September 9-18, 2025 with Alex Sundvall
California is one of the largest states with incredible diversity in its habitats and fauna. This tour is poised to see much of it, traversing an east-west slice of central California. From the coastal chaparral and deep ocean canyons to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and high desert scrub, we truly see it all on this tour! We really lucked out with the weather on this tour, with intermittent rain only on our very first day; we had moderate temperatures and very little wind the rest of the tour! Our boat trip was spectacular and went off without a hitch. We even lucked out and were able to see California Condors for the second year in a row near the Casa de Fruta. Hopefully this location becomes a regular one for them, as everyone agreed this was one of their favorite birds of the tour! And easy to see why, as we saw nearly a dozen of these humungous birds, some of which flew right overhead! Another contender for our favorite bird of the tour was Northern Pygmy-Owl, of which we saw three! This is incredibly unusual, as it’s rare to even see one on this tour, so to see three really well is amazing. Overall the scenery was spectacular and the birds were incredible. We saw 200 species over the course of our 8 days of birding, with Dark-sided Flycatcher being the showstopping number 200.
From myself and everyone at Field Guides, we would like to thank you for choosing to explore California with us. You were a lovely group and despite some challenges, took everything in stride. Happy birding and I hope to see you all again somewhere on the birding trail!
Here is a day to day account of our tour. Thanks again!
Day 1: It was a bit of a rainy misty start to the tour, but overall we managed to stay pretty well dry! We started off the morning at the Palo Alto Baylands searching for Ridgway’s Rail, a very sparsely populated species with an endemic subspecies to the SF Bay Area! We pretty quickly were able to get on one of these big Saltmarsh dwellers foraging in the muddy edge. We got great looks at it before it vanished back into the grass. Here we also had our first looks at Long-billed Curlews, Marbled Godwits, Violet-green Swallows, a late Purple Martin, and some good studies of Least and Western Sandpipers. From there we headed just around the bend down to Charleston Slough picking up some Black-crowned Night-Herons, Cinnamon Teals, and a huge group of Long-billed Dowitchers. After a quick lunch we headed down to the McClellan Ranch Preserve where we watched Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Oak Titmice, Pygmy Nuthatches, and Nuttall’s Woodpeckers right at their feeders! We ended our birding day walking along the high tide edge of Coyote Point Park seeing some Whimbrel and Willets up close! A little more distantly were some Black Turnstones and Surfbirds playing along the rocky marina edge, with a wily Wandering Tattler that escaped most of our visions.
Day 2: Today was our boat day! And what a fantastic day on the water it was. From the moment we started until it ended, there was something to look at. We saw thousands of Sooty Shearwaters dancing in the waves with handfuls of Pink-footed Shearwaters mixed in. Once we made it to the shelf, Buller’s Shearwaters also mixed in. We had a rare 3 Storm-Petrel day for Half Moon Bay, with the rarer Wilson’s joining the more usual Black and Ashy Storm-Petrels. We saw all the expected targets and most of them we saw really well: with Black-footed Albatross, Tufted Puffin, Rhinoceros and Cassin’s Auklets, and Sabine’s Gulls putting on a real show. Not to be outdone by the birds, the mammals also put on an incredible show, with multiple groups of Humpbacks and Pacific White-sided Dolphins, Dall’s Porpoise, Northern Fur Seals, and best of all, Bigg’s Killer Whale!! Most of the time when people see Orcas, they are seeing the Resident Killer Whales. These Transient whales are a lot rarer to come across, in fact this particular Orca was named CA286 and has only been seen 3 times since its discovery in 2017. A stupendous day on the water, even if it left us all feeling a little rocky afterwards from our sea legs.
Day 3: Today was a bit of a free day that saw us going a little farther than we expected. We decided to take a chance on a group of California Condors that had been spotted a couple hours away. This is quite a bit outside the normal range for Condors, and we don’t normally see them on the tour. Last year when they were hanging out in the same area, it took us over 4 hours to track them down and get a decent look at them. This year however, right as we pulled up to the location, we spotted one sitting in a tree right on the other side of a field! We got great scope views of this untagged, wild-hatched juvenile bird. Soon after, the rest of the flock flew overhead, gifting us spectacular views of these gargantuan Ice Age relics. On our way out, we had ridiculous views of a Golden Eagle flying eye level parallel to the van! As we headed back toward the coast for lunch, we stopped by a dairy farm where we picked out a few Tricolored Blackbirds mixed amongst the other species. After lunch we took a quick stroll down the beach where we stumbled upon a handful of Snowy Plovers hunkered down in the sand. As we continued up the coast along the famous Hwy 1, we made a quick stop at one of the beaches to scan for rock pipers. We were in luck, and the high tide had pushed a group of Black Turnstones, Surfbirds, and Wandering Tattlers right up against the beach, giving us incredible views! We ended the day walking with the Coastal Redwoods, the tallest trees on earth. We stopped for some birding along the entrance road to the park, where our best birds were a wayward Chestnut-sided Warbler and an exquisite Northern Pygmy-Owl right on the side of the road! There weren’t many birds in the park itself, but the trees were incredible and there were a few Banana Slugs to entertain us.
