Individuals in the 300 Club have seen at least 300 different bird species in Santa Cruz County. Not every birder keeps a County list, but the individuals listed below have recorded at least this many species. To join this exclusive group, contact Phil Brown. Requests for updates are sent out on the MBBIRDS group at irregular intervals.
Senior members with more than 333 species are on this page.
Junior members with 300-333 species are here.
David Suddjian - 416 Species
David was the first member of the 400 club. He was a resident of Santa Cruz County from 1985 – 2013. He amassed or assisted in finding an amazing 29 first county records. His favorite was a singing Wood Thrush at Chalk Mountain. He was the county bird records keeper from 1986-2013 and Santa Cruz Christmas Bird Count compiler from 1989-2013. He also served as coordinator for the Santa Cruz Breeding Bird Atlas (1997-1993) and put together the online birding site guide for the Santa Cruz Bird Club. The Marbled Murrelet is a special bird for David and one he has studied in its forest nesting habitat since 1990.
David has been an avid eBirder since 2009, and much of his recent birding in SCZ focused on his local patches in the Capitola and Seacliff areas, generating 1000s of checklists for eBird. Away from those areas he enjoyed birding at College Lake and Rancho Del Oso. In December 2013 David moved to Colorado and is exploring new birding horizons there, but he still keeps tabs on Santa Cruz.
Alex Rinkert - 414 Species
Alex grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains before moving to attend university in Santa Cruz, where he has resided since then. In his youth he honed his birding skills and broadened his appreciation for all things natural history at Quail Hollow Ranch, which has continued to be a favorite birding destination. He is now a consulting biologist in the Santa Cruz area and beyond. Some of his current projects involve the Marbled Murrelet and their predators, bird response to the CZU fire, and nest specimens in museums.
The Santa Cruz Bird Club and its community of birders has always been important to Alex. He regularly leads field trips for the club, has been the county bird records keeper and eBird reviewer since 2017, is a compiler of the Santa Cruz Christmas Bird Count, and oversees the Breeding Bird Atlas II.
Alex spends his summers finding bird nests, while the winters are consumed by seawatching and sorting through gull flocks. Between those times of the year, he enjoys birding at Loma Prieta and takes any opportunity he gets to go offshore on the Monterey Bay.
Alex is only the second birder to have passed 400 for the county.
John Luther - 400 Species (396 NIB)
I have never lived in Santa Cruz County, but have birded there for over 40 years. The varied habitats with wonderful birds always make it a joy to visit and bird in such a beautiful county. And of course the birders there always come up with new and exciting birds from Brambling to Yellow Wagtail to Dusky Warbler to Hudsonian Godwit. Since I live in Oakland it is not a long drive to Santa Cruz if I time my drive to miss the traffic. The total number of species that I have seen in Santa Cruz County is a reflection of the great birders finding great birds and quickly sharing the news and the specifics about locations.
Being a county birder that birds all 58 counties in California those specific in regards to location are critical and Santa Cruz birders are great in giving them. I have seen over 225 NIB (no introduced birds) in each California county and 300 in each of the 58 coastal counties of California, but always love to get back to beautiful Santa Cruz for more. Keep finding those spectacular birds!!
Nick Levendosky - 399 Species
Nick was first introduced to the idea of birding while taking a natural history and ecology course at Prescott College in 2001. Although he found this idea rather silly at first, the puzzle and game of identifying birds quickly piqued his interest and he was hooked.
From that point on he has worked to transform from a casual birder to an intentional observer.\
Nick has devoted a significant amount of time getting into the field to 'simply learn birds' since moving back to Santa Cruz in 2007. He most appreciates the relationship between species and habitat—believing birding lends itself to building a sense of place and physical community around one's home.
He has served as the Field Trip Director for the Santa Cruz Bird Club since 2015 and became a co-compiler for the Santa Cruz CBC in 2020.
Scott Terrill - 395 Species
Scott has lived in Santa Cruz County since 1997. Originally a California native, Scott was gone from the State from 1973 to 1990 pursing graduate degrees and research on bird migration behavior and ecology from Arizona to New York to the Max-Planck Institute in Germany. Scott has also served on the California Bird Records Committee, as a Regional Editor for North American Birds and the Research Director for the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.
