The Piratical Flycatchers will set out on an all-day birding adventure on Thursday, April 18, in San Luis Obispo County, our new home. Check here for updates after the Birdathon!

Two rash young nature enthusiasts race against time and win! Time has been defeated!

Species Count: 124

When you’re craning upward in the early morning light to peer into a verdant canopy of Live Oaks, Sycamores and Bay Laurels and Ginger just glimpsed a Hermit Warbler and a rare Hammond’s Flycatcher flies in to see what’s up and a Brown Creeper starts trilling in the hollow, but the sun is rising above the hilltops and your watch insists you’re already behind schedule, it’s hard to move on…

Barry & Ginger’s purchase of a house in San Luis Obispo causes a slight rescheduling of their Birdathon

Species Count: 124

Earth Day 2022 started dark and rainy as we zigzagged up the Mount Hamilton foothills on Quito Road. There our souls were lifted by the sight of a Yellow-billed Magpie on a telephone wire. This crow-sized bird is strikingly black and white and a specialty of the East Hills. In the dim rainy light it still looked spectacular.

Barry & Ginger Langdon-Lassagne traverse the slopes of Mount Hamilton and the Baylands in search of all the birds

Species Count: 134

The intricate beauty of flowers evolved to attract flying insects, offering food in exchange for pollination. Flycatchers and other birds evolved to take advantage of the abundance of insects, causing the insects to evolve to avoid the birds. It's way more nuanced than that, of course…

Barry engages on a first-time-ever poetry birdathon.

This experimental team used birding as a form of inspiration for prose and poetry. Every team has done some sort of writeup of their adventures, but for the Pen & Quills it was all about the writing. On a strict deadline ;-). This is Barry’s portion of the story that first appeared on the scvas.org website.

Barry & Ginger birded as part of the Sharpies, staying within our own 5-mile Radius and netting 105 species. The team as a whole found 166 species.

When we birded our 5-Mile Radius (5MR) on Wednesday as The Piratical Flycatchers, we had in mind our Friday Big Day with The Sharpies as well. In a way, The Piratical Flycatchers’ expedition was a scouting run for The Sharpies Birdathon…

Barry & Ginger embark on a social-distanced, single-household, COVID-19 Big Day, staying within a 5-mile radius of their home.
Species count: 106

Once upon a time there was a tiny virus that made the whole world stop. And look out the window. And notice birds…

Barry and Ginger start out their Big Day by camping at Coyote Lake
Species count: 135

Ginger and I (The Piratical Flycatchers) began our Big Day by camping Sunday night beside Coyote Lake east of Gilroy. We had never started in the south county before and were curious how well we could do with a route from south to north. We’d also never started a Big Day by camping, so this was a grand experiment in multiple ways…

Barry, Ginger and Melanie lead a 4-hour Birdathon
Species count: 101

Ten of us (Ginger, Melanie, Bill, Kitty, Sue, Sergey, Sergio, Garrett, Gail and me) adventured from Picchetti Ranch, through Stevens Creek Canyon and down to Charleston slough for a four-hour mini-big-day birdathon from 8am to Noon today…

The Piratical Flycatchers zigzag across the county as Barry’s mind zigzags through time
Species count: 130

…this patch of land where we live and the plants and creatures that live here have witnessed a lot of change. I was pondering the different forms that change takes as we explored the parks and open space preserves of our county, crisscrossing the Bay Area Ridge Trail and scouring the edges of the San Francisco Bay in pursuit of birds…

Barry and Ginger bird on a rainy day, and rename their team “The Piratical Flycatchers”
Species count: 115

It was a good day for ducks. Not that it rained on us all that much. I mean, it did rain on us, some in the morning and more in the afternoon, and it was cloudy, with rain clearly visible in the distance pretty much all day, but what I mean really is that we saw a great number and variety of ducks that day. And I mean that it's a good day for duck species, because this winter is the wettest winter California has had since scientists started tracking rainfall data in 1895. This was a winter where dams eroded their spillways and rivers broke their banks and houses flooded right here in the South Bay, not to mention the rest of the state…

