Our next group outing will be at the Carpinteria Salt Marsh Nature Park. A schedule conflict in late September means I need to push this outing to early October, but on the plus side that puts us in the thick of fall migration when anything could show up! 🙂 — John Callender Location: Carpinteria Salt…

September’s Carpinteria Birdwatchers online meeting will be about cormorants: Those slightly goofy but fascinating birds you see flying, swimming, and diving at our local shores and wetlands. We’ll talk about which species you can see, where to see them, and how to tell them apart. Due to a scheduling conflict I have this meeting will…

I recently received an email from local birdwatcher Diane Knowles. She was concerned about a drop-off in the numbers of small birds she was seeing in the Carpinteria downtown area. With her permission I’m reproducing our exchange below. — John Callender Subject: Carp birds To: [email protected] From: Diane Knowles Hello! I’m a bird lover and…

Our next group outing will be at Toro Canyon Park. It’s a quiet location where we should be able to hear lots of oak woodland and chaparral birds and see how the Merlin app’s new Sound ID feature does at identifying them. Location: Toro Canyon County Park, 576 Toro Canyon Park. Date/time: Saturday, August 21, 2021, 8:00…

For our next online meeting we’ll talk about birding by ear and the new “Sound ID” feature of the Merlin bird identification app. We’ll also discuss the ethics of using recorded playback to attract birds. It should be a fun topic! Special guest: Hugh Ranson. The meeting will take place via Zoom and YouTube livestream…

My apologies, Carpinteria Birdwatchers members. I’ve been distracted (by birdwatching, among other things) and overlooked the rapid approach of tomorrow’s third Thursday of the month, when we normally have our monthly Zoom meeting. Since I don’t have a topic prepared I’ve made the decision to cancel this month’s meeting. We’ll take a break in July,…

As we discussed in our latest Zoom meeting (Carp Snowy Plovers and the CLSF: Carpinteria Birdwatchers meeting for Thursday, June 24), we’re going to resume monthly group outing. The first such outing will take place next Saturday, July 3. Location: Carpinteria State Beach, including the snowy plover nest site east of Carpinteria Creek Date/time: Saturday,…

If you’ve been following my updates to this post you’ll know that I’ve spent most of my birding time over the past month watching the family of snowy plovers near the mouth of Carpinteria Creek. The eggs have hatched, the female bird has departed, and the male bird and the three chicks are still going…

Note: This page covers events from 2019 through 2021. For later developments with the Carpinteria snowy plovers, see this post: The snowy plovers are back! I wanted to give an update on the latest snowy plover news, and I thought I’d put it in the form of a timeline that I can update going forward….

Late yesterday afternoon Tom Beland texted me to let me know that the snowy plover nest we’ve been watching at Carpinteria State Beach had hatched. Three baby plovers were roaming around the vicinity of the nest site and taking shelter under the adult male bird. Unless I’m mistaken this is the first successful hatching of…