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Gather of Gulls

Flying Rats. Parking Lot Bird. Beach Pigeons. A Health Hazard. A Nuissance.

There are many epithets given to the unpopular group of birds collectively known as “seagulls”. These birds are often overlooked, even by birders. 

Gulls are found in most coastal urban areas including parking lots, school yards or perched on the roof of fast food chains, often chasing other birds and sometimes even small children. While the rising human population harms many species of animals, gulls seem to prosper with our desrtruction and altering of the earth’s landscapes.

From a birder’s perspective, gulls all seem to look alike and can be devilishly difficult to identify. Some first year birds look like a Dickensian chimney sweep, covered from head to tail in dark-gray soot. Or you have adult birds that all seem to have the same proportion of white and grey. It’s easy to understand why many birders ignore them altogether. With gulls, the devil is truly in the details.

So it was that on a Sunday morning that Dickissel and I came to be on a bluff above Pilarcitos Creek to observe details.

From our perspective, the creek was directly below us and beyond the water was Venice Beach and further down slope was Half Moon Bay. Directly in front of us were gulls bathing and preening in Pilarcitos Creek while up on the beach there where other gulls that were preening or resting on the sands. In total, the mixed gull flock included about 150 individuals.

This flock  was truly mixed. It included common gulls at different plumages on their three to fourth year journey to adulthood. And none of them resembled each other, hence the importance of observing details (and a scope helps).

The first gulls that stood out were the five adult and one juvenile black-legged kittiwakes, enthusiastically bathing in the creek. 2017 has been a fantastic year for this normally scarce species on the coast. For whatever reason, this winter, these petite pelagic gulls were abundant on beaches and off shore rocks. The kittiwakes kept their distance from the larger gulls in the communal bath that is Pilarcitos Creek.

One juvenile kittiwake would vigorously preen and bath at the base of the main flock and slowly float downstream just below our perch where we could observe it’s bold “M” stretched across it’s wing span and it’s black rimmed tail. Dickcissel christened the young one our “Homie”.

Our “Homie”, the juvenile black-legged kittiwake,  flying upstream to preen in the waters of Pilarcitos Creek. 

Aside from the kittiwakes, the most common gull present were westerns, followed by California, mew, ring-billed, and two glaucous-winged gulls. But we were searching for a large white Artic gem. This would be the largest and whitest gull around, a gull that cohabitants with polar bears and its foragaging portfolio includes predation, this gull was the glaucous gull (Larus  hyerboreus).

A large white gull with a pied bill of black and bubblegum pink appeared amoung the gulls washing in the creek. This gull really stood out. It washed and preened for a good 15 minutes allowing close study thought the scope. After it’s bath, the glaucous flew up to the beach to continue to preen.

A digiscope photo taken by Dicksissel of the 1st winter glaucous gull, bathing in the creek. All other gulls are giving this menacing youngster a wide berth.

What I noticed about the glaucous is that all the western gulls surrounding on the beach, it gave it a wide berth as if they knew the glaucous was different. Bigger, more aggressive, and menacing. All the other gulls stayed outside of pecking distance.

Some beach walkers flushed the gull flock, they took to the air, circled around and eventually returned to the creek and beach. I scanned the flock and refound the glaucous. I then noticed a bird at the upper edge of the flock that stood out. It stood out for a few reasons: first is was standing apart from the flock, as if it didn’t belong, second it’s bill shape was very different from the others, and lastly it’s dark eyes was framed in a broken white circle. This was a rare west coaster, a laughing gull (Leucophaeus artricilla).

A birder on the bluff looking for that needle in the haystack.

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Binoculars of the Gods and the Wanderer

Saturday March 11th, 2017 (~10:30)

Standing in the vast parking lot outside the Wild Birds Unlimited store in Novato, clutching my new purchase, packed in a box like a very expensive single malt Scotch, I spotted a black sickle shape, high in the sky, silhouetted against a cloud. The shape stilled in the sky, calmness before it’s storm. I pointed out the shape to Dickcissel. The shape then folded in it’s blades, forming a slick arrow, dropping from the sky. The arrow sped toward it’s moving target, somewhere beyond the plaza’s buildings, only seen by the speeding, feathered arrow.

I fumbled with the green box, removing it from it’s elegant sleeve. I unzipped the dark green soft case and raised my new binoculars to my eyes, picking out the bird that was now flying level, heading to the east, holding a bird in it’s bright yellow talons.

