​So… yeah. Back at the beginning of 2018, I set a birding goal for the year. In case you missed it, it was:
 
In 2018, I will bird in a new state every month.
 
I failed. Here are the months in which I birded in new states:
 
January
February sort of
March
December
 
There are excuses, and also not really. I had some mild health scares, and spent a large chunk of the year feeling kind of lousy. (Thankfully, as far as I know, I’m now fine!) I drifted away from birding for a while. These things happen.

I also started some fun little programming side-projects related to birding. The main point was to build career-related skills, but I’m hoping the results will prove useful for birders, possibly even some birders who are not me. I set up a birding Slack team (join here!), and wrote a little bot that checks eBird for recent notable sightings, and posts them to Slack. Recently I linked up with a couple other technically-minded folks, and we’re talking about building some other tools based on the eBird data as well. Should be fun! (If any of that sounds remotely interesting to you, please reach out!)
 
That brings me to my birding goal for 2019. Well, no – it’s not really a goal this time. I learned my lesson. (Never try.) ​

​But I will be birding. Although the reality has set in that frequent out-of-state birding trips are not practical these days, that just sets me up perfectly for the five-mile-radius challenge, also known by the hashtag-friendly abbreviation “5MR.” The idea is to find as many species as possible within a five-mile radius of your home. It’s been championed by Jen Sanford of I Used to Hate Birds, and I encourage you to check out her blog for more details (and for her other posts, which are great). A whole online community has sprung up around it, primarily through a Facebook group, but there’s also an email list, a channel for it in the Slack team, etc. etc. The bird nerds are thriving.

Have you ever set a goal and achieved it? Yeah?

You smug bastard.

I can only imagine how that might feel, but it’s a new year… sort of… and I believe in my ability to do new things, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. So, inspired by the wave of birding resolutions I saw people posting in January, I’ve set myself a Birding Goal for 2018.

Are you ready? Here it comes.

In 2018, I will bird in a new state every month.

I don’t mean a state that I’ve never birded in before. Thanks to my freewheeling, road-tripping youth, there are precious few of those. I just mean a state that I haven’t birded in yet this year.

The hustling millennials who dominate bird Twitter would probably yawn at such a modest goal. Likewise the well-heeled geriatric crowd, which lives the dream of birding vacations and naps all year long. But for me it's a stretch. Aside from my important job of frowning at a laptop all day and occasionally typing something into it, I stay busy at home with my two-year-old daughter. Though delightful and precocious in nearly every way, she’s been vexingly slow to catch the birding bug. So it’s hard enough to find a free hour during the week to get out and do my thing, let alone time to travel to another state. In fact, since she was born, I have birded in exactly three states. Damn.

So how will I do it? Let’s see…

​I live in California, so that one was a freebie. In fact I started the year with a bang, seeing 97 species in the L.A. area on New Year’s Day. More on that in a future post, but for now, a token bird pic from that glorious day:

As luck would have it, my job is shipping me off to Seattle next week, so I will slip away for an hour and take care of February that way.

In March I have a planned vacation to the Southeast, where I’ll probably get to bird in three or four different states! But all in March, so that only takes care of one month.

I’ll probably get to a couple more east-coast states at different times of the year, since my extended family is over there. The little rugrat will be with me for those trips, so I’ll have to train her either to tolerate birding, or, more likely, to tolerate me leaving her in a stranger’s care for a few hours while I go birding alone. I know you’re scared, sweetie, but Daddy’s on a mission, OK? Suck it up.

How I’ll fill the rest of the months is anyone’s guess. By my calculations, I can drive to either Arizona or Nevada in a little over three hours, so… those would be the “easy” ones, I guess. Otherwise I have no idea. Fortunately I have some time to figure it out.

Exciting, right??? Right???

​Ah, shut up.

It is with some trepidation that I poke this long-slumbering blog of mine. If I once had a few readers beyond my close friends and family, they must have purged me from their blog feeds by now. And as for those close friends and family, well… many of them are not as close anymore. And yet, here I am. I guess I haven’t found a better way to spend my free time.

