Notes about your surroundings.

Bird Rarities--This has been a good season for sightings of birds that are rare winter visitors, according to the Sea & Sage chapter of the National Audubon Society.

At the top of the list is the golden-winged warbler spotted in mid-February at the newly opened Whiting Ranch Regional Park. This bird from the eastern United States is exceptionally rare in California. It may also be the first winter record of such a bird anywhere in the United States, because these birds usually spend their winters in Central America and farther south.

Starr Ranch Audubon Sanctuary was the site of several sightings of note. They include a summer tanager, three Scott’s orioles, a white-throated sparrow, a Lewis’ woodpecker and several grasshopper sparrows.

Some of the wintering rarities that are presumed by the Sea & Sage chapter to still be present here include: a dusky capped flycatcher at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana; two palm warblers, an Eastern phoebe and a Ross’ goose at Craig Regional Park in Fullerton; two greater white-fronted geese at San Joaquin Marsh Freshwater Reserve; a dusky flycatcher in Laguna Hills; a tropical kingbird in east Anaheim; two thick-billed kingbirds, one in Seal Beach and the other in Peters Canyon; black-and-white warblers at Huntington Central Park and Yorba Regional Park; a chestnut-sided warbler, a Scott’s oriole and a summer tanager at Irvine Regional Park, and a rose-breasted grosbeak at Whiting Ranch Regional Park.