Figure 413. Twelve of California’s 15 recorded Louisiana Waterthrushes occurred between 1990 and 2000, including this fall migrant photographed on 18 September 1994 at Galileo Hill, Kern County (1994-153; Larry Sansone).

 

 

 

 

 

LOUISIANA WATERTHRUSH Seiurus motacilla (Vieillot, 1809)

Accepted: 15 (94%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 1	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 0	Color image: none

This large warbler’s northern breeding limit extends from southeastern Minnesota east to extreme southern Maine (local breeding in southern Ontario). The southern limit reaches from central Texas east to northern Florida, excluding the Gulf coast. The wintering grounds include both slopes of Middle America, from southern Sonora and southern Nuevo León south to eastern Panama and the northern West Indies. The species winters rarely or casually south to northern South America and north to the southern United States, including southeastern Arizona (Rosenberg 2001). The most northerly record during the winter period is from northern Ohio on 29 December 2001 (NAB 56:182). The species has been recorded six times in regions that surround California: 26–30 November 1998 in central Oregon; 17–19 May 1988 in westernmost Nevada (AB 42:469); 5 May 2003 in extreme southwestern Utah (NAB 57:382); 31 July–15 August 1977 in westernmost Arizona (Rosenberg et al. 1991); and twice in northwestern Baja California (27 April 1964, Short and Banks 1965; and 11–20 January 1996). Accidentals have been recorded in Greenland and the Canary Islands (de Juana 2006).

California’s first Louisiana Waterthrush was an adult male collected on 17 August 1908 from an artesian well located at the train station in Mecca, Riverside County (Miller 1908). This record stood alone for nearly 80 years, and the 1980s closed with but one additional occurrence, so a pulse of eight birds in the state during the 1990s, followed by four more during 2000 alone, could hardly have been more surprising. The records are scattered across the southeastern deserts and along the coast as far north as Southeast Farallon Island. The Louisiana Waterthrush is an early spring and fall migrant in the East, and six of California’s seven autumn records fall between 7 August and 25 September—early in the “vagrant season.” The exception is of a bird present from 23 November to 2 December 2000 near Lompoc in Santa Barbara County that may have been attempting to spend the winter. The only bird known to have successfully overwintered in the state was present from 9 February to 21 March 1990 at La Jolla, San Diego County. Five of the seven spring records fall within the typical “vagrant window” of 21 May–10 June, but Huntington Central Park in Orange County claims two in early spring: 3–6 May 1992 and 30 April 2000. See also Appendix H.

Identifying waterthrushes can be challenging; see treatments by Binford (1971a), Kaufman (1990), and Dunn and Garrett (1997) for important criteria.