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.

The Top Left Corner

And now a quick run-through of the past week or so, performed by Abby.

April 25
Morning birding at Sauvie Island with Lindsey. We probably bored her, but if so, she was admirably patient. It was a bit quiet out there bird-wise, though pleasant in other regards. The two most exciting birds of the day were both of iffy authenticity: that is, (1) improbable in terms of range/abundance and (2) seen from the fast-moving car. So we decided that we could claim to have seen EITHER a Gyrfalcon or a Snowy Owl.
Eventually we parted ways from Lindsey, and drove off toward Washington. Before crossing the border, though, we stopped to fill up on gas. Horror of horrors, there were not enough attendants at the station to fill our gas for us! The woman at the counter was very concerned…could Don do it? Did he know how? Somehow he managed. Then we crossed into Washington, back to the normal land of self-serve gas. It was still a bit of a drive to our campsite in Gray’s Harbor State Park. We got there in the dark, and decided to go tentless for ease of getting going the next morning.

April 26
Up dark and early! And on to Westport, to embark on a pelagic birding trip. It appeared that I was the only female passenger among the thirty or so intrepid birders. Later we discovered an elderly woman disguised under an ambiguously shaped bundle of outdoorwear.
We motored out to Gray’s Canyon, normally a seabird hotspot. Unfortunately, there was little out there today, so all we could do was turn back toward the harbor after one or two “chumming” attempts garnered only a lukewarm response. The chum (oil, bits of fish, etc.) did attract a dozen or so Black-footed Albatross from downwind. These improbable creatures appeared one at a time on the horizon, reaching our boat within moments. Once in the vicinity they settled down on the water to float around and tuck in on the fishy goodness. To fly short distances they opened their wings but didn’t bother to take off completely, instead paddling their big black feet across the surface of the ocean, up and over the waves. Other new birds included Glaucous/Glaucous-winged hybrid gulls, Mew gulls, Rhinocerous auklets, and tons of Pacific and Red-throated Loons. We also had a couple gray whale sightings, and a whole 14-whale pod of orcas.
Pelagic trips make me unbelievably sleepy (a good alternative to seasickness, I suppose). We managed to drive the few miles to Twin Harbors campground before crashing. While making dinner I discovered that NOT ONLY are the local corvids Northwestern Crows instead of American Crows, but that this new species is particularly fond of pasta.

April 27
Morning trip to Gray’s Harbor National Wildlife Refuge, alongside a small airport. It was rainy AND I had to use the bathroom, so instead of birding we ate at Lana’s Hangar Café (puzzlingly adorned with both aviation-related and “Betty Boop” themed decor). We went birding after that, don’t worry. Then we moved on to some other sites in the area.
At the Ocean Shores Interpretive Center we were practically attacked by over-helpful volunteers. We did manage to get some relevant info out of them, and went for a beach walk on Damon Point…but the pouring rain deterred both birds and us. There were only a few shorebirds, along with one drenched Merlin who sat on a snag and commiserated with us.
Finally we abandoned the rainy coast and went east to Olympia, to the home of the Don’s aunt and uncle, the Petersens. They treated us to a sumptuous seafood dinner at Anthony’s Restaurant.

April 28
Not uncharacteristically, we delayed till noon and missed the only sunny part of the day. And when we finally started off northward to Olympic National Park, we only drove 20 miles down the wrong highway before realizing the mistake. All in all, a pretty typical start. We made various stops for birds, including one at John Wayne Marina (what?) and a few sites around Dungeness. It was raining hard by this time, so we took refuge under the awning of the deserted Olympic National Park Visitor Center, in order to cook dinner. Then we camped a but further down the road, at the (likewise deserted) “Heart O’ the Hills” campground.

April 29
This morning we had a fruitful trip to Ediz Hook, a sandy spit just past a big industrial paper factory area. There we saw Harlequin ducks, a new bird for us, despite the fact that they’re found in Maine as well (since we haven’t seen any there yet). We made our way back south down the Olympic peninsula amidst sporadic rain. Back at the Petersen abode, we had supper from a funny French grill thingy called “raclette” or something. It was fun. The rest of the night was a little less fun, since I was just getting the horrible cold that Don was just getting over. Also, we were still covered with poison oak. It’s nice to look back on these afflictions a week later with the satisfaction of being done with them.

April 30
It was another late departure from the Petersens’ (excuse: there’s always so much last-minute preparation, planning, internet stuff, and so forth to take care of before we go…it’s really not our fault). We went east over the Cascades, through a gauntlet of rain and snow, and found paradise on the other side…aka sunny sagebrush desert. The change in weather and atmosphere was surprisingly welcome. We camped in Yakima, the one town with a campground that worked out for tomorrow’s itinerary, and coincidentally the one town we’d been warned by Don’s aunt to avoid. We didn’t meet any unsavory characters, fortunately. But we did make the acquaintance of the Black-billed Magpie, a new bird that was soon to become a common bird (though its ridiculous silhouette still provokes a reaction of mirth from Don a week later).

May 1
After some difficulty and a consultation with two semi-clueless employees at a Ranger Station, we got on track to explore the “Wenas Valley” near the town of Naches. Oddly, I found two dead wolves (one of them HUGE) lying in a ditch, probably shot and hidden by a disgruntled farmer? We also encountered some more cheerful sights, including our first Red-naped Sapsucker, and the return of the cute little Brewer’s sparrows (seen last in Arizona).
A warning in case you are ever planning to camp in Cheney, WA: the “Peaceful Pines” RV Park is fifty yards from a double set of train tracks, and peak train time is at 3 am. Don didn’t seem to notice, but you might.



