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2013 Starr Ranch Birdathon
April 27, 2013

Birders: Bruce Aird, Steve Alter, Pete DeSimone

Also joining us for part of the day were Starr Ranch Seasonal Ornithologist Jen Wilcox, Cyrus Moqtaderi and Special Guest Birder, 9 year old Matthew Wong

174 species seen/heard (list at bottom)

$12,000+!!! raised in pledges and donations - THANK YOU!!!

Congratulations to Marian for final species total guess, and Mary and Victoria for guessing the 100th (actually 102nd) species seen. All will get a Starr Ranch T-shirt!

2013 Starr Ranch Birdathon Recap
by Steve Alter

Highlights

Most Uncommon: Townsend's Solitaire (I don't know about Bruce, but that was my first Orange County record of this species)
Most Hotly Contested: Spotted Sandpipers imitating Surfbird
Best "Hit and Run": Solitary Sandpiper
Best Scouting: Lack of Black-throated Green Warbler (deleting the stop saved time)
Best Eye Candy: Hermit Warbler
Best General Knowledge of What to Find Where: Bruce and the Rufous-crowned Sparrow (that little bugger is probably still singing)
Best "Silly Goose": Ross'

For the 2013 Starr Ranch Birdathon, Pete enlisted the help of the Sea & Sage Audubon Big Day team of Bruce Aird and Steve Alter.  Little did Pete know what he was in for. (Pete note: THAT'S for sure...)

We started at Starr Ranch Sanctuary at 8:00 PM on Friday April 26.  Common Poorwills were already singing, so provided our first “tick”.  Pete drove us around in the darkness as we picked up Great-horned and Western Screech Owls.  Finally we stood beneath the famous “Owl-Cam” nest to bag our Barn Owl.  Then we’re off to Upper Newport Bay for rails.  Clapper Rail (Light-footed) was easy as they were chattering to each other, but Sora and Virginia Rail took some work.  Finally we got them to call, and it’s back on the road.  It seems that every year there’s some poor lost (possibly injured) wild goose that ends up becoming a permanent resident at a local community park somewhere in Orange County.  This year it is a Ross’ Goose at Eisenhower Park in Anaheim.  This goose has been reported for several months now, and always in the company of a certain white domestic duck who seems to be its soul mate.  We had to look around a bit, but finally located the Ross’ and its “objet d’amour” roosting in the grass.  Tick!   Then we head home for a couple hours of sleep.

The Orange County birding hotline has been abuzz recently with wonderful sightings up in the Santa Ana Mountains (about 3000 ft elevation).  It’s kind of out of the way for a truly optimized Big Day route, but we could not pass up the opportunity to include some of these montane species in our list.  So we decided to begin Saturday morning up there at first light.  Being there at “first light” requires meeting in a flatland parking lot at 4:30 AM, and driving up the twisty, rutted dirt road to be in place at 5:30.  Pete’s first words when we met at 4:30 cannot be reprinted here. (Pete note: Unlike me, Steve and Bruce are incredible birders and insanely intense – a good thing - when it comes to an event like this.  So the “wee hours” start for me is something I haven’t done in years and elicited an “Oh man, this is WAY too early for me"...but not exactly in those words...)  But Pete is accustomed to the roads at Starr Ranch, so the “road” up to Los Pinos Trailhead was a piece of cake.

We birded in the mountains from 5:30 to 7:15.  The weather was glorious, the air was clear and the trees were full of birds.  We had definitely made a good decision…regardless of the final count, this morning up in the mountains was magical.  In total we logged 39 species up there, including 9 species that we could not have gotten anywhere else.  Highlights included:  Green-tailed Towhee, Mountain Quail, Hairy Woodpecker, Rufous Hummingbird (which we only find in the mountains in Orange County), and most notably; Townsend’s Solitaire (a great find by Bruce, and my first Orange County sighting of this species).  It was hard, but we had to tear ourselves away and go back down the hill.   Along the way to our next destination we picked up more birds, including a stunning Hermit Warbler and 15 others, some at 65 MPH on the freeway headed north.

After a quick stop at El Moro Canyon (Crystal Cove State Park) for some grassland birds, we went to our favorite coastal spots for rocky shorebirds and pelagics.  Poppy Street (in Corona del Mar) gave us 14 species, including Wandering Tattler, Black Turnstone, Black-vented and Sooty Shearwaters.  Bruce saw a Pomarine Jaeger, but we could not get anyone else on the bird, so we could not add it to the list.  The Crescent Bay overlook (Laguna Beach) netted us another 5 species, including Ruddy Turnstone, Pacific Loon and Black Oystercatcher.  Heisler Park (Laguna Beach) gave up another 3 species, including 2 Spotted Sandpipers in breeding plumage doing their best impersonation of Surfbirds.  Alas, they were not Surfbirds, so our last chance for this species was gone.

