Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 11

A grebe story

I had a regularly scheduled meeting to attend in Minnesota.  I’m like the mayor of a small town except that it isn’t, it is just a campground and I’m called the president, but it might as well be one.  My job is like the mayor's and I do everything a mayor would.  It was an elected position, most-likely the only elected position I’ll ever have or for that matter, will ever stand for.  As meetings go, this one promised nothing special, unlike the one from the previous month where we had to budget added repairs to infrastructure damage caused by snow, rodents, and extreme weather.  Its scheduled date of May 10thpromised to land me some spring migrants we don’t see farther west.  We arrived on Thursday the day after I had dental surgery in Watertown, South Dakota.  It was from an injury I sustained way back in my big year 2016.  It was something I received on St Paul Island and used to get an emergency seat on a full plane to get out of the island on my last visit there in October of that year.              In Minnesota, I had to supervise the spring repairs and building projects.  The electrician was still working on some severe damage to the wiring of the pool which required a complete rewiring and the next morning as I went out for a walk and spotted two new migrants for the year, a gray-cheeked thrush and quite a few, rose-breasted grosbeaks both in the trees and the place of the couple we went at into the southern hemisphere together.  It is always nice for people to have feeders
So, while I was walking my dog, I got an unexpected text from our ground’s supervisor, who hadn’t realized I was three blocks away.  I expected he was going to report more damage and more expenses but surprisingly, what I got was just another bird consult.  Well, it wasn’t just another one.  I get bird consultations all the time, in fact, this was the fourth one this week. “What kind of bird is this?”  Jim’s text said along with a picture of a bird.              I looked at the picture and never answered, I was walking down to the pool area in search of a rather odd bird to be seen on land.  I ran into Kelly; the assistant electrician and she was finishing up the wiring for our new sauna.  Her boss was ankle deep in wiring the pool shed.  She showed me the bird. There in the grass was a red-necked grebe.  Grebes have a problem on land, they cannot use their feet to get upward propulsion to take off, so it was stranded.  I wondered how this bird got there.  I looked at the alert and very scared bird.  It had some sort of neck injury and was bleeding.  Maybe it hit a tree?  I had no idea.  It was a bird that nests near my cabin and one that I expected to arrive any day on Enemy Swim Lake in South Dakota, but one I hadn’t seen yet in 2019, but even though it counted it was an odd deal.  Here I was looking at a bird that needed help.  I felt it was an omen that this bird would choose near to where I was walking my Springer spaniel to crash land.  I guess it came here for me to help it, that was all I could deduce so I had to do what I could.             I thought about it for a moment and then began a very tiring set of texts, emails, and phone calls.  I tired federal, state, county and agencies I didn’t know who controlled them.  I wasn’t very easy to find an injured bird rehab center, or at least someone to even answer their telephone and give me some sort of direction.  It was Friday and 10 AM and it appeared everyone had gone home early for the Minnesota fishing opener.  I got answering machine after answering machine and the only humans I talked to, politely told me I was calling the wrong office.  The State office in Cambridge referred me to an office 40 mils farther away.  I called an office in St. Cloud and they just said “sorry.”  One woman was only on her third day and she found some sort of a list and gave me a name.  Unfortunately, the call to this woman named only informed me that she had given up her license to rehab birds two years earlier to take care of her ailing mother.            Luckily, the birders in Minnesota came through and gave me the directions to a rehab center 35 miles away.  I got many leads from a Facebook message I posted.  They told me where to go.  The only problem was getting the bird there.  This grebe had a sharp bill, a long neck and would not take to getting into a box very easily.  My first problem was to get more protective clothes on.  I couldn’t have the bird poke me in an eye or cut my arm.            Five minutes later, two electricians, my wife and I were trying to get the grebe safely secured without any of us losing an eye.  Two of us held boxes, and we had initially planned to throw a sheet on it.  Unfortunately, the bird had moved to the very center of the covered pool, a cover that had recently been damaged by either a running deer or a peg-leg pirate chasing a treasure.  It was hard to determine.  We were submitting a claim to the insurance company.  It is shocking how expensive pool covers are.  There was no way we could walk on that.  I was also worried the bird may fall into a hole as the bird was sitting near a good-sized hole.  One electrician used the pool skimmer encouraged the bird to get on to the edge of the pool, where I put the box on top of it and we got in in the correct way carefully and gently carried the bird to my waiting car.            With my wife sitting beside it keeping the lid on top, we sped to Roseville and the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota.  We could hear the bird move as we went around corners, so we knew it was still alive.  It took only 35 minutes and without any further events, we checked it in and dropped off the bird to the professionals.  
Certainly, it was the first red-necked grebe they’d have this year.  It had lost a lot of blood and it was severely hurt but at least I had got it there, its prognosis by remaining where we found it was zero.  It was all I could do; I had done a good deed.  Maybe it was just doing what another living creature should do?  I block traffic to get turtles of the road and removed toads stuck in our window box.  I don’t expect a reward for doing what one should do, but they say good deeds never go unpublished.  I hoped my punishment would not be too severe.  In the end I could only be a driver and could only say a little prayer for the poor grebe.  I hope it was enough.            A year bird with a bit of a story, a red-necked grebe I won’t soon forget.

