Date: 3/1/26 5:51 pm From: Thomas Wurster via groups.io <wurster...> Subject: [OrangeCountyBirding] Jim Pike, an Orange County original, passed away February 2026
Orange County birders and beyond,
It is with great sadness and heartbreak that I share that Jim Pike passed away on February 17, following his diagnosis less than a month before with an aggressive cancer. Though Jim was a respected member of the Orange County birding community for over 40 years, many will know him only through his posts to the OC Birding list serve, where he reported a steady stream of rarities, and regularly urged community action to save our park and neighborhood trees and plant cover from excessive pruning and removal. Jim, with his life partner Kim, moved to Huntington Beach from Wisconsin in 1983. Soon after Jim began his OC birding career. His impact was immediate with locals asking, “Who is the “new kid on a bike” who keeps reporting rare birds?” Shortly thereafter Jim was fully integrated with the area’s avid birders.
Jim was very keen in the field and has a string of “County Firsts” to his credit. An incomplete list includes Mississippi Kite and Black-billed Cuckoo in 1989, Sedge Wren in 1991, Streak-backed Oriole in 1996, plus a Tropical Parula in 2018, the latter being the first state record for California. Jim found all these birds in Huntington Beach by concentrating his efforts within a limited geographic area and exploring it in depth. In the 1990s and early 2000s Jim joined with a small contingent of California birders who were exploring the Baja California Peninsula. He and I traveled there together in October 1986 where we stumbled upon an Olive-backed Pipit - a First Record for Mexico - in Catavina, a small palm oasis and rancho in the mid-peninsula portion of Baja. We spotted it independently, but only Jim knew instantly what it was. In time, Jim’s skill in bird finding and identification were acknowledged statewide, leading to his election to multiple terms as a member of the California Bird Records Committee (CBRC).
The late, great Loren Hays was instrumental in recognizing Jim’s skills and talent as a naturalist and encouraged Jim to turn his avocation into a career. Starting as a seasonal biologist, and later as an independent consultant, Jim worked for 36 seasons with various agencies including the Orange County Water District, studying the Prado Basin population of endangered Least Bell’s Vireos. While the number of vireos nesting there varied from year to year, their increase likely made the Prado population a major source of fledglings that colonized rehabilitated riparian habitat throughout Southern California in subsequent years. Jim’s success there, both in monitoring and implementing recovery strategies certainly stands as one of his most significant achievements.
Jim’s work with the vireos was seasonal, and he and Kim took full advantage of the offseason. They traveled widely throughout the western states, often camping in offroad areas that gave them access to remote desert and mountain areas. At home Jim and Kim nurtured multiple “fur-children”, a dog and multiple indoor cats, as well as some feathered ones.
As a friend and fellow birder, thank you, Jim Pike, for all you accomplished in conservation and for all you shared with the community birding. You are greatly missed.