Over Memorial Day weekend, with a few days to myself, I did something for the first time in years: I went on a birding adventure. Weighing my time and money carefully, I had chosen the Columbia Gorge & Mount Hood area of Oregon. I wanted to see mountain birds and a pretty little mountain town, without too long a trip from L.A. By setting up shop in Hood River, an hour east of Portland, I pretty much nailed it.

For any birders reading this, I’ll spare you the suspense: No rarities were found; no impressive trip list was amassed; I didn’t even get one good photo of a sexy mountain-y bird. I’d had no time to plan my stops in advance, and, as anyone with access to the internet probably could have foreseen, a lot of roads on Mount Hood are still closed in late May. Like, the roads that go to the cool birding spots. Oops.

But hey, this trip wasn’t about fulfilling my wildest birding dreams. It was about… well… reconnecting with myself, I guess. Living life, doing the things I like to do. Come to think of it, that’s also why I'm writing this. And I won’t lose any more sleep over the lack of bird sightings than I have over the self-indulgent nature of this post. Which is to say: not more than about four or five hours of sleep.

On with it, then. 

Day 1

My first impression of Hood River was of its air: It smelled like trees. Not having left L.A. in a while, it was striking. I got out of my rental car, breathed in deep, and lo, it was good. I felt I had chosen well.

I eased back into the birding-adventure life with a hearty, almost leisurely hotel breakfast. The floppy scrambled-egg pucks paired well enough with the reconstituted orange juice, and I enjoyed my view of the Hood River sliding into the great Columbia. The morning sun shone gently; swallows swirled about. The hotel staff was eerily friendly. I soon fled.

​At the Historic Highway Trail just outside Hood River, I saw a bunch of pretty birds that I also could’ve seen in L.A., plus a Chestnut-backed Chickadee. I love those little guys. The Nashville Warblers were loud and bright. Several pairs of sixty-somethings pedaled their bikes steadily up the hill. I smiled broadly: “Nice day for a ride!” As if I would ever subject my own cubicle-bound body to such torture. But they seemed pleased. I congratulated myself for connecting with the locals. I was a regular Anthony Bourdain.

The rest of the day included a beer, a nap, a swim in the hotel pool, and a lot of quiet hiking around, looking at beautiful scenery and no birds. Which was fine. I had a nice dinner in town and slept soundly.

Day 2

This was my day to explore The Mountain. My little rental car and I set out early and sped up to the Hood River Meadows area, where we got our first of many unpleasant surprises. The road out to the good birding area was closed. Maybe I would take one of the hiking trails instead – but within a few steps I found each one covered with deep snow or meltwater. I eyed my city-boy New Balances, the only footwear I’d brought to Oregon. “Not today,” they said, in their usual, creepy unison.

“Not today.”

Besides impassable roads and trails, the other theme of the day was crowds. People were everywhere. Ah yes – Memorial Day weekend. Portland just an hour away. It all added up. Having worked my way all too quickly through my morning birding sites (since I couldn’t get to most of them), I thought I’d drive up and see the Timberline Lodge of The Shining fame, and look for birds around it. That road was clear of snow – but as packed with cars as the drive-thru lane at In-N-Out. Helllllllllll no.

For a moment, I was disgusted. Had this been a frenzied birding mission like those of the past, I would’ve cursed myself to no end. But this was different. I took a few deep breaths, enjoyed a surprisingly tasty schnitzel sandwich in Government Camp, and stayed positive. I was a regular Dalai Lama.

I eventually did get up to Timberline Lodge, where I eventually did see a Clark's Nutcracker – a small taste of triumph. Then I hurried back to the relative calm of Hood River. There the weather was great, the beer was great (and cheap!) and the river was gorgeous. I took a few panoramic shots with my phone.

It was all so nice, I started to wonder: Could I live here someday? I’d probably have to get a serious bike, and all the serious gear and weird stretchy clothes that go with it. I dunno… maybe. But just as my mind started to fill with all the imagined pros and cons of that, I shut it down. There was no need to make or reject such plans. The important thing was, I was present, centered in my body, calm and aware. Enjoying the scenery, and looking out for birds. I was doing what I do.

