Category Archives: Winter Birding

In Search of the Marbled Murrelet (Birding Victoria, Part II)

After three nights in Victoria (see last week’s post “Birding Victoria, BC”), Amy and I headed up the Vancouver Island coast toward a spot where we had spent our first nights together as married folk—a lovely establishment called the Point No Point Resort. On the way up, I bamboozled Amy into stopping at one of the most well-known birding hotspots in the area: Whiffin Spit Park. As its rather humorous name implies, the park is a narrow spit of land stretching about a kilometer across the mouth of the bay where the town of Sooke is located, and it has recorded an impressive list of birds.

**Whiffin Spit is perhaps the most well-known place to observe ocean and shore birds between Victoria and Port Renfrew. Alas, the many free-roaming pet dogs makes it less than ideal for shorbs.**

As Amy walked ahead, I schlepped my scope, zooming in on anything promising. Over the next hour, I found Red-breasted Mergansers, more Harlequin Ducks (Yay!), Surf Scoters, Common Loons, and most exciting, a pair of Pacific Loons. Along the path, I also got excellent looks at Black Oystercatchers and Black Turnstones. Alas, the numerous unleashed dogs did not create a bird-friendly environment, and chased off the birds several times. (Our dog, Lola, by the way, informed me that she would never engage in such unruly behavior—cough, cough.)

The longer we stayed on Vancouver Island, the more Pacific Loons I got to see. I have learned to identify these handsome birds by their silvery heads and neck postures, which remind me of cobras ready to strike. Up close, the dark “chin strap” is also diagnostic.

Despite these good birds, I had by now firmly set my mind on seeing alcids, a group of sea birds affectionately dubbed the penguins of the northern hemisphere. These birds include murres, guillemots, Razorbills, Dovekies, and puffins, but the ones I most wanted to see were murrelets. Two kinds frequented the area: Ancient and Marbled. My new birder friend John (see this recent post) had told me that Ancient Murrelets tended to fly around in groups while Marbled Murrelets were most often observed as loners floating on the surface. Either species would be a lifer for me, and I would have been ecstatic to find one. Alas, the task was proving much more difficult than I had hoped. I totally struck out in Victoria, and now I “whiffed” at Whiffin Spit, too.

Perhaps my best photo ever of an adult Common Merganser, hanging out on the bay side of Whiffin Spit with an equally stunning female.

The Point No Point Resort helped ease my disappointment. The cabins and rooms are all cleverly designed for privacy and each looks out over the spectacular Strait of Juan de Fuca (part of the Salish Sea). The sun was setting by the time we checked in—just time for me to set up my spotting scope and find a raft of about forty Surf Scoters floating below us. They would become regular companions of our stay. I also noted a few cormorants and other birds, but alas, no alcids.

**Our room at the Point No Point not only offered a mesmerizing view of the Olympic Peninsula across the water, but a chance to scope for more seabirds.**

Undaunted, I rose the next morning to hit two nearby spots that had been recommended as great seabird locations: Otter Point and Muir Creek. The birding gods seemed stubbornly pitted against me. I saw a few more loons, including my first Red-throated Loon, along with my first Pacific Wren and a dozen or so species I’d been seeing for the past few days, but nothing that really got my heart racing.

**At Muir Creek, I was pleased to get an actual look at a Pacific Wren. Amy and I heard them several other times, but the birds like their privacy!**

This pattern repeated itself for the next couple of days as Amy and I explored several more places between Sooke and Port Renfrew. Honestly, the birds that most excited me were Short-billed Gulls (formerly Mew Gulls)—birds that I had never seen in such numbers, and had only recently become skilled at identifying myself.

Gulls are notoriously difficult to identify—something I’ll tackle in an upcoming post—but the Short-billed Gull stands out for its smaller size, yellow legs, and overall “cuteness,” as Braden puts it. In breeding, its bill lacks any kind of marking, though as you can see in this photo, adults sport a faint ring at other times of the year.

Before we knew it, we arrived back at the Point No Point for our last luxurious evening of watching the sea and enjoying the view of the Olympic Peninsula across the water. As we prepared to soak in our private hot tub, though, I picked up my cool new binoculars (see our last post) for one final look at the ocean below us. In the rapidly fading light, I spotted our loyal raft of Surf Scoters, along with gulls and cormorants. Then, I noted a tiny speck in the breaking waves close to shore, and quickly focused in on it. I guessed it was a piece of kelp or driftwood, but then, through the lenses, the unlikely shape of a bird emerged!

