Tag: Harlan’s Hawk

Birding Ballona Creek #2 – Lower Ballona Creek

Birding Lower Ballona Creek: Pacific Avenue to Lincoln Boulevard

This section of my guide to birding Ballona Creek covers the last mile-and-a-half of the creek before it reaches the jetties and breakwater, from Lincoln Blvd. to the Pacific Avenue bridge. There’s a single eBird hotspot for this section–Ballona Creek: Lower–where 223 species have been reported over the years.  The creek is tidal for this whole section, and tides can shift as much as 6 feet from high to low. At the lowest tides, there’s exposed mud in the middle of the creek where Culver Blvd. and Lincoln Blvd. cross it. For the rest of the creek in this section, low tide just exposes a little more rock along the edge of the creek. The bike path (in red in the map above) runs along the north side of the creek. A path along the south side, with a view of the salt pan, is not legally accessible.

This portion of the creek is pretty good for water birds and shorebirds. The water birds (ducks, loons, and grebes mainly) can be found any time of day, moving up and down the creek. Numbers are highest in the winter. Buffleheads dominate, with a smaller number of American Wigeon (who prefer the lagoon to the creek), Lesser Scaup, and Green-winged Teal (more likely the further up the creek you go) usually present all winter, too.  Pacific, Common, and Red-throated Loons will sometimes, usually singly, swim up and down the creek. Eared and Horned Grebes tend to stay downstream of the Pacific Avenue bridge. The Surf Scoters that mass in big numbers off Dockweiler Beach during winter will sometimes wander up the creek a bit. Brant are rare. Most winters a Common Goldeneye or two makes an appearance. Less frequently a Long-tailed Duck shows up. A few Red-necked Phalaropes are seen in fall migration (they prefer the section of the creek near Centinela Ave.), and a breeding-plumaged Red Phalarope hung out for a couple of days one May. Mallards and Gadwall hang around all-year long.

The best time for shorebirds in this section of the creek is either the morning, or low tide.  At high tide, especially if it’s a higher high tide, there aren’t that many roosting spots, and many birds head to the beach or, if there’s water, the salt pan. There are a few spots where the shorebirds are more likely to be found. One is about 50 yards west of the UCLA boat ramp, on the north side of the creek. This is a great spot for viewing because you’ve got point blank views of the birds, all huddled together. Their close proximity helps to make the rarities stick out more obviously. Another spot is just west of the bike path fork. There’s bigger bushes here, which often obscures the view. The best time of the year for shorebirds is during spring/fall migration, when the variety is highest, followed by winter. From May to June, the creek is mainly a ghost town.

Black-bellied Plovers and Willets roost in numbers, with often more than 100 of each. Marbled Godwit can be found year-round as well. Whimbrel pass through for migration, with a few staying all winter.  A Pacific Golden-Plover has been present for 4 winters running, and I hope it comes back in Fall 2022 for a 5th. While not reliably found on any given trip to the creek, each winter, Dunlin and Red Knot can often be found on the lower creek, 

Of course, a bunch of birds fly up and down the creek, as well, occasionally dive bombing to feed for fish. Osprey (August through April), Brown Pelicans (all year), and Elegant and Caspian Terns (summer) are frequent flyers. The tiny Least Terns are around from May to July, but some days you’ll see them, and others not. 

Flatlands surrounding the creek

There are some big flat fields on both the north and south side of the creek. The field north of the creek is known as Area A. It had been completely fenced off for years, but recently a short (and pretty unexciting) walking path was opened up in the western-most portion. You can enter from a parking lot along Fiji Way (across from Whiskey Red’s), or off the bike path. I’ve seen it called the Ballona Wetlands Trail or the Fiji Trail. It’s supposed open Wednesday-Saturday from 8am – 1pm. The path is a short square walk, and gives you some better views of  the field.

Ballona Area A carpeted with yellow flowers in May

If you’re on the bike path, you can often see birds along the fenceline. It’s rarely exciting stuff – house finches, song sparrows, savannah sparrows, and white-crowned sparrow mainly. Spring migration often brings a few Lazuli Buntings and a Blue Grosbeak or two. Out in the field, you’ll see Red-tailed Hawks all-year long. Last winter, a Harlan’s (Red-tailed) Hawk hung around for a month from December to January.  Once a separate species, it’s now considered a subspecies of Red-tailed Hawk. In the Lower 48, they’re usually in the Great Plains in winter. Other birds of prey working the fields include White-tailed Kite, Northern Harrier, Loggerhead Shrike (a carnivorous songbird, is that a bird of prey?), American Kestrel, and Barn Owls at night. Swallows work the field frequently, and you can occasionally see Bell’s Vireo, California Thrasher, and Western Meadowlark out there. The only two warblers you’re likely to see if this mostly tree-less area are Yellow-rumped Warbler in winter, and Common Yellowthroat. 

Harlan's Hawk Ballona Creek

Harlan’s (Red-tailed) Hawk

South of the creek is a flatland sometimes called the Salt Pan. Back when it used to rain in the these parts, there would be shallow pools out there for weeks. But now, thanks to the megadrouhgt, it’s mostly dry. When there’s water, the Black-bellied Plovers will hang out there, alongside Killdeer. It’s harder to get access to this area. Pre-pandemic, there were monthly service events in the area, to clear invasive plants like iceplant. Those are just getting started up again. Without access, it’s hard to spot the Burrowing Owl that often winter in this area. The path along the south side of the creek isn’t legally accessible. You can get distant, lawful views from the high ground at the end of 63rd Avenue in Playa del Rey behind the Del Rey Lagoon, or, more uncomfortably, by pulling off Culver Blvd.  I don’t know who manages the sluice gates, but I’d love to know why the area isn’t managed to allow intrusion of water more regularly. I imagine the migrating birds would love the stopover point. 

White-tailed Kite

Birding Glory: A Bar-tailed Godwit

This section of the creek is the site of my greatest ever birding find: a Bar-tailed Godwit in September 2017. On a bike ride one day, I stopped at a group of shorebirds along the north side of the creek between the UCLA boat ramp and the Pacific Avenue bridge. In the fall, the group is typically a mix of Black-bellied Plover, Willet, and Marbled Godwit. On this day, one of the 5 godwits in the group caught my attention. It had a very prominent white eyebrow that extended behind the eye. I watched it for a couple of minutes, and snapped some pictures (thank goodness). After a few minutes, it flew with the other godwits. The birds flew directly away from me, headed toward the ocean. I noticed that the mystery godwit’s rump patch appeared whiter, or at least contrasted a bit more with the back and end of tail, than the rump of the Marbled Godwits it flew away with. At the time, I didn’t know what it was. When I got home, I downloaded my pictures, and posted a message to the LA County birds listserv about a “Maybe Unusual Godwit” on the creek with my observations and a link to my photos. The experts quickly identified it as a Bar-tailed Godwit.

Bar-tailed Godwit Ballona Creek

A Bar-tailed Godwit very far off its migration course

Bar-tailed Godwits have an astounding migration. In the spring, they leave their wintering grounds in New Zealand and western Australia and fly north to the Yellow Sea in China, and from there disperse anywhere from Russia all the way to western Alaska. For those that head to Alaska, the return trip is unbelievable. These Bar-tailed Godwits double their weight in 2 weeks time, shrink their digestive organs, and enlarge their pectoral muscles, heart, and lungs. Then, they lift off for a 7,000 mile non-stop flight from western Alaska to New Zealand. The path takes them west of Hawai’i, so a Bar-tailed Godwit on the ground in Los Angeles is incredibly far off course. The journey takes eight or nine days, and is the longest known nonstop migration of any animal on earth.  It truly boggles the mind that a 1.5 pound creature can make this insane trip, much less do it every fall its entire life.

Despite lots of nerds looking that afternoon and the next day, the bird wasn’t seen again. Amazingly, of the 445,000+ eBird checklists ever submitted in L.A. County, only two report a Bar-tailed Godwit. There’s mine, and there’s one from 1976 (also in the lower Ballona Creek) from Kimball Garrett, the Michael Jordan of L.A. county birding (he’s seen 528 species in L.A. county alone!), together with a trio of similarly obscure birders named Jon Dunn, Guy McCaskie, and Van Remsen (an LSU ornithologist who was an author of the paper that reported seeing an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Arkansas in 2004). 

While most days birding on the lower Ballona Creek are unlikely to produce a Bar-tailed Godwit, this is a great spot to get close-up views of a variety of species. 

One vision for the lower Ballona Creek

The future of this section of the creek is hotly contested right now. There are plans afoot to “restore” the lower creek to something that more resembles the original wetlands than the concrete bowling alley that the creek is today. Heal the Bay supports the plan depicted above. Environmental Impact Reports have been certified. Whatever shape it eventually takes (maybe 10-15 years from now), I hope there is more attention paid to providing attractive habitat for birds than there is now. This truly could be an amazing urban stopover site for migrating birds of all kinds, and breeding area for lost L.A. County breeders like Burrowing Owl and White-tailed Kite. A few extra walking paths would be nice as well, as long as they don’t come with large paved parking lots.

