By Andy Birch | Illustrations by Andy Birch
While many birders are using this opportunity to enjoy reduced drive times to their favorite birding spots, for the local patch and yard birder, birding hasn't changed greatly. However, being forced home from work has given myself and many of us a great opportunity to dramatically increase coverage of our local spots or yards during spring migration.
I’m an avid local patch lister. I have several nearby patches (eBird hotspots) that I am passionate about seeing as much as possible within. But I have decided on a complete lockdown during this pandemic period with little to no travel, which meant my yard was instead going to get my undivided attention. My yard list has always been important to me. It all started 10 years ago when we bought this house (our first). For me, owning a house for the first time, came with the added excitement of having a yard. And this one was a blank canvas in need of quite a bit of love. We bought the house during the financial crisis and it, being a short sale, meant that we had only had a cursory look at the place beforehand. So, after we moved in, I was keen to get a good look at the yard. After carrying in the last box, I walked out on to the deck and took a look down at the small, depressing bare, weedy yard. There were 3 birds shuffling around amongst the weeds, so I grabbed my binoculars; an expected White-crowned Sparrow was the first bird, the second bird was a “Slate-colored” Junco. Wow I thought. Not bad for my second yard bird! And then scanning across to the third bird, revealed a female Indigo Bunting! What type of yard do I have here?! The bunting stayed all winter and returned the following year, providing one of the few wintering records for southern California. Other wintering rarities over the years have included Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Summer Tanager and Costa’s Hummingbird. Regular Swainson’s Hawks and other interesting spring migrants only fueled my belief that perhaps this unassuming yard and its location was a little bit special and worth the effort.
Spring is a perfect time for seeing hummingbirds in LA County and with luck and perseverance, it’s possible to see all 6 species that regularly occur in California. The holy grail for LA County birders is the diminutive Calliope. And it is one of the most desired gaps on my yard list. Perhaps, this would be the year? eBird reports across the county and southern California showed that many yard-bound birders scored this beautiful hummingbird at their feeders in what seems like a bumper spring for them. At the time of writing, I’ve had 5 of the 6 species visit the yard but still no Calliope. I have a particularly vindictive Allen’s that chases everything away with such vengeance. I look longingly at my neighbor’s feeder, filled with hummingbirds while their resident Allen’s sits nearby quite happy to share its space. Female hummingbirds can be one of the harder IDs, so I also used this time to finish a hummingbird plate that had been shelved for years. I find it really helps me understand the plumage differences if I paint an identification plate, so I put together this cheat sheet.
Published Apr. 29, 2020
Updated June 3, 2020