A couple duos of rare kingbirds and scoters present in the county are in need of a bit of clarification. First, a bird festival field trip reported TWO Western Kingbirds around the Sunset ball fields area in the TRV on March 1st, which would have set a new early arrival date for spring migrants by one day--IF they were both Westerns and were indeed spring migrants rather than very rare locally wintering birds (TWO of which would be especially unusual and unprecedented together in winter). One of the observers, Joanne Sherif, returned the following day, the 2nd, to obtain better photos, and, voila, one bird is indeed a Western but the other looks like a Tropical Kingbird. (Presumably these two birds are the same as the two seen the previous day.) What is likely going on is that the Western indeed wintered locally and is the same individual photographed only 100-200 yards away along Sunset by Millie & Peter Thomas back on 21 December, but which had gone MIA ever since. And the Tropical may well be the same bird (likely returning for multiple winters) that had been in the Dairy Mart area (not too far away as the kingbird flies) through December but which hasn't been reported there since.
As for the scoters, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are actually TWO different White-winged Scoters on Mission Bay. The female-type with an entirely dark bill that lately stays in the little cove on the north side of Paradise Point, and a young male with pinkish near the bill base that seems to wander around more of the bay. Observers should try to specify which bird(s) they are seeing when reporting just a single White-winged at Mission Bay (although such an earlier request has almost entirely fallen on deaf ears, given that most eBirders don't read the listserv posts). A third White-winged Scoter in the county continues as of today in the Sweetwater River channel a surprising two miles up from the edge of San Diego Bay, just below the Second Avenue bridge.
--Paul Lehman, San Diego
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