My heart accelerating, I frantically set up the scope which lay at my feet and zoomed in on the shape. “No friggin’ way!” I exclaimed. Honestly, I didn’t know exactly what I was looking it, but I felt sure I hadn’t seen it before. I was also sure I needed some photos, no matter how crummy, so I switched out my scope for my camera on the tripod, and captured a few quick images through our windows before, to my disappointment, the bird drifted out of view behind some trees.

By this time, after a quick consult with my Sibley app, I felt positive that the tiny bird had indeed been a murrelet, but which kind? Studying my horrible photos and comparing them to Sibley, I noted the white patches on the shoulders and near the tail. That ruled out Ancient Murrelet. I also checked the illustrations for all the other alcids that might be in the area. Only one matched my photos: Marbled Murrelet! Even better, ten minutes later the bird reappeared below our window. By now, the light had grown truly dim, but I took my tripod and camera out onto the deck and managed some slightly better shots.

My fellow birders can imagine how that one bird pretty much made the entire trip for me. Everything else was just lovely, too, but a Marbled Murrelet? That put the icing on the cake, or for me, the chocolate chips in the cookie. It also sent my imagination racing, seeing that tiny bird deftly negotiate the waves crashing into shore. It was just so comfortable in an environment that would have snuffed me out in a matter of minutes.

Marbled Murrelets defy the imagination for another reason. Unlike other alcids, they nest not in burrows or on cliffs, but in trees! In fact, the nesting location of this bird remained a great ornithological mystery for more than a century as biologists looked everywhere (but not in the tops of trees, evidently) for a Marbled Murrelet nest. “Finally,” recounts Cornell Lab’s Birds of the World, “in 1961 and 1974, the first verified and published nests were reported in Asia and North America, respectively.”

Amazing.

Unfortunately, the birds prefer old-growth coastal forest, forests that have experienced extreme logging pressures over the past century. The birds have also been impacted by fishing gear, forest fires, and other hazards. As a result, the bird is listed as endangered or threatened throughout its North American range. That made it all the more remarkable that one had deigned to show up right below our picture window—almost as if following some kind of cosmic movie script. I felt very fortunate.

**Yay! More Harlequin Ducks! During our last session at Clover Point, these stunning birds really put on a show, chasing each other around and posing for one visiting birder.**

The next day, Amy and I returned to Victoria and another round of birding at Clover Point—my best session there yet. Pacific Loons, Buffleheads, Harlequin Ducks, and Surf Scoters seemed to be everywhere, and I was thrilled to find a pair of immaculately-feathered Long-tailed Ducks far out on the water. Though we would not head home until the following day, it was a great way to wrap up a trip that proved delightfully unexpected in so many ways. Huge gratitude goes to my wife and partner, Amy, for giving me such a wonderful surprise. And now, it was time for us to go celebrate with stiff umbrella drinks and a plate full of chicken enchiladas.

Bird of the Day honors for our last day in Victoria went to these Long-tailed Ducks. Adult male LTDUs (left) are especially striking in full plumage, and I at first assumed that the one on the right was a female. The rich brown back and bold, well-defined white face patch, however, suggests a first-year male.

Birding Victoria, BC

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For my birthday, my wife Amy surprised me with a week-long trip to Vancouver Island, including a three-night stay in Victoria and three more nights at a little cabin overlooking the majestic Pacific Ocean and the Olympic Peninsula across the Salish Sea (or Strait of Juan de Fuca). Amy’s surprising plans delighted me, especially since this was where we honeymooned a couple of decades before, and we’d always wanted to return. I was puzzled, however, when she said, “It’s supposed to be a good place to go birding.” What? Birding? On Vancouver Island? In January? After doing a little research on eBird, however, I concluded that she might just be right. For winter, the area seemed to have a good variety of songbirds, but I got even more excited about the possibility of ocean birds.

