The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

The Black Oystercatcher. Not to be confused with the American Oystercatcher, whose voice is apparently identical to the Black Oystercatcher.

Day 597 of the Pandemic (November 5, 2021)

            The Big Yard draws 78 species for October, five birds shy of October 2020.

            But November begins with birds I’ll never see in the yard.  To celebrate our birthdays, the wife and I return to Dana Point, California, for Beach Harbor Pizza (Trestles IPA!), peach muffins from Marbella Market, hand-in-hand-and-masked marina walking/beach napping, and, for me, snowshoeing in the mudflats at San Juan Creek for shorebirds.

I have Tundra swans on the mind

A Least Sandpiper reflects on the consistency of knee-deep mud—his own and the photographers.

Bonaparte’s Gull prefers its own company. This one never joined the other gulls at San Juan Creek.

The Snowy Plover prefers sandy beaches over muddy estuaries.

A Semipalmated Plover checks out my mud-caked feet.

A Whimbrel having lunch at the beach.

            Last November, on my final morning at Dana Point, I photographed a Tundra swan at San Juan Creek estuary, the first Tundra swan recorded at Dana Point, according to the local eBird administrator (see previous posts from July 1, 5, and 8, 2021).

            This time, I walk out to the “Island” to connect with gulls and cormorants, night-herons and pelicans.  I regret not carrying my camera when a peregrine falcon scatters some pigeons and perches above me in one of the gum trees.  Then, off the jetty, I hear the loud, piping, queep, queep, deedeedee quees of a flock of black oystercatchers, and among them what sounds like American oystercatchers.  I scan the birds among the guano-washed rocks for white underparts.  When four take flight low over the water, I’m sure I see flashing white as the dark broad-winged shorebirds quarter away from me.  I check 4 for American oystercatcher and submit my post for the afternoon sightings.

            The next morning, the eBird administrator emails and asks for more details about the oystercatcher.  “The species you reported was flagged for review,” he writes, “and is unusual for this date and/or location.” He wants me to edit my checklist and add more to my description, like behavior and vocalizations and habitat, to eliminate hybrids with black oystercatchers that “are much more numerous than non-hybrid Americans.”  He also wants photos.
            I’m somewhat surprised and start to question myself.  I’ve seen the birds in Mexico many times, and only last November one was visiting Treasure Island Park five miles north of here.  I tell him I’ll delete the post until I get photos.

            I lug my camera and take the Head Blond as witness.  Gulls, cormorants, and pelicans. HB points out a bird swimming in the channel.  Western grebe.  I can’t relocate a single black oystercatcher, much less the American rarity.  Then, as we’re walking along the rocky shoreline, someone in a car stops in the road behind us and calls out.  “Excuse me,” he repeats three times before I realize, pointing my long lens toward the jetty, that he’s talking to me.

            “Do you have the oystercatcher?”

            “No,” I say, slipping my camera behind me.  “Nothing yet.”

            “There’s supposed to be an American oystercatcher here somewhere,” he adds.

            “So I’ve heard,” I say, deflecting, suddenly embarrassed.

My aptitude as a birdwatcher has tanked.  A+ for Tundra swan has slipped to an F- for American oystercatcher.  Time to get back in my PJs.

The rare California Gnatcatcher is not a shorebird but a bird of the shore, this one at Dana Point beach not 50 feet from the surf.

A Peregrine Falcon, also not a shorebird but an eater of shorebirds.

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