Always Bring Binoculars

Common Eider at Sachuest Point NWR, Newport, RI

Birding Rhode Island at Christmas-time

It’s a bit backwards for Californians to vacation in Rhode Island at the end of December. People who think 45 degrees is freezing have no business in a place where the high doesn’t reach 30 degrees. That said, we actually avoided a week of steady rain in LA. And I also got to see some birds I don’t usually see. Survival required 2 layers of pants, 5 layers on top, gloves and a scarf, but I saw them.

We bookended a stay on the water in Barrington with time near Brown University in Providence. What a charming neighborhood. With the trees bare of leaves and it far too cold for most bugs, songbirds were scarce. (How do the sparrows and titmice and chickadees who stick around tolerate it?) Makes you appreciate the bird numbers we have around L.A. throughout the winter. If geese, ducks, and gulls are your jam, however, Rhode Island in December is the place to be.

Iceland Gull

Barrow’s Goldeneye

Harlequin Duck

Brant

Canada Geese were everywhere. Brant were abundant along the shore. The gulls included Greater Black-backed, American Herring, and Ring-billed. I found one Iceland Gull on the river in downtown Providence. It was a Kumlein’s subspecies, which are much paler than our dark Thayer’s subspecies Iceland Gulls on the west coast (those were separate species until 2017).

Duck-wise, it was a bonanza. Between ducks, scoters, and mergansers, I saw 17 species. I managed all three species of merganser. Seeing the male Common Eiders and their sloping foreheads was a delight. So, too, were the Harlequin Ducks at bitterly-cold Sachuest NWR. Harlequin Ducks like swift rivers in summer, and rocky coastlines in winter with pounding surf. Apparently, they suffer the greatest amount of broken bones of all birds. I found a pair of Barrow’s Goldeneye among the expected Common Goldeneye at Colt State Park. And I saw more American Black Ducks than I’d ever seen in my life.

Birds Besides Ducks, Geese, and Gulls

There were other birds to be found. In the water and on the coast, I added one life bird to my list: Purple Sandpiper. These shorebirds like rocky coasts, and I found a half dozen of them with a group of 20 Ruddy Turnstones on my first foray to try and find them. Always nice to get the main target bird of the trip checked off early. I also added Great Cormorant, a bird I’d seen in Spain, to my ABA life list.

Purple Sandpiper

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Bald Eagle

Winter Wren

Songbird wise, I stumbled on a Palm Warbler in Providence that should’ve been much farther south by now. Parks mostly hosted Blue Jays and Song Sparrows, and little else. But in one spot. I finally found some numbers and diversity. In a tangle, a tiny Winter Wren appeared next to a White-throated Sparrow. I saw one Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and three species of woodpecker. A couple of Fish Crows thankfully gave their nasal call. as they flew over. And there was a Brown Creeper, one of my favorite birds to find. I checked a few spots that might’ve had Snow Bunting, a bird I have only seen once, without any luck.

Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge

Over 8 days, I saw 66 species (I can see that many in a single day in my 5MR in January, for comparison). Since it was a family-focused vacation, I wasn’t able to chase as much as I might’ve wished. There were some Black-headed Gulls in the south coast I would’ve liked to see. And on our last day in Rhode Island, a Pink-footed Goose was spotted on the border with Connecticut. Maybe if I wasn’t the only birder in the bunch, I would’ve squeezed it in. But you can’t see them all.

Sooty Tern, for some reason on a Los Angeles beach in my 5MR

2025 Recap

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing 5MR birding for 8 years now. It’s similarly hard to believe that I’m in my 50s and have been birding for over a dozen years. In the Trumpocene, reality is hard to believe.

2025 was another great year in my 5MR circle. Big picture, I ended up seeing 235 species of birds. That tied my 2024 record. I tried hard in December to top that, but I couldn’t make it happen. The tally included seven species I’d never seen before in my circle.

