THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
Published Quarterly by the 
PitimieNsOrloweA UD UB. ON S:O:C LE TY 
ROOSEVELT ROAD and LAKE SHORE DRIVE, CHICAGO 5, ILL. 
Number 70 June, 1949 
California Spring 
By MARGARET MorSE NICE 
THE LARGE size of many of the shorebirds on the Pacific coast comes as a 
surprise to an easterner; in the spring of 1948, I was continually wondering 
at the imposing marbled godwits and Hudsonian curlews and abundant wil- 
lets, so amazing in flight. At Los Angeles, members of the Southwest Bird 
Study Club pointed out the sights to me. Curious surf scoters, elegant 
western grebes and absurd brown pelicans swam upon the waves; sander- 
lings and least and western sandpipers trotted along the beach, while 
western, glaucous-winged and ring-billed gulls stood on the pier. Very 
exciting to me were the avocets, such strange and beautiful birds with rosy 
as 
Godwit Willet Curlew Revere: 
breasts and head markings and upturned bills. It was a delight to see 
American and snowy egrets on the flats and to watch a California clapper 
rail hunt crustacea and swim across a pool. Black turnstones ran over 
the rocks, all black as they hunted, black and white when they fiew. 
Dr. Hildegarde Howard showed me the remarkable fossils in the 
County museum — vultures and hawks and saber-toothed cats and giant 
sloths that had been trapped in La Brea tar pits. One afternoon she and 
her husband, Henry Wylde, drove me along the shore towards Malibu 
mountain; we turned into Topanga canyon in the Santa Monicas and 
called upon W. Lee Chambers, long time treasurer of the Cooper Club. 
At his feeding shelf under the live oaks there were crowds of chattering 
pine siskins and pretty house finches, Audubon’s warblers, a Nuttall’s 
woodpecker and a wren-tit, a brown towhee and Oregon juncos, and 
finally a Cooper’s hawk that swooped unbidden (and unrewarded) to the 
feast. 
In Pasadena the home of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Michener is a paradise 
for birds with great eucalyptus trees, deodar cedars and camphor trees. 
We watched American goldfinches, house finches and California jays at 
the feeding shelf, but the most conspicuous visitor and the most constant 
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