Notes about your surroundings.

Planning Ahead--Some opportunities to help clean up the county’s natural areas are coming up in the next month.

The first is Sept. 15, as Friends of the Santa Ana River lead a combination cleanup and nature walk in the wetlands area of a proposed regional park. Volunteers will meet at 8:30 a.m. where Victoria Street crosses the river in Costa Mesa. Information: (714) 963-1430.

On Sept. 22, there will be a cleanup of Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve accompanied by a variety of nature walks and other free outdoor activities. Volunteers will meet at 9 a.m. at Newport Dunes Aquatic Park on Back Bay Drive; transportation to cleanup sites, along with food and refreshments, will be provided. Information: (714) 646-8009.

Also on Sept. 22, Amigos de Bolsa Chica will hold its annual cleanup of the wetlands reserve from 8 a.m. to noon. Volunteers can meet in either parking lot--at Warner Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway or on the inland side of the highway, one mile south of Warner Avenue. Refreshments will be provided. Information: (714) 897-7003.

Bring a hat and wear sturdy shoes and comfortable clothing.

Bird Sightings--Some pelagic species (birds usually found well offshore) were flying unusually close to the coast in the latter half of July.

Among the sightings from Pelican Point in Crystal Cove State Park: sooty and pink-footed shearwaters and black, least and ashy storm petrels. Black-vented shearwaters are usually seen in small numbers but were seen from the point in July in flocks of several hundred, with one estimate of 20,000 birds seen in a single day.

“I don’t know what these things were doing so close to shore,” said Doug Willick, who compiles local rare bird sightings for the National Audubon Society. Sightings dropped off again in August.

An early push of land migrants passed through Huntington Beach’s Central Park on Aug. 4 before waning again. Most migrating land birds will not arrive until this month, the peak of the fall migration.

Among the species spotted: several warbler species (Nashville, Wilson’s, Townsend’s and orange-crowned), western wood pewee, western tanager and Pacific slope flycatcher (formerly the western flycatcher).

A male rose-breasted grosbeak was seen in Central Park from July 29 to Aug. 4. A spring and fall migrant, the bird is very rarely (if ever) seen here in summer.