Important Bird Areas: Coastal California

The sites listed here come from The American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas in the United States (2003). This region encompasses most of California, south of the redwoods and Cascades and west of the deserts and Sierra Nevada. A Mediterranean climate of hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters creates conditions for chapparal in the low mountains along the coast here, home to characteristic specialties like Nuttall's Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse, California Thrasher, and Lawrence's Goldfinch. The coastline provides habitat for waterbirds throughout the year: wintering American Avocet, Marbled Godwit and Surfbird; post-breeding Elegant Terns and Heermann's Gulls from Mexico; and nesting Ashy Storm-Petrels and Scripps's Murrelets on offshore islands. Wintering waterfowl are abundant in the fertile Central Valley, which is also the center of distribution for the localized Tricolored Blackbird and Yellow-billed Magpie.