Good Times, Bad Times, Weird Times: 2020 In The 5 Mile Radius

From 2017-2019, I had seen but only a single Snow Goose in the now legendary Rancho de Bastardos Five Mile Radius. In the fall of 2020 I saw three! All maximum tame and slumming it with breadline Canada Geese. This one was at Hellyer County Park.

Ah, an old-fashioned annual end of the year round up post! Ok it's not exactly on time but what do you expect these days? Life is pain and blogging is hard.

Well, it seems like it has always been fashionable for some people to publicly bitch about each year as it comes to a close...it's the one time of year it is cool to publicly whinge about what a rough go of it you've had on social media, instead of just trying to convince everybody how fucking brilliant your life  is. I'm sure sometimes that is totally valid (it's not like tragedy and suffering, or fear and loathing, is limited to 2020), but in retrospect most of that seems pretty wimpy compared to the gargantuan cluster that was last year. This really is the time that I'm just relieved to have a year be over with, but at the same time I don't kid myself about how quickly 2021 will right the ship. One could say the short term prognosis is rather...bleak.

***UPDATE: All of the above was written before the storming of the capitol by obsequious far right Trump worshippers/fucking insane conspiracy theorists/human garbage white supremacists...oh yeah and our old friend 'Rona is going stronger than ever before. So 2021 is exactly like 2020 so far, what a surprise.

Anyways, birds. It's a cliche at this point, but I think I need to say that birding really has helped with getting through 2020. I must bird, but it was crucial in 2020. Obviously, I ended up birding a ton in my 5MR, as 5MR birding is even more suited to pandemic era birding than it was before. I was not doing any sort of concerted year listing, as 2019 was more or less a 5MR big year and I had no interest in putting in that amount of effort again, but 2020 ended up being a great year for my radius. I picked up 17 new 5MR birds, 4 of which I detected only from my yard and nowhere else! This also involved an absolutely torrid stretch where I got 9 new 5MR birds in about 5 weeks. So despite going without chasing a number of birds and dispensing with a lot of target birding, I finished with 185 species...only 2 off my my 2019 mark, when I was feverishly birding the radius in comparison. I am very satisfied.

Alright, we can move on - contrary to what almost most birders will tell you, I'm acutely aware that list numbers are rarely interesting to anyone besides their keepers. In this post I'll mostly focus on birding highlights from the second half of the year, since I've done such a shameful job of blogging lately and that's when a lot of the best birds appeared.

After a slow start to the year, the quality of 5MR birding seemed to really pick up in April. The vague runt highlight (and new radius bird for me) of the spring my grunts was undoubtedly a Northern Parula, but my favorite spring bird was this Calliope Hummingbird I found at a nearby Echium patch. I had sustained and satisfying long looks very close up, which I can't say I've had many of when it comes to adult males. Photographed at the Santa Clara Water District headquarters.

Though not a regional meguh, few birds in my yard have caused me the sort of distress that this Yellow-headed Blackbird did upon first seeing it. A 5MR/yard bird twofer, I was amazed that this thing was frequenting my backyard, particularly in July, a month known for poor lowland birding if you don't count shorebirds. There's nothing like getting some shock and awe in your very own backyard.

One perk of 2020 that came with living in the bay area was the MEGAFIRES. I was lucky enough to not have to worry about losing my home, but the smoke...it was astounding how bad the smoke was on some days. This Pygmy Nuthatch probably lost its home in the Santa Cruz Mountains to the CZU Lightning Fire and took advantage of my feeding station for a day - though the circumstances were a bummer, this was not a species I anticipated getting in the radius, let alone my yard.

This fall was my fourth here in Santa Clara County, and it was by far the best as far as rarities are concerned in my 5MR. Vasona Lake County Park was the place to be - it started with a Northern Waterthrush, which was a county bird for me. I then found another one in the same spot weeks later. Soon after that I found this shadowy Blackpoll Warbler above, a new radius bird. Then that same day some other birders and photographers found a Bay-breasted Warbler (FIRST COUNTY RECORD) while trying to track down the Blackpoll.

A first county record, right in my very own radius! You gotta love that, and I did enjoy some views of this bird on a couple different days. Bay-breasteds are quite rare in the state, although of course some of the more vagrant-wealthy counties seem to entrap them with some regularity. This is only the third I have ever seen in California. Birders flogging the area shrubbery also turned up an American Redstart, which I also chased successfully for a new 5MR bird. I dipped multiple times on a Nashville Warbler here, but there are worse things to dip on.

