Teen Birder Finds Way to Record

Steve Tucker was on a feathered quest last year.

Bumming rides to get out into the field, the 16-year-old junior at Buena High School in Ventura spent every available minute in 1998 shooting for a record number of bird species--305--sighted in Ventura County in a year.

“It feels great,” Steve said after breaking the record of 302 established in 1997 by Walter Wehtje of Camarillo.

“It’s remarkable that a teenager without a car to get around can go out and see more than 300 species,” said Wehtje, a graduate student in biogeography. “You can’t see that many species very many places in the U.S. It shows what a good birding area Ventura is.”

Four days before Christmas, Steve was up to 299 species with 10 days to go.

He thought he had found bird No. 300, a Thayers gull, but realized he was wrong. “The bird I saw had clean gray tertials,” he said, referring to a pattern of feathers on the wings. He checked his reference books for other factors and decided he was not sure. “If you’re not totally confident, you don’t count it,” he said.

How do you know when the identification is right?

“You feel the force,” Steve said.

David Pereksta, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, helped Steve locate No. 300, an American dipper--a dark brown and gray bird with bubble-gum pink legs that walks underwater as it feeds on insects. They searched up and down a creek in Santa Paula Canyon, where they spotted dipper droppings on a rock. Finally, the bird showed itself.

No. 301 was a winter wren, which Steve described as “a very small, buffy brown, secretive bird, the size of a hummingbird, that creeps around like a rodent.”

He tied Wehtje’s record with a big gift found Christmas morning south of Point Mugu--one female black scoter in a flock of surf scoters.

The next day Steve and another birder went to the Cuyama Valley in northern Ventura County and searched all day for a mountain bluebird. Finally, they found one, flying in a field near some cows. That was the record setter, No. 303.

No. 304 was an eastern phoebe, found near Santa Paula. And lastly, No. 305 was a dusky-capped flycatcher.

What does it all mean?

“The record itself is sort of like getting a high score in Pac Man,” said Kimball Garrett, author of field guides and manager of the ornithology collection at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. When contacted for a comment, Garrett had not only heard about the record, he knew that No. 305 was a dusky-capped flycatcher.

“I probably found out through what we call the bird box, a voicemail system where people call in with exciting finds,” he said.

The real significance, Garrett said, is that the record means Steve spent a lot of time in the field.

And “you can learn and contribute by doing that,” Garrett said. “You make a lot of observations, and if you record that and pass your notes or photographs along so they can get published, we learn more about bird distribution.”

Bird-watchers can become citizen scientists by listing birds spotted in watchers’ yards and tallying their finds on a Web site during the second Annual Backyard Bird Count, scheduled for Friday through Monday and sponsored by Cornell University and the Audubon Society. On the Web, they can watch the count come in live and learn what other birders in their region are seeing.

The Backyard Bird Count creates a snapshot of bird distribution and population status. It also serves to create a huge database that designed to detect broad-scale changes while providing an example of how the Web can be a powerful conservation tool.

It was the Audubon Christmas bird counts, in existence since the turn of the century, that showed how the starling, a bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests, invaded America from Europe and moved across the country.

Wehtje went birding with Steve on a recent day, crisscrossing the county and finally winding up northeast of Ventura at Olivelands School, where the pair spotted a Pacific Slope flycatcher. While the bird is common in April, it normally winters in Central and South America, so it’s noteworthy to spot one in January.

“The secret to getting good at identifying unusual species is that you have to be good at identifying the common species,” Wehtje said. “Learn what should be expected, understand the patterns of birds on a landscape level and what plants and animals they feed on.

“Birding is one of the few leisure activities where you can contribute to science,” Wehtje said. “I’m beating Steve over the head about keeping good notes.”

“Yeah, he’s a stickler for taking notes,” said Steve, who plans to work a second summer doing endangered-bird surveys in Humboldt County forests. He’s getting excited about the spring migration, which will start soon and peak from mid-March to mid--April. And he’s already up to 200 on this year’s list. Only 106 to go.

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J.M. Spiller is a freelance writer in Ventura County. Her e-mail address is jane.spiller@latimes.com.