Barry co-leads a 4-hour Birdathon with Melanie O’Brien
Species count: 68

A Nuttall’s Woodpecker nibbled at the suet feeder in front of the Audubon Society headquarters at McClellan Ranch when I arrived at 7:30am. I pulled out my camera, attached the telephoto lens, and took his portrait as a way of testing out my equipment. In addition to the camera I had two pairs of binoculars (one of which I would loan to Bino, who was new to birdathons), my iPhone (for taking notes and referencing the Sibley Guide to Birds app) and a backpack full of unnecessary snacks that I never ate and a water bottle that I hardly touched…

In which Barry & Ginger spend a perfectly normal day casually birdwatching for sixteen hours straight
Species count: 115

…There's a moment, as I wake up just before the 3am alarm goes off, when I ask myself "can I do this?" Then I remember why I'm doing this: the excitement of the chase, connecting with Nature and supporting a cause I strongly believe in: environmental education. Then the alarm buzzes and I hit the snooze button: all of that can wait a few more minutes…

In which Barry does a Birdathon writeup composed almost entirely of pictures
Species count: 122 species (107 photographed)

We were approximately twenty minutes into our hike in the dark on a dirt trail in Monte Bello Open Space Preserve along the ridge tops of the Santa Cruz mountains when the first rains of the day started down on us….

Barry and Ginger limit their Birdathon to 4-hours as Barry had been struggling with back pain
Species count: 92 (64 photographed)

We began on the shore of Stevens Creek Reservoir, picking this spot because it had forest, lake, shore and sky, all of which are grand places to find birds. We unloaded from the car all that we would need: binoculars, daypack, jackets, water bottles and a spotting scope. We each set a timer to keep track of our progress…

Barry joins the Varied Twitchers again and tries for the most species photographed in a Big Day
Species count: 170 (125 photographed)

…So, when I describe my birdathon adventure, it might be surprising that all of the Nature that we experienced is right here in the heart of Silicon Valley -- everywhere we went on Saturday is part of Santa Clara County, an easy drive from home and work. And we only touched on a tiny percentage of the vast beautiful natural landscape that our county has to offer…

The Jack Sparrows head out again and Barry tries for a Photography Big Day
Species count: 118 (99 photographed)

It was late Sunday night when we finished packing for our adventure. "Frequent showers" were forecast for Monday, so we would need a change of clothes and extra shoes and plenty of raingear. And since we would not be stopping for food, we needed a full day's worth of provisions: coffee, chocolate, Pepsi -- you know, life-giving necessities -- as well as sourdough bread and cheese, Luna bars, "gorp", fruit and plenty of water…

Barry and Ginger share a glorious day birding the county
Species count: 119

We're writing this on a rainy, windy Tuesday. Exactly the kind of day you don't want to be on a birdathon. The rain makes you miserable, and the wind keeps the birds from being out, and it makes it hard to hear them singing. Which is why we went birding yesterday!…

Barry birds with the Varied Twitchers, but leaves early due to illness
Species count: 120 (The Varied Twitcher’s total was 164)

I have bad news and good news about this year's birdathon. The bad news is that I came down sick Friday afternoon and sadly was not able to complete the birdathon. I left the team at 2pm yesterday and headed home and straight for bed where I slept off & on for probably sixteen hours, trying to fight this cold/flu thing…

Barry and Ginger embark on an environmentally-friendly Birdathon
Species count: 129

The Jack Sparrows, Ginger and Barry Langdon-Lassagne, completed our all-day birdathon yesterday. We enjoyed a successful Earth Day birdathon with the weather holding steady despite the forecast of occasional showers. We strove to minimize the environmental impact of our birding by planning a route that minimized our driving. We supplemented our driving by strapping our bikes to the back of our Prius and using the bikes to cover areas that we might otherwise have covered by short-hop driving. Also, we hiked extensively. And we picked up litter in the parks as we birded…