We Camped at a Secret Bird Paradise in California + New LIFER!

In this adventure, we go camping in a pop-up camper to one of the best hotspots in Southern California, Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. We find some amazing species along the way, and I take you back in time a few weeks to a lifer and rare bird to the state of Utah. Come with me on this journey, and let's see what birds we can find. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. My mother-in-law recently purchased a pop-up camper, so we were eager to take it out on a little camping trip. We got everything hooked up and took off into the high desert of Southern California for some unique species. All right, we got everything set up tonight here at our campsite, and I don't know if you can see me, but tomorrow, we're gonna go look for birds. We're currently camping in the camper. So exciting for the first time ever, and I haven't even researched what birds are around because I've just been having so much fun setting all this stuff up. I even brought a little bird feeder I'll show you tomorrow, but let's see what birds we can find tomorrow, and we're gonna wake up bright and early and see what we can find. I woke up early the next morning at first light while everyone else stayed asleep. I was excited to set up a suet feeder as well as a collapsible bird feeder on the other side filled with some seed. Unfortunately, I got no visitors throughout the trip, but I'll try again next time. I rolled out and headed towards one of the best hotspots in the high desert of Southern California, the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. Upon arrival, I was greeted by some Western bluebirds sitting high up in a canopy. A classic desert bird, the phenopepla, caught my eye in the distance. What's up, everybody? Back with another video, and today, we are at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. I was gonna go to the Salton Sea, but then the drive was just a little bit too long for that early in the morning. So here we are at one of the best places in San Bernardino County to find birds. I'm joined by my friend Dan once again, and Dan has already found us some great horned owls. So we picked up some great horned owls over here just roosting in the trees, and a variety of other birds that you've already seen so far in the video. Really excited to be here. There's always really cool birds. So as always, let's see what birds we can find today. Up in the cottonwood trees was a flock of whistling cedar waxwings, a beautiful tan bird with a black mask. On the ground was a dark-eyed junco of the organ subspecies. This subspecies is my absolute favorite because they look like they're wearing little dark hoods. Another bird, the American robin, pulled worms from the dirt. There's something nostalgic about seeing this scene. Whenever I think of robins, I usually think of them with a worm in their mouths. A rare bird for Big Morongo, the Kasson's kingbird, perched itself on a branch in front of us. The day was off to an absolutely amazing start. We've seen some really cool birds so far. Phenopepla, not a bird that I normally get to encounter on a regular basis, unless I go all the way down to the southern border of Utah. But here, a Big Morongo, Canyon Preserve. Yeah, they're all over the place. So absolutely incredible to pick up that bird. And we got some really good shots, photos as well, and some footage of that bird. Also picked up a Nuttall's woodpecker, another bird that I don't get to see very often unless I go down to the southern border of Utah. So really happy to get that bird, and we're just gonna continue walking through Big Morongo and see what pops up for us. There's so much cool stuff, so let's continue. The morning was perfect. Above the desert in the far distance, a snow-covered mountain could be seen on the horizon. Dan led me deeper into the preserve, following one of the many winding dirt trails throughout. Two California scrub jays, a West Coast exclusive bird, showed off their bright blue plumage. We ended up seeing these charismatic birds quite a bit throughout our day on the preserve. Weaving through the winding green oasis in the desert, we continued our search, looking for movement within the canopy. We were awarded for our effort with great views of a Nuttall's woodpecker climbing horizontally across a sunlit branch. These woodpeckers are only found in the southwestern United States, and aren't something I get to see on a regular basis, making this sighting a real treat. Obviously, the big appeal, or one of the big appeals of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve is their feeder setup. They have hummingbird feeders, they have water feeders as well. That's really important in the desert. And then they also have, obviously, just platform feeders and a few other types of feeders there as well. Just a whole bunch of food source for these creatures. So enjoy all of these awesome birds at the feeder setup. We're actually heading back to Covington Park to see if we can find anything interesting, and I'll keep you updated. At the feeders, you can expect to find incredible close-up views of a variety of different species found within the preserve, including the Nuttall's woodpeckers visiting the suet feeders. The hummingbird feeders do a great job showing off the abundant Anna's hummingbirds at really close range. The ground surrounding the setup is also full of life and features things like Gambell's quails. Where I live, I'm used to seeing the California quail, but Gambell's quails are more abundant in the drier deserts of the Southwest. The water dishes were extremely popular, attracting