Ventura County Has Nearly 500 Bird Species. Here's How to Start Noticing Them.

The acorn woodpecker on the oak at Camarillo Grove Park has not heard of social media. It is drilling a small hole in the bark and stashing an acorn for later, the way its ancestors did before there was a freeway running past, before there was a Camarillo, before there was anyone here to give the bird a name.

Last week I stood under that tree with my two-year-old and watched. The bird did its work. My daughter watched. I did not check my phone. It was the best minute of my week.

I spoke with Sammy Cowell to ask why.

Cowell guides full-time out of Newbury Park, and he has spent the better part of a decade in Ventura County, teaching biology at Oxnard College and Cal State Channel Islands, serving as vice president of Conejo Valley Audubon, and leading classes at the bird museum in Camarillo. He can identify most local birds by their songs and calls alone. His website is birdingwithsammy.com.

"When you're birding, you're forced to slow down," he told me. "You have to pay attention to very small details and listen and engage really all your senses. In today's world where the internet and social media are demanding so much attention from us, birding is really truly an antidote to that. It connects you to the place, the physical space you're living in. It connects you to the people around you. And it connects you to yourself."

Ventura County is, by Cowell's reckoning, the best version of Southern California. "We literally have 10 times less people than LA does," he said. "And just a lot more open space."

Then he gave me the tour without leaving his desk. The Channel Islands sit off our coast, with a boat ride out of Ventura Harbor that he says reliably puts him in front of dolphins, whales, and seabirds. The beaches and salt marsh habitat around Point Mugu. The Oxnard Plain. The Santa Monica Mountains, which shelter mountain lions, coyotes, and bobcats. The Sespe Condor Sanctuary, a federally protected wilderness north of Fillmore, is where one of the most endangered birds on earth nests, with a wingspan close to ten feet. Cowell takes clients out there.

The county has recorded close to 500 bird species. Most of us could name five.

If you want to start without leaving your house, Cowell's first piece of advice is counterintuitive. Skip the feeder. Get a water source instead.

"Not every bird eats bird seed," he said. "But every bird needs water." A bird bath, or even better a small fountain with moving water, will pull in species a feeder never could. He has hosted everything from hummingbirds to hawks.

The other backyard move is native plants. They bring more insects, which bring more birds, and they cut your water bill as a bonus.

If you put up a hummingbird feeder, watch for hooded orioles. They winter in Mexico and arrive in Ventura County in March, leaving in late summer. The males are bright orange and black, unmistakable, and they will visit a hummingbird feeder. Cowell calls them "a backyard bird that if you see it, I don't think you'll forget it."

The whole point of a backyard setup is that it teaches you to be in your own yard. My daughter, two and a half, can already spot a hummingbird before I do.

Once you are ready to leave the yard, Cowell's first recommendation is the Ventura Settling Ponds. He likes them because they reward beginners. In winter the ducks are in, and you can see a lot of birds without working hard to find them.

Beyond that, he sent me to Bob Kildee Park and Mission Oaks in Camarillo, and the Cal State Channel Islands campus for hiking and birding combined.

Morning is best. "Birding is a very slow paced activity," Cowell said. "If you rush, you are not going to see as many things as you will when you go slow." He admitted, with a small laugh, that he is not naturally a patient person and not naturally a morning person. He learned both from the birds.

A few specific birds are worth looking out for right away. The hooded orioles already mentioned, if you have a hummingbird feeder up. The male western bluebird, deep blue back, rust-colored chest. The male lesser goldfinch, small, bright yellow underneath and black on top. Cowell's personal favorite is the black phoebe. "It's not something flashy," he said. "It's black and white. But I love them." Black phoebes sit on fences and flick their tails. Once you start noticing them, you will notice them everywhere.

If you want raptors, red-tailed hawks and red-shouldered hawks are common across the county and are large enough to spot without binoculars. And right now, in spring migration, watch the scrubby hillsides for lazuli buntings. The males are electric blue and rust.

You can start with nothing. Binoculars help. Cowell recommends looking for a pair around $200 labeled 8x42 (the first number is the magnification, the second the lens size). His own pair is from Athlon and runs him about $250, which is on the lower end for serious birders.

When I asked about apps, Cowell pulled the rug out from under the question. "What I would do before pointing people to apps, I would point them to books first." His pick is the Sibley Guide to Birds of Western North America, by David Allen Sibley, which runs about $20. For our region specifically, he also recommends Birds of Southern California by Kimball Garrett, Jon Dunn, and Brian E. Small.

Apps are useful, but maybe not in the way most people think. Cowell uses eBird, mostly on the website at ebird.org, where you can click on a hotspot near your house and see what other birders have been seeing this week. Merlin is fine, especially the sound ID feature, but he warned that beginners lean on it. "It's a tool just like anything else," he said. "It's not a replacement for actually learning the birds."

Cowell put it like this: "The only difference between a rookie birder and an experienced birder is the number of mistakes that they've made." A lot of birds look similar to each other. A beginner will be sure they saw something rare, submit it to eBird, and get a note back from a reviewer suggesting they might have actually seen a more common look-alike. The actual mistake, in Cowell's view, is not the misidentification. It is refusing to admit you made one.

If you want to take this further than a backyard and a pair of binoculars, there are local ways in. Ventura Audubon and Conejo Valley Audubon both run field trips most weekends. The Oxnard Bird Club is active. Cal State Channel Islands has a student birding club. Each winter, Christmas Bird Counts run in Ventura, Conejo Valley, the San Fernando Valley, and Malibu, nationwide volunteer surveys that anyone can join. And in Camarillo itself, the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, an unmarked building on Calle San Pablo, houses one of the largest collections of bird eggs in the world. Cowell has taught classes there.

Cowell is leading a trip at Rancho Sierra Vista and Satwiwa on June 6 for Conejo Valley Audubon, focused on the birds breeding in the area. On June 13 he is helping with the annual Condor Festival in Fillmore. On June 21 he is hosting Birds and Baseball, a morning of birding around Dodger Stadium followed by the game. His private tours are bookable through his website.

"If you run into someone who's been doing this for a while, we're always really eager to bring more people into the fold," Cowell said. So walk up to people. Ask what they are seeing. They will be happy.

A few days later, at the park near our house, my daughter pointed at a black phoebe on a fence and said, "Bird." I said, "Bird." That was the entire conversation.

When I asked Cowell what keeps him coming back to birds after all this time, he said this: "I see birds and I see good. I see beauty. I see wholeness."

The internet is not going to get less crowded. The notifications are not going to stop. But the acorn woodpecker will be working that oak tomorrow morning, and the morning after that. The only thing I have to do is bring my daughter, stand under the tree, and let her watch.

Sammy hosts a podcast called Winging It with Frank and Sammy that covers everything from courtship rituals to nesting strategies. His YouTube channel has live feeder cams and beginner tutorials, including a walkthrough of the Merlin app.

He's on Instagram under @BirdingwithSammy.

He's also planning a guided birding trip to Arizona at the end of July. Full details, his event schedule, and private tour bookings are at birdingwithsammy.com.