**While at McMicking Point, this American Crow kindly kept a close watch on my backpack—I’m sure with purely altruistic motives!**

Our first morning there, I awoke before dawn, walked to a nearby convenience store to grab nourishment, and then drove our rental car out to McMicking Point just as light seeped across the sky. I was super excited about this spot because someone had reported sixty species there only days before, including several birds that would be lifers pour moi. I had even dragged my large, awkward spotting scope and tripod out from Montana specifically for such opportunities. Alas, I later learned that the “mega lists” I had found on eBird had been compiled by one of the region’s top birders—a guy who apparently could ID a bird miles away just by the way it flew. My experience would prove far different.

**Though the bird action seemed at first a bit slow, McMicking Point offered the most scenic vistas you could imagine.**

As I set up my scope, my first thought was, “Where are all the birds?” A couple of cormorants—too far away to identify—skimmed the water, along with a few Glaucous-winged Gulls, and I could hear a raven in the neighborhood behind me, but that was it. In such situations, I have learned that it’s important to calm down and be patient—something I am horrible at (just ask Amy), but nonetheless have learned to do. Sure enough, as I trained the scope on some nearby surge channels, I spotted a few Buffleheads and then, to my delight, the trip’s first Harlequin Ducks! In Montana, we have only a narrow window to find HADUs as they breed mainly in a handful of whitewater streams in Glacier and Yellowstone (see our post “In Glacier National Park, When It Rains, It Pours—Animals.”). Because of this, I took extra time to enjoy them.

**This trip could be dubbed the “Harlequin Duck Adventure” as I would see far more HADUs this week than in the entire rest of my life!**

Through my brand new binoculars (more about these in the next post), I also could see interesting action stirring out on the Trial Islands about a quarter mile offshore. I trained my scope out there and immediately picked up Black Turnstones, Black Oystercatchers, and Dunlins working the rocky shore. Then, I got even more excited as I noted several larger, pale, medium-sized shorebirds. Yay! Black-bellied Plovers! This especially reinforced the value of preparing for any birding trip—especially with birds that are far away. The Dunlins, for instance, would have been more difficult for me to pin down if I had not learned that they were the most likely small shorebirds in the area this time of year. I also had noted Black-bellied Plovers on recent eBird lists for the site, and so was primed to recognize them.

I almost always undercount shorebirds. When I first trained the scope on the Trial Islands, I counted about six Black-bellied Plovers. When they flew, the number exploded to forty! Once again, the black armpits in flight give these away (see our post “Chasing Migrants, Part I: Swifts, Peeps, and Plovers”). For bonus points, can you ID the flying birds on the far left?

After picking up a few more species, I departed McMicking Point with, I should emphasize, a grand total of sixteen species—not the sixty-plus I had been dreaming about. Still, my next stop, Clover Point, would add a few more good ones for the day. Unlike McMicking Point, where I birded alone, Clover Point was well-trodden by walkers, dog owners and, it turns out, a few other birders. Here, I got closer looks at Dunlins, Harlequin Ducks, and oystercatchers, but also picked up both Red-necked and Horned Grebes and Surf Scoters. A friendly birder named John also joined me and pointed out a group of White-winged Scoters in the distance along with what he said was a Red-throated Loon, which Braden and I had seen recently on Cape Cod (see our post “Birding Race Point: Cape Cod’s Pelagic Playground“). I couldn’t convince myself of that ID, but we did spot a Pigeon Guillemot about a quarter mile distant.

**Clover Point offered a great chance to watch Dunlins probe the rocky shore for invertebrate morsels.**

“Is there anything special you’re looking for?” John asked me.

“I’d love to find some murrelets,” I told him with a sigh.

“Oh, we should be able to find you more alcids,” he told me, scanning the water with his binoculars. Alas, our efforts proved to no avail, and I admit that I wrapped up the morning feeling a bit of a failure. In fact, I mentioned to John the list with sixty birds on it, and he said, “Oh, that birder is a local legend. You look at his lists and you think he’s just making it up, but I’ve birded with him, and he’s the real deal. He can recognize almost anything.”

**Love, love, love Black Oystercatchers. Can’t get enough—even though I got to hang out with a couple of dozen on the trip!**

That did make me feel better, but even if I had not learned this, it’s important not to fall into the “failure trap.” After all, you can only see what you can see—and the whole point is to enjoy every bird you are lucky enough to encounter. Also, I reminded myself, my Victoria birding was far from over. I brought Amy back to Clover Point the next day, and while she walked along the cliffs, I enjoyed another nice session, including my only encounter with Surfbirds the entire week. These are some of Braden’s and my favorite rocky shore birds, and it was awesome to watch them foraging along with a larger group of Black Turnstones.

