Wydahoming

May 8
I am a sleeping machine. I stayed asleep in the tent until 10:30 or so, a possible record for this trip. After the late start, I felt bad that we’d missed the best part of the day at our birding stop, Deer Flat. Luckily (or unluckily, it’s hard to say) there weren’t really any birds on the lake there. Being short on time, we decided we didn’t much care for the long auto loop around the lake, devoid of birds from what we could see. So we got the heck out of there. Our afternoon stop (well, our second afternoon stop) was far more interesting, even though it doesn’t technically count as birding. We visited the World Center for Birds of Prey. They had a number of tropical raptors there, including an Ornate Hawk-Eagle and a Harpy Eagle, the very same type of bird that attacked our poor friend Avery in Panama. It has absolutely massive talons, even in proportion to its large body. Also present were the Aplomado Falcons we’d missed seeing in Texas (reintroduced there by the same Peregrine Fund that operates this center) and a California Condor (again, a part of the reintroduction program).
As luck would have it, we even saw a non-captive life-raptor during our drive toward Eastern Idaho, the Rough-legged Hawk. Having seen this guy in captivity at the Rehab center in Corvallis made this sighting all the more meaningful. I guess one benefit to the late spring is that some of the wintering raptors are still around.
We stopped at an Albertson’s grocery store en route to our campsite as well. Since they had a Preferred Savings type card there, I had to shamelessly harry the unwilling cashier into giving me the discount before I’d registered for the card. Then, to Abby’s dismay, I walked right out the door instead of pretending to go over the Customer Service counter where we’d been directed. I figured we probably won’t be back to that store anytime soon. Having bought the smallest available jar of mayonnaise for our sandwiches, we slathered our bread with generous gobs of it, enough to cover the taste of all the other ingredients in the sandwich. Not having had mayo in a while, we found this surprisingly good.

May 9
We got up at a much more reasonable hour this morning and headed for the Hagerman Wildlife Refuge. At a rest stop adjacent to the park, we found a pair of Great Horned Owls standing guard near an oversized chick—half-down, half-feathers, and looking very strange perched on a small branch just above the river. We thought maybe it had left the nest prematurely and couldn’t fly back up (it was still in the exact same place when we checked back a few hours later). The parents kept quite close, and we wondered whether there was someone to whom we should report this potentially bad situation, the owlet being quite close to the picnic tables and trail.

Further down the road, we went for a walk around the lakes, dodging fishermen and their obnoxious children. Lots of pelicans (always weird to see them so far inland with their strange breeding tusks) and osprey and ducks and the like. The end of our walk took us past the Fish Hatchery, where we tried to figure out which fish was which and decided we should stick to birds (there were big fish and little fish!).
During the afternoon’s drive, we stopped at a hardware store to replace windshield wipers (which were more like windshield streakers at this point) and camp-stove gas (mushy half-cooked pasta was getting a little old). We checked the internet and found that there had been Grouse sightings, both Sharp-tailed and Sage, on our route to Wyoming, so we switched our camping plans and headed for the town of “Lava Hot Springs,” which was nice but not nearly as bad-ass as it sounds. Also, what hot springs there were cost at least six bucks to use, so we opted out of that one. Instead we went for a drive to scout out some sage steppe habitat for the early morning grouse patrol tomorrow, and ended up driving into a snowstorm. Back at the campsite, it was snowing less, though the overnight accumulation was plenty for our three-season tent.

May 10
In the town of Bancroft, we searched every roadside piece of sage we could find, to no avail. That said, it was an amazing sunrise over the freshly snow-covered mountains. Idaho ain’t all potatoes, and this was some spectacular scenery. We returned to the campsite and since it was still early, Abby decided she couldn’t stand the sight of all my greasy hair another minute. So on went the large trash bag, small hole ripped for my head to go through, arms pinned to my sides. And off went my hair. I read a silly fantasy novel (The Dark Lord of Derkholm, if you must know) to take my mind off the potential havoc being wreaked atop my head. But it didn’t turn out so bad. Some “minor adjustments” had to be made later in the day when certain asymmetries were observed, but I must say Abby is pretty darn good. I still have both my ears, so that’s something, right?
In the afternoon, we explored what lower-elevation sections of the Caribou National Forest were open. The highlight of our riparian walk was a pair of Yellow-Breasted Chat, a bird we’d been really hoping for. We got to watch for a good long while as the male chased his lady-friend around the brush, uttering some of the most bizarre snippets of song you can imagine. He seemed to take a leaf from the Mockingbird’s book, borrowing liberally across a wide range of other songbirds’ musical territory. He was also extremely yellow, and sported a ridiculous puffed-out neck during his chatty pursuit of the missus.
We drove to the Tetons, over a snowy mountain pass and through the adventure tourist mecca of Jackson, and camped in the frosty Gros Ventre campground. We expected a silly Americanized pronunciation and were going around telling people we were in Gross Ventry, but it turns out they actually say “Groh-vahn” or some such. In the night, there were numerous owl calls, Great Horned variety, and a strange noise Abby eventually identified as (Wilson’s) Snipe…confirmed by our trusty song recordings.

