Sabine's Gull; photo taken along Casper Road in Oxnard, September 2000;
A most unusual land-fall!
Courtesy Jim Greaves.
The year 2000 marked the second year for Santa Barbara Audubon's Spring Seabird Migration Count. This project originated in 1999 to build on data gathered by Paul Lehman, the totals for which were published in 1994 in his Birds of Santa Barbara County, California. Lehman's counts were conducted in the springs of 1976-78 during which he logged an average of 86 hours per year and recorded numbers for over 35 species. Totals for this year's count can be seen below.
The spring seabird migration up the coast of California is one of the state's great natural spectacles. Waves of loons, cormorants, Brants, scoters, shearwaters, gulls, and terns, among other birds, can be seen from shore as they follow the coast to their breeding grounds. Anyone who's stood at Goleta Point on a crisp April morning and looked out to see a thousand winged dots spread across the sky, and realized that all of those dots were Pacific Loons, will not soon forget the sight. Likewise, anyone would be impressed at the sight of a tightly grouped flock of five or six hundred Brant, forming a series of interconnected Vs, moving silently over the waters just offshore. These moments are few and far between, of course. But, any time spent at Goleta Point can be rewarding, whether for the sight of the occasional flock of scoters buzzing past, the glimpse of the spout of the odd gray whale on its way to the Gulf of Alaska, the camaraderie of people who share your enjoyment of birds, or the chance to spend a couple of hours at such a scenic place.
In the spring of 2000, twenty-five volunteers dropped their cares from time to time to go to Goleta Point at UCSB, help out with the seabird count, and enjoy the day. They scanned the waters and shoreline around the point, logging 195 hours over ten weeks and counting approximately 140,000 birds. Most common, as expected, was the Pacific Loon. On the morning of 18 April, George and Joan Hardie watched as this species flew past the point at an average of over 100 a minute in a two-hour period. In one twenty-minute interval, about 180 loons per minute went past. Brant and Surf Scoters were also major elements of the migration. The Hardies and Barb Millett stood at the point on 16 April as flock after flock of Brants, totaling nearly 3500 in one hour, moved by. And Dave Compton and Mary Wenzel witnessed the migration of over 2300 Surf Scoters in the span of 80 minutes on 23 March. Odd sightings of rare birds or birds seldom seen from shore, like Franklin's Gull, Rhinoceros Auklet, and Black-legged Kittiwake, spiced up a few of the sea watches in 2000 as well.
And while the enjoyment of witnessing the spectacle of seabird migration might be enough for most observers to justify taking the time out of their day, participants could also point to the body of knowledge being gathered by this project. The first two years of the project have produced very different results and raised interesting questions about seabird migration in the Santa Barbara Channel: Was the milder weather of 2000 somehow connected to the recording of many thousand more loons compared with the year before? What role does wind direction play in the numbers of birds recorded at the point during any given sea watch? How many of the Brandt's Cormorants moving up and down the coast were migrants and how many were local breeders or residents? Why were hundreds of Red-throated Loons recorded moving past the point in late March 2000--flying east (down the coast)? Two years of data cannot answer these questions, so we'll be out there again in 2001 tallying every loon, Brant, scoter, jaeger, and tern in sight. Come join us if you would like to lend a hand or come join us just see what it is we're doing out there.
Of course, the migration count for the year 2000 would not have been possible without the efforts of many dedicated volunteers. Thanks to the following people who donned binoculars and carried their scopes out to Goleta Point to count the birds and fill the columns of the data sheets: Kurt Anderson, John Ayres, Dave Compton, Rebecca Coulter, George Hardie, Joan Hardie, Marilyn Harding, Brad Hines, Becky Hoban, Bruce Hollingworth, Cher Hollingworth, Melissa Kelly, Joan Lentz, Patrick McNulty, Barb Millett, Bill Murdoch, Winkie Roberts, George Roland, Maxine Roland, Florence Sanchez, Christine Steele, John Storrer, Guy Tingos, Mary Wenzel, Grant Weyburne, and Kathleen Whitney. Also, thanks to David Kisner, who initiated the project in 1999, for his advice in conducting the project in 2000.
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Updated: September 19, 2005