Olaf Danielson's Blog

MR 2000

 

What is in a number?  For a listing birder, numbers seem to be everything, but in reality, it is deeply personal, because in the end, it does not really matter if you have seen 8000 species of birds or 1.  I feel sorry for those who have only noticed a few species as they have missed much.  I am not going to stamp my birding number on my gravestone, or maybe I should?

One of the projects of this trip to New Zealand we are currently on was to get my "World Life List" number currently at 1934, to the next milestone-2000. Does it matter... not really, is this a high number....not really,, but during a month long stay in scenic New Zealand, it gave us something to do.  After getting a single tick in Hawaii for a red avadavat I needed, I was not really much closer, 

Birds in New Zealand....there are not a lot of numbers here, many are nearly extinct, the land is full of introduced European species, but I figured with a score of some seabird species, I should just about be able to do it.  My 1000th bird happened on Kauai, it could have been one of the now almost extinct birds, but I think it ended up being an established exotic like a shama, but to be honest with list splits, lumps, added species and countable exotics and provisional birds during my big year in 2016, I am not sure which one now it actually was.  

Today was my seabird day out of Kaikoura on the South Island, my number was at 1990 as the day unfolded, but it really as it would turn out was not.  In the end I had two pretenders and one actual MR 2000.

The problem(s). While I was counting today, I noticed things had changed on the list since I was last doing Southern Hemisphere seabirds in 2019. An early bird today, I saw a wandering albatross, well I saw many, but I have seen many of this species or so I thought.  

As it would turn out, on the list I use, the "wandering albatross" is no more.  It has been split into three species, Tristan, Snowy, and the Antipodean Albatross.  This one is an Antipodean Albatross and since I have seen Tristans and the Snowy in the South Atlantic, it was actually a two-fer I was seeing today and with other birds I saw had pushed up my list 2 birds I did not expect to be able to count.  With other seabirds I had seen, I thought this put me at the precipice of 2000.  I then saw my first pretender for the crown of the big 2000.

I counted a pintado petrel.  A cute little petrel that was surrounding the boat, it could be 2000.  I counted it as a lifer right away in the morning, BUT as I would later learn, the Cape Petrels I had seen off South Africa were renamed the Pintado Petrel....sigh.  I got a photo but had to subtract one I had already counted. 

The bird I had first thought was Mr 2000 was a great one.  The Westland petrel, we saw two today.  Everyone else on the boat saw maybe one, the guy next to me was only looking for that bird on this boat, and with flesh-footed shearwaters around which basically look the same except the Flesh-footed has a yellow bill while the Westland has a big black splotch on the end, they can be hard to confirm a sighting of.  A New Zealand waters-only seabird, I was happy, but well it did not last.  You can see Flesh-foots on the US west coast in fall pelegics.  I saw my lifer out of Half Moon Bay with the infamous Debbie Shearwater.

Flesh footed shearwater today, note all yellow bill
Westland petrel, note black on bill.  We also saw one (this one?) on the water a little later
I was happy, what a quality bird for the big number but no....this was just a pretender, due to the Pintado petrel deal.

So, we ended up circling some rocks and I nabbed another lifer, a spotted shag, a handsome cormorant, only found here as well.

spotted shag
I submitted my list and expected to see the big 2000 on top but it was only at 1999.  Dang!  I checked my list and then again, but noticed one of the 5 species of albatross was saw, a white capped albatross was not there.  Sigh, they had rearranged these species again and somehow, I had not noticed it, so I had that bird.  The Salvin's was new but not both, and as such, I was a bird short, and the boat was back on the trailer.  Sheez.

We went back to our RV, and I did some looking.  I do not need many easy-to-get land birds here now.  The South Island is not that rich in species, BUT I saw a place that on the map, looked easy enough to look for South Island Robins.  The North Island version was hard to find for us.  At noon, we went out to give it a go, and what looked like a nice forest with trails was a overgrown woods with no parking a construction crew and big trucks.  We jammed two RVs into a driveway to nowhere and went looking.  We saw a shining-bronze cuckoo, which I had seen but not photographed and got some nice shots.  This is a really hard bird to see if it stays silent and even so, hard to find as it matches foliage of the bush 

It was a bonus bird on a random piece of woods.  We walked some more and no robin.  We ran into a crew of guys doing something, maybe spraying...hard to know.  We turned around and were halfway back to our campers when robins came out and one almost landed on me.

So, there he or she is, a South Island Robin, Mr 2000!

It has been fun pretty much birding the old-fashioned way with a field guide a pair of bins and my camera.  We cleaned up most of the tough endemics on the North Island with little help from anyone.  Sometimes going to the right spots helps but even then, finding birds involved climbing thousands of feet, and patience.  We will bring more tales of New Zealand as I have internet and stamina to write.  At least one trip goal has been accomplished.

