By Debbie Sturdivant Jordan

I just got back from another amazing trip to San Diego, our eighth year supporting the San Diego Audubon Bird Festival! It’s always great fun to visit with so many old friends and trip leaders, as well as meet birders from around the country!

The winner of our drawing for a $100 travel voucher and $50 gift certificate to the San Diego Audubon Bookstore was Shirley Riehn, all the way from Indiana. Congratulations, Shirley!

This year we sponsored three “Birding the Border” field trips. I had a chance to be with some fabulous local and not-so-local guides. I learned so much from them! We birded the Tijuana River Valley and, lucky me, I got to see all the target birds including Wrentit (Chamaea fasciata) and Ridgway’s Rail (Rallus obsoletus). One gardener was quite baffled at what folks were doing when we stopped at the area community gardens for Common Ground-Dove (Columbina passerina). I highly recommend this trip; we saw just under 100 species on each of the three days.

Post-festival, I finally made it to the desert with three of my San Diego birding friends! We spent the night in Borrego Springs, visiting the Salton Sea and Anza-Borrego Desert. We missed the bighorn sheep but saw new birds for me, like Costa’s Hummingbird (Calypte costae) and Verdin (Auriparus flaviceps). The free-standing art-metal sculptures around Borrego Springs are super interesting. Artist/welder Ricardo Breceda has created over 130 of them, from wild horses to giant scorpions to workers depicting the story of the now-defunct grape businesses.

Hope to see you in San Diego next year!