He has been fortunate to manage to see a number of the rare birds found (mostly by others) in the county the past 20 years. Scott and Linda like to bird anywhere in the county, but are particularly fond of birding offshore and in the coastal “vagrant traps”. They have the same total number of species, but each as seen a species of warbler in the county that the other has not. Santa Cruz is a great county and we feel very fortunate to live and bird here!
Lois Goldfrank - 393 Species
Lois is a 45 year resident of Santa Cruz. She became interested in birding when she and her husband Wally became empty nesters. They don’t spend much time at the nest any more, but they do visit their grandchildren frequently in New York/New Jersey. They are avid world birders and on a recent trip to Western Australia completed their goal to see one representative of every family with the Noisy Scrub-bird. Lois´s "home patch" is Younger Lagoon which she describes as, “an easy place to drop by when ostensibly going shopping. You never know what may show up.” Surprises have included a Ruff, Yellow-breasted Chat, and a White-winged Dove.
Perhaps Lois’ s most surprising county birding moment came on a trip led by Steve Gerow. She was looking into a tangle and saw a color, then a pattern, then a bird never seen before in California: a Common Cuckoo! Another was the Burrowing Owl that stayed for the winter after showing up on Hallowe'en on the roof of the elementary school where she was the librarian.
Phil Brown - 393 Species
Phil has had a lifetime interest in birds, sparked by his father. He joined the club for a walk led by David Suddjian and was astonished and delighted to see 20 new species that morning, 1/17/2004. His first warblers (Black Throated Grey and Wilson's) were shown by Bonnie Bedzin.
He credits the following club members for building his skills, David Suddjian, Todd Newberry, Clay Kempf, David Ekdahl, Eric Feuss, and for the Pelagics Debi Shearwater and Roger Wolfe. A special mention has to go to Steve Gerow. Steve was very patient and helpful when Phil was a beginner, and was responsible for finding a very large number of his county rarities.
Finds of his own include a Brown Booby at Natural Bridges (his favorite birding spot), a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo at the same place, and the same tri-fecta mentioned by Wally Goldfrank.
Earl Lebow - 384 Species
Sharon Hull - 384 Species
Sharon’s fascination with birds began as a small child, when her Arkansas grandmother took her on her version of bird walks around her rural home. A move to Monterey in the 70s where the world of birding was exploding happened to plop her down at its epicenter and got her thoroughly hooked. For many years, because of jobs, kids and other commitments, birding was a fascinating but very intermittent activity that only occasionally got full attention but eventually a retirement move to Santa Cruz provided the free time needed to bird extensively. In Santa Cruz she discovered to her delight that she was in birder’s heaven and that there was a vibrant community of other birders here, with many great teachers and similarly-obsessed people to share her interest. The SCBC’s big year in 2008 and several periods of
big feeding frenzies on Monterey Bay were especially exciting times. She’s also discovered the joys of local pelagic trips since she found a good remedy for seasickness. These days, she especially enjoys investigating hot spots all over the US, and birding in other countries. Her special “patch” is the riparian
corridor of Leona Creek near her home in Live Oak. Her most memorable birding experience was seeing a Harpy Eagle hen and chick at the nest in a huge quipo tree in the Darien of Panama. She always watches especially for a Peregrine Falcon wherever she happens to be since that was her grandson Pippin’s middle name and totem bird. Recently, seeing the very rare peregrine pallid morph in Chile was a special thrill.
Pete Sole - 373 Species
Pete has birded off and on from about 1998. Caught the birding disease big time in 2005 when he started photographing birds. His preference is to see birds in their "normal" ranges, rather than vagrants. However, he's happy to see any bird in the wild. For that matter, any wildlife from whales to tarantulas is fun to look at and ponder their life histories.
Favorite birds: kingfishers, birds of prey, anything in the wild that he has not seen before.
Most amazing birding experience: Hearing an owl's wing beat.
In Santa Cruz county, Pete's rarest home yard bird was a Yellow-billed Cuckoo in 2011. This was also the first photographed Yellow-billed Cuckoo in county, and the third report overall. Seen for less than 10 minutes.