May 11
If it’s a little cold, sometimes you don’t want to get out of your sleeping bag. This morning, it was cold enough that once I was even marginally awake, I was too cold not to get up and get moving. We decamped quickly and got on the road, where we ran across a herd of Rocky Mountain Elk milling about. What strange beasts they are. Most striking to me was the reddish, furry-looking neck that juts out from the breast. In their midst was a coyote. But the elk seemed to take not the slightest heed of it, large and safe in numbers I suppose. We arrived at the visitor center just after opening at eight, and immediately ran into a suspiciously birder-esque crowd near the info desk. A park ranger was launching into a spiel that sounded a lot like the typical bird-walk preamble. I then noticed a posting on the wall for International Migratory Bird Day. Turned out to by synonymous with May 11, and thus we stumbled our way into an all-day bird walk.
The walk was more of a drive, given that all the trails were still snowed over. But there was an interesting census element to the event. We took down numbers at each stop, and the note-taker was able to compare this year’s numbers with previous years’. The numbers were quite low, we learned, because spring is somewhere between two weeks to a month late. Which is annoying for us, waiting for certain birds to arrive. But it’s also nice to hear that it hasn’t been our fault, being consistently ahead of the season. Our timing for this whole trip would have been great in a normal year, it looks like.
Today’s birding wasn’t bad anyway, for us. The highlight for me was the Barrow’s Goldeneye, which here is much more common than Common Goldeneye. Of course, almost everywhere else, the reverse is true, and the Barrow’s is quite rare on the whole. Tetons residents are pretty lucky in this regard. It is a striking bird, tastefully adorned with black and white, differing from the Common in its tear-drop facial marking, the black spur on its side, and a flatter head. Other new species today included the Mountain Bluebird, looking especially electric blue among its lower-elevation relatives, and the Dusky/Blue Grouse (we’re not sure where the taxonomy currently stands on this bird, recently “split” from its close relative on the Pacific Coast). This bird can be quite hard to find, apparently. We were lucky, in a way, to find it defending its territory against a car in front of us on a major road running through the park. It seemed to respond with particular vigor to red and yellow colors (which are featured on its head during breeding displays), and attacked a lot of shoes while we gawked. It was a bittersweet sight, though, because I don’t know how long a confused bird like that is going to survive, defending a piece of highway against interloping tourists in red SUVs.

May 12
After doing a little grocery shopping and using the internet in the morning, we met up with Eric Cole, a biologist at the Elk Refuge headquarters. We got in contact with him through Will Wetzel, a friend from Williams, who has worked at the Refuge too. It was pretty cool to get a sense of how these places work and the kind of data collection and science that goes on. In this case, we accompanied Eric to the top of Miller’s Butte (off-limits to your average Joe Tourist, so we felt like kind of a big deal). The main purpose was to observe pairs of Trumpeter Swans, to figure out how their nesting proceeds on a refuge whose main focus is hosting thousands of elk. The top of the butte is a good place to get a sense of how the water flows, in a series of oxbows, and it was possible to spot the large birds from far away. Again, the late spring meant the real nesting hadn’t started, but we did identify 3 pairs and one lone swan. We also helped survey the waterfowl numbers at a given site (for an avian influenza protection project) and wrote down numbers for a vegetation survey in elk foraging grounds. This is all the fun side of field work, of course. At least we didn’t have to go back and crunch the numbers.
The afternoon was spent figuring out our plans for the rest of the trip. It’s really hitting home that we’re in the final stretch now, but it’s still tough to pin ourselves down to certain places at the expense of others. And we’re still trying to find that elusive Bar Harbor housing option. We got so wrapped up in these logistics that we almost missed the activity I’d been looking forward to the past few days—our first big-screen movie of the trip. In this case, Iron Man. I didn’t want to have to think, and it didn’t make me. It was, in a word, perfect. And also, I may or may not have a man-crush on Robert Downey, Jr. The good weather, still out to prove the forecasts wrong, held for the night, although if anything the night was colder than ever, something in the low twenties.