**Watching Surfbirds (right) foraging with Black Turnstones (left) was one of the highlights of my second visit to Clover Point.**

That afternoon, while Amy rested at the hotel, I decided to make the most of the season’s abbreviated daylight hours and take a stroll through Beacon Hill Park, a large park stretching almost from downtown out toward the sea near Clover Point. I intentionally left my camera in the room so I could just appreciate whatever I happened to see—which turned out to be a lot. On the grass right outside of our hotel, I was astonished to see a dozen Yellow-rumped Warblers—birds that I figured ought to be wintering much farther south (Sibley, though, shows them as all-year-round here after all). Once I reached Beacon Park, I began seeing Pine Siskins, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and a bird that, because of my crummy ears, always proves a challenge: Golden-crowned Kinglet.

**Beacon Hill offered my best experience with land birds of the trip—including a bona fide Victoria vagrant, a Green-tailed Towhee!**

After strolling for about half an hour, I stood watching a Ruby-crowned Kinglet flycatching, something I had never seen one do, when another birder approached. In a wonderfully British accent, he asked, “Do you know that within a quarter-mile of here is a great rarity?” I knew immediately what he was talking about. From looking at eBird lists, I had learned that a vagrant Green-tailed Towhee had showed up in Victoria and had set off a frenzy in the local birding community. John at Clover Point had also mentioned it, but I hadn’t realized I had wandered so close.

**Victoria birders enthralled with a “rare” Green-tailed Towhee!**

“I tried to see it,” my newest birding friend confided, “but you know what I heard—‘Oh, you should have been here five minutes ago.’” Nonetheless, he gave me directions in case I wanted to check it out, and with an hour or so of daylight left, I figured I might as well. I crossed the road and followed a little path up and over a hill until I came to a tall flagpole flying the maple leaf. Sure enough, in the field below, a group of four or five birders had gathered around a small thicket. I quietly approached from behind and spotted movement in a darkened space between two bushes. After a few moments, the familiar shape of the Green-tailed Towhee took the stage.

Although fairly common in Montana in summer, the Green-tailed Towhee that showed up in Victoria recently rocked local birders’ worlds! Full-disclosure: this is not THAT bird, but one I photographed in Bear Canyon several years ago.

It was weird seeing a bird that is relatively common in Montana being such a focus of attention here in Canada, but it was cool, too. It helped me appreciate the enthusiasm of birders no matter where you go in this amazing world. What’s funny, though, is that I got much more excited by the Fox Sparrow foraging a few feet away from the towhee. That is always a tough bird for me to find in Montana, so it was great to have one put in an appearance for me here. With that, I made my way back to our hotel so that Amy and I could go find a fun restaurant to dine at. What I didn’t realize is how much good Canadian birding still lay ahead of me.

**The lovely mastermind behind our surprise Victoria trip, my wife Amy, enjoying high tea at the Fairmont Empress Hotel.**

(For the second part of this story, see “In Search of the Marbled Murrelet”.)

Plenty of Partridges: Braden & I Kick Off Another Year of Birding!

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Braden and I kicked off our 2025 at one of our favorite western Montana birding spots: Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. While mainly envisioned as a duck factory, the surrounding farms and grasslands provide plenty of grassland bird habitat and raptor hunting grounds, so in winter that’s what we mainly search for. We began the day by looking for Short-eared Owls at a “vole-opolis” our neighbor Tim, a game bird hunter, told us about last year (see our post “Lost in Owls”). Sure enough, we got distant looks at three of these mesmerizing, long-winged raptors as they cruised low over a tapestry of grass and cattails. They were joined by a trio of Northern Harriers, birds that are so similar to Short-eared Owls in appearance and habits that they offer an almost perfect lesson in convergent evolution—the incidence of two unrelated species being shaped in similar ways by natural selection.

Braden celebrating seeing Short-eared Owls in 2025!

