January 21, 22 California

Southern California weather, birds and residents Karen O'Keefe and Mark Hughes were more than enough motivation to make southern California the next stop on my big year.

I stopped at ken Malloy Regional harbor Park on my way from LAX to my daughter's apartment in West Hollywood. it was a beautiful day and there were some nice birds including 7 new additions to my year list.

Today we planned ot go to Santa Cruz Island for the endemic Island Scrub Jay. It is the only place in the world this bird is found, but high winds and highs seas forced the tour company to cancel. i will try again on my own Tuesday.

In the meantime, we headed south to Ocean Trails Reserve and saw some nice birds. We were 2 hours south of Santa Cruz Island, and the seas were as calm as they could be. Our next stop was at the Inglewood Cemetery. A beautiful Painted Redstart has been hanging around there for a few weeks. We had no trouble finding the section of the cemetery it has been frequenting, but we couldn't seem to find the 'oak' tree it was supposedly visiting. We finally found the only deciduous tree in the section. It didn't look anything like any oak tree I have seen in Michigan, but it did have a Painted Redstart in it. We tried and tried to get a good picture. The bird moved so quickly and was so good at staying behind some foliage. I don't have a good photo, so i will share one from the eBird site.

166 birds through January 22