Carp Without Cars

For the July 30, 2020, online meeting of Carpinteria Birdwatchers we’ll continue our review of Santa Barbara County shorebirds, this time covering the larger species. See you Thursday at 4 p.m.

YouTube livestream:

The topic for the 7/16 meeting will be peeps: those cute little shorebirds (along with some other small shorebird species, like small plovers and Sanderlings). The first few southbound Western Sandpipers have started to show up on our beaches and mudflats, so it’s a great time to get ready for the fall migration.

YouTube livestream:

Links mentioned during the meeting:

• If you wish to contact Valerie Bentz with the Carpinteria Valley Association, who spoke during the meeting about the removal of eucalyptus trees for the new skate park project near Carpinteria City Hall, you can email her at vbentz@fielding.edu.
• John’s eBird checklist from July 9 at the “Carpinteria Police Station Tams”
• National Marine Sanctuaries online seminar on “Seabirds 101”, July 23 at 3 p.m. Pacific.

You can also view the slides from the meeting.

After last week’s meeting about grassland birds I decided to revisit a grassland birdwatching site I hadn’t been to in some time: the Point Sal Trail near Orcutt. For this week’s meeting I’ll present a trip report about my visit, including photos and sound recordings of the birds I found there.

I don’t expect my trip report will take a whole meetings’ worth of time, so I’m hoping some other participants might be willing to share about a recent trip they’ve made as well. If that doesn’t work out we can also just have a shorter-than-usual meeting.

I’m looking forward to it. See you there!

— John Callender

YouTube livestream:

Links mentioned during the event:

• Bird Names for Birds petition: “Nomenclatural changes for a more welcoming ornithology”
• AOS statement on the possible renaming of the McCown’s Longspur
• Macauley Library information on sound-editing tutorials
• Updates to eBird’s My eBird page
• John’s eBird lists from the Point Sal Trail: List 1, list 2, list 3, list 4, list 5

For this week’s online meeting we’ll talk about birds that are easy to overlook: grassland birds like larks, pipits, and (some) sparrows. Join us this Thursday, June 25, 2020, at 4 p.m. See you there!

YouTube livestream:

Links mentioned during the meeting:

• Los Padres Forest Watch page on the USFS plans for the expedited Pine Mountain logging project. The deadline for public comments to be submitted has been extended to August 14, 2020.

You can view the slides from the meeting.

Join us on Thursday, June 18, 2020 at 4 p.m. for our next online meeting, where we’ll talk about Santa Barbara county owls.

YouTube livestream:

Links mentioned during the event:

• Los Padres Forest Watch page on the USFS plans for the expedited Pine Mountain logging project
• http://www.sbcobirding.com/lehmanbosbc.html – Paul Lehman’s newly updated Birds of Santa Barbara County
• The CarpBirdwatchers group account’s profile page on eBird
• https://youtu.be/o7KXvs7WJWM – Eagle Owl captures a Long-legged Buzzard nestling, as seen on a raptor nest cam in Israel

You can also view the slides from the presentation.