Steve Gerow - 372 Species
Steve was a dedicated patch birder. He did most of his birding on the west side of the city of Santa Cruz. West Cliff Drive, Natural Bridges, Meder Canyon are just a few of the sites he favored. He was a county resident from 1976 to 2017. Prior to that he and his Dad occasionally made birding trips here from their home in Salinas, so essentially he birded in the county for 40 years.
Steve had two first county records. The Dusky Warbler he found at Antonelli Pond is the most well known. His favorite was the Painted Redstart he found in the Bethany Curve Greenbelt. He contributed to the online Santa Cruz Bird Guide and served on the Bird Club board. He was a regular contributor to the Monterey Bay Birders listserve.
Steve inspired, guided and helped many local birders over the years. His passing was a great loss to the Santa Cruz birding community.
David Sidle - 368 Species (NIB)
David became a Beginning Birder during a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains with his brother Dan in the Spring of 2002. With the help of local birders such as Steve Gerow, David Suddjian, Clay Kempf, Eric Feuss, and Todd Newberry he gradually shifted into the realm of Intermediate Birder, and is still working his way up. His claim to fame is being the first to photograph Santa Cruz County’s first Black-headed Gull on Dec. 27, 2023, the ID was provided by Elias McKown One day he hopes to find, photograph and identify a sufficiently rewarding bird in the county.
Terrace Point seems to be a lucky area for David where he found a Prairie Warbler in 2009 and a Pacific Golden-Plover in 2010 that were "chaseable" for other birders in the days after.
Roger Woolfe - 363 Species
Roger has resided in the county full time since 1975. His family has maintained a beach house in Seacliff since 1967 where he often spent summers. He began birding in 1989 when a story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel announced that a Eurasian bird had been found in a local park. With a newly received Christmas gift of mini-binoculars in hand he went to have a look. There he met birders who kindly pointed out the Brambling and so began his list.
Roger likes birding the Watsonville wetlands; Struve, Harkins and Watsonville Sloughs and College Lake in winter. He likes their easy access and the fact that they can be birded thoroughly in the course of a brief visit.
In addition to farming olives in Corralitos he works as a naturalist for Monterey Bay Whale Watch and he is the coordinator of Monterey Seabirds. He loves being on the ocean and interacting with the marine mammals, seabirds and ecotourists from all over the world. His most memorable county bird was of the Great-winged Petrel which was the third North American record for that species. Hudsonian Godwit was his other first county record.
Lisa Larson - 355 Species
Lisa has loved all things nature as long as she can remember. Her father introduced her to the world of nature and she became absorbed by its elements and beauty. As a small child on a hike in the San Bernadino Mountains mud had sucked the shoe off her foot; it went unnoticed until pointed out by father and brother when she got back to the car.
Love ignited into an obsession for birding when Lisa received her first pair of good binoculars from her brother one Christmas. While hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the first bird she saw through the binoculars was an Acorn Woodpecker; the exquisite detail and beautiful colors astounded her. Her life was forever changed! The second bird she quite luckily viewed was a Marbled Murrelet flying into a tall California Redwood.
She spends as much time as possible birding throughout Santa Cruz, Monterey, and San Benito Counties. Steve Gerow inspired her to learn to bird by ear—a skill that she greatly admired in him and will refine for her lifetime.
On November 2, 2018, her 300th county bird was the Red-footed Booby (her first booby of any kind) that blessed us with its presence for some time at the Cement Ship in Seacliff. She happily spent hours and hours watching and photographing the bird—as she is known to do with many birds, given the chance. She enjoys leading bird walks and sharing her enthusiasm. Lisa likes to say that she learns from birds daily and is truly never bored thanks to our feathered friends!
Bonnie Bedzin - 351 Species
In November/December of 1988 I took a beginning birding class from Clay Kempf. I was hooked from the very first bird. I joined the Bird Club and followed Clay and David Suddjian and then Jeff Davis and Steve Gerow (and every other leader) all around the county and state. My first Xmas count was in Henry Cowell with BB Wilder and I think of him every time I see a Varied Thrush. Chasing rarities was and is great fun, but I loved learning about our more common birds. Highlights of my early years include: Milly Rose insisting that I work on the first Breeding Bird Atlas; helping to find a Marbled Murrelet nest in Big Basin; Jeff Davis’s course on the Natural History of Central California Birds; a weekend trip into Monterey county with Debi Shearwater; and of course David Suddjian’s gull ID class. Years later I was unemployed and had promised myself to start looking for work on January 1st 2008. But the Bird Club announced their Big Year, and especially thinking of Bob Merrill, I didn’t start working until December of that extraordinary year. I can’t drive by the ag fields near Wilder without thinking of the day we saw a Mountain Plover and a Rough-legged Hawk. I really wanted my 300th bird to be a Blue-footed Booby, but instead it was the Rusty Blackbird.