I was, if you will, a regular me.
​
P.S. Next time there will be birds.

A few weeks ago I had a birthday. Nevermind which one, I'm past the sexy ones. At my age, you don't get magical gifts like voting rights or drinking rights as a reward for staying alive. If you want a good birthday, you better make it one.

My wife was out of town, and there wasn't much to do at home. So I said to myself, "Fuck it, self." My self was scandalized, but intrigued. "Self," I said, "I'm giving you a gift. We're going birding."

Full of passion but lacking direction, I appealed to the great birding sage Seagull Steve for advice. He said many edifying things, and this one stuck: "I would highly recommend southeast Arizona. It's so close to California, and the birding is fucking brilliant."

Of course. It was so obvious, so elegant in its simplicity. I was a little concerned that it might be miserably hot, but, well... YOLO, self.

YOLO.

Two days later I touched down at the Tucson airport.

Birders who are more comfortable in their own skins may bristle at this, but here it is: birding is shameful. Shameful in the sense that it arouses feelings of shame. I mean that's been my experience, off and on, meandering through life as a self-conscious introvert. Being alone in the wilderness is one thing, but in populated areas, with binoculars around your neck, staring in directions where there's nothing obvious to see, you look weird. The pursuit of birds often brings us into such places, where misunderstandings could be unflattering, or worse. How am I to feel while birding around, say, an airport, where I might be mistaken for a terrorist on a scouting mission? Or in a residential area, where I could be a peeping tom or a burglar? Similarly fraught are playgrounds (pedophile), beaches (lecher), office buildings (corporate spy)... basically ALL THE PLACES.

Hence the magic of Southeast Arizona, where birding is almost normal. So many birders descend on the place, and so many non-birders don't because why the fuck would you, that you almost expect everyone you meet to be a member of the tribe.

Sure enough, about an hour after leaving the airport, I was among my people, watching a staked-out Plain-capped Starthroat at the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon. LIFER.

Among those in attendance were a couple friendly dudes from Colorado who'd just rolled into town. We scanned the feeders together, the excitement palpable - everyone birding there is a little more alive than usual.

We wished each other well and I drove back to my hotel in the fading light, Lesser Nighthawks sweeping through the big sky all around, and dreamt of the magic to come.

The next day was Independence Day and I observed it independently. I went back to Madera Canyon, lifered again (Whiskered Screech-Owl), hiked a bit, talked to some birders, and saw a bunch of these dudes:

Eventually I made my way over the hill to Sierra Vista, where the hotel clerk reminded me that I'd booked the "birdwatching package." I chuckled at the memory - have you ever heard of such a thing? How could I pass that up?

She seemed to take my levity as an invitation. "You know I've lived here six years, and I've never once gone birdwatching. What do you see out there, anyway?" Neither of us was prepared for the true profundity of that question. I muttered something lame about birds you can't see anywhere else in the U.S., and we completed the check-in process. I felt inadequate.

For dinner I decided to treat myself to a small feast at the Mexican restaurant nextdoor. I was sitting at the bar, ruminating on my existence and a gristly fajita platter, when an utterly surreal thing happened: someone said my name.

"Josh?"

Well, you coulda knocked me off my barstool with a feather. I turned and saw a familiar face, though it took me a moment to place it. It was one of the birders from Colorado. It was a long day later and a 90-minute drive away, but we'd both wound up in the same Mexican joint and he'd come up to say hi. Not only that, but they were planning to bird some cool spots the next day and invited me to join.

Sounds good, says I. The tribe doth provide.

In the morning we took the long-steep-narrow-rocky-winding road up Carr Canyon. I had some white-knuckle moments in my flimsy rental car, but we made it. And when we made it, oh, how the birds greeted us. Some of them I'd only ever seen once, like Buff-breasted Flycatcher.