Lesser Black-backed Gull – This was one of two new birds that was on my 2025 target list. It was found in January by ace birder Andy Birch, who owed me one for finding a Sedge Wren in his 5MR a few years ago. Lesser Black-backed Gulls have been showing up in increasing, but small, numbers in LA in recent years. This bird ended up staying until at least March. Another one (or the same bird?) was back on the same Dockweiler Beach in July. It hung around until September. We’ll see if these become more regular.
Least Flycatcher – In February, a birder found an empid at Kenneth Hahn park. These are notoriously difficult to ID. Luckily, this bird was vocal. The call clinched the ID as a Least Flycatcher. I was able to visit the next day and found the active and uncooperative bird.
Red-crowned Amazon – From fall to early spring, a gaggle of parrots sometimes shows up in the mornings at the Village Green. You never know what you’ll see amongst the parrot flocks here in LA. Red-crowned Amazon is a species that, in my mind, is wrongly identified quite frequently on the west side. I’d never never confidently seen one until one day in March, when I did. It’s my 7th species of parrot/parakeet in my circle.
Franklin’s Gull – Walter Lamb does great work protecting Ballona wetland habitat in my circle. As he does, he frequently finds good birds. In March, he found a Franklin’s Gull in April at a seasonal pond next to the freshwater marsh. I saw the black-headed little guy the next morning. It gave out a few calls, took flight, and flew off toward the beach, not to be seen in the area again.
Sooty Tern – Before July, a Sooty Tern had never been seen in LA County. Unsurprising for a tropical seabird. The morning after one was seen in Orange County, Chris Dean smartly headed to Dockweiler Beach. Remarkably, she found the Sooty Tern amongst a big flock of Elegant and Royal Terns. I was looking through a flock of Caspian Terns on the salt pan, and quickly made my way to the beach for this improbable bird.
Scarlet Tanager – God bless the unobsessed but observant. A sharp-eyed Culver City resident photographed an unusual tanager at Lindberg Park In November. The nerds identified it as a Scarlet Tanager, an eastern U.S. bird that’s only seen every other year in LA. Then again, there may be more of them, because this bird was hard to see buried in the ficus trees. And then, five days after it was found, there were two of them in the same park!
Rose-breasted Grosbeak – This was the other species on my target list that I found in 2025. I was exploring patches of park I’d never birded before, trying to turn up something new in December. This hunt turned up nothing new until I found this bird. I was walking a sliver of park next to LAX along Imperial Highway. There, with a group of House Finches on electrical wire, was a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. And with that, I tied my yearly record with 235 and pushed my 5MR life list to 314/323.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Red-crowned Amazon

Scarlet Tanager

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Honorable Mention – One rainy day in November, Sara Boscoe found a Bay-breasted Warbler in front of the high school my oldest kid attended. This is a rare warbler for LA, and would’ve been a new bird for my 5MR. But, alas, it was about 960 feet outside of my circle. I could see the edge of my circle across the school’s parking lot. This close call would be bested in January 2026 when a Lucy’s Warbler was found by Chris Dean at the lake at SoFi Stadium. This bird was 740 feet outside my circle. As tempting as it may be to add these to my arbitrary circle list, I’m a 5MR purist. Close to my living couch, for sure, but not close enough.

2026 5MR Targets

I think I might widen my horizons in 2026 after 2 consecutive years of 5MR-focused birding. Variety is good for the soul. Still, I know myself. I’ll be spending most of my time birding my circle. Here are some species I want and hope to find. Some are holdovers from previous lists, others are new.

Magnolia Warbler – There are still quite a few warblers I haven’t seen in my 5MR. I’m giving up on finding a waterthrush because the riparian habitat in my circle doesn’t have good flowing water. I will now be searching the trees for arguably the most stunning breeding-plumage warbler of them all.
Painted Bunting – This was a target bird last year. I remain hopeful that I can find one of these, probably near the Ballona Freshwater Marsh. A return to the days of easier access to the backside of the marsh would help.
Broad-winged Hawk – A holdover target that seems like an inevitability. For a few moments in October, I thought I had one in my sights, but it was a Red-shouldered Hawk.
Gray Catbird – One of these showed up on UCLA’s campus this winter, not far from my circle, so I’m not crazy to have it as a target.
Chimney Swift – Like I said last year, this is about patience and ID skills, because they’re certainly amongst the Vaux Swifts migrating through my circle.
Glaucous Gull – I added two gulls to my 5MR list in 2025, and a third new one (Laughing Gull) in the first week of 2026. I’m not done, as there are several more gulls that could wander into my circle. The biggest of them all would be a Glaucous Gull.
Red-necked Stint – Now that I have a scope, I can get better looks at all the peeps in the salt pan and maybe pick out something delicious like a Red-necked Stint.
Tricolored Heron – You can see these birds each year at Bolsa Chica in Orange County, but not since 1981 has a Tricolored Heron been seen in the Ballona wetlands. This is the year one of those birds get wanderlust and heads north.
Red-throated Pipit – Last winter, I picked out a Siberian Pipit amongst the American Pipits. The next challenge is to find a Red-throated Pipit in the flock. Pipit numbers are low this winter, so this’ll have to be a fall 2026 find.
Sandhill Crane – One of these big birds was seen in Ballona Creek back in 2015. That’s the only eBird sighting within 20 miles of my living room couch ever. We’ll make it my longshot target for the year.

Face-melting Magnolia Warbler, Bartlett Island, Maine

Birding Rhode Island at Christmas