Date: 2/25/25 10:10 am From: <lehman.paul...> via groups.io <lehman.paul...> Subject: [SanDiegoRegionBirding] Oystercatcher situation, miscellaneous low-end stuff
People have been seeing a couple black-and-white oystercatchers at La Jolla off and on for a long time and I just saw one of the birds a few minutes ago, Tuesday, and it looks to be one of the borderline birds we've been seeing the last year or two that may well be just barely an acceptable American using the Jehl Scale. There's a little bit of dark stippling on the upper breast, the white wing stripe goes out to the base of the primaries, the axillars are clean white, the flanks are clean white, and the rump is about 50-50 dark and light. The scale would probably rate it a borderline 30 points give or take 1 point-- which is absolutely right on the border. Folks interested in seeing a possible countable American, might go to the usual stretch in La Jolla from seawatch down the coast the next mile or so and look for the bird and try to get a long series of photographs. Black Oystercatchers of course continue here in small numbers. And there is a pair that we've seen copulating on multiple occasions, so maybe they'll finally try to nest this year somewhere locally.
In other, minor news the last few days, today I had a total of six Western tanagers and two Bullocks Orioles in southern residential La Jolla, yesterday there was a Wilson's warbler in Kearny Mesa and two Black-throated gray warblers at Serra Mesa, another Black-throated gray at SDSU, there's a continuing Pin-tailed whydah next to Montgomery Field, and an American goldfinch a couple days ago in the Encanto neighborhood southwest of SDSU is actually pretty unusual for that whole part of the city. American Goldfinches are a lot more local in distribution than a lot of people think.
Paul Lehman, San Diego
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