These guys were sharp, and by 7am, they'd found me two lifers (Olive Warbler and Greater Pewee). After a nice half-morning atop the canyon, we again parted ways. I found another lifer on my way out, Botteri's Sparrow. It was a hell of a start to my birthday.

The middle of the day was hot and contemplative. I birded an Army base, ate a Blizzard, and headed to Patagonia, the tiny mountain town where I would spend the night. There I visited the legendary Paton house, where strangers are invited to sit in the backyard at any time and watch the dizzying action at the hummingbird feeders.

Finally, I wound up at the Wagon Wheel Saloon.

I figured I'd have a burger and a beer and call it a night, but the universe had other plans. As I was wrapping up, a group of rowdy fifty-somethings came in and started ordering two rounds at a time. Pretty soon they were ordering for me too, over my objections, which soon melted away anyhow. At one point I actually got up and danced. (*Cringe.*) At another point, they put "Play That Funky Music" on the jukebox. I'm white, and they were not, and they got a big kick out of pointing and singing at me when the chorus came around. It was a good time, and it ended late, with handshakes and hugs and a jog through the dark to my hotel, where I quickly fell into the sleep of the just.

In summary, a birding adventure was a fine and thoughtful gift for me to give myself. Southeast Arizona was spectacular, and I heartily recommend it to birders and anyone who enjoys driving through eerie, Breaking Bad-esque landscapes. But more importantly, in the process of doing all that, I gave myself the greatest gift of all:

A Blizzard.

Also, acceptance. That was also nice.

Sometimes I really miss living in New York City. But then sometimes, this happens:

I was talking to my wife when I rounded a corner, saw this little beauty out the window, and pretty much forgot everything else in the universe. Fortunately, my wife is not prone to jealousy.

As if he weren't stunning enough on his own, pretty soon he found his way into some purple flowers. I was shooting through window glass, and I suck at photos, but you get the idea.

There was a female around too, which was, you know, cool, or whatever.

My fellow onlookers included the usual ho-hum House Finches...

... and a male "Audubon's" Yellow-rumped Warbler, decked out for spring in full black vest and yellow mohawk, as we all should be.

Eventually, the oriole seemed to wise up to the fact that he was getting TMZ'd, and bounced.

Anyway, all of this is basically just to say:

O.K., L.A.

OH. KAY.

Last summer, I moved from New York to L.A. to see about a girl. My fiancée (now wife) had landed a job out here that, I had to admit, seemed more important than anything I had going back east. So I packed up our little Manhattan apartment, took a farewell lap around my circle of friends, and like so many fortune-seekers before me, took the quintessentially American flight:  JFK -> LAX.

So a little over a year ago, my cat and I spent our days wandering our big, empty new home, recovering from jet lag and, in his case, violent in-flight diarrhea. (Pro tip: Don't give your cat Benadryl for the first time right before a ten-hour journey.) I was employed, but working from home, since all my coworkers were in New York. Our girl was at her big new job, our furniture was on a truck in Kansas or God knows where, and we beheld the warm, hazy city outside our windows as cautious explorers, dazed but undaunted, yearning for connection.

One thing we did have handy was our binoculars. (Well, I had mine.) So like any geeky birder in a new spot, I started listing the birds I saw from home. I think fellow birders will appreciate the feeling of being in a new place, where even the ho-hum neighborhood birds are exciting - Black Phoebe, Western Scrub-Jay, Band-tailed Pigeon, Bushtit - none of them lifers, mind you, but birds I hadn't seen in a while. (I once read a comment on a birding blog suggesting that, if you hadn't seen a bird for twenty years or something, you should have to see it again to re-add it to your life list. Of course, an irate mob of birder-commentors quickly came to the defense of their musty old lists. But I think this wayward soul was merely trying to capture the joy of that renewal - how an old, familiar bird, after a while, is exciting again - in the only way he or she knew how - with a list. There, too, lie deep lessons about birding, humans, and how poorly we understand what makes us happy, I suspect. But not today.)

