Irvine Park Birding

So, Libby and I went birding together on Saturday at Irvine Park. We had a pretty good time. We started by exploring the Villa Park Flood Basin - somewhere we hadn't ever really heard about until there was a recent Audubon field trip there we missed. The flood basin contains Santiago Creek just in case it gets out of control, and has developed some riparian scrub habitat - dense thickets of willows, a few sycamores and some rushes where there are some little ponds of standing water. This kind of habitat has been seriously reduced or degraded in southern California, and supports a good diversity of breeding species like Yellow Warblers, Blue Grosbeaks, Least Bell's Vireos, Yellow-breasted Chats and other desirable species (in some places Willow Flycatchers, though not in Orange County).

It was overcast, and the sun was behind most of the willows, so we didn't find all the possible species, but we did have fun there. The highlight was that there were a lot of Yellow-breasted Chats out and singing conspicuously. Yellow-breasted Chats are a pretty shy species, and we'd only seen them previously in Arizona, though we'd heard them plenty at the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine. April, for our local population, is apparently the time to find them. They were singing from exposed perches in trees that form the canopies around the area. That's fun, since their songs consist of barking and whistling. We have a special place in our hearts for Chats because they're on the cover page of Libby's National Geographic Guide.

http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2425531137/

Yellow-breasted Chat

After we'd done the loop through the flood control plain, we wandered off to take in some of Irvine Park's sights. This was Libby's first time there! We ended up visiting the OC Zoo and finding a cool statue of James Irvine II - the man himself! The zoo was pretty fun. It's small, but only $2.00. They have a Golden Eagle, a Bald Eagle, a Red-tailed Hawk, an Ocelot, a couple of Mountain Lions, and a couple of bears. Cool.

The last thing we did was stroll over to the place where a Lewis's Woodpecker has been spending the winter. It's still there, though we were far away from it.

Here's a bird list, in no particular order at all:

1. Cooper's Hawk
2. Mallard
3. Cinnamon Teal
4. Wood Duck
5. American Coot
6. Red-tailed Hawk
7. Turkey Vulture
8. Mourning Dove
9. Rock Pigeon
10. Red-winged Blackbird
11. House Wren
12. Marsh Wren (Heard only)
13. Bushtit
14. Oak Titmouse
15. Wrentit
16. Green Heron
17. Great Egret
18. American Crow
19. Common Raven
20. N Rough-winged Swallow
21. Tree Swallow
22. Acorn Woodpecker
23. Northern Flicker
24. Nuttall's Woodpecker
25. Lewis Woodpecker
26. Hutton's Vireo
27. Yellow-breasted Chat
28. Yellow-rumped Warbler
29. Orange-crowned Warbler (Heard only)
30. Black-throated Gray Warbler
31. Yellow Warbler
32. Common Yellowthroat
33. American Robin
34. Western Bluebird
35. Black Phoebe
36. Pacific-slope Flycatcher
37. Black-headed Grosbeak
38. Lesser Goldfinch
39. House Finch
40. Song Sparrow
41. California Towhee
42. Spotted Towhee
43. Northern Mockingbird
44. European Starling
45. Cedar Waxwing
46. House Sparrow
47. Black-chinned Hummingbird
48. Anna's Hummingbird
49. Red-crowned Parrots
50. Western Tanager

A round 50! I didn't know that until I just numbered them. Cool. There are a lot more birds around that park and flood basin that we didn't see, some of them very easy - like Scrub Jays, but it's not about numbers, it's about having a good time out of doors. And we did.

Here's the link to the Flickr set: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157604679785851/