This was my first bird seen through my new Swarovski El 8.5 x 42s, a peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus)! You can’t get a much better parking lot bird than this!

These binoculars where the fourth pair I have owned. Each new pair got a little better that the previous. Brighter glass, lighter weight, a nice and comfortable feel in the hand. The binoculars I now hold are top of the class, light years ahead of all my other pairs. You can’t get any better than Swarovski. I look forward to a lifetime of lifers and other birds!

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Rio Grande Valley and the Coastal Bend

While planning a birding trip to South Texas in April I sketched some  birds on my wish list. I chose to sketch in a woodcut, stylized way that focused more on shape rather than fine detail. The style is that of a preliminary working sketch if I were designing a linocut.

The birds are, from left to right, top to bottom: whooping crane, sandwich tern, fulvous whistling-duck, green parakeet, king rail, ringed kingfisher, red-crowned parrot, white-collared seedeater, bronzed cowbird, green jay, Audubon’s oriole, cave swallow, northern beardless-tyrannulet, and Couch’s kingbird.

Bird notes:

Whooping Crane: One of our rarest and tallest birds in North America. In the 1940’s where were just 21 whoopers in the wild. Since then, with conservation efforts, their numbers have grown. I hope to add this bird to the list on a cruise on Aransas Bay.

Sandwich Tern: A medium-sized tern of the Gulf Coast with a black bill dipped in mustard.

Fulvous Whistleling-duck: I struck out on this duck on my last visit to Texas but am determined to add it to my list in the ponds around McAllen.

Green Parakeet: I should find this gregarious green gem at it’s nighttime roost, about ten minutes from my digs in McAllen.

King Rail: Missed this rail in Florida but I am hoping to hear, if not see it,  at Ticano Lake. This is our largest rail in North America.

Ringed Kingfisher: I missed this kingfisher, the largest in North America, by a few minutes at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park.

Red-crowned Parrot: Another McAllen specialty.

White-collared Seedeater: Found only in a few places along the Rio Grande. I’m going to search around Falcon Dam.

Bronzed Cowbird: This devil-eyed bird can be found in parking lots in McAllen.

Green Jay: Not a lifer but very common in the Rio Grande Valley. This beautiful jay is a blockbuster bird in south Texas and it’s found nowhere else in the US.

Audubon’s Oriole: Hoping to add this bird to my list near my digs at the McAllen Nature Center.

Cave Swallow: Similar to the cliff swallow. I will keep my eyes to the sky to see this lifer.

Northern Beardless-Tyrannulet: This small, drab flycatcher is inconspicuous, until it sings.

Couch’s Kingbird: Almost identical to the tropical kingbird, until it sings.

 

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Friday After Work Lifer

Is there any better way to end a week on a Friday than having an afternoon lifebird on the San Mateo Coast? I was about to find out as I left work and headed west to Half Moon Bay, recently christened, “The Rare Gull Capital of the United States”.

The rare gull in question was the slaty-backed gull (Larus schistisagus). This large four year gull is an Asian gull that is rare in Alaska but is even rarer along the western coast of California. This was my sort of lifer.

The last time the adult gull had been seen was at 5:30 on the previous afternoon at the Pilarcitos Creek mouth as it entered the Pacific at Venice Beach in Half Moon Bay.

When I arrived at about 4, there were over one hundred gulls preening, resting, and bathing on the beach and in the creek and about 10 birders combing through the mixed species flock.

Now which one of these gulls has a slaty back?

I figured patience was the order of the day. I was hoping the gull would appear and we had many eyes trained on the group.

I shared a conversation with Sterling and a non-birder lady that when a little something like this:

Lady: What are you looking at?

Birder: Gulls.

Lady: Oh seagulls! Why are there so many here?

Birder: The fresh water from the creek, they bathe and drink from it.

Lady: Why don’t they drink from there? (she points to the Pacific Ocean).

Birder: It’s the ocean. It’s saltwater.

dsc07389 Another oddly pixilated photo of the mixed gull flock at Pilarcitos Creek. I’d call it art if it weren’t a complete accident.

It was starting to get colder but the mix flocked provided me with many different looks at gulls of different ages and species. But the the large gull with a dark slaty-grey back had not yet appeared.

Then at 5:20, out of thin air, the adult slaty-backed was spotted on the southside of the creek, 20 yards away! Lifer #512!

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A rather crappy digiscope of the adult slaty-backed gull.