While the fall of 2020 was great for Brewer's and Clay-colored Sparrows in much of the state, we in Santa Clara did not get very many of the latter. I was happy to find this one at Vasona, one of three individuals seen in the county last year and the only one in my radius.

Lawrence's Goldfinches are not difficult to find in certain spots in Santa Clara County, but this isn't a species I considered fait accompli in the 5MR; they have an affinity for pretty "wild", undeveloped areas here that don't happen to fall close to home. So on that tinkling note, I was surprised when one was found at a random, seemingly unbirded park in my radius this fall in the middle of a vast sea of suburbs. I'll take it - this is one of my favorite species in California, so getting long looks at one here is an especially fulfilling radial victory.

Last fall was a big one for uncommon and rare sparrows in much of California. I happily chased a Vesper Sparrow at Don Edwards NWR as a county bird...then chased another at Vasona Lake County Park, which was a new 5MR bird and the first ever eBirded from within my radius. Shortly afterward I found my own Vesper Sparrow at a local park which almost no one birds, so I was really happy to turn something up there. It really captured the spirit of 5MR birding I reckon. Photographed at Martial Cottle County Park.

Northern Pintail is a classic species that is very common at a number of sites in my county but incredibly hard to find in my radius. A small group I found last fall were only my second personal record here, where I do a bit better with diving ducks than I do with dabblers. Photographed at the Los Capitancillos Ponds.

This is old news to everyone on the west coast, but this has been an epic year for Pine Siskins in my radius and seemingly everywhere else. Previously it was a special occasion to look out the back door and see one in the yard, but now it's an everyday occurrence. A "green" siskin (bottom photo, upside down on right) is not an everyday occurrence though, so that was a welcome feeder guest. I had not seen one in years. Photographed at Rancho de Bastardos.

The last new addition to the radius was this Green-tailed Towhee, which was also a county bird. It mostly feeds out in the open in an orchard with a Zonotrichia flock, a very un-GTTO setting. When I saw it, it was somewhat distant but super cooperative. Even though I've been birding the bay area for a long time this was the first I've seen in any of the regional counties. Photographed on the Calero Creek Trail.

I could totally pad this post with some more fun birds, including common ones, but I gotta get it out there at some point. Again, sorry for the lack of posts last year, it really does bring me angst. Follow me on Instagram @feloniousjive if you're into stuff like that, I try to post birdses on there more regularly. I'd like to wish you all a happy 2021, but I think that ship has sailed! So go forth and bird your radius, and if your radius is not that great, bird your county! Those lurking local vagues aren't going to find themselves.

Costa Rica Part IV: Sarapiqui River Cruise

Back to Costa Rica. I am going to attempt to execute this post with concision and precision.

One afternoon I scheduled us for a boat trip on the Sarapiqui River. I didn't expect to see a ton, but afternoon birding is hard anyways, so why not just hang out on a boat for a while? It's pretty much like geri birding, you just sit there and look at the things that are presented in front of you. Plus, there was a realistic-albeit-not-high chance we could see Sunbittern. We could have booked a boat through Hotel Gavilan, but I ended up going with Oasis Nature Tours and booked our boat through their Facebook page. A very low and mostly unobscured two-toed sloth passed out next to the parking lot was a good sign when we arrived at the main boat dock at Puerto Viejo.

Our guide (Carmela) and driver were on time and our party of four had the whole boat. Carmela wasn't a great birder (I wasn't expecting one) but she was a good guide and really came through for us later in the trip. She also introduced us to something we had not previously noticed, the Tico/Tica habit of attaching an affirming short question ("yes?") or affirmative sound to the end of sentences spoken in English that aren't meant to be questions. For example, instead of saying "Here in Costa Rica, it is the dry season", one would say "Here in Costa Rica, it is the dry season, mmhmm!", where the second syllable of "mmhmm" is much higher than the first and both syllables are spoken rapidly, so it sounds really enthusiastic. It's rather similar in emphasis to the "su-wheet!" call of a Pacific-slope Flycatcher. We all thought it was a brilliant mannerism.

So much for being concise...

There were tons of Mangrove Swallows, many of which would feed right next to the boat or remain perched while we passed very close by (see above). Another common but more familiar bird worth mentioning (not pictured) was Spotted Sandpiper...I don't know if I've seen so many in one place in my life.

A mixed flock along the shore contained this Bay-breasted Warbler. It was cool to see them outside of spring and fall migration for the first time, even though they all looked like fall migrants.

