The final morning of the trip had me anxious and a bit annoyed. The tour I was on had a schedule end point of around noon today. Despite this, several folks went ahead and got flights that required them to be at the airport at 8:30. This meant that we would have to drop them off, THEN bird before dropping everyone else off. This reduced an already short birding time to track down exotics to an even shorter time, maybe 3 hours at most. I am sure no one else probably felt that, given that one of the target exotics was seen in the San Diego tour portion (the white-eye), while the other person who was just doing the extension had already seen that bird and the Whydah from family visits.
At any rate, we targeted local parks not far from the airport, which ebird recorded as having recent sighting's of Swinhoe's White-eye and Pin-tailed Whydah. The former I found especially interesting. If you are a US-based birder and have no idea what this bird is, that is because this bird is currently is not illustrated in any field guide, it's first sightings being in 2009. The population seemed to remain tiny, but around 2015 began to really take off. White-eyes have now expanded there range over a large chunk of the LA Basin and Orange County, with bird being recorded as far south as Tijuana, and even being recorded in the Channel Islands. Anyone who knows about wild white-eye biology knows they are champions of dispersal, and it seems very likely they will quickly conquer all of Southern California, and could even have the ability to disperse further afield, although the deserts to the east should limit them some (unless they get into Mexico and cut over!). They are not yet on the California or ABA checklist, and the big thing holding them back appears to some uncertainty on whether they ARE Swinhoe's, versus another species. Voice and morphology match but the California committee wants genetic data, which is apparently in some phase of being worked on. Long story short, they are a neat bird that I wanted to see.
A lot of L.A. birding, as I think I referenced before, consists of visiting small parks. Our first park we visited was Alta Vista Park. We found a good size flock of warblers in the park, and began to scan for White-eyes, picking up a good number of Orange-crowned and Townsend's Warbler. It was pretty birdy overall, with Spotted Towhees in the nearby brush and a Red-shoulder Hawk that was getting mobbed by some crows. After quite a bit of frustration, our guide thought he had hear one call. Thus began a series of jogs to and fro, as the well camouflaged birds had a habit of being found but then flying into other thick vegetation. They are a distinctive bird, BUT...they are surprisingly cryptic when they wanted to. Eventually, I managed good looks of
Swinhoe's White-eye, but it was worrying me. Incidently, there were at least 7 and maybe up to 10 of the birds. Again, they are doing quite well for themselves. No whydahs however
We still had time though!
So we headed to El Retiro Park. Whydahs had been regularly seen here, and so we began our search. This park is tucked away between apartments and a little hard to find, with a decent bit of space dedicated to tennis courts and such. However there were lots of trees and dense vegetation. We did a complete walk around the park, picking up the typical Socal park birds (Cassin's Kingbird, Black Phoebe, Audubon's, etc).
Getting back to the parking lot, we saw a fair number of small birds flying in and out of trees near the entrance. More White-eyes, which were a bit more cooperative, 9 in total. Still no Whydahs. We did however run into a local birder who was heavily involved in monitoring bird populations in these different parks, and collecting data on the Whydahs. He offered to take us the Henrietta Basin, as he had the keys to get in. He also remarked as having flocks of up to FIFTY whydahs there. However, there just was no time. Biologically these are pretty interesting birds, as I find it interesting that whydahs have been around forever in tiny numbers, probably supplemented by escapes, but it really took the established of a local estrilid for the bird population to become established. As we were talking, the local thought he heard the whydahs. Suddenly there was a mad dash towards the entrance. Across the road, a flock of 8
Pin-tailed Whydahs, mixed with some larger House finches, were bathing in some puddles in the row, allowing distant but good views. Another last minute save, as we had minutes left before we had to drop another person off at the airport. Victorious, we departed for the airport and for my hotel (I couldn't find a afternoon flight that would get me home). Saying good bye to everyone, I spent my afternoon updating my life lists.
I will have one more final post, going over what I missed and some general thoughts.