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A great way to end the week: a lifer and a beautiful sunset at Venice Beach.

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Edward Harris’s Sparrow (A Surprise Lifer)

When you are north of 500 lifers, your memory can get a little foggy on what you’ve seen, especially with the class of birds known to birders as Little Brown Birds (LBBs), the sparrows and their relatives. A sometimes tricky group of birds to identify.

I was not sure how I missed North America’s largest sparrow. When I saw that a Harris’s sparrow had been found at Las Gallinas, on December 24th, in a mixed flock of white and golden crowned sparrows I thought I had added this one to my list years ago. I noticed that it had been refound on Friday and I consulted my records to help jog my memory. That box was not checked. I checked and rechecked and sure enough, that sparrow was not on my list. I knew that, with a break in our extremely wet winter, I would be heading north, to one of my favorite birding destinations: Las Gallinas Sewage Ponds.

I rendezvoused with Dickcissel and we headed up. The ponds were swollen with all the recent rains and it was extremely easy to see birds that are normally shy and elusive because most of their reedy habitat was now underwater. Soras, gallinules, and the constantly singing marsh wrens where putting on a wonderful Saturday morning show. On the west side of Pond 1, a common gallinule rushed out of the water and up into the remaining reeds. A predator was near. Sure enough, a river otter poked it’s head above the water to survey the scene.

We returned to the parking lot area and scanned any sparrow flocks for a large sparrow with a white breast. I was following a flock across the channel and Dickcissel returned to the dirt lot to see what he could find. A whistle alerted me to the fact that the Harris’s had been located and I rushed over to Dickcissel’s position and found lifer # 511, Harris’s sparrow.

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An oddly pixilated digiscope shot of the Harris’s, no Photoshope required.

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Digiscope of North America’s largest sparrow at Las Gallinas.

 

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Scope Gull

To the naked eye they are white specks on a rock. With binoculars you can discern the white front and grey back, the yellow beak (with maybe a smudge of red on the lower mandible) but the iris and orbital ring color are unknown at this distance. But with a scope the smaller gull,  just on the right, with a yellow bill, dark “earmuffs”, and black feet turns into North American Lifebird #510!

I set out on Saturday morning ,  heading south on Highway One with binos, scope, and tripod stowed in the back. My first detour of the day was in Pacifica to the Sharp Park Golf Course to check on the continuing emperor goose. A short walk south down the berm produced the rare goose, loosely feeding on the fairway with a group of Canada geese. Check.

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Journal page from the Emperor goose I saw at Seven Mile Slough, Lifebird #500. March 12, 2016.

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Digiscope shot of the goose in the rough, at Sharp Park Golf Course, January 29, 2017.

The next stop was Pillar Point Harbor to see if anything interesting had blown in. I checked the creekmouth and beaches for any interesting gulls with not much luck. I then returned to Highway One. My plan was to head to Pescadero to scope the rocks and sea to find something interesting.

On my way to Santa Cruz, I frequently stop here, scanning the rocks for one of my favorite rock dwellers, the black oystercatcher. Most times it’s banshee wail, issued as it flies, calls attention to this cryptic colored bird, especially when it tucks its bright orange-red bill into its feathers. I scoped the rocks from the Pescadero State Beach pockmarked parking lot.  I counted 11 oystercatchers among the gulls and pelicans.

I slowly picked through the gulls, noting the beautiful plumage of the Heerman’s gull that were preening near the brown pelicans. As I panned to the left I saw a small gull, one with dark earmuffs, that I had missed on my first pass. This gull was different. Through the scope I ticked off the details: black legs, earmuffs, yellow bill. This was my target bird: an adult black-legged kittiwake! Lifebird #510!

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A not so wonderful digiscope photo of the preening kittiwake (the top gull).

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In Pursuit of Phantoms

Just west of the Salton Sea, the road begins to rise, just out of Salton City. Slowly you climb up to above sea level and you keep climbing through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. My target bird for this little desert detour was the elusive Le Conte’s thrasher. This bird have eluded me all over Joshua Tree National Park and I hoping to add this bird to my life list at the known thrasher hotspot at Old Springs Road Open Space Preserve.

I walked the sand in ever widening circles, hoping to catch the bird that looked like a mouse darting from bush to bush, but the the only evidence of the thrasher were it’s footprints in the desert sands.

