Early Birders : Nature: Instead of nursing hangovers, a group of bird-watchers spent New Year’s morning taking in the view of dozens of avian species around Malibu Lagoon.

Abigail King started 1992, not with a bang, but with a goldeneye.

With half a dozen other die-hards, King rose early New Year’s morning, dressed toasty, grabbed her binoculars and headed for Malibu Lagoon.

Let the revelers lie abed, nursing their hangovers and wondering whether they had made complete fools of themselves. Birders are made of sterner stuff. King, who is president of the Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society, and her fellows chose to celebrate the dawn of the new year pursuing their passion--spotting and identifying birds.

Binoculars at the ready, they scanned the wetlands. And there among the mallards and other garden-variety ducks was a goldeneye, a common goldeneye as opposed to a Barrow’s, which is not really common at all and a relatively infrequent visitor to the lagoon.

As Charles Bragg explained, it has become a tradition among Westside birders, as most serious bird-watchers call themselves, to devote Jan. 1 to a marathon of the hobby.

At one time or another about 450 species of birds have been spotted in Los Angeles County or off its coast--from the rare albatross to the ubiquitous yellowthroat. An experienced birder will often see 300 of these in the course of a year without resorting to heroic measures. But, as Bragg pointed out, “If you plan the day right, you can pick up 100 birds Jan. 1.”

One unforgettable New Year’s the group racked up 141. As Bragg observed, “It’s a great inducement to stay sober the night before.”

In the first moments of the marathon, which would eventually take the group as far away as Thousand Oaks, at least one of the birders wore gloves without fingers as a compromise between warm hands and keeping a firm grip on an $800 pair of binoculars.

The Los Angeles area is a choice place to bird. “I don’t think we’ve ever been rained out,” said King. And Los Angeles is also rich in species, even in winter. San Diego, Santa Barbara and Moss Landing in Northern California regularly report more species in the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas count of birds. But Los Angeles is a veritable aviary compared to poor Point Barrow, Alaska, which routinely has a single species to report each Christmas--the raven.

The New Year’s Day birders are among the most committed of the Westside Audubon’s 1,100 members. Every one of them has taken at least one birding trip out of the country. King has gone twice to Antarctica, the world’s best venue for observing penguins. And Chuck and Lillian Almdale once quit their accounting jobs to spend six months birding their way through Australia.

Chuck Almdale discovered birding as a child, after he collected a group of stamps with puffins on them. “The tufted puffin was the first bird to capture my imagination,” he said. Lillian Almdale’s enthusiasm was a byproduct of falling in love with Chuck.

Birders court differently from other men, according to Lillian. Instead of outings to romantic little bistros in the evening, they wake you before sunup and take you to places where you need bug repellent. She tells of a couple she and Chuck met recently in the field. “He took his wife to the Stockton or Sacramento sewage ponds on their first date. When she didn’t object, he knew he wanted to marry her.”

“There’s a loon,” someone said as the group in Malibu approached the shore.

“A common loon, I would say.”

“Isn’t that nice?” King said. “I like to get my loons the first day of the year.”

The expertise of the group members varies dramatically, from individuals who can distinguish between a Philadelphia and a warbling vireo (the subject of an entire chapter in Kenn Kaufman’s book, “Advanced Birding”) to individuals who are content to know it’s hard to do.

Bob Fink, a retired UCLA professor of biochemistry, is one of the latter. “I like being around experts,” he said. “They’re nice people, odd but nice.”

Birding is one of those unharmful activities that the fortunate, or the wise, embrace to take their minds off their demons and give shape to their days.

Maja Block traces her interest to the time when her now adult children were young and she would observe the birds in her back yard through the window over the kitchen sink. The birds were so much more interesting than the dishes she was washing, she recalled.

Now, Block said, “I call birding my balance in life.

“Have you all seen the Caspian tern over there?” she asked the others.

The New Year’s Day birders range in age from 40ish to 70ish, and yet they all react like happy children when they add a long-billed curlew to their day’s list.

According to the Almdales, birders constitute a far-flung tribe that can be brought together at a moment’s notice by the right bird. They recalled driving to Ventura a couple of years ago to see a female xantus’ hummingbird that strayed into Southern California from its native Mexico.

“The people whose property it was on put a sign-up book in their driveway, with an umbrella over it,” Chuck Almdale said. The Almdales recognized the names of birding buddies from all over the United States.

Almost everyone in the Westside group keeps a list of the birds he or she sees, although few regard themselves as listers. Lister, Bragg explained, is a mildly pejorative term for “someone who will drop his Sunday paper and drive 500 miles to see a bird he doesn’t have on his life list.” In Great Britain, listers are known as twitchers because of their tendency to tremble orgasmically in the presence of a previously unlisted species.

Like several of the other birders in the group, Bragg has computerized his bird list (he wrote the program), allowing him instant access to things only true enthusiasts want to know, such as the 500th bird they personally identified.

After their day of nonstop birding, the group met at King’s home for supper and bird talk.

Caroline Adams told a story about Roger Tory Peterson, who made modern birding possible when in 1934 he published the first practical guide for identifying birds in the wild. Adams once went to a post-lecture cocktail party for Peterson.

“When the conversation turned from birds to the stock market, Peterson fell asleep. As soon as somebody began talking about birds again, he woke up.”

With Chuck Almdale in the role of avian stenographer, the group goes over the day’s list, which each person has been carrying around in his or her head until now.

There are chuckles when the rock dove (more commonly known as a pigeon) and the starling--two unglamorous, non-native species that tend to displace less common native birds--are added to the list.

There is an “oooooh” of approval when the handsome Northern harrier is checked off.

As the day was rehashed, the group tried to home in on what is special about birders. “They notice what’s happening to the world,” said Keith Axelson, an especially knowledgeable birder who has seen such exotic species as an orange cock of the rock in Ecuador and a kagu in New Caledonia.

Birders, he said, are acutely aware of the destruction of habitat that is eroding the number of bird species throughout the world. The bulldozers come and the birds go. King once had California gnatcatchers in the chaparral behind her home. She hasn’t seen one there in years.

Chuck Almdale said birding functions for him as “a window with a view.” It is a vantage point, a place to begin.

“Once you start looking out the window, you see all kinds of other things,” he said. “It’s a way of connecting with the natural world and understanding the processes that go on in it. Including us. We’re part of the process.”

He also announced the total number of birds spotted on the first day of 1992: a respectable, though not spectacular 102.