(Don is taking over to write about the next three days)
May 2
We deconstructed camp in good time. It was looking to be, for once, an expeditious departure. But then a couple things (one usual, one most unusual) got in the way. The usual thing was trying in vain to find an apartment in Bar Harbor for the summer season. The unusual obstacle was encountered on the camp premises while I tried to find a pay phone. It took the form of a portly man with a long gray ponytail walking his dog. He engaged me in conversation, and I took the bait. It was a pretty cute dog, after all. And how long could it really detain me? A little human interaction to start off a civilized day? Well, there went the next half hour. The rather one-sided discussion ranged from pow-wow’s (he’s a Native American product vendor and a dancer on the side) to personal health (his recent stroke was invoked to explain his current state of obesity).
After this late start, we headed to the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge. Highlights there included a Trumpeter Swan and a bizarre-looking juvenile Hooded Merganser (its crest gave it a kind of fluffy mohawked appearance).
We spent just long enough at the Refuge to rack up a good number of waterfowl species and track down a singing enigma, which turned out to be our old friend, the Say’s Phoebe. Then we got on the highway and headed for the border. No, not the Mexican border. That was “the border” for quite a while. But this was a mere passage from Washington state into Idaho. I am sad to report that I saw no more potato fields on one side of the border than the other. In fact, we later learned that our friends in Moscow buy potatoes that come from eastern WA. Go figure.
We arrived at the University of Idaho family apartment complex, where Elissa (Abby’s cousin) and her husband Clay graciously hosted us for the next few nights. We quickly became acquainted with the household cast, which included Margaret (human, 6 months of age), Peshewa (hard to spell wild-cat), and Arlo (talkative Starling). Clay promptly broke out the wine and cheese. If you know us at all by now, you know which one we gorged ourselves on. In fact, we had to eat a lot of cheese just to keep up with the myriad varieties that came our way. One looked like a cantaloupe. I was impressed. We watched “The Russians Are Coming,” which was actually pretty good, as far as McBride family classics go.

May 3
A hearty French toast breakfast saw us out the door and packed into a compact car. Traveling with a baby adds a whole new layer of adventure. We were especially impressed at the array of baby-carrying hardware it took to get her around (high-tech car seat, baby back-pack, mega-off-road stroller, etc). We drove to the Heyburn State Park, on the south side of Coeur D’Aline, where it turned out there wasn’t too much going on bird-wise after all. The marshy boardwalks were pretty neat though, with a persistent Osprey trying to come up with a fish. And we saw a Ruffed Grouse in the woods up close.
Dinner was an excellent parmesan chicken thing (with cheese on top, of course). Then Abby decided to contribute in pretty much the only way she knows how. She made a sumptuous plate of brownies. Except, this time it was made in a real kitchen. And so they were back to being sinfully delightful, instead of just sinful. This desert accompanied another McBride family classic film, which I hesitate to admit I also did not mind, “Animal Crackers” by the Marx Bros.

May 4
My early morning on the downstairs couch was dominated by a Starling Serenade. Arlo’s favorite quotes are “Hai-yah!” (a sneeze imitation corrupted into Karate Kid), “Here’s your breakfast,” “Arlo is a pretty, pretty bird,” and a spirited if strangely tuned version of “I’m a little teapot.” This is all much more impressive when one isn’t in the process of waking up. That being said, I’m glad I wasn’t upstairs—I’d take vociferous starling over crying baby any day.
Some of us went to church, but one of us did not. He stayed behind in an effort to get some planning done. While that did not happen, he did get other businessy things done. And in a fit of guilt, he did all the dishes before others got home.
After lunch, we all went to Moscow Mountain for some more hiking, this time in some impressive Ponderosa Pine habitat. Birds were hard to locate in the tall canopy, but we did get some looks at Chestnut-backed Chickadees, a Red-naped Sapsucker, and a fly-by Rufous Hummingbird too. Margaret was a trooper and didn’t cry much at all today.
The evening was spent on a well-contested game of Spades, which was great fun until Abby decided to cheat her way to victory. This, you understand, is the only explanation for my defeat.

(Handing it back to Abby for the final stretch).
May 5
A huge thanks to the Dodson family for hosting us all weekend! After leaving Moscow we set off southward down the panhandle on highway 95 (not to be confused with a slightly larger road on the east coast). This road took us through a landscape of huge, beautiful hills, coated in all shades of green. We weathered a bizarre Bug Blizzard that left our windshield indelibly spattered. I saw one suspected Swainson’s Hawk.
At the Neat Retreat RV Park in Fruitland, ID, we made full use of the wireless services and could have borrowed a dvd (how neat is that?) but decided against it.



May 6
Westward back into Oregon and full-serve gas (the attendant took pity on us and wiped our bugspattered window). In the town of Burns we reserved a campsite, an unprecedented attempt at foresight and responsibility, then continued south 30 miles to Malheur Refuge HQ. On the way there we stopped at a pond to marvel at the dozens of black terns dipping and circling. Turns out headquarters has quite the array of yardbirds: Yellow-headed Blackbirds, Western Tanagers, Yellow Warblers, Bullock’s Orioles, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Lazuli Buntings, Rufous and Black-chinned Hummingbirds…all in numbers.
At HQ we also found out that the remaining birding sites were all 20-40 more miles south (apparently the annual water influx hasn’t worked its way very far north yet). Furthermore, one of them required being there at 6 am. So we decide to waste the $17 we’d already paid on a campsite 30 miles north of headquarters, and camp at the only other campground in the general region: down at the extreme south end of the refuge.

May 7
We woke up at 5:00 and left Page Springs Campground early, but not quite early enough. By the time we got to the sage grouse lek it was around 6:00, and we found seven male Greater Sage Grouse crouched motionless among the sagebrush. They didn’t budge throughout the next hour. It was still kind of neat that they were there to begin with, even if they weren’t still puffing up their weird yellow sacs and strutting and whatnot.
The rest of the day we spent retracing our route from the day before, and stopping at a lot of sites along the way. We saw a Sandhill Crane with a Red-winged Blackbird riding its back. Don spotted a Sage Thrasher. We scrutinized the finer differences between Franklin’s and Bonaparte’s gulls. And we saw a gazillion White-faced Ibis feeding in fields everywhere. We made another stop at headquarters, where I drew Yellow-headed Blackbirds for a while and Don fraternized with other visitors. We also visited the one-room museum full of tons of stuffed birds…it’s weird how stuffed specimens look like they’re a different size (usually smaller) than you’d expect from seeing live ones in the wild.
After stopping in Burns to fill up on gas, we started back east into Idaho, and changed time zones permanently (we’d already done so temporarily a couple days before). At Caldwell Campground we had soup for supper and conked out.

