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We spent the weekend with family in L.A, and took advantage of the trip to explore a new, northerly birding spot.

At the suggestion of L.A. birder and blogger Bob Kaufman, we decided to check out Placerita Canyon and look for the Spotted Owls recently seen there.

The birding was terrific—even though we chose the dumbest possible day to go.

I suspected Saturday was going to be warm. I didn't suspect it was going to be record-breaking, head-stroke-inducing (for some) hot. And I had forgotten that the Santa Clarita area is about 15 degrees hotter than Newport Beach/Costa Mesa at any particular time. And that "emergency" bottle of Gatorade I kept in my car trunk for precisely such occasions had already been open for a couple of months, and was now filled with algae.

Crap!

When we got to Placerita Canyon, the temperature was already in the eighties, but the landscape was beautiful: rolling hills covered with shiny gold grass and clusters of dark brushy oaks--the trailhead looked like the opening shot of a well-made 1960s western. Only a few yards down the trail, we saw the first of many Acorn Woodpeckers, and the first of two shiny male Phainopeplas.

Further up, we spotted White-breasted Nuthatches, unusually fat Nuttall's Woodpeckers, and bright Western Tanagers. As Bob had warned us, the trail to the purported lair of the Spotted Owls was steep and narrow--but also beautiful: it was essentially a rocky creekbed leading to a waterfall which may or may not actually have had water in it this weekend. There was a steady, if small, drip of water all the way up, and it was greener and cooler than the flatlands below.

We saw fat American Robins, nesting House Wrens, a large flock of Dark-eyed Juncos chasing off a large grey squirrel, more Western Tanagers, various butterflies, and strange foot-long lizards that slithered like snakes--but no Spotted Owls. There was tons to see, but since the trail was so steep, Glenn carried his camera and big lens in a backpack, and I carried his tripod--so whenever we saw something cool that was close by, it was gone by the time we managed to set everything up. Hence, the absence of evocative waterfall-dwelling bird shots here!

By the time we got back down to the flatlands, it was well into the 90s, so I went back to the car to recover the single bottle of now-dishwater-temperature water that we had brought along. At the campground near the trailhead, we saw Steller's Jays (a species we don't see at our usual haunts), as well as Oak Titmice and Spotted Towhees. Weirdly, all the birds we saw there were hopping around with their beaks open, like panting dogs. I'm guessing this was because of the heat.

We spent the rest of the weekend chilling out indoors or splashing around in my parents' pool. But we agreed that Placerita Canyon is definitely worth another visit--once it cools off.

Too Much Good Stuff

A spring treat: One of this week's Nashville Warblers

One of the pleasurable benefits of my job has been swimming after work. After 10 hours of teaching, writing, dealing with students, and occasionally wishing I were out birding, there's nothing better than a long, hard swim. And my campus has a gorgeous 50-meter outdoor pool framed with tall pines, which as of late have been filled with singing American Robins (the pines, not the pool!).

In the fall and winter, the swimming was great: when it was 50 degrees and drizzly out, and lap swimming hours started after dark, I could swim to my heart's content without bumping into anyone: in every lane there were maybe 3 or 4 well-behaved aging triathletes and other random fitness buffs.

But spring has arrived, which ironically means that lap swimming now is a form of torture. Instead of being a relaxing escape from the crowd, it is now an exercise in defensive collision avoidance. I can't swim fast (but I can and do swim a couple of kilometers a day), so out of courtesy to faster people, I generally stay in the lanes designated for slower swimmers. But now, since it's light out and warm out during most of the lap swim hours, the slow lanes are now filled with people who can barely swim at all: I feel like throttling those bikini-clad naifs who dog-paddle wussily along, then randomly stop and grab onto the lane markers (which is the swimming equivalent of parking your car for a picnic in one of the center lanes of the 405.) It's like trying to maneuver around a bunch of hippos on Prozac.

Believe it or not, this does relate to birds. Last week, Glenn got some great hummingbird shots at Huntington Central Park, so another photographer pal of his asked if he could join us there for more fun. So we met at the Huntington Park Central Library, right behind the hummingbird garden, a bit before 8 this morning.

And since it was spring migration, a clear and pretty day, and prime photo time, there were almost a dozen other photographers in the parking lot, setting up their tripods and wiping off their lenses. And heading straight towards the hummingbird garden.

Yup, there's a pattern here: the better things get, the worst they get.

I didn't want to add to the crowd, and I was more interested in finding warblers than hummingbirds in any case, so I took off on my own, keeping my cell phone on in case Glenn and his pal actually did see something good.

