Trip Leader: Reef Comer

I first became interested in birds during my early childhood in South Africa. It was pretty difficult to not notice the raucous calls of hadeda ibis and the vivid red wings of knysna turacos in flight. You could say those were my spark birds, but having spent most of my life on California's central coast, it was the waterfowl, shorebirds, and raptors that really got me hooked! Since then, I have gone from casually noting birds whenever I was out, to becoming obsessed with chasing down rare species and vagrants. eBird and the discovery of bird alerts have been invaluable tools for me, not only increasing my life and state lists, but also learning distribution, vocalizations, and overall behavior. The more I learned about California's avifauna, the more I found myself doing specialized forms of birding, like pelagic trips and owling. I have been fortunate to bird such exotic places as South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, the UK, Costa Rica and Mexico, as well as several states in the U.S., but will never take the golden state's incredible biodiversity for granted. One of my top favorite birding locales in the county is the Carrizo Plain. The landscape is a look back into old California and hosts a number of species that are either rare or entirely absent on the coast, including one of my favorite birds, the secretive LeConte's thrasher.