It’s the time of year when there are plenty of birds around, so it made for a very pleasant weekend of birding. I added (18) new species to my 2026 Orange County year list. I had a decent showing of shorebirds on Saturday, with six species observed. At the Camel Farm, Linda Scrima and I had Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs, Pectoral Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper and Killdeer. I added Spotted Sandpiper at the Liberty Loop platform. I did alright with songbirds too; I added (9) new species of wood warblers to my OC year list, including my favorite new species from the weekend, a beautiful Cape May Warbler.
I also spent some time in the black dirt looking for and finding Lapland Longspurs. On Saturday I was pleasantly surprised to see the flock of Horned Larks was still around and although it took a while, I was able to locate a single LALO in non-breeding plumage. Today I was able to get on a couple of LALOs pretty quickly, and one was in breeding plumage. Unfortunately, the birds are moving around a lot, and the spots they have been favoring are distant enough to make getting photos very challenging, and I failed on both days. I was still pretty excited though, as these are my first observations ever of this species in the month of May.
