Birding Ups and Downs

This weekend is a big one for birds in the L.A. area. There was an Arctic Warbler in Long Beach, and a Yellow Wagtail in Malibu.

Friday we visited De Forest Park in Long Beach for the Warbler. We spent about two hours scouring the park for it, but we came up empty. It is not the most beautiful park, that's for sure. It's full of homeless camps and litter. Thankfully, there was a group of four birders from Orange County that showed up soon after us. We appreciated the company and the safety that numbers brought as the sun set. Unfortunately, the extra eyes weren't enough to find the bird.

We did see:

Warbling Vireo (olive back, eyebrow!, but no wing-bar: this was the closest we got to something like the Arctic Warbler)
Black Phoebes (lots)
Wilson's Warbler (5 or so)
Black-throated Gray Warbler (2)
House Wren (1)
Common Yellowthroat (4)
Vaux's Swift (50)
White-throated Swift (5-10)
Barn Swallow (2)
California Towhee (1)
Bushtit (10)
Cooper's Hawk (3)
Allen's Hummingbird (10)
House Finch

The Vaux's Swifts were probably the highlight of the evening for me. There were tons of them swirling all over the place in a giant flock above us. Occasionally they'd dart in low among the tree tops after some insect or another. Since we only get Vaux's Swifts as migrants, it's always a treat to see them.

Malibu was a little more fruitful, if exhausting. We set our alarm for 5:00 in the morning. When I woke up this morning, I turned over and looked at the clock. It said 4:35. I groaned inside. That's not enough time to get any more rest! I just lay in bed until the alarm went off, and then took a shower. After my shower, I came out to prepare breakfast to find that, somehow, our clock had been set an hour ahead. It was actually 4:30 by then. It had been 3:30 when I awoke.

We got out the door by 5:30 to drive out to Malibu. This works well, I highly recommend it. There wasn't any traffic anywhere on the roads at that time, which was nice. Unfortunately, it was still quite dark and very cold when we arrived at the Malibu Lagoon. We parked far away and walked, since we didn't know where anything was, which had the benefit of warming us up.

The Yellow Wagtail proved much easier to see than the Arctic Warbler. Right after I set up the scope on the bridge over the Lagoon, I saw it. It was too dark, however, to actually see anything much about it. It didn't stick around, either. It flew off quite quickly. We shivered and waited for awhile, but finally decided to head off some sand bars on the other end of the lagoon. It was a pretty walk, and as we arrived, two birders picked up the bird again in their scopes. I set up ours, but we were way too far away for our little telescope. The bird was there, and we could see it, but it just looked like a little dot. After awhile, we asked to look through the other birders' bigger scopes. They were courteous, but the bird was gone by the time I had asked. Bummer.

Anyway, there was no point waiting there anymore with our scope, so we headed off to a third location, more central to the marsh. We waited there for over an hour before the bird showed up again, but it did. We looked through our scope, and through another kind birders scope, before packing up and leaving. It had disappeared again by the time we packed up to go.

Anyway, birds we saw there:

Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron (getting there before the sun revealed tons of these)
Brown Pelican
Double-crested Cormorant
Mallard
Northern Shoveler
Blue-winged Teal
American Coot
Spotted Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Willet
Semipalmated Plover
Ruddy Turnstone
Kildeer
Sanderling
Black Phoebe
Say's Phoebe
Vaux's Swifts (another big flock)
Red-winged Blackbirds
Great-tailed Grackle
Song Sparrow
California Towhee
Spotted Towhee
Wilson's Warbler
Common Yellowthroat