As I strolled the streets of San Diego on the first day of a visit last Christmas, I heard soft voices everywhere saying "tsp." Occasionally I glimpsed a small drab bird moving in the bushes. I knew I was surrounded by yellow-rumped warblers before I ever got a good look at one.

I wondered whether any of these birds had passed through Sequim flying to or from their summer breeding grounds in Canada and Alaska. That thought got me wondering what other Sequim birds might be snowbirding around the city.

We already had plans to go birding with local friends and they had asked me for a list of target birds. Seeing the opportunity to collect material for this column, I surprised them with a list of Sequim birds rather than the rare or life birds they surely expected.



Heermann's gulls

I found one of my target birds early on. A hike with one of our daughters at Torrey Pines yielded Heermann's gulls on the beach (but no sign of Tiger practicing for his signature tournament there in January). Their breeding plumage is magnificent - white head with red bill on a dark body.

We miss this treat when they arrive here in summer, as their white heads have turned dark after breeding season. Heermann's gulls breed on islands off Mexico before flying north to the Olympic Peninsula, a marked change from the migratory patterns of most birds.

On reaching our friends' house on Point Loma a few days later, our first target bird was the male painted redstart that had been hanging out in their neighborhood.

It's not a Sequim bird but would be a rare treat for us as the only painted redstart we had seen had been in Mexico.



First warbler of spring

Although we failed to find him on our first foray, I spotted a drab orange-crowned warbler in a nearby bush. It is the first warbler species to reach Sequim in breeding season. Its trill-like song in the woods around Sequim heralds the arrival of spring. We got close-up views of the redstart later.

At a protected bay where our friends often find a spotted sandpiper, we saw a dozen least sandpipers busily feeding along the shore. But not the former, a Sequim area breeder in spring.

We moved on to Cabrillo National Monument at the southern tip of Point Loma, one of our favorite birding spots in San Diego. Abundant white-crowned sparrows in the low bushes reminded me of the half-dozen winter holdovers I had found on the Sequim Christmas Bird Count two weeks earlier.



North to Alaska

Below the cliffs we stood on, a half dozen black turnstones were feeding on rocks constantly being washed by waves. A nearby wandering tattler was a life bird for Julie.

Both species share this micro-habitat and later will migrate through the Olympic Peninsula to breed in Alaska. Surprisingly the tattlers leave their normal seaside habitat to breed in the mountains.

We saw no turkey vultures, as they were farther inland. Warmer temperatures away from the ocean provide better thermals for weak-flying vultures to soar in quest of food.

We failed to find a California gull, a species famous for having saved Mormon crops in Utah from a locust plague in the 1800s. It seems odd that a bird named for its own state could have been so hard to find, considering the many shore locations we visited.



About that hum

My audio highlight of the day was hearing an unfamiliar, loud, high-pitched sound. Our friends explained that we were hearing a male Anna's hummingbird as it pulled out of a steep dive. It was trying to impress a female Anna's hummer it was courting.

Breeding season already had begun, a surprise to me in that this was December. Researching this later, I learned that hummingbird expert Chris Clark and associates recently settled a long-standing debate about the source of the sound.

They used stop-action photography to show that the sound is made by the hummer fanning its tail feathers for only an instant (60 milliseconds), presumably to help pull it out of the dive.

As recently as the 1930s, these hummers didn't breed farther north than the San Francisco area. Now some of them breed on Vancouver Island as well as around Sequim.

My six-week "Introduction to Birds & Birding" class runs on Monday mornings starting March 1 and Tuesday evenings starting May 4. It includes two field trips.

Author Dave Jackson is series coordinator and Web master. Send comments to him at editor@olybird.org or 683-1355. Next OPAS meeting is at 7 p.m. today, Wednesday, Feb. 17, at the Dungeness River Audubon Center, 2151 W. Hendrickson Road. Meeting, class and field trip details are on Web site www.olybird.org.