After our time with the owls and harriers, we set out on a leisurely cruise northward on dirt roads with the spectacular snow-capped Mission Mountains majestically gazing down on us. The raptors continued to please, with great close-up looks at our first Golden Eagle of the year, three or four Rough-legged Hawks, a couple of American Kestrels, two Merlins, plenty of Red-tailed Hawks, and no fewer than a dozen Bald Eagles.

**This Northern Harrier is seriously eye-balling a group of Gray Partridges below, but decided not to go for it.**

I’ve been worried about a dearth of small song birds all year, and that continued today. Usually, we at least see some waxwings or American Tree Sparrows at Ninepipe, but not today. I’m hoping the warmer winter somehow explains it, but I am especially concerned about the pervasive use of neonicotinoid pesticides and their deadly effects on birds. A future blog post, perhaps.

While songbirds were few and far between, we encountered a veritable population explosion of a bird we usually see only once or thrice a year: Gray Partridges! In the space of an hour or two, we saw these birds at least half a dozen times in groups ranging from four to more than a dozen. “I think I’ve seen more Gray Partridges today than in the rest of my life,” I told Braden, and it might have been true, as we totaled almost seventy of these birds. As with the rest of the day, I managed only lousy photos, but we delighted in watching these introduced, but charming, orange-faced critters.

Another fuzzy shot, but entertaining just the same—a Gray Partridge zooming toward us. These birds are unusually difficult to photograph, and I doubt I’ve ever gotten a good shot of them.

We finished the day scouring the southern shore of Flathead Lake near Polson. We had to look pretty hard, but finally found good numbers of waterfowl and gulls at Ducharme fishing access. Here we were rewarded by more than five hundred Common Mergansers, and much smaller numbers of wigeons, Mallards, Buffleheads, Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintails—and a lone Redhead. Braden also picked out several Tundra Swans from the more numerous Trumpeters.

Tundra Swans on Flathead Lake. These birds can be hard to distinguish from Trumpeter Swans, but they have small yellow patches forward of their eyes, and often have overall whiter heads and necks than Trumpeters.

Perhaps my favorite part of this last big session was focusing in on a group of seventy or eighty gulls out on a frozen edge of the lake. Part of my enthusiasm was having just received a review copy of Amar Ayyash’s epic new book, The Gull Guide: North America. I plan to write a full review of this remarkable book soon, but my first perusals have gotten me super excited to learn more about gulls. Even better, as Braden and I studied the group in front of us through our scope, we picked out both Ring-billed and Herring Gulls. Then, I paused on a gull that looked unlike any others. It had pink legs, medium gray wings, dark eyes, light head streaking, and a single red spot on the bill. It also was noticeably smaller than the Herring Gull next to it. Braden suggested a Thayer’s Iceland Gull and I have to say that I agree with him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get decent photos and gulls are notoriously hard to ID, so we didn’t record it. Still, I’m thinking Thayer’s is what we saw.

**Ring-billed and Herring Gulls on Flathead Lake. It’s easy to pick out the Herring Gulls by their large sizes. Maybe I’ll even find some other species after studying The Gull Guide in depth!**

And so it begins . . . a great new year of birding! I hope you’ve all been able to get out and enjoy the remarkable avian wildlife our planet is blessed with. In fact, if you haven’t already done so, I urge you to support one or more of the terrific conservation groups working to make sure birds are always with us. For more info, see our post “Saving Birds. It’s Time.” Thanks for reading and I hope to see some of you out there birding soon!

Birding Race Point: Cape Cod’s Pelagic Playground

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The week before Thanksgiving, my family had the opportunity to visit a place that featured prominently in my childhood—Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We headed to Boston so that I could accept a big award for my picture book, Border Crossings, but the trip provided many piggybacking opportunities. These included a chance to look at colleges for Braden’s sister, Tessa, and to meet up with Braden for Thanksgiving. After Amy, Tessa, and I spent a few days in Boston, in fact, Braden drove down from the University of Maine and whisked us off to the Cape.

I spent parts of many summers in Woods Hole on the Cape. My father did his post-doc at WHOI—the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. My step-father spent dozens of summers in Woods Hole doing research and teaching classes at the MBL—the Marine Biological Laboratories. I have many fond (and some not-so-fond) memories of those summers, but had not been back for (gasp) 45 years! I looked forward to revisiting old haunts and showing my family some of the places that had shaped my childhood. Naturally, Braden and I also considered the birding possibilities.