Keep biding, from the land of tomorrow...because it is tomorrow in New Zealand

Olaf

ODE TO A FALLEN SPECIES

 

Today we are on Kauai.  We are on our way to points west and I stopped to get a lifer bird (or more).  I saw a Red Avadavat, a countable exotic, it was an okay view.  I was not enthused, essentially today as I had received some unhappy news from Adrian, a young guy who I hired to drag my around the top of this island 

I had three major bird memories of my big year in 2016. I wrote at the time, "One was finding an akikiki, on Kaua’i now critically endangered, the population has declined from around 3000 in 2012 to less than a thousand now. I suspect this little forest bird on Kauai only has a few years left to go and it will be gone for good. It feeds by probing bark for insects and is restricted to Alaka'i swamp area."

Sadly, what I wrote a week short of 8 years ago happened.  The population of the Akikiki has crashed and as of this summer the wild population was estimated as just 2-3 birds, JUST 2-3 BIRDS! and this past summer, was declared functionally extinct.  Sigh...sob sob!

here is another photo from 2016

Of course we did not see one today, we also did not see a 'Akehe'e, which lost 98% of its population between 2000-2012 and by 2021 a little of 600, today....?

So, this bird is probably never going to be seen by ne or even anyone else shortly.  The cause, currently avian malaria, from introduced mosquitoes, from decades of deforestation by first the king selling forests, then American mainlanders trying to suck every buck from out here, buying up and exploiting the land, short term thinking, silly plans of trying to introduce exotic birds and on and on.....and on.  

We did not start this trip on Kaua'i, we started on Maui, we went up the volcano, saw the four most likely endemics without much difficulty, three i got nice photos of and the nene of course.  I also saw a ghost, a rare bird (I believe) but alas no photograph and so bigfoot, Elvis, UFO, and the bird I will not even name, that I saw, I shall keep my eyes out if anyone posts one, but .....I think I missed a chance of a lifetime and as such, I shall just never mention it again, 2 nights of nightmares is enough, what if's and what I could have done different....Here is what I did see.

apapane
Hawaii amakihi
I'iwi
Hawaiian Goose the Ne'ne
So, I am melancholy thinking about lost birds, missed birds, and well, a slow photographer, but alas tomorrow will be more stories and more intrigue as Olaf and Silja head west across the Pacific Ocean to points unknown.

The endemic Kauai birds are dying as I speak and to be honest there seems little hope.  

more and happier notes from the road later

Olaf

Butterfly Week 2024

 

BUTTERFLY WEEK came late to the prairies of NE South Dakota this summer, it has been raining since, well, since spring.  It has rained and rained and rained.  It has been cool and the prairie grass has grown and grown and grown.  To be honest, I have never seen it so high.

The sharptailed grouse chicks above are just sucked in and you could hardly even notice they were there, but from my perch on my ATV, I saw them..

Monday on the prairie featured 30 mph wind, and then afternoon downpours, but the biggest week of butterflies started today at 11:14 when the first adult appeared of the annual flight of Dakota skipper and as for at least two hours the sun came out and the wind blew only slightly.

Regal frits have an odd life cycle.  They feed on violets in prairies.  They lays their eggs late in the season and the caterpillars hatch and then go hide in the ground over the winter.  Then in spring, they form a chrysalis and then fly about now. 

I counted 20 regal fritillaries, but the real prize were a dozen Dakota skippers, both males (orange) females are spotted.  

A few Mellissa Blues were out, these are typically a western species and NE South Dakota are on the eastern edge of their range, a subspecies Karner Blues are an endangered group in Wisconsin.  I like blues, their larvae are raised by ants in a weird symbiosis. 

A male Melissa Blue

Grasshopper sparrows serenaded me, 

A view of my new shed from my favorite Dakota skipper prairie

Then, the clouds strangled the little sun that was out and the butterflies disappeared.  

So, the butterflies will be out there for about a week or so, then others species will emerge, in the meantime get out there and see some of this cool stuff.

Olaf

 

Golden dreams and memories

 Today brings me to the north suburbs of Chicago.  Although not for a bird even though a lifer bird had been flying tantalizingly close to where we parked the RV at Illinois Beach State Park in Zion.  We are here for a Medical School Graduation, our oldest twin, Tyko Seth graduates Rush Medical today and then off he goes for his internship/residency to Milwaukee.

When we graduated medical school, we went to Glacier National Park. I had a marmot steal a hiking boot on a pass in Montana when my wife and I, well, we got caught up in the moment, and it was thanks to a Mountain goat licking an exposed part of me that clued me in that my boot was going underground. We turned around and went to Chincoteague NWR to see birds.  We found long lost relatives in Maryland, we saw Ted Koppel from Television skipping dip in the Potomac River.  We watched a boy scout tent, blow away.  We saw birds.  We camped next to a madman in Pennsylvania who chopped wood all night at a campground, and we feared we were next.  On a second trip out east, I almost lost a 1962 Ford Galaxie on a car trailer on I-80 when the hitch broke and it almost careened down 200 feet into a gully.  On one of our many visits with cops on that trip with my grandmother, the police ordered me to get headlights and so I rigged a wire from the battery to the taillights, using a lot of duct tape. It got us home. Then we moved to Danville, Pennsylvania.  The rest, history, I guess.

