HUNTINGTON BEACH : City Seeks Flocks of Bird Lovers

With help from a special grant, the Bolsa Chica Conservancy is trying to lure bird-watching tourists by compiling a list of birds that have been sighted in the city in the past 10 years.

“Eco-tourism is where we are going in the 1990s,” said Diane Baker, president of the city’s conference and visitors bureau, which is coordinating the birding campaign.

While surfing and beaches are summer draws, the city needed a tourist lure for the slower winter period and decided to capitalize on the bird-rich nearby Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and on Huntington Central Park.

Pacific Coast Homes recently donated $3,000 for the project, which will be used to pay conservancy research director Louann Murray to catalogue the birds. She has been working on the list for several months, using what she called a “rocking-chair approach”--calling on local experts who have spent years tracking birds.

So far, about 315 species have been identified.

“My God, that is remarkable,” said Murray after learning the reddish egret is on the list. “It is a Florida specialty. What it is doing here, I have no idea.”

The entrants read like characters from an adventure novel. There is the much-discussed gnatcatcher, the subject of many local news stories as developers vie for the coastal sage scrub habitat of the songbird.

A lone harlequin duck, 3,000 miles off its course, has been appearing in the city, along with 32 species of eastern warblers, and even a pink flamingo.

Murray said one reason so many birds have been spotted in the city is that Central Park, in birding terms, is known as a migrant trap: The area is attractive to migrating birds that come there for a few days, then leave.

She does not expect to add many more species to the list of 315 birds, about half the number found in the United States. The list, which should be completed by the end of October, will also be used to track the birds to see how their numbers and geographical range changes. It will contain information about where the birds are most likely to be seen and when.

The list will be reviewed by five or six experts before it is published. “For beginning birders, (the list) will be a great help,” Murray said.

The next step will be to begin the tourism campaign.

An ad is planned for Audubon magazine and contests similar to a bird scavenger hunt are being considered. Cities in the East hold such competitions, in which participants try to spot the most birds on an official checklist, Baker said.

Going after the bird-watcher tourist dollar could prove lucrative. According to a recent survey by a birding group, the average bird lover has more than four years of college and an income level of $50,000 to $70,000, Murray said. Birders typically also spend a large part of their earnings traveling to pursue their hobby.

“What we are trying to say is we have really great birding here,” Murray said. “We know we have the birds--we just need to get the information out.”