Hi Kimball, I just got home from Crystalaire, after looking for Inca Dove (yes) in Lake Los Angeles, on the way home from the Lancaster Water Treatment Plant/Piute Pond field trip. I stopped at Crystalaire tonight exactly because I wanted to get Scott's Oriole. I did not see her male bird that hangs out at her house (the neighbors are probably wondering who this creepy guy is who parks in front of her house randomly) so I walked around the neighborhood counting Robins (at least 46) and Townsend's Solitaires (I think there were three, but I only put one into eBird). While I was searching in vain for the Scott's Oriole I heard a weird bird singing in somebody else's front yard so I started recording it and it turned out to be a Red Crossbill singing this long, strange song: https://ebird.org/checklist/S131248304 I am only used to hearing Red Crossbills give their stereotypical loud, twonote "Tick! Tick!...Tick Tick Tick!" calls, with maybe a little bit of a vaguely House Finchish sounds noise thrown in. Before I arrived at the Lancaster Sewage Ponds my day started at Pearblossom Park, where the Red Crossbills there were much more cooperative than the ones at Apollo Park which have been reported as being on a nest. Interestingly, neither Pearblossom Park nor Crystalaire had Verdin today, and I'm assuming that had to do with the cold weather.
Thomas Geza Miko Claremont, LA County 909.241.3300 "With a sufficiently large sample size a correlation can at once be both very significant and too small worth discussing."--Daniel Kahneman
On Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 2:22 PM Kimball Garrett <cyanolyca818...> wrote:
> Birders, > > [Sorry, no Swainson's Hawks to report out here yet today...] > > A singing Scott's Oriole in our Juniper Hills neighborhood today was the > first for the year. However, this arrival date is a bit later than > average. For the past five springs here, arrivals have been: > 2019 -- 22 March > 2020 -- 14 March > 2021 -- 6 March > 2022 -- 2 March > 2023 -- 18 March > [mean arrival, about 12 March] > > I'm sure Ruth Gravance in Crystalaire also has good data on arrival dates, > but her situation is complicated by regular wintering of at least one male > in her neighborhood. No Scott's have wintered in our Juniper Hills > neighborhood. > > Coincidentally, the first Hooded Oriole in our neighborhood also > arrived today. > > Kimball > > Kimball Garrett > Juniper Hills, CA > >
