Big Day

Female Western Bluebird at Malibu Creek, March 16, 2013

I spent Saturday with two friends, doing a thrilling "Big Day". We went to beaches, camp grounds, parks, wildlife reserves, lakes, creeks, and rivers all over L.A. county, at Malibu, San Fernando Valley, Playa del Rey, South Bay, Long Beach, trying to find and identify as many birds as we could.

The first time I had done this was in December with another birder.  I had seen 84 different birds that day, but it left me feeling that I could have done better, given we had faced a combination of starting late, limited daylight hours, heavy traffic, and poor planning. I therefore set myself a target to see a 100 birds this time. To make the day more enjoyable (and yes, to increase my chances to meeting that target), I invited a couple of  birder friends I've met several times and gotten to know over the past year at various Audubon walks and trips.

We planned quite carefully in advance, with many excited emails sent back and forth a few days before. We discussed and argued about alternative locations. We solicited inputs from other birders we know. We took into account factors including the times of first light, sunrise, sunset and last-light, and poured over tide charts. We examined our own old birding records and read through online reports of birds sighted in our planned locations on eBird.

 

Clockwise from top left: Western Gull, Snow Egret, Oak Titmouse, Whimbrel

All this preparation paid off beautifully. Over a span of about twelve hours, covering around 80 miles of ground in driving between sites, we identified a total of 119 species** of birds, including two I had never seen before (see the full list). The day began a little before sunrise at Malibu Lagoon, and ended in L.A. river a little after sunset. One of the first birds we identified was a song-sparrow trilling just before day-break. My last view in the fading light was of an indescribably beautiful gathering of hundreds of Black-necked Stilts.

Glaucous-winged Gull at Malibu Lagoon

Inter alia, we saw three different types of Loons (Common, Pacific, Red-throated), a Glaucous-winged Gull, Caspian and Royal Terns at Malibu Lagoon, a Chipping Sparrow at Malibu Creek, a Eurasian Wigeon pair (a life bird for me) and two Cackling Geese at Reseda Park, an early Bullock's Oriole at Lake Balboa, a gorgeous male Wood Duck at Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, Elegant and Royal Terns at Playa del Rey beach, three pairs of hooded Mergansers at Ballona Freshwater Marsh, Canvasback and several Ring-necked ducks at Alondra Park, and a Blue-winged Teal pair at L.A. River - Willow Street.

Chipping Sparrow at Malibu Creek

Because I wanted to focus on identifying birds, and because my lens's autofocus broke half-way through the day, I don't have a lot of photos to show. Luckily, one of my companions took a great set of photos as well.

There were also some remarkable "easy" misses: Northern Flicker, Downy Woodpecker, American Kestrel, Northern Harrier, some of which we thought we might have seen but couldn't confirm because we didn't get a sufficiently good look. On the drive back, mulling this over, we concluded that with more experience and skill we might well have added another dozen birds to our list. For next time...

** Update: Three days later, we were able to resolve one of the photos we took that we weren't sure about to be of a Sharp-Shinned Hawk, not Cooper's (one of the notoriously hard identification problems in North American birding). This brings our total from the day to 120!