[andy latham]

RFI

I am in the early stages of planning a birding trip to California in late march 2012. Two big target spp for me are Rock Sandpiper & Mountain plover, I need to know when these species leave california for their breeding grounds please?
Have the plovers left the salton sea area by this time? Are Rock sandpiper still reliable north of San Fransisco? One other request when does 'al' (the regular wintering Laysan Albertross) leave the area for the summer?

Any information would be grateful..

Cheers Andy Latham

[Andrew Whitehouse]

Ebird is your friend here:
http://ebird.org/ebird/eBirdReports?cmd=Start
You can check records for an area or state for the time of year you're going. I found it very useful on my recent trip to America.

[andy latham]

Thanks Andrew,

I've been reading your trip report from california, you said you had traveled to the west coast during the winter, what time of year was that and which part of the west coast?
I have already checked e-bird its just seems a little general/non specific with occurence times. I think the rock sand should still be around but mountain plover does appear to arrive early in colorado, late march/early april. This is the most likely 'dip' I think. Once again thanks for the responce.

Cheers Andy

[Andrew Whitehouse]

Originally Posted by andy latham

Thanks Andrew,

I've been reading your trip report from california, you said you had traveled to the west coast during the winter, what time of year was that and which part of the west coast?
I have already checked e-bird its just seems a little general/non specific with occurence times. I think the rock sand should still be around but mountain plover does appear to arrive early in colorado, late march/early april. This is the most likely 'dip' I think. Once again thanks for the responce.

Cheers Andy

My trip to California was really just to the San Francisco area in November. Here's the report:
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=26957
You can get more specific information down to dates of individual reports on Ebird. If you go to 'Graphs and Maps' for example you can work out maps for individual states (and parts of states or individual sites) for specific months. Therefore, you can do a map for Rock Sandpiper in California in March (of specific years if you wish). This will map individual records together with dates and numbers.

[ianreid]

Originally Posted by andy latham

RFI

I am in the early stages of planning a birding trip to California in late march 2012. Two big target spp for me are Rock Sandpiper & Mountain plover, I need to know when these species leave california for their breeding grounds please?
Have the plovers left the salton sea area by this time? Are Rock sandpiper still reliable north of San Fransisco? One other request when does 'al' (the regular wintering Laysan Albertross) leave the area for the summer?

Any information would be grateful..

Cheers Andy Latham

Andy,

Check out the web pages of soutwestbirders.com. See in particular the page

http://www.southwestbirders.com/swb_...salton_sea.htm

The guys who run this, Henry Detwiler and Bob Miller are in the process of publishing a site guide. I met Bob Miller while birding in Brawley and he was very friendly and helpful. I reckon they'd also be able to give you firmer info about dates for departure of Mountain Plover.

I used their info for a day and a half at Salton Sea in late March, 25-27th, this year after a conference. Report at:

http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~ian/Birding

Also photo galleries from that trip and one in June 2009 covering Big Sur and Sierra Valley, though no trip report for that one yet. At Salton Sea I saw no sign of Mountain Plover, nor Longspurs, in the places they suggest looking. However I was lucky enough to have another conference in June in Colorado, so I picked these up on their breeding grounds at Pawnee National Grasslands (pics also at the site above).

Cheers, Ian