Digging in the yard, and the San Diego River

Seeking gems amongst the wet toilet paper...

Local looking

With a year of far and wide travel ahead of us, with a massive expanse of possibility and landscape on offer, it may seem funny to begin this year of birding and nerding with a neighborhood walk. But, in looking with such a wide view, we sometimes forget how amazing our own doorstep can be. I think it was Annie Dillard who said that if you want to discover a new species, just go dig in your front yard. Maybe it wasn't Annie Dillard, but someone once said something like that. So, the year began locally, in my parents' neighborhood in the town where I grew up.

Poway, in the local Kumeyaay native language means either “meeting place of the valleys” or “meeting place of the waters”. It is a North County San Diego town, inland and at the foot of the hills at the foot of the mountains. I do not think it is particularly pretty; just another town with a taco shop on every corner, kids sitting on curbs in front of the AmPm trying to come up with something, anything vaguely interesting to do, and adults who really love talking about bathroom renovations and real estate. Culturally, apart from the Mexican influence found everywhere in southern California, it is the wet toilet paper of towns; in terms of nature, though, it has a few colorful feathers in its otherwise palid cap.

When we moved here in 1986, we had a small house in the notably distressed neighborhood behind the Poway Fun Bowl (the Fun Bowl has since been torn down and replaced by wet-toilet-paper condos). Our neighbors were the types to accidentally blow off fingers setting Fourth of July fireworks and hosting bare-knuckle fight clubs in their garages. Not everyone in the neighborhood was totally bonked-out, though; one of the rotating renters directly to our right wanted the cops to come and dig up under the house because the spirits of the dead children buried there had been visiting her in her sleep. She was cool.

As my sister and I moved away to become more adult-like, my parents gained in economics and eventually bought a house in a neighborhood on the non-distressed side of town. The neighborhood was imagined in the early seventies as a place for people to have horses, donkeys, goats; it has tinges of neighborhoody boringness, surely, but it is also a place with lots of trees and intentional horse paths that follow the drainage easements that host lots of local and transient birds.

The morning was high forties (no, San Diego is not monolithically 75 and sunny); the sun was getting ready to peak. The birds were singing away. Another snap, in terms of generic perception: yes, spring is when creatures generally begin courtship, but here, in San Diego, many locals begin action now. Our first bird of the year: a Song Sparrow cheerily trilling, already seeking matehood, from the side yard feeders. Pretty much all of the expected species showed for our opening morning, and many of them clearly agitated by the coming go-time: Mourning Doves, Bewick’s Wrens, Spotted Towhees, hordes of Yellow-Rumped Warblers (Audubon’s subspecies), the resident pair of elegans subspecies of Red Shouldered Hawks. Beyond the expected, there were a few pleasant surprises, not surprises because of a rarity, but because of their sporadic status: Townsend’s Warbler (locally common, but never expected; a Phainopepla (an open space bird, more common in arid desert regions; a Red-Naped Sapsucker (definitely not expected). All told: 36 species, not bad for digging around in the backyard dirt!

Red-Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus elegans)

Spotted Towhee (Pupil maculatus)

The San Diego River and Robb Field

For many people attempting a “Big Year”, let alone a moderately sized one, San Diego is an ideal place to begin. January 1st is the winter, and during a Southern California border town winter you can put eyes on many creatures, winged or no. The ducks and shorebirds at this time of year, alone, would be worth the flight, had you not the privilege of just waking up here.

The Ferry and I have spent a good amount of time around this area, usually during the end-of-year holidays. One of our favorite places to bird, and definitely a place locals will tell you to visit when looking for birds, is the San Diego River and the adjacent green of Robb Field.

Green-Winged Teals (Anas crecca) and Cinnamon Teals (Anas cyanoptera)

Like many places across the US, the area is experiencing an increased level of homelessness. Being homeless is rarely a true choice (too heavy a discussion for this post), but if it were a choice, being on the streets would be much more comfortably done in a city with little rain, hardly any weather at all, really. So, San Diego has always been a draw for people in between homes. As soon as The Ferry and I arrived riverside, we were approached by B, a security guard hired this week to patrol the park after a homeless person’s pit bull “mauled” some passerby. Before relaying any information about his duties or about the mauling or about anything expected from a security guard approaching you in a park, B, noticing our field glasses and scope, leapt right into detailing what birds were to be seen around the area, letting us know where to seek current rarities (Eurasian Wigeon, Vermilion Flycatcher, Tropical Kingbird, Burrowing Owl).

B is a fifty-something-year-old San Diego surfer stalwart, well schooled in waves and which taquería has the best Carne Asada. Though clearly piecing it all together, charmingly ham-handed in his approach to “figuring out life”, he broke the mold of private security guard I had come to know when working as a security dude, myself, back in my rock and/or roll days. A lot of times that job is filled by men and women working through/against drugs, familial struggle, uphill economics, or perhaps a general lack of that basal love so integral to self-grace. This is, obviously, a generalization, and generalizations I try to only acknowledge when I have first-hand experience with them. God knows when I took on the role of getting paid minimum wage to tell everyday egos what they could or could not do, I also was down amongst the emotionally ham-handed.

Part of the aim of this Moderately Sized Year is, beyond encounters with naturing, to become a better person through human encounters, as well. To be more graceful. To progress beyond a black and white. If I were a bettin’ man, I would find a safe bet in guessing that our generalization-defying security dude, B, has not been a stranger to drugs, but his curiosity and his heartfelt attempt at joyful, communal sharing did not go unnoticed. Day one and we have already found preconceptions being confronted by an unexpected human. I will say that B did, at one point, add amongst his musings on tacos and his dedication to a “deflection-based approach” to conflict resolution, that he was/is “a U.F.O. guy”. The Ferry and I have gone down that road before, and so avoided asking for elaboration.

There were many birders about, which made it easy to find the rare-for-this-location Burrowing Owl, the Vermilion Flycatcher and the Tropical Kingbird that has been hanging out for six weeks, or so. All of these will most likely be seen at their normal locations over the course of our year, but seeing them all here on our first day of exploring injected an extra joy. The tide was in, meaning many ducks all along the river. All three teal species: Green-Winged, Blue-Winged, Cinnamon; huge numbers of American Wigeon, with the floating gem of a Eurasian Wigeon flocking amongst them, Buffleheads, Ruddies, Lesser Scaups…but no mallards! Ha!

Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia)

Snowy Egret (Egret thula)

Clark’s Grebe (Aechmophorus clarkii)

Greater Yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca)

American Pipit (Anthus rubescens)…from the wilds of Alaska to the tames of San Diego.

We took a coffee a few blocks away, walked to the Ocean Beach Pier, which had just yesterday been damaged by monster waves. We contemplated the listing Christmas Tree set against the backdrop of surfers taking advantage of the stormy swells. This is what experts would categorize as a “good day”: mixed sun and clouds; excellent company; 85 species of birds to begin our moderately sized year.