning the marsh when another birder told us he saw the bird on the other side of the apartment we were standing next to. We headed over, saw some Snowy Egrets, but no Tricolored Heron yet. Suddenly, something flew, slightly bigger than a Little Blue, but smaller than a Great Blue. Tricolored Heron! My first lifer on the day. However, the bird decided to land, really close to the sidewalk. Of course, by the time we get over there, it decides to be uncooperative, and has moved away from it's landing spot, to now, around fifty feet away. However, a friendly resident of the nearby apartment let us go on to the site, where we managed to get some close looks of the bird, even if it meant having to hide behind a bush. It still was a bit foggy, which added a weird look and made it hard to focus in my photos After getting a really good view of the bird, we decided to walk over to the Imperial Beach Sports Park, one of the only places in the county where Yellow-crowned Night-Herons hang out. It took us a second, but we saw one, then two, and so on until we managed to count nine, tying the county record. We then decided to head over to Nestor Park, to maximize our chances at the rarities there. On the way back to the car I snapped some photos of Snowy Egrets and a partially Leucistic Ridgway's Rail We then left Tijuana River Marsh/Mouth, and headed to Nestor Park, to see the many rarities being reported there. After walking around the park a couple of times, we had a Merlin and the Black-and-White Warbler, a photo nemesis of mine. Other than that, we didn't have too much success in the actual park at first, so we went across the street to Tesoro Grove. There we had a Townsend's Warbler, but nothing else until I spotted a bird, that appeared to be a kingbird at first, but was bright red! Summer Tanager! An ABA lifer. We then spotted the female Vermilion Flycatcher toward the end of the loop, being chased by a House Finch for no obvious reason. We were about to start heading toward the car, when Alex spotted the Baltimore Oriole, another ABA lifer! It wasn't too cooperative and stuck toward the top of the pine tree. We then tried to see if we could pull out a reported Cassin's Vireo, but with no luck we headed back to the car to go see some more Vermillion Flycatchers. We almost immediately saw the male, got some photos, and were headed back to the car when we had a very cooperative female. I managed to get some pretty good pictures of it. A Red-naped Sapsucker was reported just across the street from the fields, so we decided to check it out. We tried some playback, and a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher started calling from a shrub, but it didn't want to come out. Then, a woodpecker came in, which happened to be the Red-naped! I quickly snapped some pictures before it decided to fly away. Since some Hutton's Vireos had also been reported, I decided to try some playback to bring them in. It worked, bringing two of them to a nearby tree, and I snapped a decent photo of one. We then decided to go to North Delta Beach Overlook to see if we could find the Long-tailed Duck and dipped miserably. After dipping, we headed north to Roselle St. Riparian, where another Cassin's Vireo and a Common Merganser were reported. We used some playback in the area where the vireo was reported, and heard the exact same call back from across the stream, but it didn't want to seem to come out. We then walked the length of the stream and didn't see the merganser. We were coming back when something took off. We continued to walk, this time paying attention to the stream, and being a bit more stealthy. I spotted it, and the bird was cooperative for about two minutes before a Green Heron flushed it. After this, we called it a day, and returned to our houses.
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