I rarely see Anhingas up close so was happy to crush on this bird a bit. In the first two pics you can see it getting at the oil gland at the base of its tail. Mmmm, sweet precious Anhinga oil...

Cattle Egrets are common in the area, and a couple flocks were taking their afternoon egret tea down in the river.

We saw quite a bit of non-avian wildlife. I think these are Rhinoclemmys funerea, black river turtles aka black wood turtles. Life turtle! We also saw a guy on the riverbank mocking us for birdwatching. In response, I also mocked us for birdwatching, which guide and driver appreciated. Their English was good enough to know what "NERDS!" means.

This green iguana was a particularly fine specimen.

Of the three monkey species we saw on the trip (howler, spider, white-faced capuchin) I think I like howlers the most. They make the coolest sounds by far and have the best scrotums, as you can see here.

The nerds enjoyed themselves. Boat times are good times.

We also saw our first spectacled caiman of the trip. This one has a massive insect next to its eye, presumably trying to get tasty caiman tears.

Yeah, it happened. About halfway through the trip, Carmela let us know that we had an excellent chance at seeing a Sunbittern. She was right and the bird obliged. This was a life bird for all of us and I was beside myself. The bird gods were with us.

We got great, prolonged looks. This is one of those birds that you see for the first time and think to yourself, "I can't believe I'm actually looking at this". Sunbittern is an iconic species and there are not enough superlatives out there to do it justice.

And yes, we got excellent looks at everything it had to offer. I could not have been happier.

It was a winning afternoon on the river topped off by an unforgettable bird. Stoked!

The Best Birding of The Year: April in Sabine Woods

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed, but I am pretty awful at finishing trip reports in a timely manner. However, I love trip reports (though they seem to be dying) and I love fantastic birding, so I would be crazy to not make one last installment from this year's trip to Texas. Our second trip to Sabine Woods not only warranted a blog post, it was the best birding I experienced the entire year. So hop on in to the BB&B time machine one last time, as we make the quick leap back to April of 2018...

The day started out innocently enough. After Great Success earlier in the week at Sabine Woods, Dipper Dan and I headed back, hoping for a repeat. The southerly winds that prevailed over much of the previous day had switched to winds out of the north, so conditions were right for a good morning, if not a facemelting one.

At dawn we started the birding the trees at Texas Point National Wildlife Refuge, which is right on the way to Sabine Woods. It's not an impressive looking patch (some pieces of private property in the area appeared better suited as migrant traps), but since this is the UTC it should be checked! It was really slow at first, but after a while we began to see sweet sweet migrants coming in off the coast. Not many were stopping, but it was encouraging. The Northern Parula above was very accommodating, and ended up being the only one we would see that day.

After exhausting the relatively small Texas Point patch, we returned to Sabine Woods. Birding was on the slow side at first...acceptable, but not anything crazy. The forest floor was not crawling with Ovenbirds and thrushes, like it was when we visited earlier in the week though. This Canada Warbler that Dipper Dan found was an early highlight.

After talking to BB&B reader Steve from Kansas City for a while and learning about how terrible fans of the Kansas City Royals are...and looking at the Cerulean Warbler he pointed out to us...I found this Blue Jay getting high on sunbeams in the forest floor. Things were getting interesting.

Incrementally, the birding got better and better as the morning progressed. What began as dull birding became mediocre birding, which turned into decent birding which turned into good birding. A few hours after we arrived, the number of birds in the patch had seemed to double, then triple. By about 2PM there were simply birds all over the place. Woods totally empty of Ovenbirds earlier now were filled with them. The birding had gone from good to great; migrants just seemed to be piling in to the patch.

Eventually, we came to that rare and special realization that it was happening, much like it was at High Island the first day of the trip. This was the birding I had come here for, the birding I had hoped to experience but dared not expect. There were simply too many birds, too many birds to look at, mainly thrushes, vireos and warblers. Migrants galore. At one point, Dan and I split up for a while, and he encountered this Swainson's Warbler (left). It was only a few feet from him, falling asleep inside a bush, so the only photo he could get of it was with his phone. Obviously, the bird had just dropped in from who-knows-where and needed a nice nap before turning up the skulk meter to normal Swainson's Warbler parameters.

Well, when it's happening, it's happening. This is the sort of thing that happens when it's happening.

I missed Dan's sleepy Swainson's by a few minutes but managed to find my own in a different part of the patch. It was slightly more cooperative than I expected, which I was happy about. The brown wonder was a lifer only a few days before.