We hope our son has a good break as well.  I have to move some of his junk from our garage.

We spent two nights ago in a fairgrounds in Indiana.  The RV almost got stuck.  It should have gotten stuck, but we camped on a road instead.  I needed to get to Indiana to go pick up books in N. Manchester, and luckily that worked out, and we got through the Loop in Chi-town without incident.

This book project was a big project, and now I just have to sell them.  People seem to want the artwork more than the book.

At the Newton County Fairgrounds, I did see a red-headed woodpecker and then another, and another, they hung around long enough for me to get a camera

This was my grandmother's favorite "summer" bird, they used to live on the electric poles in NW Wisconsin, but I have not seen one in Burnett County in 40 years.  I guess my birding is also "Burnett County Revisted."  She even had a cool plastic model of one in the basement I always admired as a kid.  I wonder where that got off to?

So, what bird do I need in Chicago?

The European goldfinch story of how they came to America, were released is vague and inconsistent.  In a paper from Craves and Anich recently published document the first known breeding of these birds around Chicago was in 2003.  There is no smoking gun on the release they just say they originate from cage bird releases from a Chicago dealer prior to 2003.  They moved north of town and then settled.

Another European bird, the Great tit, is also suspected to have come from the same situation, but they moved north first Milwaukee and then near Sheboygan.  In my coming and going from Ripon College, my sons including Tyko went there from 2013-2017, I have lectured there as well and attended 1984-1988, I had heard about the birds.  I saw my first one of those in Kohler, Wisconsin in 2014

Olaf's lifer North American great tit, March 2014, Kohler WI, it was a "Bucket list" item for me, but not a listing bird, although it should be, as it qualifies to be on the list as an established exotic.  I doubt Wisconsin will ever add it to their list however.  I love seeing this bird in Europe and Asia, they are always fun to see.

Due a lot to the paper on the European goldfinch, and the Illinois bird committee's attitude, the ABA added it to the list, it has now become a countable exotic, and...one I have not seen in the USA. I have not bothered to go get it.  

This being the last reason for us to be in Chicago for a while, I need to get it this weekend or it may take a while. 

The European goldfinch is a bird I have tallied only nine times before worldwide, in France, Sweden, and Scotland, most of which qualifying for my "sans clothing" list and I have only taken two decent photos of the bird, sometimes because where I see them, I can't have a camera, sometimes that they flit high in pine trees, and sometimes because. they are pretty common.

But as you see, I do not need to get a better photo, this one from 2022 in Scotland, is pretty good, so the fact that I have few photos is a misnomer.

Anyhow, this morning I went out to see them, truth be told, I saw one yesterday, but not very well, and I got no photo, so I did not count it.  They are not the easiest to find this time of year, especially in the middle of a large state park.  Today on my way to the shower, I did better, I saw them and photographed them.  It was in the shower that I had my issues, I could not get the shower turned off, sort of a Seinfeld moment.  So there it is, another addition to my Continental ABA list.  

 They are not Natural Geographic quality, but they are the bird. To be honest, I remember being happier getting that Scottish bird's photo, maybe because the sun had not been out for six days and since I have so rarely got a photo of that bird.  Now, on with graduation, my parents land in two hours, I need to get dressed, the car cleaned out of books, and through the traffic jam to O'Hare....the weekend fun is just beginning!

Olaf

Birding in LBJ's footsteps

Lyndon B. Johnson once describes his favorite and luckiestnumber, "four." "That's what I want you to remember. If youdon't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Foursentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words inthe English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .Iknow peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four."

Olaf, also likes the number four, it is better than threeand twice as good as two, but his favorite words would be bird, wife, cats,unlike three letter words like dip....

We headed in the direction of Johnson City Texas. Johnson City is the boyhood home of our 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson andhis home, the LBJ Ranch is just 15 miles west of town.

In many ways, LBJ's ranch is the coolest presidential homeever.  Besides having a 6,000 foot runway and being the home of prizedHereford cattle then and now, you can walk in the footsteps of a leader thatmany reviled at the end of his reign, however, like quite a few presidents, LBJshould be remembered better. 

LBJ was our first Western bred and born President. Unlike recent Presidents who attended IVY League schools, LBJ went to SW TexasState Teachers College, dropped out went to California, and returned asgraduated and then briefly taught as a teacher.  LBJ did attend GeorgetownLaw School for a time after he was elected to Congress, however the only thinghe got from that was a date with Lady Bird, who he asked to marry him, she puthim off for a few more dates, but finally agreed. In Congress, he was probablythe most savvy Majority leader in the US Senate until McConnell recently.

