New Birds John Saw in 2015
I started 2015 with a life bird right off the bat, chasing down a group of McCown's Longspurs on New Year's Day. I was still slow to add new birds in the early part of the year, however: an overwintering Worm-eating Warbler, a female Painted Bunting coming to a friend's feeder, etc. My family trip to Yellowstone produced two lifers: a Common Nighthawk outside of our hotel in Utah on the way, and a group of Trumpeter Swans in the park's Hayden Valley. On a fall pelagic trip around the Channel Islands, I added two specialties of the California Current (Least Storm-Petrel and Craveri's Murrelet). In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I took my first trip to southern Arizona, one of the birding meccas of the country; I saw 7 lifers while there, including both of the year's best birds (Sinaloa Wren, a mega-rarity in the U.S., and Yellow-eyed Junco, my landmark #500 bird). My final lifer of the year was a Field Sparrow in Ojai, only the 14th record of the species in California.
avg. score: 4 of 19 (21%)
required scores: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7