And so I looked, listened, and listed, and I enjoyed watching the list grow. For a couple weeks, a Bewick's Wren would work its way through the neighborhood first thing each morning, singing loudly. A fine song to brush your teeth to. A couple times I thought maybe I'd heard a very faint chickadee call before finally - yes! - I saw one in the cedar next door, Mountain Chickadee, Number 22 on the list. In the winter a White-throated Sparrow came to eat the seeds I scattered on my patio. Rare enough in L.A. to make the rare bird report, but not to lure gawkers. Just as well. Number 33.

Over the course of the year, I got to know the birds of my immediate area pretty well. At least in this one very specific way, I connected with L.A. - and in turn connected L.A. with my personal history, which has involved birds for as long as I can remember. Alas, with connection comes familiarity. Since the spring, new additions to the house list have been few and far between, as have those moments of excitement at renewing old bird-quaintances. For the most part, the neighborhood birds are now just the neighborhood birds.

Two days ago, though, we had our first visit from a House Wren, after all this time. A perfectly ordinary neighborhood bird, even back east. Probably there are millions of people, not even birders, who have them nesting in their yards in cartoonish bird houses bought at Home Depot. But in this time and place, for this guy, it was exciting. It was also Number 45. And thanks to the custom-built database with which I keep track of my sightings (I know), I can tell you that my current home is now in a tie with one other as the birdiest of my adult life.

Does that fact represent some kind of achievement? No. Does it make me happy? Not really. So what does it all mean? Probably not much, but how should I know? I'm just a human, trying to find a bird.

A human - and an Angeleno. By the way, shouldn't I have been discovered by now?

So yeah… Three months just happened.

Oops.

Well, you heard it here first: I may not be cut out for this blogging stuff. If there were a book called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers, one of those habits would probably be “Don’t just drop off the face of the earth for three months, ass hat.” My timing couldn’t have been much worse:  Springtime in the U.S.A. brings a flood of colorful birds, and with it a surge of excitement among birders new and old. Everyone’s checking the internet for the latest updates on bird movements, and more importantly the latest lampoons of birder behavior. Not only that, but while I was AWOL I actually got a shout-out on one of my favorite blogs, Bourbon, Bastards, and Birds. “Check it out if you haven't already, I think it will be going places.” My excitement, when I finally logged on and read that, was extreme, but short-lived – for I realized a moment later that I had proved its author wrong. (Unless of course the “place” he imagined BFH going was oblivion.) Sigh.

Still, there’s no use crying over spilt milk. And maybe there’s something to be gained from all this. Liberated from the pressures of bird-blog superstardom, from the impossibly high expectations that followed my meteoric rise, I can now reflect calmly on what’s important, both in blogging and in life, knowing that my true fans will still be reading. (Hi, Mom.)

Onward! What news, then?

1. I went to High Island, Texas in late April. It was probably among the top five most groin-grabbingly spectacular birding experiences I’ve ever had. I might post about it in more detail at some point, but if you want to get a sense of it in the meantime, you can do so very quickly, because…

2. I’m on Twitter! I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Who does this guy think he is, Kanye West? Ellen DeGeneres? Who cares?” Or, if you’re like most birders, you’re thinking, “What’s this Twitter? How do I dial into it? Did I take my heart pills this morning?” Either way, I suggest you check out my feed, with the help of a patient grandchild if necessary, and scroll back to April 28 – the day on which, I believe, I truly began to forge my legacy as a pioneer of the birding internet. Make sure to read from the bottom up for maximum effect.

3. After High Island, I traveled a lot (one of the reasons for my silence) but did not bird much. Sad. But something happened while I was away to light a fire under me. While I was in New York last week, a Red-necked Stint was found back home in L.A. County. WTF! This is basically a bird of Eastern Eurasia and Alaska that is “supposed” to migrate along the western Pacific Ocean, but rarely pops up in the western states. Well, this one had popped up like a half-hour from my home, but it did so on Tuesday, and I wouldn’t be back until late Friday night. So I waited, as patiently as I could, a renewed bird-chasing passion smoldering within me.

