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September: Southwest Specialties
- Texas A&M University Press
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s e p t e m b e r Southwest Specialties new bird species seen this month: 25 totaL bird species by the end of the month: 691 pLaces birded:Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona September 2 I’m hoping to get beyond 666 species today. My plane is scheduled to depart from DFW in 10 minutes for Los Angeles. It will be early afternoon there when I arrive. I plan to bird coastal Orange County today and am enthusiastic about the possibilities. It’s high time that I do California birding before the breeding birds migrate south, out of the ABA area. For years I have had a wintering Rufous Hummingbird, arriving generally in August. This year, after August came and went but no Rufie, I was quite sure that we were not going to have one visiting in our yard this year. Yesterday , as I blearily made my way through the house after having flown all night, she appeared, tick-ticking in the back of our yard, a female Rufous Hummingbird for the eighth winter. Having a wintering Rufous Hummingbird for multiple years has been, without any doubt, one of the most miraculous things of my entire life. September 3 Yesterday I left the airport in California to look for still-needed birds. At the Canyon parking lot (Back Bay Drive) were the typical expected birds, but not the hoped-for California Gnatcatcher. Across the bay, however, I spotted the first of many Elegant Terns. I drove east along the coast toward Orange, where I was to stay last night. Just before dark I went to Crystal Cove State Park, which was supposed to have California Gnatcatchers. It does have singing California Thrashers. I got two new year birds in half a day of birding. Pretty good for so late in the year. A great start to a great trip. 170 Today I drove east, having plotted out a series of stops on my way to Ventura . The first place was a set-aside spot near a development (Ocean Trails) especially made for California Gnatcatchers. I did not hear or see one right away but ultimately heard a few and saw three of them. The first one scolded, popped up, and then darted across the trail. Clearly a gnatcatcher, by sound and locale. But I wanted a better view and ideally a picture. I got an out-offocus picture of a pair of California Gnatcatchers climbing up a thin stalk. Their sounds seemed a bit more like cats than I had been led to believe by the tape, but they looked right—dark as they should be with a thin white tail edge and indistinct eye ring. Shortly after I saw the first gnatcatcher, I took a trip down a side trail to the beach. As I came around a corner, I startled a small empid, which I realized (and confirmed by bird book and sound) was a Pacific-slope Flycatcher. I hadn’t considered where I was going to get this bird, except they are on Santa Cruz Island where I was scheduled to go the next day. After two new birds for the day, I am feeling pretty cheery but calmed down as I tried without success at the first so-called reliable spot (Sand Dune My returning wintering rufous Hummingbird female arrived at my yard on September 1. [54.211.203.45] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:50 GMT) januarY 171 SEPTEMBEr Park in Manhattan Beach) for Spotted Doves, a countable introduced bird. I thought I might have one for a while, an oddly spotted Rock Pigeon near the park. I went to the other spot given in the most recent Southern California bird guide—Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. Eventually a couple of Spotted Doves sailed out of the woods across the mowed area above the park and landed in the trees. They were the right shape and color, but it was not a good view. It was good that on the last day of the trip I returned there and had a slightly closer view of two Spotted Doves. When I got to Ventura Harbor, which took awhile because I got all turned around on my way, I checked in at my motel and then went to Foster Park, north of Ventura, to look for woodpeckers and flycatchers. Nothing new, but many Oak Titmice were calling and feeding young, and a Hairy Woodpecker zipped through. a California Thrasher serenades me at sunset...