Tag: San Diego (Page 1 of 2)

Lifer! Louisiana Waterthrush

November 19, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Louisiana Waterthrush’s distinguishing features = long white eyebrow, clean throat

Chasing a Louisiana Waterthrush in San Diego

I had originally planned to use the day after a big, 36-hour rain storm to check the coast in my 5MR for something interesting. But I changed my mind. After zipping over to my oldest kid’s high school parking lot to see a rain-soaked Bay-breasted Warbler (sadly, just 1/10 of a mile outside my 5MR circle), I ate dinner with some younger birders. They had plans to get up early the next day and drive over 4 hours to Blythe, California to try and see a Chihuahuan Meadowlark. That kind of road trip for a non-lifer is not for me. But it did change my plans.

I often talk myself out of chases that take me outside of L.A. County. Not always. Five of my last 8 lifers were seen in Orange, Santa Barbara, or San Diego County. That Olive-backed Pipit was a big rarity, and just 45 minutes away. Indeed, it was closer to my house than many parts of L.A. County. Still, I’m just not obsessed enough with my lists, even my life list, to automatically drive multiple hours to see a new bird. Maybe I fear the guilt of failure, and having to then justify a 4-hour drive plus 1-3 hours spent looking around for a bird and not seeing it. 

But one bonus of this dorky hobby is the adventure it can involve. So I decided to make a drive down to Solana Beach in San Diego in search of a lifer Louisiana Waterthrush. There had been one of these eastern U.S. warblers in San Diego in September. But I never made the chase. Now there was another. And this one was apparently a returning bird. That means it spent last winter in the same spot. That made me more confident that the bird would stick around, and that I wouldn’t be chasing a ghost. 

The spot was a densely vegetated creek/drainage that ran behind a business complex parking lot. Many of the reports from last fall were “heard-only”, or noted 1-2 second obscured views of the bird. I was optimistic that I’d do better than that. After arriving at the spot, my optimism sunk a little. It was overgrown, with few clean lines of sight. The heavy rains from the previous 24 hours looked to have made a mess of the place. For an hour, I neither saw nor heard a waterthrush.

Just when the fear of striking out started to surface, I heard the unmistakeable loud chip of a waterthrush coming from somewhere deep in the tangle behind the creek. Merlin called it a Northern Waterthrush, but Merlin isn’t perfect. I couldn’t see the bird, but it was definitely there. Waterthrushes are land-loving warblers. There are two species. Northern Waterthrush breeds in Canada and the Northeast, and is a regular vagrant in L.A. County. Louisiana Waterthrush breeds in the eastern half of the U.S. and has never been reported in L.A. county. Both have big eyebrows, with the Louisiana’s whiter than the creamy Northern. Both bob their tails as they walk around the ground. The Louisiana tends to have a clean throat, while the Northern’s throat is often streaked. When this bird finally showed itself, the eyebrow was white, not creamy, and the throat was unstreaked. Lifer!

The bird made me wait for it, but I was rewarded with good looks

So Many Warblers

Adding the Louisiana Waterthrush got me curious about how many warblers I’ve seen. It’s a question without a simple answer. “Warbler” turns out to be a complicated category. There are many birds called warblers. But they are not all in the same family. Some aren’t even that closely related. The biggest group is the new world warblers, a family consisting of (at current count) 120 species found in North, Central, and South America. Of those, 56 regularly occur in the Lower 48.  Other families include the leaf warblers, reed warblers, bush warblers, some birds named warblers in the family sylviidae (all of these primarily in Eurasia and Africa), and the new world Olive Warbler (not in the new world warbler family, and actually the lone member of its family). 

I have seen 43 (of 56) new world warblers in the Lower 48, plus 2 vagrant leaf warblers in L.A. (Wood Warbler and Dusky Warbler). I’ve still got a few to go, all of them eastern warblers that rarely are found on the west coast. My world species total for new world warblers is 56. Other warblers that I’ve seen include 4 more leaf warblers (Arctic, Willow, Yellow-browed and Common Chiffchaff), an Oriental Reed Warbler, a Cetti’s Warbler (bush warbler), a Sardinian Warbler (inf the family sylviidae), and an Olive Warbler. 

Lower 48 warbler faces

Another Arctic vagrant in California

January 16, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Yellow-billed Loon: The Canyonero of divers

Yellow-billed Loon in San Diego

It’s not rare for birds that breed in the high Arctic to show up in Southern California. It happens by the thousands every year. Dunlin and Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings and Western Sandpipers, Red-throated Loons and Peregrine Falcons and many more species are all Arctic breeders that are common in Los Angeles in the winter. That said, it has been a notable winter in Southern California for Arctic vagrants. The most famous has been the Snowy Owl, which is still roosting on residential rooftops in Orange County. But there has also been a Snow Bunting in Oceanside, and a pair of King Eiders at the Ventura County pier. I didn’t see either of those two, but I did take a trip to San Diego to catch an additional Arctic rarity.

A couple of days before Christmas, a Yellow-billed Loon showed up in Mission Bay in San Diego. I didn’t learn about it until we were away in New Mexico. For whatever reason, I’m still reluctant to drive more than an hour, especially if it requires leaving L.A. County, just to see a bird. But there are only scattered reports of this species south of Monterey. eBird shows 3 different sightings in L.A. (1977, 2010, 2013), one in Orange County, and this first-ever San Diego bird. The Audubon Field Guide says that “its great size, remote range, and general rarity give the Yellow-billed Loon an aura of mystery for many birders.” Since it appeared that this bird had settled in to a spot, I decided to make the drive down.

The size difference compared to Common Loon was apparent

I pulled up to the parking lot at Quivira Basin at 8:25am, and had the giant loon in my binoculars within 5 minutes. The bird was farther away than I’d wish, and never came close. Another birder graciously let me peer through his scope at it. It’s bigger size was apparent with the naked eye, especially when it was near a Common Loon.  I came back early in the afternoon to see if it was swimming closer to shore, and it wasn’t. 

After the loon, I toured a couple of spots to see what other good birds I could see. My first stop was a residential neighborhood where a population of Burrowing Parakeets has taken up residence sometime during the pandemic. They are large parakeets that are native to Argentina, with some spillover in Chile and Uruguay. As the name suggests, they nest in burrows in cliffs. The highest count I noticed in eBird was 50 birds. There’s been talk that some birds seem to be trying to make nesting cavities in palm trees. For now, this seems like a non-breeding population. They were easy to find. I drove up to a spot in eBird where they’re regularly reported, got out of my car, and there were 18 of them in the trees directly above me. A couple of them flew down to check me out. And then they moved across the street to a yard where someone has set up feeders. Fun sighting, even if they don’t “count.”

Burrowing Parakeet
Exotic California

From there, I headed to the south end of San Diego bay. There’s been a Little Stint wintering there for a few years. I struck out. You really need a scope at this spot, and I don’t own one. The odd highlight here was a Golden-crowned Sparrow. That’s not because it’s rare. Instead, it’s because it turned into a lifer for someone else. The dude with the scope at the loon spot at the beginning of the day mentioned he needed Golden-crowned for his already-substantial life list. As I was entering a note in my eBird checklist, on the hopes he might get an alert, he walked up. We promptly re-found it.

That basically did it for my quick day-trip. There weren’t any other potential lifers or California lifers in town. There was the possibility of bumbling into a pair of escapee American Flamingos that are seen around the bay occasionally. I checked a couple of spots, but didn’t see them. The rain was coming, so I headed back to Quivira Basin to check on the loon. From there, I drove back to Los Angeles.  

 

 

 

 

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