Date: 6/10/26 10:51 pm From: David Trissel via groups.io <dtrissel...> Subject: [SanDiegoRegionBirding] Serendipity Sand-Plover
About a week ago, I received an envelope in the mail from my birding buddy Kevin in New Jersey. He had never sent me anything in the mail before, but he had been going through his old American Birding Association magazines and ran across an article that he thought I might like. It was the 2014 edition that included Barb Carlson's article about her 2013 San Diego County Big Year. In the article, she eloquently describes how she set the record for most species seen in a single year in a single county, along with many of the amazing rare birds she was able to see.
This morning, I decided to throw the magazine in the car, as three of us embarked on an hour and a half drive up to Hot Springs Mountain, in the hopes that either Geoff or Margaret would want to read the article. To set the scene, this was at 5:45am on Wednesday, June 10, 2026.
As Margaret was reading the magazine in the back seat, I was telling Geoff that Barb had seen some truly amazing birds during her big year, including the Lesser Sand-Plover. Geoff said "I've never even heard of that bird!" I said "Well, it hasn't been seen in San Diego since 2013. Back when I saw it in Ventura County in the 1980's it was called Mongolian Plover. It has changed names a couple of times."
We arrived at the trailhead at 7:00am and proceeded to spend the next three hours trekking up the mountain, with no cell coverage, looking unsuccessfully for the White-headed Woodpeckers that had been seen there in years past. Finally, some time after 10:00am, we reached a high point on the mountain that briefly had cell coverage and our phones began chirping wildly as texts and WhatsApp messages came flooding in. Of course, you see where this is going.
"... Siberian Sand-Plover on south San Diego Bay ...".
Geoff said "Hey, isn't that the bird you said Barb Carlson saw back in 2013?" I replied, "Yeah, it was called Lesser Sand-Plover back then, but now it is called Siberian Sand-Plover" (due to a split).
Of course, we high-tail it down the mountain, hiking for an hour and a half back to the car, and then drive (rather speedily) all the way back to the J Street Marina in Chula Vista, also an agonizing hour and a half. All the while, getting alerts that the bird keeps disappearing and reappearing, sure that we are going to be too late to see this bird, and cursing ourselves for choosing to be about as far away (and without cell coverage) as you can be and still be in San Diego County.
Luckily, all's well that ends well, as we skid to a stop at 1:17pm and hop out in time to see the Siberian Sand Plover through Matt Sadowski's scope. Whew! It turns out, in talking to Matt after all the high fives, that Matt was the one to find both the 2013 and the 2026 birds.
I hope I was successfully able to convey the bizarre sequence of events that led to this serendipitous encounter. For Geoff, going from never having heard of a bird prior to 6:00am this morning to having the bird as a world lifer by 1:20pm has to be mind-bogglingly statistically close to 0.000% chance. I have not interrogated Margaret about her experience, but it is equally bizarre to have read the 2014 article this morning and have the bird as a lifer in San Diego in the afternoon.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I hope you enjoyed the read.
Sincerely,
David Trissel San Diego, CA
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