Adventure and Misadventure

April 17
I took a morning shower with my blanket, which had somehow acquired a slight lantern-oil smell. A sparrow singing in the bushes planted its jazzy song (kind of Pink-Pather-esque) in our brains, and we dorkily sang it all day, finger-snapping along. How much further can we sink? I just don’t know. We visited Patrick’s Point State Park to look for rocky shorebirds one more time. It was beautiful there, with the rather-large waves lapping the rocks, but our target birds were not to be found. We stopped in Brookings for supplies and proceeded on to the campground. I don’t have much else to report about this day, except that if I didn’t wait a week to write about things, I suppose I had would have more to say. Go figure.

April 18
We woke up at “Jessie B. Honeyman State Park Campground” and headed over to the Safeway to use the internet in preparation for our big pelagic trip the following day! Whoopee! Oh wait, sorry, it’s canceled. Dangerous off-shore winds. Well, I guess there was nothing we could have done about this, but this was kind of devastating, given that we’d planned so much around this one day, speeding up our California segment and replanning our house-visits to accommodate a day with the Albatrosses of Newport, OR. Not to be. We tried to readjust some plans and cheer ourselves up. It didn’t work too well.
So we walked along a sandy beach and talked out the rest of the trip, in vague terms. Cape Perpetua, a later stop in the rain, was pretty cool and lifted spirits a little. Eventually we arrived in Newport itself and found a campground (not hard: there’s an embarrassment of state parks on the Oregon coast) where Abby whipped up a sinful one-pot dessert. The remains of this chocolate dessert she somehow secretly sculpted into a turd, which she planted in front of the tent, where I later discovered it. She couldn’t have planned it better had she tried, because I found a group of raccoons and thought they had left it (when in reality they’d been attracted by it). Then there was a bunch of hail, and we went to bed…hoping tomorrow would bring better news, better weather, or maybe even both.

April 19
We stayed in camp, still getting hailed on, until about 1PM. This was our first completely indulgent sleep-in of the trip, I’d have to say. And it was fun. We read and wrote and took our darn time. The weather being so bad gave us a nifty excuse, and we ran with it. We did decide to go see some birds, if there were birds, but there really weren’t many. At Boiler Bay, one of the many high-way pullouts along the Oregon coast, we pulled in right behind a cop who inexplicably pulled a gun on a guy standing next to a pick-up truck. We stayed in the car, confused, nervous, and a little curious. We never got an explanation. Instead, we got a bunch of Glaucous-winged Gulls and another hailstorm.
We headed over to Corvallis in the afternoon, where we were welcomed by Abby’s Uncle Greg and his wife Kristin. We had some excellent carrot soup for dinner and took a short walk with the neighbor’s dog before heading to bed.

April 20
Breakfast was a carnival of heathen delights. We made banana waffles, a huge pepper and mushroom omelette, bacon, and apple sausages. The whole affair lasted a solid two hours, never mind the ongoing digestive marathon. Greg’s associate, Howard, joined us for a bird walk at Finley wildlife refuge, where we didn’t see very many waterfowl, as expected, but we did see a good number of songbirds, especially swallows of all kinds. A few pairs of Wood Duck were also a very cool surprise. The weather was still a little funky, but we made the most of it.
In the afternoon, we met up with Kristin, who showed us the raptors at the wildlife rehab center where she works. The assortment of hawks and owls included a female Rough-legged Hawk. Technically, a birder can’t “count” a captive species, but this thing was just amazing, list or no list. Its irreparably broken wing meant that prospects were not good. It would never fly again, but it caught my imagination in a big way, as I stood there in the rain not wanting to leave it like that but having no choice.
We went out to dinner (which again was a decadent affair), this time with a great view of the river running through town. Kristin told stories of being a rafting guide in the Grand Canyon, which made us want to float as far as the water would take us. Or at least that’s the way I felt.

April 21
It was a very uneventful day bird-wise. We got a late start, trying to cram in as much stupid planning online as we could before we left. The drive from Corvallis down to Medford was tiresome. We got to the farm in decent time though, and we got a grand tour of the estate from our college friend, Avery Briggs. The tour included a brush with poison oak, only now beginning to show its full extent (days later). We also got a close look at a Red-tailed Hawk, making a Xena Warrior Princess-esque noise in response to our proximity to its nest. The strange thing about the Dunbar farm property is that it is situated within Medford’s city limits, an agricultural plot sandwiched between suburban housing developments. Pretty cool, though odd. We had a lovely tostada dinner and had fun meeting the other young farmers, all with interesting stories to tell. We tried to remember embarrassing stories from Avery’s past to pass on. The farmhand housing is on the raised land adjacent to an irrigation canal. Our tent fit right in, and it began to rain as soon as we got in our tents. Good timing on our part, for once.

