Field Trip Reports Point Mugu NAWS Friday, March 3, 2006 By Jeff Hanson It was drizzling pretty good as we headed for Mugu on Friday morning. Our guide and base biologist, Carly Gocal, greeted us with a smile as we arrived. By the time the 17 of us actually got in the base, we had lucked out and the rain stopped. Our first stop was at the Mugu Lagoon, which was rife with many hundreds of ducks, shorebirds, waders and a few gulls. Rarities included the Long-tailed Duck and the Black Scoter. After a lengthy stay, we then ventured out to the point, where we could look across to the harbor seal rookery, which had just produced the first pup of the season. The Brown Pelican colony was looking very healthy as well. The rest of the tour brought us over to the west side, against the Ventura Game Reserve (where we were last week). We enjoyed good long views of kingbirds, meadowlarks, blackbirds, swallows, sparrows, and several raptors to name a few. It seemed like only moments after we started to head back to the gate, that it started to drizzle again! All together, we logged 60 species for the trip, not bad for a day that was bracketed by rain. Our special thanks goes out to Carly Gocal for her friendly and professional guidance, and the staff of Point Mugu NAWS for allowing us the privelidge of being on base. Many thanks to Jack Sanford and Peggy Kearns for their untiring efforts !! Long-tailed duck, photo courtesy Jeff Hanson Brown Pelicans inbound, image courtesy Jeff Hanson

It was a blustery morning as we gathered at 8:30, at the gate of the Lone Star Ranch. Once again, we found ourselves hoping for no rain! Soon, 17 of us headed in, including four members of the Carr family, the owners of the ranch. Once parked and geared up, we headed for their dock on Lake Cachuma. It wasn't long before we heard the cacophony of the numerous Clark's Grebes. They were accompanied by Cormorants, Shovelers, Coots, Mallards, Gulls, Buff leheads, a few Common Mergansers, and a Common Goldeneye. A Green Heron zipped by as we checked out a Great Blue Heron rookery tree backed by a Turkey Vulture night roost. We then made our way through some oak woodland on our way out to the grassy pasture area. We all had a taste of some Miners Lettuce while enjoying all the wildflowers as well as Woodpeckers, Nuthatches, Towhees, Juncos, Sparrows and Titmice. While enjoying some vistas of the lake from the high ground, we got to see those nine foot wings of a low circling White Pelican. Near the pasture, we were greeted by our first-of-season Western Kingbird as well as a snazzy pair of Western Bluebirds. Even though it still feels like Febuary, spring is really here !!

Sparrows, Meadowlarks, Robins, Phoebes, Wrens and Swallows welcomed us into the pasture area, where we could really see the high shoreline of a very full lake ! We traversed the pasture and headed for the cars when a small group of Wood Ducks was spotted on the far shore, just as the sky was starting to mist up. We concluded the walk with the Red-naped Sapsucker in the pepper trees near the parking area. We logged 65 species for the morning. Our special thanks go out to the Carr family, for their kindness and generosity, and to Paul Keller, for a last-minute standin as Trip Leader. Also, many thanks to Jared Dawson and Kathleen Boehm for keeping the bird list.

Pelican, photo courtesy Jeff Hanson

Juvenile Nuttall's Woodpecker Trekking above Bulito creek

For the first time this year, this writer headed out on a SBAS field trip without the threat of rain! As in previous years, we had a full compliment of 25 birders for this once-a-year opportunity. We had an uneventful, but windy drive up the splendid Gaviota coast. We then made our way through the pastoral ranch properties to the historic ranch headquarters, now the clubhouse. After receiving an enthusiastic welcome from our hostess, Wendie Kruthers, we gathered up our gear and immediately began. The local field and oak woodland netted us Towhees, Bluebirds, Thrashers, Finches, Swallows, Flickers, Starlings, Sparrows, Jays, Orioles and Woodpeckers. We enjoyed long looks at a pair of Nuttall's feeding their juvie. We then crossed Bulito creek and hiked up the canyon a short distance, where we noted that it was quite windy. Having the great advantage of looking up a grassy hill, or down on the creek, we logged Warblers, Vireos, Wrens, Quail, Phoebes, Hawks and Hummers, to name a few. We then made our way back to the cars, and headed for Drakes beach, which was very windy. With our scopes, we saw a Pigeon Guillemot, our rare find of the day, out there with Grebes, Gulls, Cormorants and Brown Pelicans. A visit to the nearby pond got us more Hooded Orioles, and a glimpse of a pair of cute-as-the-dickens baby Coots! Before we knew it, it was time to go. We logged 45 species for the trip. While the numbers were down due to wind, a great time was had by all! Our special thanks go out to the Hollister Ranch Association and Ms. Wendie Kruthers for their generosity, and to Guy Tingos and Jack Sanford for leading this delightful trip.

Birders met at the newish parking lot/picnic area at the Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve beach. A little silver trailer is the creative summer solution to having a Dunes Interpretive Center on site. The dunes were buff and beautiful, and the big waves offshore felt wild in spite of the windless morning. At 9 a.m. about 20 of us, ably led by Jack Sanford, met Willie Richardson, the friendly and knowledgeable Dunes Center Naturalist, who shared the next 2 hours on a leisurely walk and talk about the local natural lore and science. Without the binoculars and a couple of scopes, we might have missed the perfectly camouflaged snowy plovers that remained at the cordedoff (March-September) nesting area. Willie told us that although the females had left, some males still remained with the chicks teaching them the plover ropes, huddling down in their sand dune dents and gobbling the flies and larvae around the kelp piles on the shore.

We saw a flow of birds offshore maybe a mile, flying at least 20 feet above the waves. We looked both directions to find that it seemed like an endless, seamless f low. These Sooty Shearwaters live life completely at sea except for their annual nesting. They are specially adapted for drinking seawater, mostly eating small fish and doing long distance gliding using wings as sails, and they are rarely seen from shore.

As we meandered north to the estuary of the Santa Maria River, pelicans wheeled over the waves in loose formations. A hundred Brown Pelicans busily preened and stretched in a group on the estuary's edge. The only white-headed pelican turned out to be the one adult overseeing all the motley feathered juveniles. Like a high school prom? Gulls mixed in peaceably. In the shallow fresh water, we saw 2 elegant Avocets with their thin upward curving bills and some swimming Red-necked Phalaropes among the throngs of Sandpipers. Two Great Blue Herons stood stock-still out on the mud flats, and we spotted a Great White and a Snowy Egret.

Then came the excitement. Everyone fluffed up, riled up, and flew up in a big swirling avian crowd until eventually organizing back on shore again. It was a Peregrine Falcon swooping in. It came around twice, looking for a morsel on the wing, or just to mix it up for fun?

As we reluctantly left these pristine dunes and the riparian zone of the Santa Maria River, we spotted more soaring hawks and Turkey Vultures along with many boxes on poles, erected at vineyard edges to attract owls and hawks which keep the rodent population down. Jack logged at least 17 species. Some of us stopped at the Dune Center, located in a lovely Craftsman bungalow on Guadalupe's main drag (Highway 1), to round out this fine field trip.