Well, here it is Saturday evening, and I hope you know I wouldn’t be sitting here typing if I hadn’t already made a run at the stint. Sure enough, when I pulled up this morning to the scenic (not) bank of the L.A. River in Long Beach, several spotting scopes were already trained on the little darling. It preened and foraged, showing off its trademark orange-red throat to an appreciative crowd. I’d come bearing only binoculars, but a nice couple let me look through their scope, which gave me a gorgeous, BBC-documentary-caliber look at the bird in all its crazy foreign glory. Just like that, a great life bird.

I sighed, stepped back, and looked around. The sky was gray, and the river, down in its concrete trough, was dotted with all sorts of garbage. I was in Long Beach.

Well, you can’t have everything. I guess you better focus on what matters.

See you soon.

At long last, I’ve returned to the blogosphere. I’ve begun poring over the hundreds of posts from other bloggers that piled up in my RSS feed, and now here I sit, trying to peck one out myself, while my cat alternates between walking across my keyboard and head-butting me. Of course, he’s just a convenient scapegoat – the real thing that’s hard about writing is… writing.

It’s been over two weeks since I posted. Was I in some remote jungle in New Guinea where there’s no internet service? Was I sequestered as part of a jury in a celebrity murder trial? Was I in a coma?

You’ll never know. You should learn to live with uncertainty.

The point is, I’m back. When last we met, I was blathering about a bunch of travel plans I have for this spring. Well, some of em got done already. I was in the Dallas area for a little over a week, and did a bunch of birding there. I have two key takeaways about Dallas birding:

1. In Dallas proper, the birding-quality-to-traffic-frustration ratio (a measure that I may have invented, henceforth BQTF) is mediocre. Here in L.A., we have plenty of traffic, but there are also shit-tons of birds. When I get off work, I hop in my car and twenty minutes later I’m seeing cool stuff. In Dallas? Meh. Granted, I don’t know Dallas as well. Well, go ahead and prove me wrong, Dallas.

2. If you have time to go like an hour and change outside of Dallas, there's really cool birding. I used the weekend to make two such trips. First I went southwest to Dinosaur Valley State Park, in search of my lifer Golden-cheeked Warbler – which, after much warblerless hiking, I did in fact find. I also found some more unexpected stuff, like a Philadelphia Vireo and a rare-for-there Townsend’s Warbler. Plus, it was a gorgeous place. Then I went north to an area just shy of the Oklahoma border which has Harris’s Sparrows and lots of other cool shit.

Each of those weekend trips is worthy of a post on its own, but it’s too late for all that fuss so I’ll just give you a few photographic highlights. It’s probably better for everybody.

First a non-bird, but one of my coolest sightings in recent memory:

Saw that little beaut at White Rock Lake (thanks for the tip Laurence), when it swam across a creek. Dope.

Not a great pic of him, but gives a sense of the spring-springing that was going on in D-Town.

Seriously does not do the bird justice, but I had to include one of these. I love these guys and they're all over the place out there.

Dear Swainson's Hawk, 

You can fly, but you can't hide from my bird-crusher. 

Warm regards, 
BFH

In the end, I returned from Dallas satisfied, and frankly sort of birded out. The old familiar haunts were a little less exciting after that. Fortunately, I recently got a bike and have begun exploring the path that runs along the L.A. River, which puts me in position for some pretty decent incidental birding. That’s what I did today.

Although I’ve written disparagingly of the L.A. River in the past, I actually sort of love it. It’s been thoroughly transformed by human activity – deliberately so – and in many places looks downright depressing, but still there’s remarkable vegetation and bird life in some spots. My interest in it grew recently when I read Blake Gumprecht’s book, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth. Did you know that, in the mid-1800s, largely thanks to the river’s largesse, L.A. was known as a wine-producing region? The “City of Vines,” they called it. And as recently as the 1930s, the river was subject to frequent, catastrophic flooding. Hard to imagine for those of us who know it as a trickle in a giant concrete bed. Anyway, today the sun and the birds were out in force:

Not exactly the world's rarest bird, but pretty cool for such an urban setting.