Now I bird the county, the country and the world. Birding makes me happy on so many levels.
Roy Carlson - 349 Species
Roy lives in San Carlos, San Mateo County, and has been birding in California since 1970. He has been a member (off and on) of the SCBC since the mid-70s. He began his Santa Cruz County list in 1971, often birding here with Peter Metropulos, and encountering Santa Cruz birders of that era such as Bill Anderson and Randy Morgan.
Roy has birded in much of the Lower 48 states; and in Europe, Central America, Caribbean, Ecuador, Galapagos, eastern and southern Africa, and New Guinea. His current emphasis is on birding all 58 California counties. He has at least 125 species (NIB) in each of them.
Being retired from the information technology field since December 31, 1999 (not wanting to ruin a new century) has been a BIG help! He especially enjoys birding in Santa Cruz County with its varied habitat and the universal helpfulness and friendliness of the Santa Cruz birders.
Glen Tepke - 348 Species
Glen Tepke is probably better known as a bird photographer than as a birder, with numerous publication credits and hundreds of photos contributed to conservation orgs like American Bird Conservancy, Audubon, USFWS and SCBC. He also enjoys playing the photo-listing game, perennially placing in the top 10 of the American Birding Association's rankings for number of species photographed in the ABA Area. Glen started birding occasionally in Santa Cruz Co. in the late '80s while visiting family in the area from his long-time home in Oakland, but didn't become a full-time resident until 2020. As an aficionado of pelagic birding with over 200 days at sea, it's not surprising that he saw 31 of his first 300 county birds offshore on pelagic trips (including, of all things, American Redstart). Rare seabirds seen in SCZ's relatively meager slice of the Pacific include Streaked Shearwater (2008), Cook's Petrel (2009), Least Storm-Petrel (2006), and the improbable trifecta of Scripps's, Guadalupe and Craveri's Murrelets seen on the same day (2017). Glen is retired from a career in public financial management and policy, and lives on the western edge of Santa Cruz with his wife and frequent birding partner, Carol Chetkovich.
Wally Goldfrank - 346 Species
Wally was a 45-year resident of Santa Cruz and taught Sociology and Latin American & Latino Studies at UCSC. He began birding in the Adirondack Mountains (NY) while earning his Wildlife Management merit badge as a Boy Scout in 1954, but became serious about it only in the early 1990s when empty-nested by his adult children. They and their families now live in the New York City area, squaring the circle, and rendering Central Park a favorite birding venue.
He loved looking for birds and mammals in distant lands. His and his wife Lois’s project of seeing at least one member of each world bird family came to fruition with the September 2012 sighting of the Noisy Scrub-bird in Western Australia. Among monotypic families, his favorite was the bizarre Shoebill, recorded at three different sites on a 2008 adventure in Rwanda and Uganda—one of them requiring an impromptu walking safari when their boat broke down on the Nile.
He credits many local mentors for helping him improve his field skills, including many other members of the 300 Club plus many other gifted SCBC adepts: Clay Kempf, Todd Newberry, Debi Shearwater, Jeff Poklen, Eric Feuss, and the late Steve Allison. His favorite local days were (1) a fall morning at Natural Bridges when within about twenty minutes several locals found a Wilson’s, a Hooded, and a Canada warbler for a rare trifecta, and (2) a tennis morning on the UCSC East courts when looking up at a first serve toss enabled a startling view of an adult Bald Eagle directly overhead.
Jeff Wall - 344 Species
Jeff started birding in 1965 while working as a range surveyor for the BLM in NE CA. From 2001 he spent four years volunteering in the raptor banding program run by the GGRO.