April 22
After a delightful breakfast at Chez Avery, we headed out for the Klamath Lakes, which involved the navigation of a snowy pass through the Cascades. We like snow, but we had a lot of it this winter. It would be okay if it didn’t snow on us for a while. The gloomy weather (snow turned to hail to rain and back again, through many intergrade forms as well) seemed to indicate another lackluster birding day ahead. But it was not to be so! In fact, we saw thousands upon thousands of waterfowl. The largest numbers were Greater White-fronted Geese and Ross’s Geese, but there were Canada, Cackling, and Snow Geese too. And there were Teal, Mallards, Shovelers, Coots, Avocets, Stilts, and Sandpipers galore. We even saw Wilson’s Phalarope, a new one for us, in their rusty breeding plumage. The habitat there was just great for wintering fowl, I suppose. Lakes, reeds, and wetlands all around. Even a non-birder would have been astounded at the sheer numbers. The sky tried to get a little sunny on the way back but never fully broke out and shined. Ah well.
Abby added some drama to the evening by accidentally putting the corner of Avery’s car door into her eyeball. This was pretty scary. However, it could have been a lot worse, as the damage turned out to be superficial. Now, she merely has a strange mascara-esque bruise. And we can all laugh and blame Avery for sicking his car on poor Abby.
Dinner was a hearty affair, with two different pizza types (one with feta and spinach, one with mushrooms and onions) and an intense green salad. The youthful company of Avery’s CSA co-farmers was much welcome. We finished off with a semi-local “mudslide” ice cream.

April 23
We left the Dunbar farm after watching some Snipe working the fields for a while. Avery gave us a wildly-gestured farewell and went back to pulling nails out of the house he’s recently torn down. So destructive! We drove to Crater Lake, as the snow drifted higher and higher around us (due to rising elevation, not current precipitation). We made it all the way to the Visitor Center, a mere three miles from the lake rim, only to find that the last leg was closed for plowing. We were told to wait an hour and it would probably be open again. But wouldn’t you know—the plow itself broke down. No more Lake for us...and we were so close!
Somewhere during the drive down, our righthand rear wheel ran across something tougher than it could handle. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the tire must have been slowly letting out air the whole way down. Probably better that I didn’t know, since I would’ve been pretty darn stressed if I’d discovered it then. As it turned out, no damage was done to the wheel and by the time it got weird enough to notice, we were only three miles from a repair center. Another potentially time and money-consuming incident passed with a ridiculously fair $10. I hear a lot about tourists getting gouged by mechanics. But that has been the opposite of my experience so far. Good thing, too. The newly-patched wheel brought us the final hour or so to Deschutes National Forest for the night. We set up camp in the snow, but it wasn’t as cold as I had been dreading.

April 24
We woke up to a surprisingly dry tent. A short walk through the Ponderosa Pines turned up a couple neat-o new birds. The Mountain Chickadee is stripy-headed, and sings a bratty imitation of the Black-capped song. The Varied Thrush (cover bird of the Western Sibley guide) turned out to be a loose variation of the other thrushes, with its bright orange stripes. The morning was pretty nice, but the temperamental precipitation just won’t quit. We drove up to Portland, where we stayed with Abby’s aunt Lindsey for the night. She took us out to a Mexican restaurant she knows pretty well, because she’s their PR person. I had a margarita with ginger and pomegranate in it, and it was clear from the color in my face that I have not been drinking lately. Afterward, we took “Chartley” (an elderly golden retriever named after a neighborhood in Norton, MA) for a walk…during which she marked just about every lawn in this section of town. Good for her.

And the rest of California

(In a scandalous departure from tradition, the following four entries are written by Abby.)

April 8
A morning trip to Butterbredt Springs, in the middle of a Joshua Tree desert, didn’t yield much at first. But things started picking up after we decided to postpone birding in favor of breakfast (featured events: spilled milk, late-rising birds). An endless and barely-driveable dirt road finally spit us out into semi-civilization, aka the Kern Valley Preserve, where we saw a Tricolored Blackbird mixed in with the redwings. Then we had a longish highway drive, broken up by a Route 99 rest stop with wifi, and later by a life-saving In-N-Out Burger in Fresno. We spent the evening driving back and forth in search of the elusive Millerton Lake campground. After covering the same stretch of road three or four times we finally blundered our way there.

April 9
Our departure from Millerton Lake was hasty, and didn’t involve breakfast, a fact that we later rued. We didn’t end up eating till Yosemite, and at that point cereal wasn’t enough…so we demolished a whole bag of Sunchips as well (though it wasn’t yet 10 am).
After a brief stop in Yosemite Village for information, we drove on to the “Camp 4” walk-in campground, which means we you park in the lot and carry your stuff a few hundred yards to the campsite. Don conked out for a few hours of unplanned nap, but he eventually tore himself from his sleeping bag, and we took a free shuttle to the Happy Isles. The shuttle ride was an experience in itself, a scene of mild pandemonium. This was due to the high volume of passengers and the fact that most of them seemed to have no idea which stop was theirs (for all that, it was surprisingly good-natured).
We had no trouble getting off at our own stop, oddly enough, and proceeded to the horse-trail recommended to us earlier by a red-bearded ranger. As we made our way along the river, I inspected every tributary for American Dippers. Nothing. We did get one nice mixed flock of Golden-crowned Kinglets, Brown Creepers, and our first Chestnut-backed Chickadees (a novel take on the standard black-and-white color scheme).
After that, we took the normal people-trail onto the famed Happy Isles themselves, three islets situated euphorically in the middle of the river. And then, mostly by accident, I saw one! A dipper! If you’ve never seen one, I highly recommend doing so. It’s probably the coolest bird ever. Picture a small but incredibly rotund songbird perching on a rock in the middle of a violently rushing stream…then hurtling headfirst into the river, swallowed up in the blink of an eye. A few moments later it emerges somewhere else with a worm or other such prize. We watched it for as long as it stuck around, which was quite some time. After all this excitement, it was back to camp and bear-proofing measures (in the hopes that our car wouldn’t host one of the three weekly grizzly break-ins).

