Notes about your surroundings.

PELICANS: It is not uncommon in Orange County for a few American white pelicans to be spotted in fall and winter, especially along parts of the Santa Ana River and occasionally in the county’s wetland areas. But this season, the bird has congregated here in numbers unmatched in recent memory.

According to Doug Willick, about 200 of the birds have been frequenting the Santa Ana River area in Yorba Linda and east Anaheim in the past few weeks. “You can always expect one or two, but 200 is an amazing total,” said Willick, who compiles a list of rare bird sightings in the county for American Bird, a publication of the National Audubon Society.

The American white pelican is significantly larger than the endangered brown pelican, which is fairly common along Orange County’s coast. Most of the time it is found farther inland--thousands sometimes congregate at the Salton Sea--but this season, for unknown reasons, a large number of birds have moved closer to the coast. Higher-than-usual numbers of the bird have also been spotted in Los Angeles County and other areas of coastal Southern California.

In another unusual incident, about 80 mountain bluebirds were spotted together outside Irvine Park on Dec. 9. Usually, as the name implies, the bird winters at higher ground. Sometimes, the birds are forced to the lowlands by weather or food shortages, but in those cases the birds will usually stay for the winter. The birds at Irvine Park were not spotted again.

“That’s a big group to just show up and disappear,” Willick said.

Overall, it has been a good fall for the number of rare local sightings, Willick said. Several birds were recorded in the county for the first time. That’s exciting for local birders, Willick said, but the bad news is that populations of regular migrants seem to be down for the second season in a row.

“We had, probably, a poor showing of western migrants,” Willick said. It is too early to tell if that poor showing is just a short-term phenomenon--perhaps the birds are migrating farther offshore, or there has been a temporary downturn in breeding success--or an indication of larger problems.