Over the past week birdwatchers in the area have been noticing brown pelicans showing up in places they aren’t normally seen, like inland lakes. Now the following message has been sent out by the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network: Over the weekend, SBWCN experienced an unusually large influx of brown pelican patients. In just two…

For this month’s meeting we’ll visit the breeding snowy plovers at Carpinteria State Beach. This year there have been no fewer than five nesting attempts (so far), so there should be plenty of fun plover action. Location: Carpinteria State Beach, including the snowy plover nest site east of Carpinteria Creek Date/time: Saturday, May 21, 2022, 8:00 a.m….

Exciting things have been happening with the snowy plovers at Carpinteria State Beach. I’m going to do my best to summarize the current situation, but I haven’t visited the beach as often as I did for last summer’s nesting, so I’m a little fuzzy on some of the details. I’ll do my best to tighten…

I was surprised when I realized we’ve never had a meeting specifically on warblers. We’ve talked about individual species a few times, but never covered them as a group. For this month’s meeting we’ll correct that by discussing 9 of the most commonly seen warbler species in Santa Barbara County. (Part two, covering rarer warblers,…

Six different groups of birders participated in the first Carpinteria Little Big Day today. The team competition was won by the Surf-birds team, with 95 species tallied during the four hours of the competition. Team leader Peter Gaede and team members Hugh Ranson, Will Knowlton, and Jeremy Pohlman were honored at the online awards ceremony…

Carpinteria’s snowy plovers continue to make news. The nest established a little over a month ago by plover pa:yb and her mate has now produced two chicks! (I’m not sure what became of the third egg, but there appear to be only two baby plovers on the beach at this point.) The mother, as is…

There will not be a Carpinteria Birdwatchers group outing in April. Instead, I encourage everyone to participate in the Carpinteria Little Big Day event on Saturday, April 23, either by forming a team for the 4-hour competition that will take place between 8 a.m. and noon, or by participating more casually and sharing your results…

The Carpinteria “Little Big Day” event will be happening in just over a week, on Saturday, April 23, 2022. So far there are two teams that have signed up for the team competition: The UCSB Roadrunners, consisting of team leader Max Laubstein and additional team members Alex Castelein, Jeremy Cowan, and Lucas Gaede The Old…

For this month’s Carpinteria Birdwatchers online meeting we’ll continue the discussion of “better identifications” that we began last month. This month we’ll cover how to report rarities, and go through some examples of birds I’ve misidentified recently, with a focus on lessons learned to avoid misidentifications in the future. Join us at 6:30 p.m. on…

Snowy plovers are again attempting to nest at Carpinteria State Beach just east of the mouth of Carpinteria Creek. State park biologists discovered the nest on Monday, March 21, 2022, when they placed an anti-predator exclosure over the nest and established a protective rope fence around the area. I learned about the nesting attempt when…