April 10
We were happy to observe an absence of bear damage when we woke up. We got on the road fairly quickly, but stayed on it for much longer than planned…the ten-minute drive became a forty-minute one because of construction. Finally we got to “Foresta” and hiked around, seeing a new (native!) pigeon along the way, the Band-tailed Pigeon. Then we endured another equally long wait for the same construction project, and finally exited the park. Our last stop in the area was “Savage’s Trading Post,” not only a fascinating historical site (I’m sure) but also the landmark for the nearby trail we took. This trail ran along a steep riparian hillside that was veritably blazing with wildflowers. Another inside tip from the red-bearded ranger.
As we neared Monterey, we stopped at strategically placed tourist office…not strategically timed, as it turned out. It closed at 5, while we arrived at 5:02. We had a particular dearth of info (and especially mappage) on this leg, but muddled through and managed to find our target, the Veteran’s Memorial Park campground next to the Presidio.
We ate a Subway meal and walked along the Monterey waterfront at dusk. A row of seals (remarkable in their ability to look both cute and sluglike at the same time) lay on the shore below, with Black Turnstones running around in between them. We’d never seen this species before, but they looked just like the Ruddy Turnstone, except darker all around. A bit further on, despite the dimming light, Don spotted a couple of Black Oystercatchers, an all-black version of our American Oystercatcher. I managed to manually test the temperature of the water without getting my shoes soaked from incoming waves (a feat if there ever was one).
We drove back inland and uphill to the campground, lulled to sleep not by owls or nightjars, but by yalping sea lions. The fact that their noise carries that far is pretty impressive. At 10 p.m. we were treated to a possibly live (though improbably well-performed) rendition of Taps.

April 11
Morning in Veteran’s Memorial Park: fortunately, woke up before Reveille. A brief visit to Fisherman’s Wharf comprised the sum total of our Monterey cultural experience. After a perfectly revolting breakfast of whatever we happened to have in the car, we drove north up the coast to Elkhorn Slough – an estuarine preserve that requires you to both wipe and disinfect the bottom of your shoes before entering, so you won’t introduce some lethal oak disease or something. I don’t remember what. It’s been a long time since my Williams-Mystic maritime studies field seminar to California. Our next stop: Moss Landing State Beach, home to an impressive array of marine mammals (seals, sea otters, sea lions, and sea-crazed surfing fanatics). Also plenty of Brandt’s cormorants, all three types of scoters, and gulls. It was lateish in the afternoon before we finally got on the road toward San Francisco, and as we’d feared, we ran into some horrible traffic. Don, for one, was saved psychologically by a Taco Bell burrito along the way. I drove the last part into the city, and faced the formidable task of finding a parking place near our destination. We ended up playing musical parking spots with a local guy who somehow was driving two cars at the same time. He pulled up in one, got out, offered to switch places with us (saying he had a bigger spot and a smaller car), pulled a DIFFERENT car into the spot we vacated, and got back into the previous car and drove away. After this excitement we were welcomed into the apartment of Maggie Carr, Don’s former housemate at Williams. We enjoyed the novelty of conversing with people who were not (1) us, or (2) an elderly birding couple.

(Back to Don.)
April 12
Recent feedback suggests that long, relatively unedited journal-style posts are intimidating to read. Also, I’m very short on time. So we hope you enjoy a sparser text for our most recent adventures.
We slept in later than usual (i.e. past daybreak) and headed to Maggie’s lab to help (i.e. watch) with the changing over of a rat brain from one vial to another. Or at least that’s what I think happened. My housemate is a PhD student…weird.
She showed us through the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park. They have strange sections (like Cloud Forest, Succulents, and Redwoods) that mimic natural settings from around the world. Unfortunately, the corresponding birds aren’t part of the package. This is a state that already has stands of Australian eucalyptus naturalized and thriving up and down the coast. I guess they just get bored with their own trees here? Well, they haven’t been boring to us. Redwoods aren’t great for birds – you can’t see the canopy, for one – but they sure are impressive otherwise. We stumbled across a herd of bison grazing in the park (and winning the award for least creative Latin name ever: Bison bison). Soon after that, we came to a large Dutch windmill. And of course we encountered multitudes of the strange, strange people who make San Francisco famous. The beach was full of them. It was the hottest day they’d had in quite a while, which lined up nicely with the weekend. Perhaps for that reason, the birds were nowhere to be found in the beachy areas. It’s particularly frustrating when you see placards indicating a protected area for a given endangered breeding bird, in this case the Snowy Plover, but you can’t find any sign of its existence there (aside from the…uh…signs).
The coast is beautiful. The public transportation was not on top of its game however, and we ended up waiting a solid half hour for a street-train that, due to the delays, had about three times its passenger capacity crammed into it. We made it back to Maggie’s neighborhood in time for a great Ethiopian meal at a nearby establishment. We met up with Maggie’s boyfriend Paul’s cousin, who in turn brought two friends, so we had a stout party of seven for the proceedings. Instead of utensils, you eat communally, using a spongey bread to pick up assorted foods from a platter. We ate until we were past full, an evaluation that we modified ten minutes later when the prospect of ice cream arose. A rousing though inexpertly-played game of darts capped off the evening.

April 13
Okay, this one will actually be short, I promise. We had amazing mixed berry pancakes in the morning, expertly prepared by Paul. The Golden Gate Bridge was surprisingly uncrowded as we made our way across to the Marin Headlands for some hiking near Rodeo Lagoon. We ended up at a lighthouse with an amazing view of the bay, which contained a ginormous concentration of Grebes in the bay…and some seals, with new pups in the mix, making things slippery and awkward for their mothers.
In the afternoon, what was left of it, we shopped for dinner, which resulted in a wonderful mushroom and leek quiche, the likes of which I fear we will not see again on this trip anytime soon (back to Mac and Cheese for us now…). It was followed by Abby’s famous brownie soup. Katie Belshe, a friend from Williams, joined us, adding to the already substantial merriment.
Instead of going to bed at a decent hour, I stayed up playing with Maggie’s TiVo and watched too much of a favorite childhood movie of mine, “Hook.” Dustin Hoffman with a twirly mustachio? I couldn’t resist.

