Date: 11/28/25 8:08 pm From: Conor McMahon via groups.io <conormcmahon22...> Subject: [sbcobirding] Various Birding
Hi all,
This morning I birded East Pinery. I stopped on the way to get my Magpie and Lark Sparrow fix, so I didn't make it up there until about 9:30, and things already felt a little slow by then. You can definitely still see impacts of the Lake Fire last year - I think maybe 1/3 of the trees are dead. The highlight was heaps of sparrows using the understories of burnt, standing chaparral (e.g. my running count of Juncos was 114). I did find a few Mountain Chickadees, Red-breasted Nuthatches, and Brown Creepers, but no Golden-crowned Kinglets, Pygmy Nuthatch, etc. I also missed seeing a Turkey for Thanksgiving on the drive through the valley!
Yesterday I birded the Ellwood area. There are a lot of blue gum eucalyptus flowering, and a couple isolated patches of red gums which had decent numbers of lerps (a minority). A few lemon-scented gums were also flowering and birdy. Most red ironbark at Ellwood are not currently flowering, although other stands around town are. It will be interesting to see how the newly planted 'karri' eucalyptus is for birds in another decade or so. There's still a lot of water and mud everywhere, including on the trails, which makes some places tricky to navigate if you mind getting wet.
Out on the mesa I saw the two continuing White-tailed Kites interacting with each other for a bit. My impression (interested to hear disagreement) is that these birds are spending most of their time at Ellwood and only occasionally moving over to NCOS / Devereux - I only see them at the latter once in every few visits. I had a Tennessee Warbler in a blue gum towards the west end of the woodland, but not a lot of other warblers overall, mainly Yellow-rumped with just a few Townsend's and Orange-crowned. I was hoping I might pull out a tanager or oriole, but no luck with either. Overall numbers of woodland songbirds at Ellwood felt down to me, like others have noted elsewhere this winter. I also think the extensive clearing of understory through much of the western part of the eucalyptus woodland has degraded the habitat for birds, at least in the near term - hopefully it improves as the new plantings gradually fill in. I did see a handful of monarchs fluttering around but didn't go over to check the main roost areas.
On Wednesday I checked Area K in the morning - nothing remarkable there but continuing good numbers of ducks including all three teal, a Tropical Kingbird, and a Marsh Wren I've heard maybe every other visit in the last few weeks. In the late afternoon I checked the UCSB East Beach, which was the birdiest I've seen it so far this season with shorebirds and gulls (probably the same Goleta Beach flock), then I did a quick seawatch at the Campus Point which had a decent group of Black-vented Shearwaters etc. The two Common Goldeneyes were continuing on the lagoon.
