Ann's Bird Blog: What We Saw in Southern California

Saturday, September 10, 2011

What We Saw in Southern California

We saw three new birds in southern California. These are NOT my pictures; I pulled them off the internet.

This is a Western Gull. It takes the place in the west of the eastern Great Black-backed Gull which we saw one time, in the winter at Kiawah Island (an unusual sighting), and which we saw a couple of last summer in Maine. It's the only black-winged gull of the west, and has pink legs and a yellow bill.

We had to turn around in a neighborhood, on our way to the tour of the GTY offices, and got a quick glance at a white-winged dove, which according to Mike takes the place of our eastern mourning dove. He immediately recognized it.

We also got a quick glance at a scrub jay, which takes the place of the eastern blue jay. Wish our brief look had been as good as this photo! We were riding up the long driveway to the Reagan Library when it flew past our car and landed in brush on our right. Would have stopped to watch it longer, but there was a car behind us. It's much easier to identify these birds when there are species that actually replace the ones we have in the east, and the ranges do not overlap.

It was somewhat of a surprise that we saw very few birds on our two trips to Ventura, on a much less busy road than the freeways. We hoped for a roadrunner, but it wasn't to be.

We did see ravens again, the first time for me since our 1997 trip to Washington/Montana/Canada. (Saw them in downtown Couer d'Alene on that trip.)

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How This Bird-Watching Happened

I'm always a little self-conscious and reticent about telling people that I like to watch birds. Somehow that hobby conjures up pictures of little old women in khaki shorts and boots, peering through binoculars at some little spot in the woods. Maybe wearing a pith helmet.

But birdwatching is something that really brought my husband and me together in the early years of our marriage. He was a huge hunter; I had never picked up a gun. We were very different. But we discovered that we were quite a team about birdwatching - I was the bookworm about them, and he had the outdoors knowledge to pick up sounds and motion in the woods. We kept lists and watched everywhere we went. I picked up some of his extensive knowledge about wildlife. And it was fascinating.

Even after our son was born, we still could keep up with this hobby somewhat. Our home had a great shelf feeder, directly out of our second-story bedroom window, that was about fifty yards from woods and stream. So we had great variety coming directly to our house.

After moving to Mike's hometown, the hobby waned. Two children, not a good location for much variety at a feeder, not as easy to take trips, either short or long ones. So it became an occasional thing rather than a main focus.

On our trip to the northwest, fourteen years ago, we put fifteen new species on our lists and got excited about it once again. And on our recent California trip, we got a few more.

Now that our children are gone, we're intent on watching birds again. It is still bringing us together. And we don't even need khaki shorts or pith helmets.