Western Birds Journal

Volume 23, No. 3

Published July 1, 1992

Issue description

Volume 23, number 3 of Western Birds, published 1992

Articles

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    PETER PYLE, GUY McCASKIE (Author)

    THIRTEENTH REPORT OF THE CALIFORNIA BIRD RECORDS COMMITTEE

    This report contains 376 records of 96 species that have recently been reviewed by the California Bird Records Committee (hereafter, the CBRC or the Committee). The 321 accepted records of 83 species and 55 rejected records of 36 species represent an 85.4% acceptance rate. Reports were received from 37 of the state’s 58 counties, including all coastal counties. As in past years, the best-represented counties were San Francisco (44 accepted records including 36 from Southeast Farallon Island), San Diego (35), Santa Barbara (31), Monterey (25) and Marin (21). Although the dates of the records extend from 30 August 1969 to 9 September 1989, the great majority of them (339) are from 1 December 1986 to 28 February 1989, representing a very high percentage of the records of CBRC Review-List species (see below) from California published in American Birds (hereafter AB) during this period.

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    KEM HAINEBACH (Author)

    FIRST RECORDS OF XANTUS’ HUMMINGBIRD IN CALIFORNIA

    On the afternoon of 30 January 1988, Art Edwards, Peter Willmann and I were birding at 157 Via Baja in Ventura, Ventura County, California. Virgil Ketner, of 169 Via Baja, was also there to show us the adult male Broad-billed Hummingbird (Cynanthus latirostris) that had been coming to his and his neighbor’s feeders. The weather was clear, calm, hazy, the temperature about 60°F. About 1430, while waiting for the Broad-billed Hummingbird to reappear, I heard a buzzy chatter coming from a blooming bottlebrush tree, then saw an unfamiliar hummingbird in it. I called the others over to look at the bird, and Edwards and I saw it hovering in the shaded bottlebrush for perhaps 10 seconds before it flew off. I wrote the following description about 10 or 15 minutes after my observation: Moderate size hummingbird. All green back. All pale rufous-beige underparts. Green crown. White face with broad sooty eye line, much broader than the white borders above and below it. Dark bill. Feeding in bottlebrush. Low-pitched buzzy chatter.

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    ALAN CONTRERAS (Author)

    WINTER STATUS OF THE SORA IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

    In this note I attempt to clarify the winter range and population density of the Sora (Porzana carolina) in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia by using data from Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) and other sources. The Sora’s principal winter range extends from the south Atlantic and Gulf states west through central Arizona and northern New Mexico to central California and south into South America. The species “occasionally occurs in winter north to extreme southern Canada and the northern United States” (A.O.U. 1983). Most Soras migrate out of the Pacific Northwest by September, although later migrants have been noted, e.g., as late as 8 November 1987, Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Harney Co., Oregon (Littlefield and Cornely 1984). A late fall record from Washington is for 6 November 1980, Moses Lake, Grant Co. (Rogers 1981). Soras typically return to western Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia by early to mid-April, arriving on the coast a week earlier and east of the Cascades a week later than in the interior valleys (Cannings et al. 1987, Littlefield 1990, Littlefield and McLaury 1973, Paulson 1990, pers. obs.).

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    EDUARDO PALACIOS, LUCIA ALFARO (Author)

    FIRST BREEDING RECORDS OF THE CASPIAN TERN IN BAJA CALIFORNIA, (NORTE), MEXICO

    The Caspian Tern (Sterna caspia) is a nearly cosmopolitan species, except for South America, with a highly discontinuous breeding range (Voous 1960). On the Pacific coast of North America breeding colonies are widely scattered from Sinaloa, Mexico, to Washington, U.S.A. (AOU 1983). In the peninsula of Baja California, the only breeding colonies of Caspian Terns known so far are at Scammon’s Lagoon (Bancroft 1927, Grinnell 1928, Wilbur 1987, Everett and Anderson 1991, M. Evans pers. comm.), where they nest together with Royal Terns (Bancroft 1927), and at Laguna San Ignacio (Danemann 1991, Danemann and Guzmán 1992). Both of these breeding colonies are located south of latitude 28°N, in the state of Baja California Sur. In this note, we report an additional small breeding colony at Laguna Figueroa (30°40'N), the first for the state of Baja California. We have described this closed coastal lagoon and its breeding birds previously (Palacios and Alfaro 1991).