Tag: Winter Wren (Page 1 of 2)

Birding Rhode Island at Christmas

January 15, 2026 / KDL / 0 Comments

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.

New Year, New LA County Lifers

January 13, 2024 / KDL / 0 Comments

A Winter Wren in the right season, but on the wrong coast

Two New LA County Lifers in the New Year

The New Year is an exciting time for birders because their precious year lists revert to zero. Every species, including the commonest of resident birds, is a new tick again. On top of that, it’s the season of Christmas Bird Counts – the annual ritual of counting all the birds in a designated 15-mile diameter circle. In addition to yearly snapshots of bird populations, Christmas Bird Counts have a tendency to produce good rarities. With so many birders covering not just the frequent haunts but places that folks don’t often check, all kinds of surprises turn up.

As the calendar turned to 2024, a couple of birds were in LA County that I’d never seen here before. One was a Hepatic Tanager. These birds range from the southwestern U.S. down to South America, but rarely make it to the west coast. This one had been found on November 20th in Griffith Park. It was found near a gold course by an out-of-town birder who didn’t ID and report the finding until 9 days later. It was refound in the same area the next day and a couple of days later. And then reports quit. A few days before Christmas, Andy Birch found it again. It was still in the same area. I made one stop on January 4 during a lunch break, but couldn’t find it. A couple of days later I went in the morning and was lucky enough to spot it. While I’d seen one before in SE Arizona and Mexico, it was a lifer for several birders around me.

Hepatic Tanager

The other good bird in the county was a Winter Wren. It’s part of a duo of tiny brown, short-tailed wrens with a dazzlingly long song that used to be just one species. But in 2010, the Winter Wren and Pacific Wren were split. West of the Rocky Mountains is the Pacific Wren. East of the Rocky Mountains is the Winter Wren. I’ve seen each before – the Pacific Wren a couple times in LA County and once up in Seattle. The Winter Wren is a resident in Maine that I see each summer when we visit. But I’d never seen a Winter Wren in LA County before. In fact, this was only the second county record for Winter Wren.

The Winter Wren was found on December 31st at Castaic Lagoon (which, I guess, technically, is a lagoon). I went up there the next day, the morning of January 1st, to see if I could find it. As I arrived at the spot at 7:30am, a couple of workers were 50 yards away running a chain saw. Despite this inauspicious start, I spotted a juvenile Bald Eagle soaring overhead. And then I quickly found the Winter Wren. After about 5 minutes, the chain-saw stopped. Ten seconds later, the Winter Wren popped up in the bushes in front of me and starting calling. It didn’t seem bothered by my close presence, and called away for 5 minutes before disappearing into the brush. I then walked the shore of the lagoon and spotted the Red-necked Grebe that’s been around. I was far from my 5MR, but it was a nice way to start the year.

Later on January 1st, LA-birding guru Kimball Garrett sent out a new year message on the LA County birding listserv, As he has done previously, he urged birders to take a break from county year-listing. Instead, he encouraged focus on a “birds found” list. That is, rather than chasing birds found by others, he hoped birders would prioritize finding birds themselves. The next day, I decided to chime in. As the original champion of 5MR birding in L.A., I felt this was a good chance to shout-out again for birders to focus on birding near home. As i said in my message, it’s a win for science, a win for the Earth, and a win for other birders because of the birds I find that otherwise would go undetected.

Unable to resist the temptation to take a shot at the perpetual county big-year listers, I called that approach to birding “gross.” Which it is. This meant I was openly criticizing a dozen or so of LA County’s long-time and well-known birders (and year-after-year-after-year eBird Top 100 list toppers). Maybe I went too far, or chose my words poorly. But I don’t regret it. As I said to the birder who complained about my characterization, there are downsides to year-list-driven long-distance car birding that we must acknowledge.