We birded vigorously through the afternoon. It was great. Not a fallout...lots of very approachable but otherwise normal-acting birds...but I had difficulty thinking that the birding could be much better than it was.

Eventually, we were fully saturated by migrants and the day was drawing to an end. We made our way back to the entrance, where a confiding Worm-eating Warbler greeted me...

...and promptly flopped down to the pavement. I love seeing warblers flopping around on the ground...it is a sign of excellent birding. Sure, some warblers are inherent ground floppers, and some may flop at any height...but it can be a sign. Worm-eating Warblers aren't exactly ground-phobic though, so I merely appreciated the bird's gesture and went on my way.

But I didn't get far. The day's final act was about to unfold, and the few tattered remains of what was once my face were about to melt off completely.

Right next to the entrance, some birders were looking at some Blackburnian Warblers...certainly not an unusual event but I felt these Blackburnians needed some special attention.

It turns out these Blackburnians were especially tired. They were in full just-crossed-the-Gulf mode and treated us with the same amount of caution they would give to an oak tree...in other words, we might as well have been invisible. I've met some confiding Blackburnians before, but these really took it to another level. When one of them started passing out on an open branch about 15 feet away, I knew that not only was it happening, it was happening really hard.

In short order they flopped to the ground and did their best Brewer's Blackbird-in-a-parking-lot impressions. I've been lucky enough to be really close to Blackburnians before, but this was a different level of close.

Incredible.

Here is an uncropped photo - the dark blob on the right is my shadow.

I looked up into the trees and saw a Bay-breasted Warbler, then two. They had been fairly common the past few days, but it was strange to see them perched just a few inches from one another; I got the clear impression that they had just fallen out of the sky together, their long Gulf crossing just completed. The Worm-eating Warbler on the ground had foreshadowed what was unfolding before my very eyes...

Warblers were now flopping around on the ground in front of us. This adult Tennessee Warbler, a known ground hater, flopped about without apologies.

Another Tennessee jumped into the ground frenzy. The growing terrestrial congregation of fearless warblers wasn't completely surrounding us, but were very focused or concentrating on an area in front of us about the size of a small lawn.

A Hooded Warbler, known to groundabout, was especially floppy.

The pair of Bay-breasted Warblers descended from the trees to join the growing flock of warblers in the grass for soul-satisfying looks.

Considering all the warblers on the ground, gravity must have been especially strong. This Blue-winged Warbler felt the pull but mostly managed to stay a few feet above it.

Gravity's pull was so forceful here that it was holding on to a leaf with one foot for dear life. Clearly, this was some sort of Bermuda Triangle for warblers.

This crippling Chestnut-sided Warbler materialized a few feet above the ground-fray.

The Bay-breasted Warblers in particular had little interest in going back up into the trees.

We should probably make sure a combo gets in here...Blackburnian/Bay-breasted ground combo is a sweet one. There were other warblers here in groundtown as well, but this post has to end eventually!

I'm still not sure how to describe this event. This was not normal. Kansas City Steve, who had logged a great many years of springtime birding at Sabine Woods, admitted he had never seen anything like it. It was like what I expect a full-blown fallout to be like, except happening on a weirdly small scale. I have always maintained that there is no such thing as a small fallout, but it appears time to reexamine that position. Keep in mind, of course, that there were huge numbers of birds in the patch that were not acting like this, but I'm thinking a small wave of extremely exhausted migrants had arrived at the edge of the patch just as we were leaving, giving us....well...a micro fallout? It makes me wince to read that but I can't think of a better label for the event. No matter what it was, it was unlike anything I've experienced before, things will never be the same, and I really hope a springtime return to the Gulf Coast happens sooner than later. We ended up getting new high counts in eBird for Acadian Flycatcher, Swainson's Thrush and Ovenbird at this heavily birded site.

I did have one more day to bird in Texas with Dipper Dan and Officer Shaw at High Island, which was ok but nothing like what happened at Sabine Woods the previous day. We then went to Shaw's, where we drank incredibly good beer, I had an incredibly bad allergy attack (how embarrassing), and a freaking Chuck-will's-widow flew over his suburban yard in broad daylight!

This will conclude BB&B's coverage of 2018's fantastic foray to Texas. Thanks to This Machine Nate for coming all the way out to the coast, shortly before being banished to the depths of an uncharted corner of Ohio. Thanks to Dipper Dan for being my ride or die and coming out from SoCal. Thanks to Officer Shaw for meeting up with us (twice!) and letting us crash in the Land of Sugar. You all battled Geri, you all won, and you are all birding heroes.