By the way, the place where I got my bike is great. The owner is a very interesting dude and seems to have a budding interest in birds to boot. He even name-checked me on his pithy blog. Everybody there is really helpful. If you’re in L.A., even if you don’t need a bike, you should drop by just to shoot the shit with these guys.

Anyway, this is how I’m spending the lull in my Spring Birdstravaganza. Not bad. Friday night I head off to High Island, Texas for what should be some sick migration birding. Until then, I bide my time, quiet, calm, but intent… marshaling all my resources in preparation for the frenzy to come.

U.S.A., you're about to get birded. HARD.

Sometimes things are great.
     - Bomb the Music Industry! “Syke! Life Is Awesome!”

(If you have headphones on or want to piss off everyone around you, check it out here!)

For the last few months I’ve been A-O-K just chilling in SoCal, as it seemed the only place in the U.S. suitable for human habitation. Word on the street is, spring is now springing in other places, and I intend to find out for myself. Over the next couple months, I’ll ride planes, trains and automobiles in pursuit of vocation, avocation, vacation and birdcation. No, most of my plans were not made primarily for birding purposes, but they happen to take me to some very good spots at some very good times. Because sometimes, things are great. Check it:

TONIGHT:  Dallas, TX

LATE APRIL:  High Island, TX. Two days of balls-to-the-wall, no-holds-barred, don’t-eat-don’t-sleep-don’t-do-anything-but-bird birding.

LATER APRIL:  Dallas again.

EARLY MAY:  New York, NY. Manhattan, the island that has everything, has even more than everything in May. It has warblers. Hell yes.

MID-TO-LATE MAY:  ??? Mrs. BFH and I are mulling vacation options. No doubt we’ll be taking in our share of monuments and gift shops and the like, but rest assured:  there will be birds.

All in all, this could turn out to be my birdiest year yet – maybe even by Memorial Day. But in my excitement, I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first:  Where does one bird in Dallas in April???

Previously seen on Cleaning Up in SoSoCal:

California Gnatcatcher. NO Pacific Golden-Plover. Wandering Tattler. Clapper Rail, barely. Footlong turkey on honey oat. Bell’s Vireo.

SATURDAY (CONTINUED)

EXTERIOR. A FREEWAY THROUGH A VAST, ROCKY DESERT. MID AFTERNOON.

After my departure from the Bell’s Vireo spot, it’s a brief trip through the San Diego suburbs and then a long haul through nothingness. It’s a good opportunity to ponder one’s place in the universe. And to snap some iPhone pics of the stuff one is passing.

By and by, I arrive.

3:50 pm. Jacumba, CA. Targets: Tricolored Blackbird, Harris’s Hawk.

Yes, my next location is an entire town. Or rather, a small settlement, an outpost on the Mexican border. Jacumba, or “J-Town” as the locals call it, is small enough that the online bird reports don’t refer to specific locations within it; it’s just: Jacumba. In fact, it’s small enough to have an adorable community Facebook page. (My favorite post from the J-Town account: “The lake is filling up very slowly.”)

So I figure I’ll just show up and somehow know what to do.

For a hot minute, it feels like I may have made a mistake. I see doves, starlings… a few people milling around… and the big creepy fence that separates Us from Them:

But I just drive around slowly, hoping not to attract the attention of the locals, all of whom probably have rooms full of guns. Pretty soon a flock of blackbirds flies over the car and lands nearby. I stop in the middle of an intersection to check them out, and sure enough they’re Tricolored Blackbirds, giving their awkward rasping call. Cha-ching! Feeling the unwelcome gaze of a Jacumbian locked onto my car, I mosey along.

I still need that Harris’s Hawk though. This is a beautiful bird, unique in many ways among hawks, and one I’ve wanted to see for a very long time. It’s my last target of the day, but since I have no idea how to make it materialize in front of me, I think about taking off so I can fit in another stop before nightfall. Finally, as I’m about to head for the exits – you guessed it – the hawk shows up. I only get brief looks as it flies off, but I am happy. God bless you, J-Town.

At 4:45 I roll out, feeling my oats. I speed east and then north, past the town where I’ll be spending the night, to my Extra Bonus Birding Location of the Day.