Loose ends, RVs, and Golf on Sirius

I may have just returned from Africa, Trisdan da Cunha, Argentina, and all that, but I still had our lives to put back together.  I had pets to retrieve and also importantly, an RV to get.  Big Bird needed to come back home.

We got an almost unreal and probably unmeasurable pile of snow last week and then on Saturday, I-29 opened and at 8 AM we took off south.
My RV ended up at Tiffin Headquarters in Red Bay Alabama in December as one of the side effects of my 1 month repair of my new 33aa, RED (Rear Engine Diesel) which was cured after 106 hours of mechanic work, two flown in engineers and involving replacing the entire engine electrical harness and all other electronics.  The side effect was that it froze up due to our early October winter after they gave it back to me on the 120 mile drive home.  As I told Tiffin, "IF I break a water line, you are fixing it."  They agreed and I broke the line right under the shower..  When I plugged in the water in Tallahassee, a fountain was formed inside and outside of my rig.

I had a repair guy in Tampa look at it and as it would take two guys and three days to fix it, they would not touch it, resulting in us dry camping for a month in Florida and then in December, we dropped it off at Tiffin, I-22 was just 20 miles from Red Bay which was the route home and as such, it wasn't too far out of our way, so the week before Christmas, we dropped it off and then a second odyssey began, not from Tiffin, they were great and they pulled out the shower, the toilet and they fixed it, but us retrieving the rig became the issue.  How hard could finding a window to drive it home be?

We went to Curacao over new Years and then when we came back, we had a blizzard and then as Tiffin was replacing my ladder (I jackknifed in Florida and bent it, and figured easiest to replace it now).  They shattered my back fiberglass.  So I got a new panel but.....as I was off to bird in Jamaica etc, I couldn't go get it.

Then returning, I saw a hole in the blizzards, so my buddy Barry and I drive down straight to Red Bay and then his wife called us (she works for NOAA) and despite the government being closed due to budget impass, she was still working and reported yet, another blizzard and ice storm incoming.  I thought fast.  My rig would be done in 4 hours after we arrived but I'd have to drive through Iowa on ice, so I told them my plight, I left for Texas in five days and then after 48 hours, I would leave for South America, all from Minneapolis.  I did the math, I'd never make it home and if I got stuck in St. Louis or KC, I'd have a rig to deal with and still could not make it back and Tiffin told me they'd store it for the winter.  We emptied out anything edible, I threw in my snake boots, and we drove 1100 miles home in a hurry, hitting the ice in Waterloo Iowa, it was pretty bad, but we made it before it really got bad.

Now we had a another window and it was April, who would guess the winter that never ends would never end?  My wife went and the plan was to get behind a really nasty tornado forming storm on Sunday and cruise into Red Bay, get rig and get out before the following Pacific storm came through on Wednesday.

We made great time on Saturday listening to golf on the radio, The Masters kept us oddly on the edge of our seats, who'd guess the next day, would be a historic conclusion.  My wife even wanted to listen.  Hearing Tiger hole the final put was cool.  As we did 700 miles on Saturday, we had some time on Sunday to see stuff despite the cool and rainy day.

First, I revisited Cahokia, the site in East St Louis, containing the largest documented man-made earthen pyramid in North America (I think Pilot Mound in Manitoba is bigger, but the experts don't agree as I do that it is man-made.

 I was last here in 2001, I still wear the t-shirt I bought, and the place still impresses.

We would have climbed Monk's mound except for the lightning risk and as such we could only look and admire.  My research has my own ideas of these pyramids, but I won't elaborate here.  I've visted similar mounds all over the world.
The only thing new here this time was the new warning on the sign
NO SLEDDING ON THE PYRAMID!