With one last day in Joshua Tree I decided to try one last place for Le Conte’s, a location I had tried before, Queen Valley Road. I walked the road, stopping every once in awhile to listen for the thrasher’s song. I was about 300 yards down the road, when I heard the warble of of a far of thrasher off to the left. I maddening ran through the desert brush, like Tuco the Ugly, in the famous “Ecstasy Of Gold” scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The song seemed to come from the rock outcrop. I scanned the area for any sign of the thrasher.

I finally spotted the thrasher in the upper branches of a tree, signing it’s heart out and mimicking a scrub-jay, which perched in the tree next to the singing thrasher. I was able to get great looks at the very light, sandy thrasher. Le Conte’s thrasher! I watched the thrasher as it moved around, singing from the highest perches around it’s territory.

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The singing thrasher on top of a boulder.

I then walked off to the Wall Street Mine. On the way out to the mine, doubt started to set in. There was something about the bird that didn’t fit. Would a Le Conte’s sing in the top of the tallest tree around? Is the Le Conte’s know for it’s mimicry in it’s songs? Everything I had read about the bird was that it was elusive and sang a quiet, hushed song. This was not the thrasher I had just seen. In my desire to see a Le Conte’s, I had convinced myself that this thrasher fit the part.

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The abandoned Wall Street Mine, Joshua Tree National Park.

On my return from the mine, I refound the thrasher and this time I confirmed that it was not a Le Conte’s but a California thrasher. And I so I left Joshua Tree without finding the elusive silent-sulker of a thrasher.

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Foot steps in the sand are the closest I came to “seeing” the mysterious, Le Conte’s thrasher.

 

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An Extremely Rare California Gull

On Thursday January 12, 2017 at 2:07 PM, word went out of Sialia.com (a birding lists digest) that a very rare gull had been  found in a parking lot in Pillar Point Harbor, just north of Half Moon Bay. This small, dove-like gull was a Ross’s Gull, an arctic breeder that spends it’s time feeding near ice flows in the Arctic. And this gull was only the second time this species had ever been seen in California. It was previously seen in November of 2006 in, (where else?) the Salton Sea.

On the following day, Friday the 13th, I saw that the gull had been seen up until 3:20 PM on Thursday when it had flown north and the Ross’s could not be refound.  I knew where I would be heading after work to attempt to add a rare gem of a bird to my list but in the morning, the gull’s location was a mystery. Then it was refound at 12:20 at the Half Moon Bay Airport. Now if the gull would only stick until I could get there! But the gull flew east, fortunately no further than the flooded Brussels sprout field across highway one.

I left work and headed west on Highway 92, willing the gull to stay put and not head north into oblivion. Traffic slowed through Half Moon Bay and was equally as sluggish once I turned north on Highway One. I passed the intersection to Princeton, just a bit further, then I spotted all the cars pulled over on either side of the highway. I parked and swiftly walked north, towards the hordes of birders.

The Ross’s stood out like a sore thumb, a brilliantly white gull in a brown field. Bingo Lifebird #509, the perfect lifer!

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The Ross’s gull in the flooded field, across Highway One from the Half Moon Bay Airport on Friday the 13th, 2017.

The Ross’s was the perfect lifer because it was ultra rare (only the second California record), it was seen in amazing afternoon light, it was tame and extremely accommodating, it was only 30 yards away in a puddle by itself (no massive gull flock to muddle through), and it acted as if 150 crazed birders watching it was an everyday experience.

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Field sketch from Highway One.

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Overexposed digiscope photo of the Ross’s. The little gull was scanning the skies, two peregrines were spotted earlier, heading northeast.

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The hordes or birders from near and far, enjoying a late afternoon gull from the edge of Highway One.

Coda:

On the following day, Saturday January 14, at 2:10 PM, it was reported that the Ross’s Gull had been flushed up from the flooded field by a pair of peregrines and the gull was taken by the two falcons, ending it’s wayward journey.

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Looking for a Gull I Found a Legend Instead

Salton Sea, California.

From Joshua Tree, I headed two hours south to one of the top birding destination in the nation.

The Salton Sea is really an accident. In 1905, the Colorado River breached it’s banks and headed downhill to the Salton Sink, 200 feet below sea level. It took engineers three years to stanch the flow and in that short time, the Salton Sea was created, the largest lake in California and the 2nd largest inland sea in the country (only bested by the Great Salt Lake).

The Salton Sea was a hopping place back in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Water recreation in the form of boating, water skiing, fishing, and sunbathing was the main draw for folks from the Los Angeles Basin. But this boon was short lived. The lake began to shrink, becoming more polluted by agricultural runoff, and growing saltier than the Pacific Ocean. The communities around the sea become dusty ghost towns.