He has great quotes, possibly the best of the 20th Century,many almost beat Yogi quotes:

I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chickensalad.

On the media:  If one morning I walked on top of thewater across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read"President Can't Swim"

On Liberal Democrats (his own party):  Don't spitin the soup, we all have to eat.

On being President: Being president is like being ajackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

On the CIA: The CIA is made up of boys whose familiessent them to Princeton but wouldn't let them into the family brokeragebusiness.

Visiting Seaworld: Why does Sea World have a seafoodrestaurant I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize Oh man....I couldbe eating a slow learner.

 Unlike other President's graves, LBJ's looks just like anormal one.

Compare this to the worst President of the 20th Century, Warren G. Harding.  The ego of the bad man still lives on.

LBJ was somewhat larger than life, but anything fromperfect.  He was a lady's man and when he went to Congress, he was dirtpoor.  How the couple made their fortune was all (well if you ask LBJ, hesaid so) Lady Bird's doing.  In 1943, she spent $17,500 of herinheritance to purchase KTBC,an Austin radio station. In 1952, she added a television station, alwaysgetting favorable FCC rulings.  She invested $42,000 total, which by 1990became $150 million.  

Famously in 1968, he pulled out of reelection after a poorshowing in New Hampshire.  Hubert Humphry got a late start and then waspassed by Robert Kennedy, before he was assassinated and after a convention riot, HUMPHREY WON.  The Democrats wenton to lose to Nixon, and the rest is history.  In 1972, LBJ donated theRanch to the US Park Service and then a few months later, at only 64 years of age died three daysafter Nixon's second inauguration in January 1973.   

The LBJ Ranch house, however cool it is....has been CLOSEDsince 2018 due to structural issues. Maybe, maybe they say it will reopen in 2025, but in typicalgovernment fashion, everyone it appears to be working from home, including theconstruction workers. The new normal, everyone in the government works fromhome, and nothing gets done and the world is always the same.  The man givinginfo at the park?  A person from Ireland on a student visa to learn "tourism."  The cool old AirForce 1/2, Gulfstream, also closed.  You can see it but they have surrounded inwith fences and orange tape, what harm can you cause by walking around adecommissioned old airplane?  You drive 30 feet from it?

There were a lot of lark sparrows around.  Birding,near LBJ's grave was a little slow.

Scissortail flycatchers were around as well.
The countryside was in bloom, too.
We went to Perdernales State Park to see a bird.  It turns out we were turned away.  It was also closed, due to it being full, "Come back tomorrow."  The ranger told us.  You can tell that Texas has too many people and not enough parks....when they are full to day visitors.
I wanted to see Golden Cheeked warblers, but at this park, they would have to wait a day.  We went to lunch.
I tracked down the Blanco County Courthouse in Johnson City. It turns out they also had one a few years older (below), since after building a courthouse in Blanco, they voted to move the county seat to Johnson City.

We ate lunch and Silja wanted to take a motorcycle for a test ride, but again that would not be possible

After looking around for another place for the warbler, Idipped and went back to the RV.

The campground we were at is unique.  It not only hasone helipad, it has two.  Who brings their helicopter with their RV, orwho goes to a RV resort with their helicopter.  I guess this one does rentcabins.  Our RV is just behind the pad

We were back to the park this morning and on my fourth trip to get a photo of the Golden Cheeked warbler in my life, I hit paydirt. Having seen that birders I know were here recently, it would be bad if somehow, I had dipped on both LBJs ranch AND the warbler so at least I got the bird.  I am not missing photos of many breeding birds in the US, last year I FINALLY photographed the Colima warbler, and now this......




It was a pretty good haul of them, some pretty good pictures, despite being dark and overcast.

There was this "starcircle" at the park with purpose unknown.  
Driving around the Hill Country, many of the ranches and ranchers seem to have a lot of hat but no cattle, to steal words from LBJ.  Big prices for 20-50 acres of dry land--all because residents from Austin want to have some place to go.  We prefer west Texas.  I am glad we came, and if LBJs White House opens up, I would advise you all to come here and see it, but do not hold your breath.  Getting anyone to work seems unlikely. The Golden cheeked warblers are neat little birds with an isolated range.  Other than that, the Hill County seems to be a lot of hype, a lot of people, and well, probably not our scene.I looks a lot like Lawton Oklahoma without the crowds.
working our way north
Olaf

Solar Eclipse Report from Texas

 

Our eclipse glasses ready and tested, we got up at 6 am and headed towards Eagle Pass Texas, weather be damned, we were going to see the eclipse if it killed us.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  My grandma Lucille saw one in 1954 cooking breakfast but for us, alas seen some partial events but never totality.

