Scenes Through the Rear View Mirror

On the move yet again...

Well, I'm back in Gainesville. I'm counting down the days until fall migration starts, and I promised Glenn that our reward for moving and unpacking in the midst of a Florida summer will be a day tubing at Ichetucknee Springs. We'll also snorkel with the manatees in Crystal River in the winter. And of course, there are zillions of Florida birding hotspots we still haven't hit.

But I'll never see our little apartment in Costa Mesa again. We were fantastically lucky to be 15 minutes away from some of Orange County's best birding spots—Huntington Central Park, Bolsa Chica, and the San Joaquin Marsh. Of course, we can always go back during our visits to my family in Los Angeles, but this will require a 90-minute drive and—the horror!—advanced planning. I'll miss having Bolsa Chica as a convenient place to procrastinate.

The only birds I saw during my last trips to my usual spots were the usual summer suspects. (The only noteworthy bird I encountered in my last week was a Least Bell's Vireo, which was singing loudly but remaining stubbornly out of sight.) So I gave up hunting for non-existent rarities, and instead made a point of trying to get shots of some typical scenes from a Southern California summer.

Here's a common sight at Talbert: a Matilija Poppy, aka "Fried Egg Poppy". These are apparently native to California.


Bolsa Chica in the summer is a sure-fire spot to see Elegant Terns, a So Cal specialty. The shot contains hundreds of them, along with Caspian, Forster's , and Least Terns. It was unclear what flushed this giant flock into the air:

Another summer treat at Bolsa Chica is the chance to see nesting Least Terns and Snowy Plovers up close. Even adult Snowy Plovers have that baby cuteness about them:

And to conclude the nature shots, here is California's state bird, the California Quail. This guy was at San Joaquin Marsh, along with a covey of about 20 others, mostly babies:

While beautiful, these birds are jaw-droppingly dim: when I was small, I was shocked to see our arthritic and slow-witted dog actually catch and kill one—while tethered on a leash! Choosing the dumbest bird in the world as our state mascot was NOT a smart move. Whoever pulled that off couldn't have played up the gorgeous-but-vapid Californian stereotype any more if he tried.

Finally, here's an ode to the non-bird-related institution I'll miss most:

You Can Go Home Again

Eew, gros!

The academic year ended at UF, and now I'm back in California for a brief working vacation before another round at the Gator Nation!

I figured things would be different when I got back: I can't vote here anymore, and when I found myself roped into giving another tour of the San Joaquin marsh on Saturday, I was dismayed to find that the tour started in a different building and followed a different path than before. But some changes were for the better: The docents' restroom in the Audubon House is no longer stuffed to the rafters with taxidermied birds (which required anyone using it to move a stuffed and mounted Great Blue Heron), and the number of summer Bat Walks has been increased from five to seven.

And the fundamentals of California life remain unchanged. I got back just in time for a 4.7 earthquake, the annual collapse of the state government, and a standard-issue off-year election full of ballot measures nobody understands.

Best of all, West Coast birds remain the same. I haven't had much time to bird since coming home—but when I finally got out this weekend, it was like meeting old friends again.

We spent both Saturday and Sunday at Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary in Modjeska Canyon. It's a tiny little place, but we almost always find birds there we don't normally see in the flatlands of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. And this time was no exception. We saw several Lark Sparrows, a bird I haven't seen in ages:

Black-headed Grosbeaks have been lurking about everywhere as of late, but at Tucker, the generously stocked sunflower feeders brought them closer than I'd ever seen them, which allowed for great photos.

I also heard strangely familiar calls and scolds that reminded me of Florida—in particular, they reminded me of the crowd swarming around my front-yard feeder at sunset. Titmice! But of course, not the eastern Tufted Titmice, but Oak Titmice—which are just as feisty and sound almost the same:


Florida Scrub-Jays are rare and treasured; their western cousins are joyfully abundant at Tucker. Western Scrub-Jays are bold and noisy, but not as much so as their Florida counterparts:

We had such a good time watching the birds at Tucker on Saturday that we went back again on Sunday. And we were treated to good looks at Phainopeplas and a brief glimpse of a juvenile Lazuli Bunting.

More on that later!

Your Batty Old Aunt

Everyone has a slightly loony older relative. Glenn's is an older woman in Texas: Apart from her Texan habit of stretching Glenn's name into two syllables ("GLAY-un!"), she is known for dragging family members to events they're not particularly interested in. Once, after Glenn had endured 22 hours of air travel from his native South Africa, she picked him up at the Dallas airport and drove him directly to—wait for it—a drivers' training course!