Now we head inland for passerines.  Dilley Green Belt Preserve and Quail Hill Open Space give us 5 more ticks, so that at 10AM we roll into Mason Regional Park (Irvine) with a grand total of 99 species.  The first bird we see as we approach the entry kiosk is a Canada Goose…number 100, and the day is still young!  (Pete note: No one guessed Canada Goose as #100 or #101 Ruddy Duck.  #102, Western Tanager, was guessed by two people so they’ll get SR t-shirts) Mason RP is a major migrant trap, so here we pick up our warblers (Orange-crowned, Yellow, Wilson’s, Black-throated Gray, Nashville) plus a Pacific-slope Flycatcher and a surprise Hammond’s Flycatcher.

John Baca Park is a small community park in Huntington Beach which has figured prominently in Orange County birding this year.  JB Park is a prime example of the “Patagonia Rest Stop Effect” which states that one good bird found in an obscure location draws more birders, and subsequently more good birds are found there.  Our Christmas Bird Count team in December found a Least Flycatcher wintering there.  Someone going there to confirm the flycatcher found an Ovenbird.  Someone else going to see the two rarities found a Solitary Sandpiper in the drainage basin.  Sadly, both flycatcher and Ovenbird have flown, but the sandpiper had been seen up to two days before our Birdathon run…would it hang on?  So we come roaring up Ellis Avenue, park and tumble out of the car to look down into the basin and, voila!...the Solitary Sandpiper comes through!  We pile back in the car and roll, having spent a total of about 3 minutes at this location.   Now that’s efficiency!

Bolsa Chica Wetlands and the associated Harriet Weider Regional Park are world-renowned for migrant and resident shorebirds and waterfowl, and figure prominently in any Orange County Big Day.  And today is no exception, we add another 33 species to the list….Redhead, Northern Shoveler, Horned and Eared Grebe, Snowy Plover, Least, Elegant and Royal Terns, a crowd of Red Knot, Western Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew, Red-breasted Merganser and Reddish Egret fall in place.  Our total stands at 150 species as we head back inland at about 2PM.

Now comes the hard part.  It’s mid-afternoon and the temperature is rising.  We are starting to show the downside of that 4:30 AM meeting in the parking lot….too much coffee, junk food and bad jokes are taking their toll.  Plus, every stop nets fewer new birds, we’ll have to claw and scrape for anything new from here on.  An unsuccessful stop for Cactus Wren at a location where they are known to nest only adds to the fatigue.

Then a stop at the Santiago Creek Quarry nets us three new birds, including an unexpected (and hard to find) Violet-green Swallow, and we’re back in the hunt.  Holy Sepulcher Cemetery (Lark Sparrow, Yellow-rumped Warbler) and Irvine Regional Park (Wood Duck) help us inch higher.  Then a stop at Irvine Lake gives us a renewed energy.  Bald Eagles have been nesting there for a couple of years, and we are able to scope an adult perched in a pine tree near the nest.  What a bird!   This is really cool!

Back up into the hills (Modjeska Canyon, Tucker Wildlife Center) and we get two more birds (including Coopers’ Hawk which had eluded us all day and was beginning to be a concern).  Coming back down the hill into Lake Forest, Bruce calls on his intimate knowledge of what-to-find-where to get us a Rufous-crowned Sparrow at Whiting Ranch and a Eurasian Collared Dove in a local industrial park..  It’s 6PM, and we stand at 161 species.

The next two stops are needed fill in the remaining shorebirds and passerines.   Back Bay Drive (Upper Newport Bay) gives up 5 species, including Osprey (they nest there), the ONLY Black-bellied Plover of the day (a month ago there were hundreds of them) and a gorgeous male Northern Harrier coursing over the marshland.  We then met up with Starr Ranch Seasonal Ornithologist Jen Wilcox, Cyrus Moqtaderi and Special Guest Birder: 9 year old Matthew Wong and his parents at San Joaquin Marsh. The water treatment ponds there gave us another 6 species, including Long-billed Dowitcher, Bell’s Vireo and a lone Green-winged Teal.  172!

Now it’s 7:30 and we’re racing back to Irvine Regional Park for the most reliable Lesser Nighthawks in the county.  On our way into the park we get a bonus, two Red-crowned Parrots, easily found by their raucous squawking.  Then back to the dry east end of the park, in the dying light we see the first of several Lesser Nighthawks soar overhead.  I love these graceful and acrobatic fliers, and can’t think of a better way to end a hard day of birding.

174!  A good total!   We celebrate the accomplishment, and try not to dwell on the “misses”…American Goldfinch, Cedar Waxwing, Cactus Wren, and others.  In part we accepted a few misses by deciding at the last minute to alter our route and head up into the mountains.  We are all glad we did, but it did cost us a few lowland birds.  Maybe next year we can scout the mountain route better and find convenient places to pick up some of them.

2013 Starr Ranch Birdathon Species List

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