April 14
We slowly piled our junk into the car and said our goodbyes (thanks Maggie & co. for hosting us so graciously!). We headed up to the Point Reyes area, where we discovered a lot of wind and a consequent dearth of bird activity. The coastal scenery, however, only got more amazing as we progressed northward. And we managed to see a couple new birds along the way: Greater Scaup, Glaucous-winged gull, and Red-shouldered Hawk (the terra-cotta colored California race). We camped in a stand of redwoods, which at least kept us out of the wind, although it still felt pretty darn cold. Tonight’s big accomplishment: eating the canned chickpeas that we’ve had since December.
(See, THAT one was short)

April 15
The morning was a little less windy, which meant for the first time in a while we actually saw some things, at least during the first half of the day. The Wrentit put in his first appearance for us, finally, at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory banding station (which was unfortunately not operating while we visited). Part of the trail there was so enclosed and damp it felt like a rainforest. Winter Wrens greeted us with their long, babbling songs, and we felt that familiar feeling on this trip, that we’d crossed into a different world overnight. We headed out to the lighthouse point in the afternoon, and were again greeted with closed signs, meaning we couldn’t get all the way down to the rocky cliffs. Exasperatingly, we could see a colony of Common Murres down there, as well as Pigeon Guillemots in the water. So two of our new species for the day were too far to really get a good look at. Ah well, we’ll catch up with them later hopefully.

We headed up to Bodega Bay in the evening, driving directly into the sun of course, and camped for the evening at the lovely Willow Creek Campground, which we had all to ourselves. Next stop: Eureka! I hope we shall there find inspiration.

So Cal

April 5
We left Gilbert Ray Campground early and headed over to the Saguaro National Park for a 7 AM bird walk. We had already visited this area the previous day, but only during the afternoon lull, so we planned to tag along and see if the guide was any good or if the birds were active. As it turned out, the guide was fine, but he was also not a healthy man. In fact, about 20 minutes into the tour he rushed off to his car, mumbling something about his heart condition. When he came back, he explained that his irregular heart beat was being medicated and that sometimes he just felt worn out and couldn’t go on. As he left, he told the group the same joke he’d told me earlier, that since Abby and I had been here before we should lead this section instead of him. Except this time, it didn’t sound like a joke. So I don’t know if the other birders took this seriously or not, but after a few minutes of awkward standing around, I somehow ended up filling the guide role. As much as a way to fill the silence as anything. And suddenly it was almost like we were back in Bar Harbor again, leading elderly vacationers down Ocean Drive. Only, instead of chickadees, there were cactus wrens. And instead of Balsam Fir, there was saguaro cactus. Not to mention we’d been in the area all of 12 hours.
The other critical difference is that this group was bird-oriented, and that puts more pressure on your identification skills. In Maine, with the cruise ship crowd, we could say, “Oh, there goes a Rose-throated Becard,” and they might not know the difference. Well, this walk was a good indication that we were quite up the challenge. I really do feel like I’ve come a long way, as far as being able to quickly sort out all the standard birdlife of a new place. It does help that there are often hold-overs from one place to the next. For instance, the same migrating vireos may show up in both Arizona and Southern California, even though many of the Arizona residents may no longer be a possibility. Anyway, although the walk was a little bizarre, it was a confidence boost for sure, and we did see some birds. The highlight was a Scott’s Oriole, glaring yellow with a black hood and bib, sticking his sharp beak in between the spines of the saguaro on which he was perched.
The remainder of the day was spent driving to the Salton Sea. En route, we made our habitual McDonald’s stop to use the internet. It was filthy hot outside, so I was compelled to treat myself to an iced coffee. After working in a coffee shop during the winter, it is strange indeed not to be having coffee regularly anymore. At least I know I’m not addicted I guess. We spent so long there planning our next trip segments, updating the blog, responding to emails, and trying to get all our business done in one go, that as we were leaving Abby remarked fondly that it kind of felt like home. Well, that was one chicken coop I was glad to have flown.
Night fell before we arrived at our campsite, which was a large gravel parking lot with a few scattered fire rings in the middle of a multi-use duck refuge. Multi-use means that there are both non-consumptive activities (bird-watching for instance) and consumptive activities going on. Like duck-hunting. So as we heard what sounded like machine gun fire in the distance and then saw flares shooting up, we weren’t sure whether it was a holiday fireworks display (we’ve been oblivious to the passing of holidays already on this trip) or we were in the middle of duck-hunting season and hadn’t known it. After passing a fretful night, spent in the company of a small army of mosquitoes, we learned the following day that there is an “aerial artillery range” in the Chocolate Mountains nearby. Not that we know what that means exactly, either, but it was somewhat comforting to know that the bird-watchers weren’t about to go down with the birds.

April 6
I don’t know what time we woke up because 1) my watch had gone a little strange and now claimed it was New Year’s Day and 2) we didn’t know if California was on Daylight Savings Time or not. Since Arizona is proudly against D.S.T. we eventually found out that we had crossed in to Pacific Standard Time without changing times at all. I resolve not to look at my watch anymore. Thank you, New Year’s Day.
The birding at Salton Sea was really neat. Shorebirds, terns, gulls, and herons all rejoined us, and we picked up right where we’d left in Texas, except we had to remind ourselves we weren’t actually on the coast anymore. It’s just an enormous man-made salty lake, occupying an ancient sea-bed. But all day, I couldn’t shake the Gulf Coast comparisons. There were plenty of songbirds around in the bushes, too. Our first Black-Headed Grosbeaks popped out first thing, along with the greatest diversity of warblers that we’d seen yet. We drove down Davis Road parallel to the shore, and took a number of small access roads over to the lake, where there were thousands of Northern Shovelers, American Coots, Long-billed Dowitchers, American Avocets, and Black-necked Stilts. What a show. In the middle of one large gathering of waterfowl, Abby spotted a Roseate Spoonbill threshing the water with his prehistoric bill. A Brant also stood out from the ducks, looking almost but not quite like a cross between a coot and a Canada Goose. Gull-billed Terns (in the U.S. confined to this one location) were a real treat, as were the Burrowing Owls we found perched on telephone wires above the roadside agricultural fields. At least there’s one owl out in the daytime so you can see it pretty easily. At one point, we had all three peeps, the smallest sandpipers, lined up for us to compare…a stroke of luck, as these are a notoriously difficult group to separate in the field. Marbled Godwits also put in an appearance, mixed in with the Dowitchers on the mudflats. But it wasn’t even the new species that was most exciting. It was the numerical spectacle of so many birds concentrated in one area. That’s one of the greatest joys of watching birds that depend on water—when there isn’t much water around, the birds can be found in these oases in unimaginable numbers.
Eventually, we had to uproot ourselves and drive on up to Joshua Tree, where we spent a much more restful night. First, though, we had a long-put-off planning session that should carry us to the end of the month! In particular, we’ve had to plan around an April 19th pelagic birding trip to see Albatrosses on the Oregon coast (just signed up a few days ago…very exciting). The more immediate plan is to bird at Big Morongo today, and then head up to the Kern River Valley, where we’ll spend a night and morning birding before continuing on to Yosemite.