The drive to the place where it would be total was close but not that close. It was a long trip and about 70 miles away from Eagle Pass and in the middle of nowhere, we had a flat tire.  Undeterred, we pulled into a truck stop north of Laredo, but the compressor was broken.  Limping the car nine miles up the road, we found one that worked or at least it was supposed to work.  It finally did and we were back on the road.  I had planned a random stop at a wayside on the US Highway west of Eagle Pass but driving through Carrizo Springs, a Texas Highway Department sign said "NO STOPPING FOR ECLIPSE ON THE HIGHWAY."  Cops were everywhere or so it seemed.  Texas was going to punish anyone apparently, spitting on the sidewalk, illegals, people seeking birth control, and eclipse watchers.  I suspected the penalties would be severe but, we kept going.  How many people could be at a picnic area two hours before an eclipse?

The answer was a lot.  Some had tented overnight, even.  

We drove up a few miles past the picnic area and pulled into ranch road while Silja hopped a fence, found a bush, and I read a sign, and got honked at for apparently breaking another Texas law...heck the flowers need water in these parts.  We went back and got ready for the show.  The parking lot was full, so we pulled on the shoulder, probably illegally.

The busy traffic kept driving past and almost all of the trucks and some of the cars on the highway honked and we could NOT tell if they were jeering or cheering....But who cared?  I just wondered if the sky would clear enough, it looked doubtful and then, like I am always the lucky birder, I was ALSO the lucky eclipse watcher, the sun began to appear... and then it started.

A squadron of old planes flew over
I got bored and looked for butterflies seeing a gray hairstreak, a common butterfly in the USA, but got a nice shot.

It started to get dark, headlights came on automatically, so I got ready and back to my post and then the traffic stopped honking, in fact, the traffic pretty much stopped, and everyone was on the side of the road, ignoring the Governor's orders.
Almost totality!
Then a total eclipse and you could see flares of the sun!!  The crowd of onlookers on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in SW Texas cheered.  It was grand, it was great, it was un-describable and it was dark.

Well it was dark until some people who had not left their car in an hour opened their car door and their headlights came on.  They got jeered by many for ruining the moment, but their lights went off.
And then it was past, nearly 4 minutes later
That was that, for ten minutes, traffic stopped and the America came together and even the border guard at the check station up the road was asking what we saw and Silja showed the officer a picture of totality.  The other officers had on their glasses.  
We drove back and heard four more hours of our book on tape about someone who bought and old mining town in California.  It was a bucket list type event, but it was not on either of ours but probably should have (the eclipse, not buying a ghost town).
The wonders of this world are beyond description
Olaf



  

Fences, Jays, and things that go Hoot in the Night

 

So, if you build a fence around your house, yet one without a gate, they would call it a decorative fence.  If you built a pasture and put a fence around it on three sides, you would be chasing cattle all over the countryside and the other ranchers would laugh at you.  Here near Roma, Texas, they are building a wall (Texas is paying for it), billions of dollars' worth of wall, yet the wall has a door, (many doors) a door for Olaf to go through as well as anybody trying to get in or in my case...out.  Is it decorative, is anyone laughing?

My wife and I went out to the Santa Margarita Ranch north of Roma, Texas it was a guided trip with Cameron Cox, who does many of the day treks.  We sat and watched the Rio Grande for a while, hoping for something interesting to fly by.  The tiger heron that had been here and seen by many had disappeared two weeks back so I would not tally that lifer bird.  We saw local specialties post up and some fun ducks on the river.

A Mexican duck on the US side of the river
Silja had tripped over our cat Snoball and was injured, having hurt her calf muscle but was game with a game leg and came with and was able to keep up slowly.  After nothing exciting was going on, we went walking to the brown jay area.  Many butterflies were in flight, so I took the time to identify two lifer butterflies, both very small ones.  I snapped some photos.

Elada Checkerspot
Texas crescent
We did not see the jay and Silja kept on the bench and the rest of us went exploring.  One man wanted to see a seedeater, and I just wanted the brown jay.  I returned to the bench and Silja proudly showed me pictures of the jays she had seen in my absence on her cell phone.  That begat an uneasy 45 minutes as I hoped they would return and my wife would not have a lifer bird up on me.  All that came were noisy golden fronted woodpeckers.
                              But as the guide and the other birder returned so did the brown jays and I had tallied my lifer bird for the day, second for the trip.

That was about all to say about this day.  We ate at Stripes, we avoided the Starr county and state troopers, We paid the $140 per person fee, I guess a bargain for lifer bird 829 and drove back to camp.  Camp was having an "Olympics" Silja won woman's cornhole, and then there was an event called Charmin-Plunge (what can be done with two people, male and female, a plunger and a roll of toilet paper).  We participated in it, and set the best time so far on our first run, then on our second run, Olaf went for broke, blew away the competition but on crossing the finish line in 7.4 seconds, wiped out backwards and injured his wrist and other body parts.  That was it for our "Olympics" but a gold medal and bragging rights for people we did not know was (almost) worth it.