5:40 pm. The Salton Sea.

It’s a weird wild place, with more steam-spewing industrial-type buildings than humans. I have faint hopes of stumbling on a Yellow-footed Gull here, which I soon abandon; I probably wouldn’t recognize the damn thing anyway. But the birding is good. Eared Grebes are everywhere. 

American Avocets are in lotsa places too.

And it’s a nice evening. As the sun sets, I start back toward… uh, civilization… and what do I happen upon? Why, it’s a pair of Lesser Nighthawks, dancing in the sky.

Oh. Snap. That’s a lifer, and that makes seven ABA-area lifers in one day. I feel as though floating in a sea of grace.

And just when I think the day’s done, I see this guy on the side of the road:

Not a lifer, but an awesome, awesome bird. 

7:45 pm. Brawley, CA Best Western. Oblivion.

SUNDAY

Let me assure my weary readers that there’s much less to say about Sunday. All that's left is to try my luck on two more species, scope out the fabled Anza-Borrego Desert a bit, and make my way home. Having had so many birdies on the way out, it hardly matters how I do on the back nine. (Yeah I just said that.)

I hit the road at 5:45.

6:50 am. Old Springs Road Open Space Preserve. Target: Le Conte’s Thrasher.

Yeah, right. I don’t even get out of the car here. It’s sort of gloomy and windy and there’s no sign of birds at all.

7:00 am. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor’s Center. Target: Black-tailed Gnatcatcher.

This is a really nice little spot. Cactus Wrens are singing, California Quail are strutting around, and sure enough, pretty soon I spot the first of several dashing little Black-tailed Gnatcatchers. This guy’s pretty cooperative.

After watching him and the other desert specialties for a bit, I pause to talk to two other birders who are milling around – a young guy from Indiana who’s seeing everything here for the first time, and an older guy from Washington state who spends his winters down here and knows the area. I ask him if he has a good spot for Le Conte’s Thrasher; he tells me Clark’s Dry Lake is as good a spot as any.

8:00 am. Clark’s Dry Lake.

From the middle of nowhere, you take a dirt road five miles to get to this place. This pic isn’t from the lake bed but it’s what pretty much the whole huge area feels like. (Click on the pic for a larger version.)

Unfortunately it’s really windy here, but it’s kinda funny to watch the Phainopeplas (which are plentiful) get buffeted by the wind.

Otherwise, not many birds. At one point I hear something like a thrasher’s song from deep down in the bushes, but there’s just no chance of getting a look at whatever’s in there. Anyway who could complain? I start the great journey north and west, making one more stop at the visitor’s center, now overrun by humans but still good for a nice look at a male Costa’s Hummingbird:

I leave at 10:05.

The long journey home has its nice birds, but the tenor of the trip has changed. I’m now moving not away from the swarms of humanity but toward them, and it being a fine spring Sunday, they are understandably out enjoying the parks and clogging the roads. At 11:30 I stop at Lake Skinner County Park in Riverside County, where I see a few things that are new for the trip, the nicest being my first Yellow Warbler of the year – a brilliant male singing from the trees along the lakeshore. And there are lots of barbecues and kids’ birthday parties and so forth all around. It’s sort of nice, in a coming-back-down-to-earth kind of way.

Traffic crawls through the insipid concrete landscape – this is the other side of the SoCal coin. I stop for some sugar and caffeine to lift my spirits; it works. As I finally near L.A., I decide to prolong the trip just a bit more, making a stop at my regular neighborhood birding spot. It, too, is overflowing with people, like I’ve never seen it before. But there are still a few birds about. I pick up one more species for the trip list, the squawking family of Acorn Woodpeckers that I never fail to see here. And I leave the park to the revelers.

3:50 pm. Home.

There you have it:

34 hours,

616 miles,

113 species.

Eight glorious lifers.

Plus, you know, lots of photos and memories and all that stuff. Are there better things to do with your time? Probably. But once in a while, you just gotta cut loose.

I submit that this is a damn fine way to do it.