When Braden first mentioned going to Race Point near Provincetown, I hesitated. I recalled driving up there as a ten-year-old and didn’t relish spending an extra four hours of our vacation in a car. When Braden started telling me what we might find there, however, I quickly changed my mind.

Race Point, it turns out, is one of the nation’s premiere places for spotting seabirds from land. A map reveals an obvious reason: Cape Cod juts miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, and the tip—Race Point itself—is surrounded on three sides by the sea. This means that birders have an opportunity to see both regular beach-type birds and many species that only rarely show up near land. Braden and I especially hoped to see jaegers, “tube noses” such as shearwaters, and any interesting gulls or ducks that happened to be around.

After a delicious breakfast at Liz’s Café in Provincetown, Braden and I left Amy and Tessa to explore while we headed off to the parking lot near Race Point lighthouse. As soon as we approached the beach, we spotted Northern Gannets soaring above wild, wind-raked seas. I’d only ever gotten a brief look at a NOGA before, when Braden and I had visited Acadia National Park three years before, so right away the drive up to Provincetown redeemed itself!

However, the excitement was just beginning.

**One of perhaps 150 Northern Gannets we saw at Race Point. Like Blue-footed Boobies, these birds torpedo straight down into schools of fish.**

As wind and sand pelted us, groups of White-winged and Black Scoters, Common Eiders, and Long-tailed Ducks skimmed the waves just offshore. Some occasionally landed, but most seemed hell-bent for destinations only they knew about. All were birds I had scant experience with, so I soaked up every sighting.

**This was only my second time seeing Common Eiders, and I was uber impressed by the coloration of both females and males.**

“There’s a Red-throated Loon!” Braden said, pointing to a bird with an exceedingly pale, long neck reaching up from the surface. It wouldn’t be long before we saw several Common Loons, differentiated by blockier heads, chunkier bills, and more black on their faces.

**Only my second Red-throated Loon ever. Note the smooth, rounded head and white “winter” face.**

At the top of our To Find list were Great Shearwaters, a potential Lifer for both of us. These birds belong to the “tube noses,” the same group of birds that includes albatrosses, fulmars, and storm-petrels. These birds are truly seafarers, rarely approaching shore. Only a few weeks ago, I had caught a glimpse of Sooty Shearwaters while visiting California’s Point Reyes National Park with my friend Scott. Great Shearwaters had been sighted regularly at Race Point for the past couple of weeks, but alas, we arrived too late to see them today.

**Braden fruitlessly searching the seas for Great Shearwaters and jaegers.**

We still had plenty of thrilling birds to look at, however. As we trudged the mile and a half through the soft sand toward the very tip of the Cape, flocks of Dunlin and Sanderlings in their winter plumages worked the drifts of foam left on the beach by each encroaching wave. We even saw a group of six Horned Larks, birds we were used to seeing on the backroads of Montana—not here at the end of the world.

**It had been years since I’d gotten to hang with Dunlins, and it was a real treat.**

Not to be outdone, gulls also put on a show. This was the first time I’d ever gotten to see Great Black-backed Gulls in a natural setting. They are the world’s largest gulls, and I gotta say they looked like they belonged in this rugged, challenging environment.

“Look!” Braden suddenly shouted. “Iceland Gull!” Two of them, in fact. These gulls had until recently been split into Iceland and Thayer’s Gull, and Braden and I had seen the latter at the Helena landfill in Montana. This look was much more memorable as both a juvenile and adult landed near us. Both were gorgeous birds with subtle markings, and they quickly jumped into contention for Bird of the Day honors. Not long after seeing the Iceland Gulls, Braden also spotted a Black-legged Kittiwake. I was grateful he’d gained experience with all of these birds while on the East Coast, because I certainly would have missed a lot of them.

**I don’t even want to know what this Great Black-backed Gull is eating, as our two Iceland Gulls look on.**

I picked up two Lifers for the day. One was Razorbill, a kind of black-and-white alcid I had dreamed about seeing for years (see our post “All About Alcids”). During our hike to the lighthouse and back, we saw about eighty of these birds in groups, flying low or bobbing up and down in the jagged waves. My second Lifer was a pair of Purple Sandpipers that landed in front of us and shouldn’t have been anywhere near a wide sandy beach. Like its closely-related West Coast cousin the Rock Sandpiper, these are rocky shore birds.