Now both of us were injured so, we took it easy for a few days until our second outing at the Santa Marguerita Ranch.
Mottled owls have 2 documented ABA appearances.  On Feb 23, 1983 a road killed specimen was found near where we are camping in Hidalgo County.  It was a suspected find, with many thinking it had fallen off of a truck.  The bird does live about 60 miles from the US-Mexico border, however.  In 2006, for five days over July, another one was seen here.  As such, it was a bird on few people's bird lists and few thought they would ever see,
Then, they found one on the ranch north of Roma in Starr County while calling for tawny-collared nightjar, a bird never seen in the ABA area but lives even closer.  This mottled owl has stayed put in the few trees on the US side of the border.  The night outings are once or twice a week and last night twenty-one of us went out and we were not disappointed.  It was like they knew exactly where it hangs out.


  The mottled owl is a species I never ever thought I would hear let alone see (unless I was in Mexico or in Central America, but I have now seen it.  It sang once, we looked at it for a minute and then it flew away silently into the night, and we looked for other night creatures.
Western screech owl
  We found a screech owl and saw no illegals, one border guard, heard a coyote, and lots of frogs and common pauraque's.  There was a poorwill way out in the distance and a lesser night hawk and a couple of great horned owls near or on the border wall. 
We saw a blind snake (one of two species) which was better than the six foot diamondback seen brown jay hunting by the other two birders.
All of this fun for just $100 more.....it seems the tow guides doing this have a little business venture , but for an owl of this magnitude, again, a bargain.
Tomorrow through the haze and clouds we will look for the eclipse near Eagle Pass, what will we see, if anything, I shall report to you....
Home at 2 am from owling and up tomorrow before dawn to drive to a celestial event wears on an older guy...today I am hitting the hot tub...the wrist is sore but hopefully on the mend....campground games....we need to pass on them in the future.  Cats...well we love the cats...Snoball is doing fine.
A three lifer trip!....so far
Olaf

A Fan of Warblers

 

It was old-time birding. Drive, drive, drive, crawl into a hole in the brush, wait patiently, slap mosquitoes and then see nothing consequential.   Crawl out, decide to pack it in, see a couple birders about a block away and wonder what they are looking for, and drive back to camp without asking them.

The fan-tailed warbler has vexed me before.  I dipped in Arizona before Covid, missing it by half a day and when I saw one in Brownsville show up, I had just been there and knew we would be coming this way in the spring, and figured it would be gone by the time we showed up or, just before I flew in, so I stayed in Florida and wrote.  I just could not justify a chase.

We drove this week to the Lower Rio Grande Valley for the eclipse and some birding.  It was somewhat uneventful on the 1400-mile journey.

I saw the first (apparently) documented limpkin in Orange County Texas

We camped near Rockport, Texas on the beach at Goose island State Park, missing the whooping cranes by a day.  Then arrived in Edinburg on Friday.  Silja promptly stepped on our cat and tripped significantly hurting herself, but Snowball is just fine.  Now she has a limp and has not birded with me.

Seeing that the fan-tailed warbler (seen much earlier this winter in Texas) had been refound, I could not resist going after it. This species is actually a bird from the other side of the Sierra Madre in Mexico, and how and why one got on this side of the mountains, it a story no one knows. With the potential of a rare lifer, I drove down to UT-LRGV campus to see it, but as it turned out, the only bird I found that I had never seen in the US, was a red-lored parrot.

The problem being, that this species of exotic is not on the official list, so all I got was a photo of a bird I had seen in Costa Rica in 2019.As noted, I was looking for the warbler in the wrong spot and saw nothing, meanwhile 200 yards away, it was seen by four birders, one even got a photo.  This bird is not that easy to photo since this bird likes living in the shadows deep in the undergrowth and does not sit still.  I needed some more luck.
So, with Silja still hobbled, I returned to the scene of the crime.  I stopped at Stripes and had the usual birder breakfast today for an Easter morning, that is, a breakfast taco and bug spray, I usually try to not spray the bug-spray on the taco, but that is not absolute.  Finding where some crazy birder had trapsed into the underbrush (or maybe it was a wild pig?) I followed.  It was wet with dew, full of thorns, ruts, brush, and it was very buggy.  I kept thinking that I needed some luck, since this bird was about to reach "NEMESIS" status, that is, three dips.  I wondered, maybe I should take my clothes off for luck?  No one was on campus, and I was in the middle of the brush anyhow, but then not watching where I was stepping, as I found an opening, I slipped and landed on my bum. A bird landed on my hat.  I saw the yellow belly of the fan-tailed warbler on the brim looking at me like it was mocking me, OR maybe just sparring the world from naked Olaf, who knows with birds.  The birding Gods were being kind, that was certain.   
It was even too close to photo, too close to do anything, and it wandered off and then luckily in the murky hole I was in, it showed up again. It hesitated just enough to get a few somewhat focused shots.   I had the iso at 2000 and it was not high enough, but I got the bird!  And a photo...
I crawled out of my hole after seeing it feed with some olive sparrows and I found a couple of German birding tourists.  I gave them the quick skinny and somewhat reluctantly they followed my game trail back into the brush, hopefully as lucky as I was, and hopefully they had bug spray. 
ABA Continental 829 (including the cattle tyrant probably will be added to the list), as I try to clean up some long-lasting missing birds I need.  World lifer 1909.  

