Pomona Valley Audubon -
Chaparral Naturalist Archives

I haven’t been officially birding with groups much lately, but when I do go, it is with just as much zest as it was in the beginning. A four-day trip to Idaho for the Siberian accentor in February bagged me 74 species with six lifers...a quick trip to SE Arizona over Memorial Day weekend, with purple martins nesting in Saguaro cactus and seven more lifers waiting in the "wings" ...a Yosemite trip, with three great gray owls (lifer, lifer, lifer!)...a three week long trip in July to Glacier Park in Montana yielded 217 different species with six life birds...camping in the White Mountains on Memorial Day Weekend found us a prairie warbler (all the others weren’t counted up...but the fact that you could see all the moons of Jupiter and the orange color of the planet itself when tenting at 10,000 feet didn’t discount this as a birding trip!)...a BIG Day with Dan Guthrie in September counted up 186 (he said 184...wonder what he missed!)...and the trip to Death Valley (must go to Death Valley once a year...right???) found six more lifers for me! This was some great unofficial birding!

My most memorable bird of 1997? Could it be the snipe "winnowing" (what an eerie sound!) at McGee Meadow at Glacier Park, perching at the top of the pine tree (odd, a snipe at the top of a pine tree or anywhere near pine trees?) Or perhaps, the snowy owl found in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho as the light of day was fading, a brilliant white dot ("I must get the scope, better check it out!)? Maybe, the rock formation I vaguely "saw" in a field in Idaho, which ended up being a ring of gray partridge that, after we stopped for a better look, slowly sunk out of sight behind the clods in the field? Maybe it is the Baird’s sparrow that circled us in the grassy field in Montana, where the sky went on forever? The McCown’s longspur, ringing, tinkling in the sky as it floated down on stiff v-shaped wings? The upland sandpiper--picture perfect on a fence post? No, all these are memorable and obviously, each in its own special heart-wrenching way, unique, but the most memorable bird for me in 1997 wasn’t found in the grandeur of nature, with bird song and wind in my ears. It was a little palm warbler, pathetically looking up at me from the bottom of the sink of a relatively clean restroom in a Juice-Stop in Huntington Beach!

The day had been rather blah...so far to drive, and so much wind in the Ventura area that after we tried and failed to find the black-throated blue warbler in Sycamore Canyon, we were pretty much "ready to go home." Jim said we should try further south, after all it wasn’t windy in Los Angeles County when we left in the morning (early morning!). So we drove back through Malibu (traffic wasn’t bad; and indeed the wind had died down), and all the way to Bolsa Chica where we spent a long time looking at the

birds. We were finally seeing some birds, and any birds, not like those whipping by in the gale-force winds of the morning, were a pleasure to see!

I got out of the "Ladies’ Room" much faster than I got in. I had to tell my friends out there calmly sipping, slurping their smoothies! "There’s a palm warbler in the restroom," I called from behind the counter. "Sure there is!" (This is the pat answer of someone who didn’t find the bird... "SURE there is." ) "No, I’m not kidding, it isn’t a finch, it’s a palm warbler!" At this point the young man who kindly allowed me to use the employee’s restroom was sounding a little defensive. "We were going to take it to the animal rehab...we didn’t know it was anything special." "No, it’s fine" I say. I didn’t want to get him riled, after all he may think it’s his, since he’s had it for three hours in his restroom. My birding companions, Jim and Steve, the manager, the assistant and I all piled into the little restroom to stare at the little bird who is now on the back of the toilet. "My word, it is a palm warbler" the birders say. Meanwhile the manager was still trying to explain how he didn’t know what to do with it. Since I could see it looked healthy enough, I decided to see if we can get it from the owner and free it somewhere near, where it might have a chance to recover from the wind. (I wasn’t the only thing affected by the wind today, I see.)

We explained to him about the wind and that the bird was probably exhausted this morning when it flopped into his shop. I showed him a picture of the bird, with the map and explained how far off course the little thing has been blown. He was fine with letting us take the bird. We quickly decided to take it to Huntington Central Park, to the area where there is a little water and a natural area where it can hide and recover.

I went back into the restroom. The little thing was sitting on the back of the toilet and flew around the small room as I went in. I put my hand out and it landed on my finger...no weight! Just a little sensation of tickling on my finger. I slowly reached up and was able to easily get the little body inside my hand, where it seemed to realize it was caught, for it didn’t struggle. We quickly got in the car and headed toward the park. At that time, the bird started to pant and struggle, and I thought, "Oh, no...I can’t have it die right here in my hand of overheating!" and I freed it! It flew up to the front of the car and sat on the dashboard, seemingly mesmerized by the sky and trees and street lights going by above it. It sat that way for the whole trip, depositing a little memory we decided that Jim could never wash off! A palm warbler token on the dashboard in his car!