The main visitors to the sea nowadays are birders and the bird that draws then to this remote part of California is the yellow-footed gull, the only place in the United States where this gull can be found. A bird the size of the common western gull but with a heavier bill and yellow legs. This gull breeds on the Sea of Cortez and some spend the summer and fall at the Salton Sea. A smaller number overwinter and I was hoping to see one of these birds from the Rock Hill Trail at the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge on the sea’s southern shores.

img_6276The sketcher at the famous Salton Sea birding trail: Rock Hill Trail at the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge.

Along the Rock Hill Trail there were many gulls to comb through and the scope was a great help. But try as I might I could not turn a single ring-billed gull into a yellow-footed.

I left Rock Hill Trail and I tried a few other locations  to the seashore, down dirt agricultural roads which were impassable because of New Year’s rain. On one such road (Young) I spotted the bird that stares back at you from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service brochure.

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That dirt claude on Young Road, just to the right of center, turned into a burrowing owl, who didn’t give a fig for my search for yellow-footed gull. The plumes of the thermal generation plants can be seen in the distance.

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This place is for the birds!

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The mystical and surreal Salton Sea from Rock Hill.

I returned to Rock Hill Trail for one last look for my target gull. I went all the way up to Rock Hill and scoped both shorelines and spotted a gull with yellow legs but I couldn’t convince myself with 100% confidence that it was a yellow-footed gull.

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I tried to turn this gull into a yellow-footed gull but it’s size, back color, and dark eye said, “California gull.”

On my return along the Rock Hill Trail I came upon a group of three birders. Two younger birders (a man and woman) and a grandfatherly type, shouldering a tripod and scope. Upon seeing him, I knew immediately who he was, a California birding legend!

The man with a scope was Guy McCaskie. The late California birding legend, Rich Stallcup describes McCaskie impact on birding on the continent thus:

Guy’s arrival in California in the late 1950s was to cause not only a CHANGE in North American Ornithology, but a RENAISSANCE. Birdwatching was about to have its definition remodeled and its confining protocol burst open.

McCaskie, given the moniker of “The Godfather of California Birding”and  became known for finding migrant traps and chalking up 11 first state records of birds first seen in the Golden State. He also became, and stills is, a mentor to generations of California birders.

We scoped both sides of the trail for any large dark-backed gulls and we found none. If Guy McCaskie couldn’t find any yellow-footeds then there probably none within the reach of our scopes.

So instead of finding a yellow-footed gull, I instead found a living, California birding legend. Not a bad trade off.

Now I was off to the northwest to look for a phantom.

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GP in JT

Joshua Tree National Park is most closely associated with one musician: Gram Parsons. This country-rock legend, who played with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers and created two classic solo albums GP and Grievous Angel, frequently made trips out to Joshua Tree. On some of these occasions he was accompanied by Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, spending  time at night, searching for UFOs from the park’s boulder outcrops.

There are two locations that are destinations for any Gram fan: Room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn (I stayed in Room 9) and Cap Rock.

Room 8 is at the epicenter of Gram’s cult legend for it was in this room that he died on September 19, 1973 at the age of 26. He was just shy of joining the infamous “27 Club” whose members include: Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison,  Pigpen, D. Boon, Richey Edwards, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse.

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The memorial for Gram Parsons erected outside room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn,  Joshua Tree, Ca. “Safe at Home” is the name of one of Gram’s early albums, then playing with the International Submarine Band.

Gram was another causality of the distructive rock and roll lifestyle, he was another musician cut down too early making many fans wonder what might have been. So far this seemed to be the typical rock and roll tragedy but things were about to get strange, very strange.

Gram’s body was sent to LAX to be flown to New Orleans. But Gram’s friends claimed that he had talked about having his ashes spread in Joshua Tree. So two of his drunk friends put on some suits, borrowed a hearse and convinced airport officials to release the body to them. They then headed east to Joshua Tree stopping to buy gasoline on the way. They took the coffin to Cap Rock, filled it with gasoline and set it on fire.

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The boulder at Cap Rock where Gram Parsons’ body was set afire. To rock climbers it’s known as the Gram Parsons Memorial Hand Traverse. (The traverse can be seen at the base of the rock.)

Cap Rock is now an unofficial public shire to the legacy of the music and memory of Gram Parsons.

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