 

Dark Hawk ID Challenge

Red-tailed Hawk Ballona Los Angeles CA

Spooked and ready to flee, frustrating ID efforts

Dark Hawk ID Challenge

A few days ago, I spotted a dark hawk flying over the Ballona Creek. I  first saw the bird at a long distance. The coloring suggested a turkey vulture (white underwing, white undertail, otherwise dark), but it wasn’t wobbling.  I thought it could be a Zone-tailed (would be a 5MR lifer), but it was too far away to tell. Frustratingly, it went out of my view.

About 30 minutes later, I found what I assume was the same hawk perched on a low snag along the Ballona Creek bike path. The back and chest/belly were all pretty uniformly dark brown, with a little white splotching on the wing. It had yellow legs and pale eyes. The bird flushed, and I saw that its underwing and undertail was white with faint grey barring. The bird landed on the ground in the middle of a large field scattered with tall grasses. After 5 minutes, it moved 50-70 yards and landed on the ground again, this time out of view. 

I found the landing on the ground to be the most notable behavior I observed. I couldn’t recall ever seeing any Red-tailed Hawks settle on the ground in this field before. And this bird did it twice. That, with the dark coloring, had me thinking that I had found something other than a dark western Red-tailed Hawk. But I don’t have the birding chops to make an ID.

On top of that, my photos that first day were pretty bad. They were taken with a pocket zoom camera I bring along on bikes rides. The photos did show some barring on the white sections of the underwing and undertail. You could see that the upper undertail was dark. And the back and upper wings were, other than a few white speckles, uniformly dark dark brown.

I posted my photos and description to LACO Birds listserv (an invaluable resource for anyone, but especially those like me who don’t use facebook or eBird alerts. Indeed, I love local bird sighting listservs. Anytime I travel in the U.S., I look up the local birding listservs). The reactions were both unanimous (“better photos would help”) and mixed (Zone-tailed Hawk, dark morph juvenile Western Red-tailed Hawk (calarus), dark morph juvenile Red-tailed Hawk (Harlan’s), and dark morph Ferruginous Hawk were all mentioned). 

Red-tailed Hawk Ballona Los Angeles California

Seeking better photos and a more certain ID, I rode out to the spot a couple of days later. I found the dark hawk again, perched on a low snag in the same field. Once again, just after I started to take pictures, it flushed. And just as before, it flushed to the middle of the field and landed on the ground, out of view. I biked around the area, trying to re-find it. There were at least 4 obvious (though varied) Red-tailed Hawks in the field. One had a dark belly, but a rufous tail.

I re-found the target dark hawk after 20-30 minutes: in the middle of the field on the ground. It eventually flew to a low snag perch closer to the bike path. The bird was still all dark dark brown, but more white mottling on the upper wing and some white streaking on the chest were apparent. When it flushed, I was able to get better looks at the underwing. The barring on the white underwing areas was more obvious today, and the dark portion of the underwing looked more mottled with white. Again, it flew to the middle of the field and landed on the ground. None of the obvious western Red-tailed Hawks around (at one point I saw 3 perched and 3 soaring at the same time, so there were at least 6 others in the area) ever landed on the ground.

Red-tailed Hawk Ballona Los Angeles CA

Birders far more expert in hawk ID than me felt better about calling the bird a Harlan’s Red-tailed Hawk after the second round of photos. Features that these folks noted as supporting a Harlan’s Hawk ID were the uniform dark brown color, the dark upper undertail, and the pale iris. A couple of other birders have seen the bird, and got even better photos. My report of Red-tailed Hawk (Harlan’s) was confirmed in eBird, which I take to be the stamp of approval on the ID. Not everyone agrees, though.

Harlan’s Hawk has been a separate species in the past, but is now considered a subspecies of Red-tailed Hawk. They breed in Alaska and northwestern Canada in taiga. Many of them winter in the central U.S. plains. A Harlan’s Hawk is a good find for L.A. County.  There are a couple of reports of Harlan’s Hawk in the Antelope Valley (northern L.A. County over an hour from my house), a 2017 report from Long Beach, and a wintering Harlan’s Hawk in the very same Ballona area in 2013-2014.  They undoubtedly occur more frequently, but the variability of Red-tailed Hawks means they are likely overlooked. The best comparison of Harlan’s Red-tailed Hawks with Western Red-tailed Hawks is here

Harlan's Hawk Ballona California

I saw the hawk again on Christmas Eve in the late afternoon. Nothing had changed. I found it perched on a low snag not far from the bike path. It flushed as soon as I got off my bike and peered at it through binoculars. It flew to the middle of the field and landed on the ground. Maybe it will stay all winter like the 2013-2014 bird, and I can study it a bit and maybe get the bird to do a close flyover in good lighting.