Yo tweets, I just got back from a short jaunt to Torrance, CA (just blocks
away from Palos Verdes peninsula). While there I hiked around a new nature
reserve that the city is trying to restore. It's called Madrona Marsh. It
consists mainly of temporary, vernal ponds that are dry as the proverbial
bone right now but that do fill (to various depths) when the rainy season
occurs. If it ever does. I saw hordes of blue-gray gnatcatchers there, and
I got a very, very good view (though very, very brief) of another one that
I think may have been a California. It looked just like the pix in Natl Geo
(dark tummy, black cap, dark back). I couldn't see the underside of the
tail, however.

I was wondering if anyone out there might be able to tell me whether such a
gnatcatcher would ever forage in a vernal-marsh-type habitat? The habitat
was dry (check), desert-y (check), with plenty of scrub (check). But it
also had plenty of tules and no cactus.

I did go to the Palos Verdes peninsula itself, but it is so completely
paved over now that I could barely find any natural habitat at all. I
managed to find an illegal pullout in the landslide area (where Lane's says
to look), but it is tiny tiny tiny. No birds at all, except for a couple of
white-crowned sparrows and one red-tailed hawk.

I also spent a couple of days at the South Coast Botanic Garden and found
an abundance of Allen's hummingbirds (a life bird for me). They were
everywhere, and very beautiful. While there I did what often happens to
traveling birders: I found a couple of real rarities that were ho-hummers
to me: a hooded merganser and a white-throated sparrow. Nice, but where
were the (less rare) California gnatcatchers said to inhabit the garden
too? I'm hoping someone out in tweeter-land will tell me that of course the
gnatcatchers were at Madrona Marsh. - Connie Sidles, Seattle
(csidles at mail.isomedia.com)