Santa Barbara Birding | A Tale of Two Counts
The Weather Makes All the Difference When It’s for the Birds
The adult female king eider, known as a queen eider, is far from her native Arctic | Credit: Hugh Ranson
While birders love the rain as much as anyone – after all, water generally means more birds – many of us were grousing about the foul conditions on New Year’s Eve, Santa Barbara Audubon’s official Christmas Bird Count (CBC) day. There was hope that the rain would hold off till midmorning, but it wasn’t to be; as dawn slowly glimmered into being, down came the steady rain that only let up for a few minutes at a time all day long.
Birding in the rain is difficult for many reasons. Birders rely upon hearing calls as one of the best ways to locate birds, and with rain this becomes quite difficult. For those of us looking for landbirds, the constant movement of leaves as they were struck by raindrops made finding small birds tricky. Add to this the fogging up of optics and eyeglasses, and you can see the difficulties we faced.
Not only that, but several top-notch out-of-town birders, deterred by the forecast, made a last-minute decision to forego the count this year. We still had over 150 birders out braving the elements, some birding the mountains where four inches of rain fell, others going out on the ocean in tricky conditions. Despite all these hurdles, we logged 195 species, a little lower than our usual tally in the low 200s, but still remarkably good considering the conditions.
