Date: 1/27/25 11:30 am From: <lehman.paul...> via groups.io <lehman.paul...> Subject: [CALBIRDS] all-time record highs for winter rarities; miscellanea
First some minor miscellanea for the past two days include continuing adult male Orchard Oriole, Bullock's Oriole, and a new female Summer Tanager along Leon Ave. in Nestor, and a new immature male Summer Tanager and Western Tanager in Tierrasanta. Continuing Little Stint and Pacific Golden-Plover at the Salt Works.
This is a good segue into the topic of there being quite a few all-time record high counts for the winter season being set here in San Diego County for a number of very rare, rare, or scarce-but-regular species at this time of year.
Some of the rarer species totals are:
Sage Thrasher: 14 (!!) on the coastal slope, only one of these birds clearly present all winter, the rest all since Jan 10th, suggesting they are, in fact, probably mostly early northbound migrants shifting north out of Baja
Lesser Black-backed Gull: 9 a minimum, though difficult to count due to some likely duplication from different sites, but 9 during the period at Lower Otay Lake alone
Orchard Oriole: 9 including five adult males
Hepatic Tanager: 7 two pairs and three singles
And some crazy high totals for more regular-occurring scarce wintering species, December-January, almost all certainly due to better and better observer coverage, NOT due to real population increases or habitat improvement (given the opposite is true):
Bullocks Oriole: 56 (old record 47)
Nashville Warbler: 24 (ties 2nd highest; the highest is 26)
Yellow Warbler: 50 (old record 45)
Black-throated Gray Warbler: 54 (ties record)
Wilson's Warbler: 29 (better than average but not near the record = 37)
Western Tanager: 97 (ties record)
Given that we have at least 5 weeks of the winter season still to go, there is plenty of time to get some of these totals a bit higher still!