Day 4: Today we left the coast behind as we headed towards California’s hot central valley to look for some highly sought after endemics and near endemics. The main birding today was along Mines Rd, a winding road through the central valley and Diablo Range, covered in chaparral and oak scrub. Our first stop was at a winery, where we got our first looks at a family of Yellow-billed Magpies! These cousins of the more widespread Black-billed Magpie are a California endemic and one of the major targets of the trip. We had marvelous looks not just here, but at many more stops throughout the morning. In fact, our next stop had us seeing another couple family groups of Yellow-billed Magpies! It was obvious migration was actively happening around us, with flocks of Western Bluebirds and raptors flying overhead. We spent an extended amount of time around Mile 10 hoping for California Thrasher, and while we weren’t quite able to get a visual of any of the singing birds there, with patience we were able to get views of another bird just up the road! This bird just gets down into Baja California, so is near endemic, and as we learned, can be very tricky to spot! Once we did track one down, we all got great looks and even got to watch it sing. Here we also had a family of Rufous-crowned Sparrows, something that has gotten harder to spot over the years, and our best looks at a large covey of California Quails. We stopped right at the crest of the road as the chaparral there can sometimes host Bell’s Sparrows. While we weren’t lucky with those there, we did have a wonderful experience with Wrentit and a couple of Sooty Fox Sparrows, an uncommon northern migrant. Before heading to lunch, we made a couple stops around some watering holes to try for the nomadic Lawrence’s Goldfinches in the area. Thankfully, we heard their twinkling calls almost immediately, but they would not sit for us! It took quite some time, but we eventually were able to get some decent looks at some perched birds. It was here that we also had a fleeting glimpse of a Bell’s Sparrow, and that was the best we were able to do unfortunately. Migrants were still flying however, as we had many more flocks of Western Bluebirds, Western Tanagers, and even another Northern Pygmy-Owl! After lunch, we followed a tip from our server and went just up the road and got lucky with spotting a Greater Roadrunner characteristically running across the road! It didn’t stick around long, but nearly everyone came away with an experience with this tough bird. From here, we drove out through Del Puerto Canyon and on to our hotel in Sonora.
Day 5: This was our day for Calaveras Big Trees! Seeing the Giant Sequoias is a truly life-changing experience. The trees are so big it is hard to fathom it. We spent the entire morning amongst these giants, walking around the North Grove and learning about the trees themselves and what they had seen and experienced. We also saw plenty of birds too! It was a birdy morning in the park with Red-breasted Nuthatches everywhere, and a fair number of migrants too, with our first good looks at Townsend’s and Wilson’s Warblers. The main birds we were hoping for were Pacific Wrens dancing around the big roots and understory, and White-headed Woodpeckers, the ghost of the forest high in the canopy. We were able to see both with relative ease; the Wren sat and sang for us (very uncharacteristic of this skulker in September, no less) and multiple woodpeckers graced our presence. After lunch, we went higher into the Sierra looking for some more montane species. Our first stop was at one of the ski resorts where we had our first looks at Red-breasted Sapsucker, Lewis’s Woodpecker, and Clark’s Nutcracker. We also had a bonus pair of Rock Wrens darting around the boulderfields. A little farther down the road, we were driving along when suddenly a small covey of Mountain Quail darted across the road in front of us! Thankfully they stuck around just long enough for everyone to get views of this incredibly elusive species. We ended the day enjoying some of the local Thick-billed Fox Sparrows in a scenic clearing before heading back to the hotel.