Tomorrow, hopefully, another bird and another story.
Olaf

Trip report the Canary Islands

Agatha Christi once wrote in a novel set and written in Puerto de la Cruz Tenerife Canary Islands Spain

“Mr.Satterthwaite passed on down the cypress walk to thesea. It was rather wonderful sitting there--on the edge of nothing--with thatsheer drop below one.  But he found noinspiration there, and turning slowly he walked back along the path between thecypresses and into the quiet garden.”

Most of our trips or so it seems, are learning events.  We learn how to get through an airport, get a rental car, order food in a foreign language, how to find the birds and what unfamiliar calls are, or drive on the left.  We just spent 9 days in Tenerife on the Canary Islands and a day in Iceland after going for a week to Wisconsin and Minnesota for Christmas.  I have made some additions to "Olaf's Rules."

1) Never check in luggage.

This is an old rule, but recently we have forgotten.  Icelandair bullied us to check a suitcase in Minneapolis and we did not have to, and we checked one going home that we definitely did not half to, and it is still out there ...somewhere, carrying my tripod, two monopod walking sticks and an 800 camera part I just got in from losing it in Bhutan.

2)  Christmas trips are two long

being gone 17 days over the holidays is too much, thing need to be fixed in the future.

3) Why are we going to a place that is typically cooler than Florida when we have a house in

 Florida plus and RV spot?  The Canaries are nice but from Tampa we can be to Puerto Rico or Panama in 3 hours by plane.  Tenerife was 6 hours from Minneapolis plus another 6 to Tenerife.  The flight home was 6 plus 8 to Orlando with an overnight in Keflavik near a volcano that is ready to blow again, and possibly a closed airport.  

4) Do not eat squid ink, it is a little salty going in, but what comes out a day or two later is a little much

So with that introduction, we went to Tenerife, just off the African coast of Spanish Sahara, we met up with our son Allwin, his girlfriend and her parents.  We've known then for many years,  Allwin is a research Chemist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.  It is much easier to get to Tenerife for him.  a Four hour flight

We stayed in a nice VRBO and hung out on the tropical island.  The house was in the middle of a banana plantation We had a nice view of the ocean, and of the city below us.  We went up to the volcano, Teide that last erupted in 1908 and could threaten the entire eastern US coast.  The barren landscape was used for the movie "Planet of the Apes."



The most common critter in this massive desert is the Gallot's lizard
We also saw endemic butterflies like the 

The Canary Speckled Wood Butterfly, and we also saw African blues
The beaches are down steep cliffs, wavy, black sand beaches and filled with shadows


Ancon BeachSome impressive waves
We even saw a few surfers.
One (in)famous beach, the naturist Playa Patos, just below our house, had had its stairs eroded 9 years ago, then in 2023, they spent 30000 euros to replace them.  On December 24, five days before we arrived the cliff failed and blocked the beach.  The local city closed the access and put up a barricade fence. But intrepid souls climbed the fence and then went down the stairs and then in barefeet or flipflops crossed the fifty meter high pile of rocks.

We had an eight course meal at new years (see previous blogs) and hiked and saw a few sights including Agatha Christi's famous steps

The port, just another place to take one's clothes off for sun
red rock crab
Of course I drank lifer beers  I saw nine lifer birds for my world list and photographed 8 of them, six of those pretty good.  The Bolle's Pigeon went unphotographed, saw one and heard one.  Birder Neil Hayward was on the island but he was a day ahead of me in seeing birds and we never met up despite me reaching out.  Oh well.

Tenerife Blue Chaffinch, maybe a population of 5000 birds on the one island
(White tailed) Laurel pigeon, maybe 5000 on three islands having been split from the Madeira Laurel Pigeon and is near threatened
Island canary
Canary Island Chiffchaff
Canary Island chaffinch
Berthelot's pipit 
Barbary Partridge, here and North Africa
African Blue tit
Tenerife is not a birdy island. I also saw some avian creatures.

common buzzard
Common sandpiper
Eurasian blackcap
Eurasian kestrel
European robin
Gray wagtail
Little egret
The super skulky Sardinian Warbler
Yellow Legged gull, despite being an island, saw a grand total of just four gulls all were this species
  It was really a nice vanilla trip and then...we started for home. We got notified of a strike so we headed to the airport extra early but there was nothing looking like a strike, just long lines at the food court and a crowded airport.  We had a long wait.

