Spring Birding in the Cuyama Valley

Following some reports from other birders concerning some unusual arid country birds in north county, Kathleen and I took a day to journey to the Cuyama valley area and found 3 new county birds. Ballinger Canyon Rd is only within our county for a few miles, but it is the closest to sage habitat that is readily accessible. We found 3 or 4 Black-chinned Sparrows, and one teed up in a juniper to sing (I also recorded its song from this perch):

This portion of a longer recording has only two phrases. This singer would shift from one phrase type to the other each time but not invariably, occasionally repeating one type twice.
Lawrence's Goldfinch were everywhere, with a lot of singing and calling.

Later, near New Cuyama, we found 3 subadult Swainson's Hawks in the air. These are unusual in our county as they migrate through northward. Here is a light morph:

Note the long pointed wings and the dark flight feathers. The hawks were flying over a large tilled field that may have made displaced prey more visible. There were many Common Ravens and a few Red-tailed Hawks around as well, along with quite vocal Western Kingbirds in the nearby trees.
It was a quite beautiful day in the valley, temperatures in the 60s with a light wind.
We also had for the day Brewer's Sparrow, a single Lark Bunting female (rare in the county), Lark Sparrow, Horned Lark, Sage Sparrow, Ash-throated Flycatcher. Spring is a great time anywhere in the world for birds and their song!

Big Green Day

Last Monday a good birding friend and I took the Big Green Day challenge, which is to see how many distinct species that we can find during one day without using any motorized transport, ie., human powered. Mostly we walked around good sites and then used our bikes to get to the next one, which of course limited our scope.We chose to stay centered in the Goleta valley and began with more riparian and lake species in the morning, and then went over to Devereux Slough and the ocean for the water and shore birds. It turned out to be quite enjoyable, we detected 114 species, which I was quite happy with considering that we were still a bit early in the migration season and that very high onshore winds at the beach limited the seawatch considerably. The challenge is not only to see or hear birds, but to get your team member to see or hear it as well (and agree on the proper ID!). This introduces yet another skillset of staying close and attuned to your teammate and describing what you are seeing as efficiently and accurately as possible. Our competitive total was 112, which means that only 2 birds were detected (in both cases, heard by one and not by the other), an excellent percentage.
Our best, most unusual birds were a pair of Yellow-headed Blackbirds at the corner of Los Carneros and Mesa Rd, and a beautiful breeding-plumaged Ruddy Turnstone at Goleta Point. At fading light getting a single satisfying look at a migrant Vaux's Swift was a nice last bird to get.
—I have to interrupt this post due to a Pacific-slope Flycatcher coming into the neighbor's apricot tree. This is only the second one we have ever had at our house during spring migration—
It will be interesting to see how other teams fare around the country and the world. We'll probably make it an annual event to compete with ourselves and to maximize planning as much as anything.

Trying to Rush Spring

I went out to inland Santa Barbara county on Happy Canyon and Sunset Valley Rds last week, hoping to find some early spring migrants, and some interesting butterflies. It was a gorgeous day, in the low 70s, with light breeze (this was 6 Apr). Other than pairs of expected Bullock's Orioles, I did not find the unexpected later spring migrants such as Western Tanager and Black-headed Grosbeak. I did hear one Cassin's Vireo up a steep oak slope, but it was nearly drowned out by the many Warbling Vireos. Every oak tree seemed to harbor a loudly singing House Wren, easily the dominant singer of the day:

 There were some butterflies about, the most dramatic being dozens of Pale Swallowtails, almost of them flying from one Blue Dick flower (or Wild Hyacinth, Brodeia) to another. This one was of particular interest due to its missing portion of hindwing, which may illustrate the strategy of the eyespots and tails on many butterflies at the hind end. The idea is to fool an attacking bird to mistake the rear for the head, leaving the butterfly with enough wing to continue to fly:

At the Nira campground, in a dry parallel river bed to the rushing creek, I found what I will tentatively ID as an Edith's Checkerspot. This is quite similar to the more common Chalcedon Checkerspot. Kathleen and I have signed up for a week's intensive "Butterflies of the Sierras" field course up at Yuba Pass along the Yuba River in early July. We will probably visit the challenges of checkerspot distribution and maybe I'll look at these differently. Stay tuned.