**I was especially thrilled to see my Lifer Razorbills, but it’s a tossup whether these or the Iceland Gulls grabbed Bird of the Day honors.**

“They must be migrating,” I said, and Braden agreed, though we were well within their wintering latitudes.

As we trudged back toward the car, Braden spotted a fin jutting out of the water. At first we thought it might be the dorsal fin of a shark or orca, but after watching it for a few minutes, we concluded that we were looking at the tail flukes of a larger whale. I’d seen quite a few humpback whales before, and these didn’t look anything like it. “I think it’s a Right Whale,” I said. Later, we learned that Right Whales had been regularly spotted in the area. It was one more unforgettable discovery for a memorable day.

Race Point eBird Checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S203601766

Chasing Migrants, Part I: Swifts, Peeps, and Plovers

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In case you missed our last post, be sure to check out my new book, Birding for Boomers. It’s a great gift for anyone you know of any age or background who might be interested in getting into birds. It’s also a great way to support our efforts here at FatherSonBirding! Why not order one or two copies—or even a dozen—right now?

I’ve had little time to catch up on our birding adventures this time of year. With new books to promote, house guests to entertain, seeing Braden off to his senior year at UMaine, and more, life has been a juggling act through August and September. I did manage two lovely trips to Freezeout Lake in August, one with my occasional birding buddy Steve Flood, the other with Braden right before he headed East. In mid-September, I also rewarded myself with a personal trip to the Bay Area to visit friends and relatives—and, of course, see as many birds as possible. Like the recent trips to Freezeout, my primary objective was to find and study as many migrating shorebirds as possible.

Despite birding for more than a decade, I still feel like a beginner when it comes to shorebirds. My recent trips to Freezeout were “study sessions” more than birding excursions, and I was grateful that Baird’s Sandpipers, Red-necked Phalaropes, Semipalmated Sandpipers and other species offered hours of observation and ID practice on each trip. I hoped for similar sessions in California. After I spent a few days with relatives in Oakland and reconnected with the delightful birds of oak woodlands, my friend Scott (see Eastern Odyssey 24: Return to Westby) whisked me off to the North Bay, where serious birding adventures commenced.

Before heading across the Richmond Bridge, we gave McLaughlin Eastshore State Park in Berkeley a try, but our timing was off as high tide covered the mudflats. Next, we visited the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District in Marin County. I enjoyed that, but again, we saw nothing spectacular. I was surprised to spot a lone Vaux’s Swift—a lifer for Scott—and eight or nine Black Phoebes put on a show, but it was a slow start to meeting our birding ambitions. Fortunately, things would pick up—dramatically.

**Though they didn’t perch at the top of our target list for the day, Black Phoebes charmed us at the Las Gallinas water treatment ponds in Marin County.**

After Las Gallinas (“The Hens”), Scott drove us to Reclamation Road in the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, where we hoped—finally—for some shorebird action. Our first surprise wasn’t shorebirds, however. As soon as we got out of the car, I spotted four tiny shapes frantically flying west. “Hey, there’s more Vaux’s Swifts.” I really hadn’t expected to see these, but it did make sense. I knew they’d departed Montana in the past few weeks and that they followed the West Coast down to their wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America. Our four birds were merely a prelude, however. As Scott and I walked out toward the shore, we saw half a dozen more swifts. Then a dozen. Then, as we looked east, we witnessed a veritable river of Vaux’s Swifts flying toward us.

**This photo doesn’t begin to capture the remarkable river of migrating Vaux’s Swifts that passed over our heads.** Yes, those “dots” are the swifts! Swifts are a species of concern because of the loss of old growth forests and other natural roosting sites. Ironically, saving old brick chimneys should be a priority for those interested in protecting these birds.

“This is amazing,” Scott said as the birds stiff-winged it over our heads. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

I shook my head. The most VASWs I’d ever seen at one time was perhaps a couple of dozen. Now, hundreds streamed past us—probably thousands! We learned from a passerby that they were most likely heading to the chimney of an old brick-making plant, a well-known roosting place for them. Scott and I were suitably awed by the sight. It was enough to make the whole day worthwhile, whether or not we ended up seeing shorebirds.