.Allwin's flight to Frankfurt and ours to Reykjavik were at adjoining gates, so we bid farewell and off we went to Iceland.The six hour flight ended and my suitcase never came off the carousel  "Sir, your bag is safe and checked for Orlando."  So we went to the hotel and slept.  The Blue lagoon opened up that morning but many thought it was risky as another volcano eruption is imminent (has not erupted as of today) so we went to airport and I birded a little outside.
I picked up a nice redwing, have not seen one for a few years and after a hot dog we went through security.  Everything was going fine and then, it did not....I broke a zipper on my favorite jacket that morning, I have had the jacket for at least 25 years.  I love that jacket.  decided to throw it away before security.
It was very sad throwing away an old friend, 
So we went through customs and Silja got the random selection for extra screening.
Back at Christmas we have a newer tradition, we go to my uncle's place on Christmas eve to his gun range and shoot.
My daughter Lauren and Silja target shooting
Afterwards we ate Swedish meatballs with Grandma Lucille's recipe!   Son Tyko with meatballs

So back to Iceland, they swabbed that jacket of Silja's for explosives.....and forty minutes later as I was wondering if she had been kidnapped.  She was finally released from her secret room.  She was mad and upset and vowed that Iceland was never going to be in our future again.  
So after more lines we got on a plane and 8 hours later aboard a 727 Max 9 (with a plug) that would be grounded a day later, we arrived in Orlando.....my luggage however has never been seen again.......Iceland(air) again is on my S#$$t list 
You know it was fun, it was nice, but was it real nice and fun.....?  Silja picked up a bug on a plane,  we have jet lag, my luggage is ....somewhere.  I am out a tripod a teleconverter some Christmas gifts, a kilo of prized coffee and a favorite hat.  I ruined a jacket and well, that is that.
Cheers
Olaf

What is in a Pipit's name

 

The Berthelot's pipit is a non-descript pipit with a short tail and a big head.  The pipit, found only on the Canary and Madeira Islands, was named after Sabino Berthelot by his friend Carl Bolles. Why name it after the preeminent botanist in this archipelago?  It just was.

Sabino Berthelot wasthe son of a Marseille merchant. He joined the French Navy andserved as a midshipman during the Napoleonic Wars. After the war he joinedthe merchant fleet, travelling between Marseilles and the West Indies. Hefirst visited the Canary Islands in 1820, where he taught at a school in Tenerife andmanaged the botanical gardens at Orotava for the Marquis of Villanuevadel Prato.  The are schools also named after Berthelot and Harvard has honored him in publications for his Botany work on the island.  With his work as a midshipman during the French slave area, one wonders how long until someone will find that he was a crewman on some objectionable ship. 

 In Madeira, people in rural areas used to call it “OurLady’s bird”, giving rise to the legend that the Berthelot’s pipit accompaniedthe Holy Family in their journey from the Holy Land to Egypt, with the missionof wiping out with its long tail their footprints in the sand to avoid beingfollowed by King Herod.

On Tenerife, although seen by the sea on flat open fields,most of which have been made into banana plantations.  Luckily they arealso seen up on the dry arid plains around the volcano Teide.  I did notfind them an easy bird to find.  They seem to be parking lot birds. Looking for them I struck out, dumb luck scored me three birds. 

We saw the pipits on Teide Volcano, a huge 12, 288 foot, active volcano that dominates Tenerife.

It last erupted in 1908 from the flank and was not a serious event, previously it erupted in 1798 and from 1704-6, and last from the summit in about 850 AD, some believe that it it erupts fully again, it could split the island and be a catastrophe causing a huge tsunami heading westward towards...you guessed it America.

The most numerous critter on the volcano is the Gallot's lizard, or Tenerife island lizard.  Named after an armature naturalist D. Gallot who collected the first specimen of this endemic lizard.  Found only here and on La Palma and a small island in between, the lizard is a good find for herpetologists, but was actually a pest where we were eating lunch as they tried to storm our lunch bags.  

The big bird on Tenerife to find is the Tenerife BlueChaffinch. found only on Tenerife and with only 4-5,000 birds in existence, itwas the go to bird for the trip.  Sadly, Tenerife had some serious forestfires recently and as an obligate pine forest bird, much of its habitat went upin smoke.  Even without that, they are up elevation and in the pines andthere are not a lot of places to even stop to look for them.  Since Iwas  a tag along to a group that I was the only birder with, it is amazingthat I even found one.  I saw two.  One in low light which I stillhad the camera on auto focus and it focused out of the bird and it flew awayand then I got a second chance two hours later.  That bird would NOT comeout of the pine tree.

I got a good look at the male in my first sighting. Thisfemale or immature male was not optimal but sometimes this is all you get.

This was the last of the Island endemics out here I had tosee, but hoping for photographs of a couple I never got on camera.  I didnot go over to Grand Canaria to see its blue chaffinch, I will leave that foranother time.  I still have two days to photograph rather elusive pigeons,I see a fellow big year birder Neil Hayward saw a few hours after I did, butthat is tomorrow mornings project.  I sent Neil an email, we will see ifhe sends me a response.  Who knows?

Later

Olaf