April 7
We finally figured out what time it was this morning and marched off to the Big Morongo Preserve to do some birding. Odd that the best site in the area is not in the National Park at all, but there you have it. We walked the trails through a remarkably varied set of habitats, from a boardwalk through the marsh to a desert scrubland up to a ridge-line absolutely covered in wildflowers. I’d heard of the desert bloom, but this was something else. Abby and I independently thought of Switzerland. I guess when you combine snowy peaks in the background and rolling wildflower meadows in the foreground, that’s what you get. Then when you add yucca and desert plants, I don’t know what you get. Big Morongo, I suppose. Most of the birds, however, were hanging out down below. So that’s where we spent most of our time. We were shown a Hooded Oriole’s nest, a tubular structure attached I-don’t-know-how to the underside of a palm frond, forty feet up off the ground. In the last two days, we have run into three new species with “California” in the name: the California Gull, Towhee, and Thrasher. I guess at least we know where we are, even if we can’t tell what time it is.
We spent a decent amount of time at the feeders by the entrance looking for Costa’s Hummingbird, a somewhat scarce but year-round resident. Only the females, which are far more difficult to differentiate, showed up, but we did figure them out in the end. Lawrence’s Goldfinches were another new species, and though Abby got a look at a distinctive male earlier on, I was left to sort out the plumage details on the females at the feeder. Also present were two birding brothers who would split up and communicate via walkie-talkie, which we found very amusing. “Good look on the Vermilion Flycatcher here, come over to the cottonwoods and find me.”
We had a decent drive to accomplish today, so we left in the early afternoon (though not as early as we should have) and made our way up toward the Kern River Valley. On the way we stopped at a pizzeria and ate hamburgers, which tasted a little like meatball. Abby exercised the “Italian” option on hers, meaning it came on garlic bread. Eventually, we arrived at Red Rock State Park. It’s quite windy and a lot colder up here (now that we’re no longer 200-plus feet below sea level, as at the Salton Sea). Go figure. I fear that on the rest of the trip we’re going to have to be more conscious of the elevation changes, since there’s still snow in a lot of the high places where we’re headed, in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. We’ve gotten spoiled in the past three weeks or so, not even bothering to set up our tent half the time. During that whole stretch we’ve had a total of two cloudy days, and no rain at all.

Stoked

April 3

We got into the Molino Basin campground late the previous night, and had another of those strange experiences where we wake up and say, “Oh, so this is what our campsite looks like, I guess.” And it was a nice one. The best birding of the day turned out to be right there in the desert scrub, as I tried to avoid packing the car by hearing interesting things and chasing them down. This haphazard process produced the only new species of the day, a Dusky-capped Flycatcher. I never did get a good look, but the calls were distinctive enough. We took a short hike in search of the Crissal Thrasher. This species is becoming what you might call a “nemesis bird” for us, in that we have looked specifically for it a number of times and come up empty-handed. It is known for being secretive, so I guess we won’t be too hard on ourselves about the whole thing.

We drove up higher into the Santa Catalina Mountains, to Bear Canyon, where we took a short hike that got us up high pretty fast. Unfortunately, the birds did not want to come with us. And the peace was kind of disrupted by a lot of mowing and maintenance being done on the nearby campground. “How about that serenity,” I felt like saying (that probably means little if you haven’t seen the Australian movie “The Castle” —in which case you probably need to see it!).
The rest of the day was spent on errands, groceries, internet, and planning. As exciting as all of that sounds, I will spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say, we were uncharacteristically productive, and yet somehow still have lots of things left to tackle another day. We spent the night at nearby Catalina State Park, with an Elf Owl yapping nearby.

P.S. Driving in Tucson has now been removed from my list of things I would recommend that anyone ever do if it could be avoided.

April 4

Catalina State Park has a trail called “Birding Trail.” On the basis that this was not just a convenient name, we spent the early morning wandering this cross-section of mesquite, desert scrub, and riparian habitats. We were stumped by a bizarre noise coming out of the denser Bosque on the way back, and every time we tried to sneak up for a look, we would suddenly hear the call from much farther away. We finally by chance met up with the singing culprit on the way out, a Gambel’s Quail, which apparently has at least two bizarre calls, only one of which we’d previously encountered. Another fun new noise that was easier to identify was the Rufous-winged Sparrow’s song, which sounds like a ball dropping and then bouncing up and down until it finally comes to rest.

We headed back into Tucson to finish one last errand. At the Tucson Audubon nature Store, Abby got a spiffy new pair of binoculars! Technically, as we recently read, we should call it a binocular (singular). But, what can I say, we’re rebels at heart. Also, if you've read this far, you deserve to finally learn what the heck the title of this post means. Abby and I now both are wearing Stokes binoculars. Hence, we are "Stoked." She now looks as goofy as I do with her binocular harness on. It’s nice to have some help carrying this particular torch. (Edit: It is impossible to look as goofy as Don with his binocular harness, Australian cattleman hat, long underwear, cheese juggling shirt, and chaco sandals combination. –A.M.)