Nonetheless, as we walked out to the bay I was gladdened to see shallow mudflats and hundreds of dots scattered over them. “Shorebirds!” I rejoiced.

With San Francisco in the distance, you couldn’t ask for a more dramatic setting to study shorebirds! Many of those specks in the foreground are Least Sandpipers—though you’ll see a lot of other species mixed in!

As we drew closer, I set up the spotting scope, and quickly zoomed in on a dozen-plus Long-billed Curlews, at least fifty Willets, and what would turn out to be a couple of hundred Marbled Godwits. These were easily-enough identified. Not so the hundreds of small sandpipers, or “peeps,” that peppered the scene in front of us. Birders generally include four species under the “peep” category: Sanderlings, Western Sandpipers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, and Least Sandpipers. Since it was the nonbreeding season, Sanderlings should have given off a distinctive whitish vibe by now, so I ruled them out, but what of the other three? The problem with peeps is that their coloration, size, bill shape and bill length overlap to a frustrating degree, and I just didn’t have enough experience with these to make a call. Least Sandpipers can be easy to pinpoint if you can see their leg color—yellow compared to black for Westerns and “Semipalms”—but when they were feeding in the mud, determining leg color often proved impossible.

As I often do in such situations, I called Braden. I described what I was seeing and said, “I am guessing that they are Semipalmated Sandpipers, but I just don’t know.”

“Well,” he informed me, “the good news is that if there are large numbers of them, they aren’t Semis because Semipalmated Sandpipers don’t move through the West Coast.”

**With Braden’s help, I narrowed down these far-away “peeps” to either Least or Western Sandpipers. Confirmation would have to wait until later, however.**

Doh! This surprised me because we do see them in Montana. I never realized, though, that our Montana birds were on the western edge of their migration pathway from their northern breeding grounds to their wintering grounds in the coastal tropics.

“If I had to guess,” Braden continued, “I’d say you’re looking at Least Sandpipers. You said that they’re darker brown and Westerns give off a grayer color.”

Still, even through the scope, the birds were too far away for me to be sure, so I recorded “peep sp.” in my eBird checklist—at least for now.

One species, however, excited me more than all the others. Almost as soon as we reached the mudflats, I spotted birds that I had especially hoped to see: Black-bellied Plovers. Black-bellied Plovers are one of the world’s largest plovers, and they have the widest distribution. Like many shorebirds, they breed mainly in the arctic regions, but in winter they disperse to coastal areas of every continent sans Antarctica.

**At San Pablo Bay NWR, I was especially excited to see Black-bellied Plovers mixed in with Long-billed Curlews, peeps, Marbled Godwits, and other shorebirds.**

Braden and I had only ever seen Black-bellied Plovers about twenty times—and only four times as they migrated through Montana. The birds are known to flock up in winter, but even in places such as California and Texas, we generally only saw a few at a time. Now, as I trained my scope out over the mudflats, I began picking out more and more of these birds. At first, their light color and larger size made them look kind of like gulls, but their more erect posture and stubbier dark bill gave them away. One bird they can easily be confused with are American Golden Plovers, which look almost identical except for their smaller bill, head, and overall size. Some AGPLs also show flecks of gold color even in winter, but today, I saw no AGPL suspects and counted sixty Black-bellied Plovers in front of me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many before!” I effused to Scott. “This is really amazing.”

What I didn’t realize is that I vastly undercounted. I took a couple of photos of shorebirds in flight and later, going over the images, I made a startling discovery. One of the flying flocks consisted of at least 140 Black-bellied Plovers! How could I tell they were BBPLs instead of other shorebirds? In this case, it happened to be easy. Black-bellied Plovers are the only shorebirds to show distinct black armpits under their wings!

**When I took this photo, I didn’t realize these birds were Black-bellied Plovers—easily the largest flock I have ever seen. The black armpits make IDing this species particularly easy in flight.**

It was a great way to end the day for both me and Scott and we celebrated with a fabulous Mexican food dinner with Scott’s wife Ginny and step-daughter Hayley. I went to bed happy—but eagerly looked forward to more migrating bird opportunities ahead.

https://ebird.org/checklist/S195291789