Jeff and Susan moved to Santa Cruz in 2005 to be near their daughter after their grandson was born. Jeff discovered the SCBC field trips and met other birders in the area. Then, in 2008, the club put on the big year which more than doubled the number of field trips led by experts like Steve Gerow, David Suddjian, and others. Following the trip leaders and taking advantage of their eyes and ears led to sightings of many birds he would never have found on his own.
His most memorable birding event was when a group he was with was looking at a Mountain Plover and a Rough-legged Hawk flew over. His favorite birding area is Watsonville Slough which is where he saw a Black Tern in July, 2011.
Steve Rovell - 344 Species
Paul Miller - 343 Species
Paul grew up in Kansas, and spent much of his time outside climbing trees and looking for bugs and snakes. His family spent time fishing, camping, and even sometimes hunting. He remembers seeing Northern Cardinals against a snowy backdrop, and huge flocks of migrating AMERICAN ROBINs. He moved to California in 1989, and worked as a naturalist at a science camp. Backpacking trips, hiking, mountain biking, road trips to beautiful parts of California he'd never been to--all of this set him up for his interest in birding.
On a day somewhere around 1997, Scott Smithson invited him to go "birding" at Natural Bridges. (Scott was the one who set up a welcome table with coffee and bagels on the way in to see Lois's Common Cuckoo).
Paul accepted. He and Scott became good friends, and began to chase rarities together--all around California, Arizona, Belize, to name a few places. He became hooked on birding, especially twitching (chasing rarities), but had to split his birding time with his other hobbies. In addition to birding, Paul enjoys mushrooming, mountain biking, backpacking, playing softball and smoking foods in his backyard.
Paul is now a high school biology teacher, and has been able to share his passion for birds, mushrooms, arthropods, and other living things with 9th graders, who don't always seem very interested. They'll come around--eventually..
Jim Lomax - 340 Species
Started birding in 1987 living in Contra Costa County where I still live. Took pelagic cruises out of Monterey and Santa Cruz beginning in 1991 and became familiar with this county birding off and on over the years. Joined the Santa Cruz Bird Club as a life member in the early 90’s and know quite a few Santa Cruz birders, some who tolerate me, some not so much. Over the years some of the more memorable birds I saw were the Brambling in 1990, Dusky Warbler in 1997, Common Cuckoo and Great-crested Flycatcher in 2012, Eastern Whip-poor-will, Lesser Sand Plover, and the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper all in 2013, and more recently, the White Wagtail and Scarlet Tanager in 2020. Strive to see new birds in all 58 California Counties and in Santa Cruz County.
John Sterling - 339 Species (NIB)
John has never spent more than one night at a time in Santa Cruz County, but has been birding there off and on since the mid 1970s while embarking on the task of learning first-hand the distribution and status of birds in all 58 of the state's counties. Starting at the age of 11, he has worked birds into his life as his hobby and career. He grew up in Napa County and by age 16 had met many of the top birders in California during that formative era of birding in the 1970s.
His favorite birding experiences in the county include finding a Buff-breasted Sandpiper at Watsonville Slough, seeing and hearing the Eastern Whip-poorwill with his daughter Lydia and good friends, barely missing the Upland Sandpiper with John Parmeter but remaining to search all day and ending up seeing the first Yellow Wagtail, and chasing and seeing the Dusky Warbler, Common Cuckoo, Great Crested Flycatcher, Brambling, Little Gull, White Wagtail among others. He lives in Yolo County with his wife Amy Wilson and teenaged daughters, Lydia and Natalia. He currently has his own environmental consulting business and teaches birding classes, leads occasional international tours and photographs every natural thing that he can.
Randy Morgan - 338 Species
Randy had a seminal role in Santa Cruz County’s modern birding history, helping to shepherd the county into the modern birding age in the 1970s, beginning to county’s bird records files, and finding lots of great birds. Beginning in 1974,Randy found on his own or with others 11 first county records, including two species that have still not been found in the county since – Greater Pewee in 1975 and Nelson’s Sparrow in 1977!
His creation of the “Bird File” was the first attempt at collating and consolidating the county ornithological record since Streator (1947), and it was easily the most thorough archive ever gathered up to that time…. In looking back over the county files one sees a burst of records beginning in 1974 led by Morgan’s field efforts. Morgan and others began to visit many areas of the county that were little explored, or for which there was little information from recent years.