A Marathon or a Sprint?

Kathy Kay and I made a valiant effort to chase the Garganey at Arcata Marsh on Thursday, October 26, 2023. The Garganey, a small duck that had strayed from Asia, didn’t show but Kathy picked out a drake Eurasian Wigeon among the many hundreds of waterfowl present. On Friday, October 27, 2023, we tried to chase another Asian vagrant, Common Greenshank, without success. This is a large sandpiper similar to our Greater Yellowlegs, but with greenish legs. A close encounter with a Barred Owl was a consolation for missing the Greenshank.

We arrived at the harbor at Half Moon Bay at 6 AM Saturday, October 28, 2023, in plenty of time to board Alvaro Jaramillo’s organized pelagic. I was looking forward to meeting Alvaro for the first time but it turned out he was guiding in Chile or somewhere. Instead he had arranged for several experts in sea bird identification to accompany us and serve as leaders for the group of 20+ birders. Among the experts were Steve Howell and Peter Pyle, both published authors on seabird identification. I introduced myself to them and was surprised to learn that they had both spent time with my brother Oliver birding in Central America a couple of decades ago.  


The pelagic was quite productive.  Species observed included Black Storm-Petrel, Ashy Storm-Petrel (USA and Territories Biggest Year-Bird number 815), Sooty Shearwater, Short-tailed Shearwater (816), Pink-footed Shearwater, Buller’s Shearwater (817) and Northern Fulmar. 


The boat returned to the dock with about an hour of daylight to spare so we headed a few miles up the coast where we successfully chased Pacific Golden-Plover. I had seen plenty of these in Alaska and Hawaii, but I still needed it for my Lower 48 year list in order to be competitive with the McQuade’s, who were leading me in this category by about 15 species. 


A vagrant Northern Jacana had just been discovered in Phoenix, Arizona, so I made Phoenix my next destination, hoping the Jacana, a stray from the marshes further south in Mexico. Kathy dropped me at the San Francisco airport and I was in Phoenix with a rented car by 11 PM. I rented the car for a week with an ambitious plan to drive a 2000 mile loop through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. My targets were Northern Jacana, Nutting’s Flycatcher, Golden-crowned Warbler, LeConte’s Sparrow, Yellow Rail, Smith’s Longspur, and Black Rosy-Finch. In a week, I was scheduled on an east coast pelagic from Pompano Beach, Florida. This race to 900 species was no longer a Marathon. With two months to go, it was now a sprint!

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