2 ia AU DA BOeNy eB UL eel N 11 
A Field Trip at Santa Barbara 
By MRs. CHARLES S. BRADEN 
IT WAS A fascinating and stimulating experience last October 3 to take a 
field trip at Santa Barbara, California. A landscape and climate so different 
from our own; new and exciting bird names, as, marbled godwit, curlew, 
black turnstone; congenial companions who knew the habitat of the birds 
of that region, all made it a very satisfactory day. 
Some of the birds mentioned here were seen in the vicinity of the home 
of Mrs. Seth Langdon, former chairman of Field Trips of the Evanston 
Bird Club, who now lives on Quinientos Street in Santa Barbara. Other 
places visited were the bird sanctuary of Santa Barbara, a large pond where 
many water birds were seen in migration, the ocean front, a salt marsh, and 
Sycamore Canyon, back of the Langdon home. 
At the sanctuary were many old friends, pintail, shoveller, baldpate, 
mallard, great blue heron, coot, ruddy duck, pied-billed grebe, and black- 
crowned night heron. We found one American egret (I had seen numbers 
of these in northern California), and one Brewster’s snowy egret. We saw 
the canvas-back duck, the eared grebe, osprey, tule yellow-throat (just the 
northern yellow-throat to me), San Diego song sparrow (seemingly another 
old friend), western belted kingfisher, western kingbird, ring-billed gull, 
Farallon cormorant, and western gull. 
On the ocean front were brown pelican, semi-palmated plover, one black 
turnstone, and a large flock of sanderlings chasing themselves out of the 
way of the waves breaking over the sandy beach. At another part of the 
beach, as we were plowing through the sand Mr. Langdon called out, “Long- 
billed curlew!’”’ And there they were, just above our heads in a small flock. 
We also saw the Hudsonian curlew, western willet, marbled godwit, and 
Heermann’s gull. In Sandy Land, a salt marsh, we added Belding’s sparrow 
to our list. 
On the way back and at the Langdon home we saw the red-shafted 
flicker, California woodpecker, western crow, California shrike, Audubon’s 
warbler, western mockingbird, linnet, Nuttall’s white-crowned sparrow 
(quite common at this time), desert sparrow hawk, killdeer, Brewer’s 
blackbird, black phoebe, Anna’s hummingbird, and willow goldfinch. On the 
hill at the side of the house we saw the road runner several times. In the 
canyon we saw numbers of bush-tits, called coast bush-tit here, and the 
San Diego titmouse. We heard the wren-tit, identified by Frances Langdon 
as it was a completely unknown bird to me. There was a hawk hovering 
above us in a good light which we wanted to call the red-bellied hawk, but 
our conscience forced us to leave it as not satisfactorily identified. Mrs. 
Langdon has seen the western sandpiper, Say’s phoebe, and perhaps others. 
The next day on a trip to Mission Canyon we saw the western meadow- 
lark, the California jay, and had a satisfactory look at the usually elusive 
wren-tit. Also we found Hutton’s vireo, the western gnatcatcher, California 
yellow warbler, lutescent warbler (orange-crowned to me), black-throated 
gray warbler, western tanager, and the Oregon junco. The evening of my 
arrival at Langdon’s I found a Bewick’s wren in their back yard. 