white-crowned sparrows and a spotted toey to the much-needed resource. One of my favorite birds easily found at Big Morongo are the white-winged doves. They're very underrated with a bold white stripe on their wings and a beautiful light blue eye ring surrounding their eyes. Visiting the suet feeders were these butterbutts or yellow-rumped warblers. It's not typically a bird I see at feeders, but at Big Morongo, they absolutely love it. Also, I need your help with this hummingbird. It looked quite small, so we're not sure if it's an Anna's hummingbird or a Costa's hummingbird. Let me know what you think in the comments below. All right, so we were actually able to pick up the red-naped sapsoakers. We were looking for them earlier in Covington Park and we got them just barely. Thanks to Dan. Yeah, two of them actually, so pretty cool to see those birds. We just arrived at this feeder setup. There's an Airbnb here and they have a couple different species of birds that shows up, so let's see if we can find some birds here as well. Anna's hummingbird. Sometimes the Anna's hummingbird's beards look so wide. Yeah, he's got the flaps like a Costa's. Well, we didn't pick anything up at the feeder setup over there. There's probably a hawk in the trees somewhere. We just couldn't see that either, so we're heading back into the middle of the preserve in Covington Park and see what we can find here. We made our way along the boardwalk trail, hoping for a few more sightings for our already amazing day. We got a great one with these bright views of a verdant chirping from a shrub. Verdants are quickly becoming one of my favorite desert birds. Back at the water dish, another new species, the song sparrow drank its fill of water. Big Marongo Canyon also works completely off of donations. There's no entries for this amazing paradise for birds and I'll leave a link in the description below if you're interested in helping them out. We ended our trip with beautiful views of a California scrub jay. And then we also ended the day playing the best board game on earth, wingspan. Big Marongo is absolutely incredible, but there is one more bird that I found in this adventure. So I'm gonna send you back into a couple weeks into the past where I found an extremely rare bird while searching for another super rare bird in the state of Utah. Let's check it out. Little quick trip here to Lincoln Point in Utah County, Utah, just on Utah Lake. Obviously came to see the second state record of ancient murrelet and unfortunately we haven't seen it and nobody's seen it today. It flew in yesterday, landed on the lake and then flew off. But what we did find was still a lifer, Northern Perula. We got a Northern Perula on our list. That is an awesome bird. Really difficult to find obviously for the state of Utah. And then also kind of weird time of year, I would say, to see that bird here. It's very cold. It's like 32 degrees right now. So hopefully it's doing okay. Very obscured views of the bird, but we're gonna just see a few more spots, see if we can find the ancient murrelet. Here with my four year old and she's done. She's done for the day. So yeah, not super happy. She wants to go back to the car. So we're going back to the car, but I'm also here with Caleb, of course. I don't know. Caleb's gonna keep looking. So Caleb might find the ancient murrelet, but we'll see if we get it as well. We just got word, murrelet, we're heading there now. We scan the depths of Utah Lake for the ancient murrelet, picking out a common merganser. Perhaps more exciting, we spotted a leucistic grebe out on the water. The funny thing is we can't tell if it's a Western or a Clark's grebe because the identifying features of this bird are missing in a leucistic creature such as this. Also, this is my third leucistic species featured on the channel. All right, so unfortunately it looks like we got here about five minutes after the bird disappeared. And tomorrow I head to California for two and a half weeks, which you probably are seeing in this video now. So no luck on the murrelet, super happy with the Northern Perula lifer. That's absolutely incredible. And I just hope anyone else who comes to look for the murrelet, and I hope the murrelet itself gets back to the ocean and is healthy. So amazing day regardless with one lifer, a new state bird and absolutely incredible. Finding the Northern Perula was absolutely incredible. Of course we did not find the ancient murrelet, but a lot of people that saw it only saw very distant views. Someday I will find that bird. So I'm gonna send it back to Jordan of the past to wrap up this video. All right, everyone, we made it back home. The camper is all put away. Ended up being a really, really fun trip. I didn't film much of the rest of it just because I was with family and I didn't want to subject them to being on camera, of course. We found some awesome birds at Big Morongo Canyon Preserve. That's one of the coolest places to go birding in California, period. Amazing species there, really great views of birds I don't normally see. I'm gonna leave a link to Dan's photos in the description below. He takes some incredible pictures and he has a Flickr link that I'll just leave down there. You guys should go check it out. Also, if you haven't already, go buy yourself a Bright-Eyed Birding calendar to help support my adventures for next year, 2026. It features some of my best photos of 2025. If you haven't seen that video, go check out that video featuring some of those photos. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I hope to see you all next time on Bright-Eyed Birding. ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