May 13
I don’t mind getting up at five as much as you would think, given how late I sleep in sometimes. It’s almost easier to get up this early than it is to get up at seven, for some odd reason. Regardless, we did manage to get up and stationed by the lek well before sunrise this time to see the Sage Grouse display. The unfortunate aspect of this lek is that since it’s in a National Park, it’s heavily regulated. Not the birds, of course. They strut and parade against one another and puff up their two breastal air sacs with a thunking noise, just the same. But there are signs posted far away that say the area is closed to the public. Which means that you can’t really get up close enough to see that well, even with binocs. During this time of observation, a horde of grad school students managed to sneak up on us and set up their scopes nearby. Just when you think you’re the only weirdo in town…turns out there’s an institution full of them. On the way out I approached some (non-grad school) gents who had their tripod and cameras trained on something, and when I asked them excitedly what they were so intent on, they replied tersely, “Barn.” “Oh, hm...cool,” was about all I could muster. To each his own I guess? But tell me that’s not even weirder than birds.
In the afternoon, we proceeded southwest through Afton, WY (Home of the World’s Largest Elk Horn Arch…what?), skirted the town of Preston, ID (filming location of Napoleon Dynamite), passed the cerulean-hued Bear Lake, and ended up in the Salt Lake City area.
At the very end of day’s drive, we accidentally went the wrong way down highway 15, away from our intended campsite. However, we stumbled onto a different campground, Willard Bay State Park, which couldn’t have been nicer. Lakeside and well-kept, it had good showers and even better birds. The popular colors were yellow and orange: Western Tanager, Yellow Warbler, Bullock’s Oriole, Western Kingbird, and Black-headed Grosbeak. Abby made another cookie-mix mash-up and we retreated into our tent.

May 14
In the morning, we walked around the park, observing orioles ducking into their hanging-bag nests and kingbirds chasing each other all over the place. We encountered one of the friendliest groups of birders I’ve ever met. They loaded us down with maps, checklists, and good advice about the Salt Lake area.
In the afternoon, we hit the Bear River National Wildlife Refuge. On our way to the driving loop (most of the refuge was only visible from a twelve mile dike that encircled the wetlands), we were accosted by a local who saw our CT license plate and decided we need a history lesson about the founding of the refuge by Teddy Roosevelt and how the area also had such-and-such connection to the Golden Spike and railroad history. Perhaps he didn’t understand my policy on history—if it happened before I was born, I don’t care! Just kidding…kind of. The birding was decent but the large numbers of shorebirds were not to be found. A day full of Avocets and Stilts is nothing to complain about, however. I wonder how much I’ll miss those birds when we’re back in Maine.

That evening, we headed to Antelope Island State Park, which involves a long causeway drive out to the camping area. There, we encountered a very forward group of California Gulls (who were most intent on acquiring our food), along with clouds of intolerable bugs. We spent most of the remaining daylight trying to eat in the car and read in the sealed-off tent. Having probably inhaled too much “Green Ban” bug lotion, I got a nasty headache and crashed. Abby came back to the tent from the shore, and described an owl she’d just seen that sounded suspiciously like a Short-eared Owl. Consulting Sibley, we found that was exactly what it’d been. I blame the bugs for having missed that one.

May 15
The bugs were mercifully absent in the morning, thanks to the stiff wind. We drove to a ranch on the South side of the island, to see if the island’s sole stand of trees harbored any migrant birds. Unfortunately, the reported oasis was not in effect. The most interesting sightings were some antelope (we figured there had to be some on the island, given the name) and bison (one obligingly rolled around in the dust while Abby was taking pictures).

During the afternoon, we began to make preparations for the return journey, getting the car serviced and checked out, and doing some internet planning and apartment searching. Something will turn up eventually, right? We did get one offer to live with someone’s 78-year-old mother at an exorbitant cost, and we almost considered it, too. Almost.