Later, we visited the Western section of the Saguaro National Park, where we’d been two years ago during a Williams Outing Club trip to the Grand Canyon. This is a place that definitely can stand a second look, bizarre cactus totems springing up everywhere you turn. But it’s amazing how different it feels now that our focus has changed. All these birds were probably flying in front of our car then too, but I was oblivious to their presence, much less aware of what kind they were. We’re staying at the very same Gilbert Ray Campground, where we’ll spend our final night in this region before heading out tomorrow to California and the Salton Sea. Arizona, it’s been real.

Last days in southeast AZ

April 1

No birds today.




(April Fool’s)

Well, I don’t know if I got anyone there. Sigh. We did see birds today—I admit it. And they were good ones too. The morning started off splendidly when we joined up with a birder who lives in the area and leads tours. He was doing recon for a group he was taking out the next day…and they wanted Black-capped Gnatcatchers, which have been known to nest near Patagonia Lake. The Birding Trail on the upstream side of the lake is so well-traversed by birders that the different low areas (known as “washes”) are numbered, for ease of reference. So we can say, for instance, that we tracked a pair of Black-capped Gnatcatchers near the saddle between washes 2 and 3. And people would know what we meant. Now, whether we’d want to share that secret…that might be another matter. The fact is, these birds acted completely unaware of our presence, as we followed along watching them forage in the mesquite for about 20 minutes. Just out walking the gnatcatchers, as our co-birder put it. If the two birds got separated, they would make a kitten-like buzz to locate each other (that’s how we originally knew we were in the right area). This bird is pretty similar to the Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher we see in New England, but after really looking at it for a while, you can tell that it’s very much its own thing. And these guys are about as rare as they come for regular breeding birds in the United States (down in Mexico, where most of their range lies, would be another story).
We wandered further up the creek today and saw mostly the same species as the day before.

After packing up and taking a refreshing dip in the freezing-cold lake, we headed out. Our camping destination was in Madera Canyon, but on the way we stopped at Kino Springs, a collection of wetlands and ponds on the property of a golf resort (stranger places have been birded). A highlight there was seeing our second new gnatcatcher of the day, the Black-tailed. This guy was easier to tell apart based on the black underside of his tail, and he’s not so rare. But we had somehow missed him up to that point, and it was really cool to see the two species on the same day. Also on the pond were a trio of Long-billed Dowitchers punching up the mud for invertebrate morsels and a lone male Cinnamon Teal, gleaming in the afternoon sun. In the top of a tall cottonwood, we saw a couple of huge stick nests fifteen feet apart. Suddenly, a Great Blue Heron flew in and landed on the left-hand nest, to share food with his mate who had been hiding from us inside. Later, we discovered a Great Horned Owl head sticking up from the other nest! Making use of the available real estate (last year’s heron home?). What a bizarre combination of bird species, nesting high above the golfers on identically formed nests.

April 2
Our campsite at Madera Canyon was adjacent to that of a strange man who kind of creeped us out, such that we left early, in a hurry, to eat breakfast and change clothes elsewhere. That is the story of how I ended up wearing pajama bottoms, sandals, and a puffy down jacket as my birding attire for the first part of the morning. We dawdled waiting for the sun to come up a little more over the canyon walls and made our way to the Santa Rita Lodge, famous for its hummingbird feeders. There we spent a little time observing the 10-20 Wild Turkeys cleaning up around the seed-feeders.

A few hummingbirds were starting to feed, but we decided to move on to the Madera Kubo, where a Flame-colored Tanager had been reported back early for the breeding season (in the past few years he has attempted to breed in the vicinity of this cottage feeder site, sometimes with a female Western Tanager rather than his own species). Our good luck continued, and we saw in quick succession a Scott’s Oriole, a Hooded Oriole, and then the Tanager, clear as day across the road. We followed him for a while, listening to his hoarse calls and pointing him out to the crowd of birders that began to form. This would be a life bird for most visitors, and there was a cool buzz about the place.

After some really nice looks at the Tanager, we headed for the trails. There was surprisingly little activity up there, probably due to the first overcast day we’d experienced in weeks. But we made do with a nice walk up and found a number of new treats on the way down. We tagged along with a guided walk on the way down, which helped with identifying three new flycatchers: the Greater Peewee, Western Wood-Peewee, and Cordilleran Flycatcher. The latter is distinguishable from its closest relative only by voice, so the help was appreciated. We also saw a beautiful Townsend’s Warbler, relative to the Black-Throated Green from home and the Golden-cheeked we saw in Texas. And in the parking lot at the end of the hike, I was doodling around after lunch and decided to put my binoculars on a Hutton’s Vireo singing his brains out, when a distinctive male Hepatic Tanager came and chased him off. That’s one way to “find” a new bird, I guess. I wish they all could be that easy.
We check for interesting things at the feeder sites and the famous Florida Wash (a glorified gravel trench) on the way out. But the afternoon lull seemed to have kicked in. So we headed into Tucson, discovering some icky traffic en route, and drove to our campsite in the Catalinas. And when I say “drove to,” the reader should understand that, as per usual, I mean “drove well past and eventually back to.” In this case, it turned out that the campgrounds up high (elevations in the 7,000-8,000 ft. range) were closed until the middle of the month, so we had to drive all the way back down the winding road to the basin to find a piece of turf to lie down on. Too tired to cook, we had cold canned ravioli and cold cocoa. As bad as that sounds, I was very happy with the experience.
Now we’re trying to figure out where we’re going after we leave Arizona. The next couple days we’ll be in the Tucson area, but after that…well, we have some general ideas, let’s put it that way.

Don

P.S. Our new policy (as of several posts ago) is for me to write the posts and Abby to edit and/or supplement, time permitting. So you can assume that’s the deal unless noted otherwise, since I’m probably going to stop signing each entry.