Lawrence’s Goldfinch

I saw my first Lawrence’s Goldfinch Sunday when a flock of 15 or so landed in a small, leafless tree right in front of me. I was with a group invited to a morning of birding by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Birdsong Ranch, a property between Ventura and Ojai being rebuilt for birds by the Chouinard family (that was my assumption, as Lizzie Chouinard was our host). Ian Owens, the Lab’s director, had mentioned that Lawrence’s Goldfinch was the final spotting on his predecessor’s North American life list, which reinforced a comment I often make when I hear of someone bragging about the number of species they have seen: seeing a lot of birds is mainly a function of how much you travel for birds and what local guides you have, not your skill as a birder. We had been told upon arrival that we were likely to encounter the Lawrence’s, as they had been seen the day before; and it certainly required no expertise to identify the goldfinches, with their yellow-spotted bellies and black foreheads, posing briefly before us before flying off in a flash.
At the other extreme, we also saw two very rare, for southern California, Swainson’s Hawks. They were flying high in the sky, above a kettle of Ravens. “How do you identify them?,”  I asked and was told that they are the only Buteo with pointed wings. Indeed, although they were barely visible, I could see their graceful form. It took skill and experience to identify the high flyers as Swainson’s, very different from the one I had seen with Norse sitting on the roadside in Minnesota, with its identifying band across the chest.  (4/16/25)