Day 6: Today was mostly a travel day over the Sierra to get us down into Lee Vining. We spent the first couple hours of the morning birding the Cascade Campground, which is often really good for woodpeckers and migrants. It lived up to that reputation well with great looks at both Red-breasted and a male and female Williamson’s Sapsucker, along with more White-headed Woodpeckers. Migrants were everywhere with Yellow-rumped Warblers and Red-breasted Nuthatches dominating the scene, but an Olive-sided Flycatcher was a real nice treat, as were the handful of Purple Finches flying around. We even had yet another Northern Pygmy-Owl, which made for three(!!!) for the whole tour! Our next stop was at Donnell Vista, an absolutely gorgeous overlook. Here we had some of our only Pine Siskins, Cedar Waxwings, and by far the best looks at Townsend’s Solitaire of the entire tour. Our last stop before lunch was the Clark Fork Campground where American Dippers have nested in recent years. Thankfully they were around today and put on a wonderful show! After lunch we made a quick stop to scan the Bridgeport Reservoir, a massive lake out here in the high desert. A large concentration of ducks was a bit too far to identify, but we did have 15 species of waterbirds, including a couple closer White-faced Ibis, Eared Grebes, and a lone Western Grebe. Suddenly next to us in the Pinyon forest we started seeing wave after wave of Pinyon Jays flying over. Some came in singles, some in groups as big as 20. But over the next 15 minutes or so the sky was filled with these enigmatic jays until about 150 of them came over. Some were calling, some were carrying seeds, very few stopped, but what a magical experience! Hoping to track some of them down, we took a side road into the Pinyon-Juniper scrub. While we had awesome looks at Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and Cassin’s Finch, the Jays had slipped away as quickly as they had arrived.
Day 7: We started the morning seeing sunrise in the south tufa area of Mono Lake. These great salt pillars left behind from upwellings when the lake was deeper provided an incredible foreground, with the mighty Sierra as the background to see an exceptional sunrise. A fantastic backdrop for our morning birding around the lakeshore and surrounding sage flats. As we started birding around the lakeshore, we quickly found a few Yellow-headed Blackbirds mixed in with the Brewer’s Blackbirds. Green-tailed Towhees and White-crowned Sparrows sang and perched on the tufas while flocks of House Finches flew overhead. As we made our way through the sage flats, we got close views of Brewer’s and Sagebrush Sparrows, and great scope views of Sage Thrashers. After breakfast, we made an extended stop near Owen’s River Ranch where we had a nice bunch of migrants around a brushy creek, with most stopping to drink. The major highlights here included more Clark’s Nutcrackers, Williamson’s Sapsuckers, Western Wood-Pewees. Cassin’s Finches, and a Merlin! Afterwards we visited the nearby Inyo Craters where some of us decided to hike up to view the craters proper. On this hike we had unfortunately brief experiences with both Black-backed Woodpecker and Red Crossbills. Next, we made a brief stop at the Minaret Vista, enjoying the incredible scenery and even had our best looks at a Say’s Phoebe for the trip. We ended the day in Bodie, an old mining ghost town turned State Historical Park. Bodie is second only to Utqiagvik, Alaska for the number of nights below freezing in a year (Bodie’s average is 303 while Utqiagvik averages 315) and no month has ever been frost free. Bodie is home to a small population of Greater Sage-Grouse, and while we hoped to spot them they can be exceptionally tricky and none of the staff had even seen them yet. We unfortunately didn’t connect with any Sage-Grouse, but we did have lovely experiences with Lark Sparrow and multiple Mountain Bluebirds.
Day 8: What was meant to be a mostly travel day ended up being very birdy with a very unexpected finale! We started early with a prebreakfast outing along the Lost Cabin Mine Road, which traverses a lovely canyon and just enters the aspen zone of the mountains. Lower along the road were Green-tailed Towhees, Clark’s Nutcrackers, and Yellow-rumped Warblers. As we crept up into the aspens and conifers higher up: Townsend’s Solitaires, Cassin’s Finches, Mountain Chickadees, and Steller’s Jays all started to wake up with the rising sun. On our way towards breakfast, we spotted a very cold looking late Black-chinned Hummingbird visiting a feeder. After breakfast, we started the very long drive back towards San Francisco. As we were getting closer to the city, I realized we still had a little bit of time and were still sitting at 199 species for the tour. At a rest stop I was brainstorming what we might be able to see as our 200th species, when I realized I had about 30 missed messages on the local Bay Area Birding text alert. Quickly scanning the messages, I saw what all the chatter was about, a Dark-sided Flycatcher! This Asian flycatcher had no business being anywhere near here, in fact it was a first record for California and the entire lower 48. Most of the records were of vagrants to the Alaskan Islands; there are very few mainland records at all for this species. And it was only a 5-minute detour from our already planned route! So I pitched the idea to the group, and the chase was on! It took a little longer than I originally hoped for once we arrived, but eventually we were all face to face with this insane rarity. The throngs of people all running through the streets and parking lots to glimpse this bird was like something out of a movie! What a way to end a fantastic trip through California and finish with a bang with a killer bird 200!
You can see my complete trip report on eBird at this link: https://ebird.org/tripreport/430503
You can download a combined PDF of this page and the eBird report at this link: https://fieldguides.com/triplists/ncx25TRIPLIST.pdf
-- Alex