Near the Slater Street parking lot, I did get a nice inventory of spring warblers: a couple of Nashville Warblers, several Townsend's and Black-throated Grays, as well as the usual Yellow-rumped and Orange-crowned Warblers and Common Yellowthroats. Another birder (one of only three I saw, surprisingly), told me he had seen a Plumbeous Vireo as well as the American Redstart that I reported a few weeks back. (I was really glad that he had gotten the latter, since Glenn and I were unable to get a photo of it—at least now we have someone to back up our ID.)

I was wandering around by the island looking for more warblers (and seeing a surprisingly large number of White-crowned Sparrows) when I saw the other birder again: he called me over, saying he'd gotten a Lazuli Bunting!

I LUST after Lazuli Buntings. They totally thrill me. And I can count my actual sightings of them on the fingers of one hand.

He had seen it in the island, just a few yards back from where I was looking. We looked into the foliage where it had been foraging, without any luck. While we were waiting (in vain) for it to return, I did get my first-of-the-year sighting of a bright male Western Tanager. Glenn phoned, saying he and the other photographers had located and photographed the Great Horned Owl fledglings. I told him about the Lazuli, and he was by my side on only minutes. And of course, the stupid bird was nowhere to be found.

We then returned to the hummingbird garden. Glenn said the hummingbirds had been scarce (probably because of the number of people looking for them), but there had been a lot of butterflies. Even better than an actual hummingbird was a very active hummingbird moth (officially, a White-lined Sphinx Hummingbird Moth) that was foraging on the same purple flowers as the small number of Anna's, Allen's/Rufous, and Black-chinned Hummingbirds in the area:

It was definitely the coolest bug I've seen in a while. While Glenn and the others chased after butterflies and hummers, I looked around for more birds: I got a male Bullock's Oriole and yet another Black-throated Gray. It's definitely a sign of how spoiled I am that I was actually getting tired of both birds.

And there's no excuse for that. The only solution is, of course, to get out and enjoy them while they're here.

The More I Bird, The Dumber I Get

"Every time I learn the name of a student, I forget the name of a fish."
—David Starr Jordon (ichthyologist and first president of Stanford University)

Right now, I'm suffering the opposite problem of the late Dr. Jordan: Every time I remember the name of a bird, I forget the name of a student. Or something I'm supposed to be teaching that student.

Maybe it only feels that way. Before I got into birding, I thought of it the same way most non-birders do: as an amiably mindless activity for children and people in the twilight of their lives. Once I got into it, I thought birding would be a skill like long-distance running or learning a second language: it would get easier with time and experience.

Instead, it just kept getting harder. The more I learned, the more I realized what I didn't know and should know. And every time I mastered some new and useful habit of bird observation ( the beak! the beak! Quick! Get the shape and length of the beak!), I learned of a dozen other things I was supposed to have noticed in the three-second period when a new bird comes into view.

This weekend presented a wealth of opportunities for me to face my ignorance. It started (as usual) with docent duty at the Least Tern reserve at Huntington State Beach. The breeding season is winding down: a few young chicks are still present, but most of this season's hatchlings have fledged and are in full undergraduate mode (flying and hunting imperfectly yet independently, and still happy to take handouts from Mom and Dad).



A pair of birders came by to check out the chicks. We started chatting, and I realized I was totally blanking on most the their questions: How many chicks hatched this year? (I had gotten an e-mail on this very topic earlier in the week, but had completely forgotten the numbers.) How long has that fence been there? (Beats the hell out of me.)

After our shift ended, Glenn and I dropped by Huntington Central Park. High in one of the trees between "the island" and the pond behind the library was a bright yellow warbler. I knew it was a warbler because of its fine bill and inability to stop moving—but what kind? Bright yellow with olive wings around here= either a Yellow Warbler or a Wilson's Warbler. But I couldn't see any of the Yellow Warbler's red streaks on its breast, and it was too high up for me to tell if it had the telltale black cap of a Wilson's Warbler.

There are no doubt ways of distinguishing the two birds apart from these obvious fieldmarks, but I have no idea what they are.

Saturday night was the Sea and Sage Audubon Summer Barbeque. The invited speaker gave a terrific presentation on the pelagic birds of Southern California—all fascinating, and none familiar to me. Many had migration and breeding patterns that reminded me of back-cover blurbs on fat historical romances ("An epic tale of sex and danger spanning four continents—Buller's Shearwater!") The speaker explained with great care and passion the tiny distinguishing features between the dozens of jaegers and petrels. They were easy to see on his well-focused slides, but would I be able to catch these on a flying bird while on the deck of a rocking boat?

Probably not. At least not yet.

Yet more stuff I now know that I don't know. Oh joy!