Lazuli Blue

It's not a Lazuli Bunting. But it will do.

The first time I saw a Lazuli Bunting, I couldn't believe it was real.

Glenn and I were walking up a brush-lined path in Talbert Nature Reserve in Costa Mesa, looking for hummingbirds, when he said he saw "something blue" in the bushes. A Western Scrub-Jay? No, too small. A Western Bluebird? No, not that shade of blue. It was REALLY blue. And it had red and white on it too.

Then I saw it for a brief moment. It was blue. REALLY blue. An amazing, iridescent eyeball-searing aquamarine kind of blue. The only things I'd ever seen in that color were foil balloons and particularly swank East Los Angeles low-riders.

And now this color was on a tiny little bird in the wild mustard off the side of a local bike path. No effing way!

From that moment on, I lusted after Lazuli Buntings—and have been rewarded by perhaps one or two brief but wonderful sightings a year. And shortly after returning from Florida, a friend mentioned seeing "lots" of them on the Santiago Truck Trail near Modjeska Canyon. Lazulis don't occur in Florida, so they topped my list of Western birds to bag before returning to Florida in the fall—so I dragged Glenn up there and after an hour of dodging mountain bikers, saw not a one.

But they just had to be out there, somewhere. After all, Hamilton and Willick's canonical text on the birds of Orange County lists them as regular summer birds. And at nearby Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary, where we have been spending lots of time as of late, one of the staffers told us that Lazulis had been seen regularly along the trail leading up the hillside. So we hiked up to the top, and got great looks at Phainopeplas, Ash-throated Flycatchers, and California Quail—but no Lazuli Buntings.

No matter—even though we didn't get the Lazulis, this was the closest and best look we ever had of Phainopeplas, and we saw several of them to boot. Very cool birds! As for the Lazulis, we'd just come back another day.

We did, and once on the top of the trail, it started raining. And still no Lazulis.

Back in the main part of the reserve, Glenn camped out by a set of feeders to photograph the Black-headed Grosbeaks and California Thrashers lingering in the area, while I wandered off in search of other more exotic creatures, including Lazulis. I came back half an hour later to find that he had seen and photographed a juvenile Lazuli Bunting—a sighting that surprised the staff, who had only seen the birds away from the main part of the reserve, up on the hillside!

And I had missed it.

There have to be more Lazuli Buntings out there somewhere. I don't want to go back to Florida without seeing one. So yesterday afternoon, I went back to Talbert, where I'd had most of my previous sightings. I just knew they were in there, and that I'd find them—how could anyone NOT see something that color?

But after three hours of watching singing Yellow-breasted Chats, and dive-bombing Caspian Terns, still no Lazulis. The closest I got were a number of singing Blue Grosbeaks. I also had an unexpected sighting of a male Red-breasted Merganser sitting on a sandbar in the Santa Ana River—I thought they only occurred here in the winter.

This was cool but it wasn't a Lazuli Bunting.

I didn't get one this week. Nor last week. Have no idea if I'll get one next week. But I want one. Bad.

Little Pleasures

A baby American Avocet at San Joaquin Marsh

Cheapness and sloth have kept my birding outings close to home as of late. For various reasons, I haven't felt much like driving, or taking the $5 gamble of going to one of the OC regional parks only to find it birdless and crammed with partygoers.

And this doesn't seem like the season for finding rarities. Instead, I've been quite content to visit and re-visit my usual haunts, all mere minutes from home, and watching the local landscape shift and change from week to week. After all, if Emily Dickenson could see the universe in a flower (and turn out an admirable body of poetry without ever leaving her house), a reasonably competent birder could certainly stay entertained within a 10-mile radius of Costa Mesa.

So today, it was back to San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary. I arrived just after 8, and immediately spotted a female Western Tanager on the path in front of me. Further on, two loud Yellow-breasted Chats were engaged in what sounded like a singing duel.

One of the birds I've been trying to get all season is the Least Bell's Vireo: they've been singing like mad at San Joaquin for the past month of so, but I've never managed to actually see one. (They're not much to look at, but it's the principle of the thing...) Today, I got lucky: I heard them, as usual, singing by the boardwalk. After I crossed the boardwalk, the singing got progressively louder: I followed the singing and finally got one of them in my sights.

And even better, I saw it fly into a nearby tree and snuggle up to another bird. I then realized that it was feeding a fledgling!

Baby Bell: A fledgling Least Bell's Vireo

The adult flew off as soon as it passed a fat little grub on to the baby. But the fledgling stayed on for a few minutes before hopping out of sight. I love watching baby birds, and seeing a baby of a threatened species is always cause for hope.

In the front ponds were a pair of Egyptian Geese, looking weirdly sinister as usual. The baby Avocets look more and more grown up, and feed with the same sideward bill-sweeping motion as their parents.

I went home at noon, just as it started getting seriously hot. It's great knowing that one can find such great little surprises so close to home.

Two Days at the Marsh

On Saturday, we did one of the dumbest things one could possibly do during a heat wave: we spent the day birding San Joaquin Marsh. And it ended up being so rewarding that we went back again on Sunday.

Our original plan was to bird Bolsa Chica, which we hadn't visited in a while. But when we got there, both parking lots were full and from PCH, the trails looked crowded. So it was time for Plan B, and for no particular reason, we headed to San Joaquin Marsh.

At San Joaquin, the avian hormone level was off the charts. The Tree Swallow nest boxes were all full, several pairs of American Avocets were mating in the front ponds, and the Marsh Wrens, usually (and frustratingly) invisible despite their loud singing, were now perched high on the tops of the reeds, singing up a storm.

Other interesting voluble singers were a Yellow-breasted Chat and a very bright Yellow Warbler, who was working the trees by the Audubon House parking lot and the construction site behind it. We also saw a Sora in the reeds on the edge of Pond D, and some mother and baby American Coots, also in Pond D.

Glenn was particularly interested in getting photos of the elusive Marsh Wrens, but wasn't happy with the harsh late morning/early afternoon lighting we had. So we went back on Sunday morning, bright and early. to take advantage of the pleasant light and relative cool.

And it was even better than before. We saw the same cast of characters with a few new additions: a group of White-faced Ibises, some really bright Western Tanagers, and about four still-bright Wilson's Phalaropes in Pond C.


Plan B turned out to be a winner. Thank goodness Plan A didn't work out!