Odds are, if you’ve heard of the Audubon Starr Ranch Sanctuary in Orange County, it’s been in reference to their terrific Barn Owl webcam. But the sanctuary does a lot more than open a window into the family life of Barn Owls. One thing they do is protect and restore a certain type of bird habitat called coastal sage scrub. Because of development, fire and fragmentation, this unique Southern California habitat is increasingly scarce – and this threatens the birds that rely on it. This includes the state namesake California Gnatcatcher, Coastal Cactus Wren, and several others. When spring migration comes around, it’s a big deal at the ranch when the coastal sage scrub birds return, and that’s why the annual arrival of the Black-chinned Sparrow a week or so ago caused such celebration. According to ranch ornithologist Lauren Morgan-Outhisack, a lot of spring birds are starting to turn up at the ranch. They also saw their first Lincoln Sparrow recently, as well as Audubon’s Warblers and Orange-crowned Warblers. They’re also seeing some Dark-eyed Juncos, that are probably headed to higher elevations to breed. More on the Black-chinned Sparrows below (photo by Peter LaTourrette):

So far, there haven't been any sightings of Black-chinned Sparrows reported into eBird in California, but you if you look at the map below from March of last year, you can see that only a few were reported, and almost entirely along the dry southern coast of the state:

As we got into April of last year, we saw more, but still almost entirely in that same area defined by coastal sage scrub habitat:

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