A rarity to Powdermill, this sparrow usually breeds in shrublands, field edges, and thickets across the northern prairies.
Powdermill Nature Reserve’s avian research center is part of Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s biological research station in Rector, Pennsylvania. The research center operates a bird banding station, conducts bioacoustical research, and performs flight tunnel analysis with the goal of reducing window collisions.
#327
I’m fighting a cold, but the year’s almost done and I’m tied for the top spot in the county-year eBird rankings. So I set the alarm and headed to River Park in Lompoc, where a Clay-colored Sparrow has been seen lately hanging out with the White-crowned Sparrows.
I spent most of my time checking out a couple of different groups of White-crowns, trying hard to make one of them look smaller than the rest. No dice.
I’d basically given up (again. why is it always like that?) and was heading back to my car past the pond when I saw one more group of sparrows I hadn’t checked before. And there, hopping around with them, was one that was distinctly smaller. And cuter. 🙂
My photo’s nowhere near as good as the OP’s. But it’s special to me.
This could be my last county-year bird of 2018. I’ve got a few chances at a Northern Pygmy-Owl coming up, and there have been some Black and White-winged Scoters seen off Vandenberg not far from Surf Station; maybe I could see one of those. And there’s the method Nick explained a while back to scope for American Bitterns at Ocean Beach Park. Any of those could add another species to the list.
And there’s always the chance of a wildcard. They’re birds; you can’t predict them.
Again, no booth pics, but something amazing happened this morning - I had a Summer Tanager in my yard! When I first saw him, I thought it was a weird female Cardinal or maybe a female Orchard Oriole (because I have never seen one before), but something did not add up. From what I am reading, their range normally does not even reach as far as Michigan, so this was such a cool surprise! What a spring this is!
#326
Right where it was supposed to be, eating persimmons at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
A female Long-tailed Duck was reported by Nick late Sunday afternoon from Ocean Beach County Park, just far enough away that I couldn’t get there before dark, and would very much not have wanted to anyway since it would have put me in Thanksgiving weekend traffic on the way back. And the next day (Monday) was my day to go the opposite direction to LA for work, so I had to cross my fingers and hope the bird would stay until today (Tuesday).
One eBird report by Libby on Monday showed the bird still there, so I was hopeful. I set the alarm for 4:30 and got there shortly after sunrise. It was cold, which wasn’t so bad, but also foggy and windy, which put a damper on things. I looked around the railroad bridge near the parking lot where the bird had been seen, sifting through the Ruddy Ducks and Eared and Western Grebes, but no dice. I walked to the beach and checked out the Snowy Plovers, then returned to the railroad bridge again, wiping condensation off my glasses. Still no Long-tailed Duck.
Oh, well. Most chases don’t pan out; it looked like this was going to be one of those.
I returned to my car and reviewed my eBird list. As I was about to drive away I noticed that the sun was starting to poke through, and I thought, well, maybe the duck has been tucked away somewhere waiting for it to get nicer out. So I took one last stroll down to the railroad bridge.
Not a great photo, but a pretty amazing bird. This is a hybrid Red-breasted x Red-naped sapsucker in my backyard. You never know what migration (esp fall migration) will bring
#324
The Red-naped Sapsucker I was fortunate enough to see today wasn’t a hybrid, I don’t think, which is good for my county year list since a hybrid wouldn’t count.🙂
Sometimes I get a new bird for the county year list out of the blue, an unexpected and exiting rarity (like the Green-tailed Towhee at Jameson Lake last Sunday). Other times I chase a bird previously reported by someone else. Most of the time those chases don’t pan out, but once in a while they do.
A report had come in of a Red-necked Grebe in Santa Barbara Harbor this morning. I didn’t find out about it until I broke from work for lunch and saw the posting on the sbcobirding list. I’d only have time for a quick look, but I could at least go to the harbor and see.
When I got there I saw plenty of Western and Clark’s Grebes, but no Red-necked. At one point I saw a Western Grebe that had been discolored by oil, which was sad, and it occurred to me that maybe that was the bird that had been seen. It didn’t look like a Red-necked Grebe, but it looked different enough to be potentially confusing?
I sat down on one of the benches by Sea Landing, looking out at the main channel of the harbor. I took some photos. The oiled Western Grebe:
An interesting Double-crested Cormorant with a lot of white on it (leucism?):
A Herring Gull (gotta keep working on those gulls – so much to learn!):
It was almost time for me to get back to work. And then, right in front of me:
