Jake Xia has been fascinated by the natural world since childhood. A lifelong naturalist, he lives in Irvine, California, and credits his love of nature to being homeschooled and living in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains for nine years. He’s interested in most aspects of the natural world and has been birding for almost six years. Jake is active with Los Angeles Birders–Students and Sea and Sage Audubon, where he leads birding trips and assists with educational programs.

In addition to birding, Jake studies native bees and has conducted research on thermal niche partitioning, which he presented at a conference in 2024. He is also an enthusiastic contributor to eBird, iNaturalist, and Reef.org, and is currently writing an article for Western Birds on California’s second state record of a Tropical Parula. Jake was one of 10 student scholarship recipients at Western Field Ornithologists’ (WFO’s) 2025 Annual Conference in Yakima.

When not in the field, Jake enjoys snorkeling, tidepooling, and is an avid fan of The Lord of the Rings, How to Train Your Dragon, classical music, and Pokémon.

 

Do you have a favorite bird species? 

I have too many favorite birds! I’m a very sentimental person, so a lot of my favorites are ones that I grew up with back in Glendora, California. My spark bird was a Red-shouldered Hawk who I named Halo, so that species is definitely one of my favorites. Other contenders include White-crowned Sparrow, Peregrine Falcon, Townsend’s Warbler, Verditer Flycatcher, and Hawaiian Petrel.

 

How about a favorite birding location? 

My favorite birding location is Frank G. Bonelli Park in Los Angeles County. Overall it has an incredible diversity of habitats, so you can go there for warbler migration, or ducks, or chaparral specialists, or really anything else. I love spending entire days there, and those trips often total up to over a hundred species of birds. Additionally, Bonelli Park is where I met Keith Condon, a local legend. Birding with him over the years at Bonelli was how I gained most of the birding skills I have now.

I also love birding my hometown of Glendora, especially my old yard. Sadly, I didn’t start birding until two and a half years before I moved out. Normally I don’t care much about listing, but I was very proud to have found over 140 species there during that time, including unusual ones like Scott’s Oriole, Lewis’s Woodpecker, Northern Saw-whet Owl, and Calliope Hummingbird. Seeing Swainson’s Hawks fly over at sunset, doing homework perched in the oaks with warblers and Hermit Thrushes foraging around me, watching dozens of sparrows and finches at the feeders on chilly winter mornings – those are some of my fondest birding memories.

How did you first get involved with WFO? 

I was an inactive member shortly after I started birding, back in 2020. At that time, I was simply looking for local bird clubs to join and thought WFO was one of them. That changed when I attended the 2024 conference in San Diego, and it was then that I really began to appreciate the value of an organization that blends hobby birding and scientific research so seamlessly.

 

Which WFO conferences have you attended? What do you find valuable about attending the conference? 

I attended the WFO conferences in San Diego in October 2024 and Yakima, Washington, in June 2025. It’s really cool getting to meet birders from all over North America. A lot of them are deeply knowledgeable but often in very different fields from one another. Some are researchers, some are grizzled ornithologists , and some are just there because they think birds are cool and want to learn more. It’s a wonderful experience overall.

I think the most important part of the conference is the science sessions. Being able to learn about all kinds of advanced research with such easy accessibility and open discussion is what makes WFO unique to me. Field trips are fun too, of course. But that can be done any time; scientific presentations aren’t always there. I also appreciate that WFO is making an effort to bring in more scholars and researchers from Mexico, an incredibly biodiverse but notoriously underrepresented country in the birding world.

 

Congratulations on your forthcoming article in Western Birds! Could you give an overview of what the article is about?

The article documents California’s second record of Tropical Parula, which I found in May 2024 at Big Dalton Canyon in Glendora – a 10-minute drive from my old home! It also analyzes other vagrancy records of the species across mostly the western U.S., and looks at the subspecies of these records, which reveals quite a lot of interesting things.

 

How did you get interested in that topic, and how did you decide to write the article? 

Well, finding the parula was certainly a big influence. I was really happy that my constant scrutinizing of every weird-sounding bird finally paid off, and also proud to bring birders to a very underrated spot. However, I didn’t realize this was something that could actually be put in a publishable article until Jon Dunn approached me on a pelagic trip a few months later. I have him to thank for suggesting turning the report into an article for Western Birds, and also for all the invaluable advice and tips he’s given me before and during the process.

Originally I was just going to document the record and reference other vagrancy records in the U.S. without really doing a deep-dive, but that changed as soon as I started reading about Tropical Parula subspecies. A whole mess of subspecies and subspecies groups are recognized, but there seems to be a lot of disagreement on which ones are really valid. There’s a general idea of their vagrancy patterns in the U.S. and Baja, but I wanted to expand on that more.

 

What are your future career plans? Do you plan to continue studying birds or conducting research? 

Absolutely! About what exactly, I’m not sure yet. My dream is to become a marine biologist (which doesn’t exclude birds!), but I hope I’ll have time for projects in other fields too. I already have one or two native bee studies I’d like to at least partially carry out next year. In terms of birds, some prospective projects include digging deeper into Tropical Parula subspecies, investigating the Leach’s Storm-Petrel-complex situation with some seabird aficionado friends, and perhaps something about the management of birds in Yunnan, China, using bird-friendly ecotourism practices.

 

November 2025 | Lauren Smith, Newsletter Editor