Last year, when my first nephew was born—my parents' first grandchild—my other sisters and I swore we'd never be That Kind of Aunt. We'd be cool and fun to hang out with. We'd never resort to cheek-pinching or any other forms of auntly evil.

And last week, I had to eat my words.

We had promised to help out on Thursday night at one of Sea and Sage Audubon's Summer Bat Walks at San Joaquin marsh. Of course, we had totally forgotten that this was the same evening that Glenn's nephew, who had just finished his freshman year of college, was flying into town for a few days of R&R before his summer camp counseling gig began.

So now was our turn to be the dorky aunt and uncle: "Guess what? We know you just finished finals, are recovering from the flu, and suffering from jet lag, but you still have to spend the evening with us in a mosquito-infested swamp looking for bats!"

Thank goodness, he's still talking to us...

We got to San Joaquin a little after 6 to help set up for the 7:00 presentation and walk. It was still light out, and the resident Yellow Warbler was still singing his little heart out.

After setting up the chairs and projector for the introductory slide show, we had time for a quick check of the front ponds. The American Avocet babies had grown visibly since last weekend, and noisy bands of Killdeer worked the mudflats.

The introductory slideshow—presented by Orange County's best and only authority on bats—was a joy. Bats are a surprisingly varied bunch of animals, but all are—counterintuitively—freaking adorable. Some have darling fox-like faces with shiny little button noses; other are weirdly Furby-like, with big plasticky-looking ears and big shiny eyes. And they can fly, and many eat the kinds of bugs that everyone hates—what could possibly be cooler?

During the walk, we volunteers got to hold electronic bat monitors—receivers that could pick up the high-frequency calls of bats and play them back as audible signals. (Our nephew got drafted into manning the receiver that could also record bat calls.) A clicking sound from the monitors meant that feeding bats were nearby.

The monitors clicked a lot. We learned to recognize the erratically darting objects overhead as bats, and there were a lot of them. A few late-feeding Black Skimmers were there, and Glenn caught sight of what might have been a gliding owl.

We headed home just before 10, and agreed that seeing one of the tropical flying foxes with a six-foot wingspan would be a very good thing indeed.

There are definitely worst things one can inflict on a younger relative.

Birder Watching

On Sunday morning, I spent a few quiet hours at Huntington Central Park, looking in vain for the American Redstart seen by the Slater Street parking lot. The area by the parking lot was loud with the chattering of birds, so I spent about an hour there, waiting to see what might show up: I was rewarded by a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks, a female Summer Tanager, and a large number of Townsend's, Yellow-rumped, and Orange-crowned Warblers.

But something was wrong. The park was busy; joggers, dog-walkers, and families with kids were everywhere—but no other birders. I worked my way toward the island—lots of people mucking around in the brush, for reasons unknown, but none with binoculars or cameras.

I was at the park from 9 to noon on a sunny midwinter Sunday, prime birding time in a prime birding place—and yet, it was just me. It was as if every other birder on the planet had dropped off the face of the earth.

I was soon to find that this wasn't the case.

After lunch, Glenn and I returned to San Joaquin Marsh to see if the American Bittern and visiting African weaver were still around. In the parking lot we ran into a couple of occasional birding buddies and a familiar-looking photographer staking out the weaver. Once Glenn set up his tripod, this established a critical mass of people all looking at the same spot, which attracted yet more birders.

It seemed as if we couldn't walk three feet without someone stopping us to ask about Glenn's photo gear or the inventory of ducks in Pond D, or if we'd seen anything unusual (we hadn't—the Bittern had disappeared.)

We did manage to see a good assortment of raptors— Red-shouldered and Cooper's Hawks, both dark and light morph Red-tailed Hawks, a Northern Harrier, and a White-tailed Kite. We also saw a very fat gopher excavating a burrow, dangerously close to an area frequented by an aggressive Great Blue Heron.


There were also plenty of sparrows hopping about near the cages in the parking lot, and I suspected there might be a Golden-crowned Sparrow or some other treat mixed in with the White-crowned and Song Sparrows, but we ended up spending most of our time in the area talking to people about birds rather than actually looking for them. And after a slightly creepy morning of feeling like the last birder on earth, this was actually okay.