It was even cold and nasty walking the dog

So we headed south, drove through a depressing Cairo Illinois and then heard an even more depressing tale in Wickliffe, Kentucky.  These mounds in Kentucky were excavated in the 1930s and some of the most astounding clay pots were unearthed intact.  Then during Christmas break in 1988, the museum built and maintained by Murray State were broken into and the artifacts taken.  The case has never been solved except, one pot was found for sale on Ebay and retrieved.  These were some of the best pottery ever found and now are in someone's basement.

Reproductions of the priceless stolen artifacts
Other museums have been robbed over the years and rarely are the artifacts recovered.  We were quite sad, but then Tiger won and well, by the time we got to Jackson, TN, we were looking at new mounds, mounds of food at Waffle House.  You got to love Waffle House.

An hour or so later, we were again in history, at Shiloh, the site of a rather gruesome and somewhat controversial Civil Wart battle that some say opportunity of the South was lost, but whether it was or wasn't the war was brutal and the South would have still lost, but in 1862, Shiloh was the most carnage on US soil by any battle up to that time.  By 1865, it would not even be in the top 5.

Confederate memorial (Daughters of Confederacy)
Shiloh Church, namesake of the battle, where Beauregard dithered to advance on the Union troops at the end of April 6th before being defeated on April 7th by a reinforced Grant

Union memorial (Iowa)
We also went to the Tennessee River south of Pittsburg Landing where there are more mounds.  We walked around these, from this Mound builder city from 1500 years ago or so.

Standing on this mound overlooking the river, I was visited by a prothonatory warbler, a year bird, taken with my wide-angle lens, it was like five feet away

It was 45 degrees in Corinth, Mississippi when we bedded down that night in a non-pet friendly "pet-friendly" motel, ate Popeyes, and waited for morning and hoped the weather would clear.  On Monday, it was a beautiful day.  We drove to Red Bay, they found my rig, and despite my worries that the battery would be dead, or something, it was not only running well, and ready for me, it was even clean.  By 0930, my car was on the trailer, and we were off northwest, driving by other full-timers in typically larger rigs waiting on some service issue.  I was glad we weren't them.

The camping area for those waiting to get repairs done at the factory in Red Bay
We drove hard to get to Minneapolis during the nice day.  There were some delays trying to get Popeye's chicken in Dyersburg TN,  but by evening we had already gotten north of LaGrange MO, and found a really nice state park, to camp at where I got the Red-breasted mergansers (first picture) for a really good bird for the area, and had the park largely to ourselves.  They hadn't even got the pay station out of its winter case yet.  We'll see if they ever find my check for the camping fee.
Yesterday, we made it back and parked Big Bird at a campsite north of Minneapolis where she'll sit for a while awaiting spring camping, while today in a driving rain we headed back to South Dakota to watch the snow melt, ending a four month odyssey of our poor rig, although truth be told, it was largely caused by our other travel needs and the winter from hell.  We've owned the rig 8.5 months.  It has been driven 9600 miles and spent 1 month in Cummins, and four months at Tiffin, but with its new electrical heart, she has been driving well, and we still love the RV life.  Mind you, we've driven 3200 miles in our personal car getting it or trying to get it at various times, and I've used my sat phone to call Tiffin or Cummins from five countries but heck, cool birds along the way, interesting history, seeing terrible icy roads, and well, recently listening to great golf, was worth it, well almost.This morning I even got my Minnesota lifer woodcock, and it was nice to be driving my "Bird"
 Olaf

Final thoughts on the Great Journey

About 8 hours into my flight home I opened the window of the 777 and looked out.  There, squarely in my field of view was the iconic Southern Cross, something I only first saw on day 40 of this trip (too cloudy and i wasn't looking in the correct direction).  Was this sighting coincidence?  In my opinion, nothing is coincidence, but was this like the rainbow stories of Noah's Ark?  Was it a sign?  What did it mean?

For a moment I pondered what was a truly massive undertaking, this Great Journey as I called it on what I'm writing.
We would travel almost 27,000 miles on a trip I dragged my wife and Don and Nancy Harrington on.
This was a self-planned operation with an exploration  cruise in the middle.  I flew from Minneapolis to Atlanta to Rio to Montevideo.  Then we rented a car and drove up to Punte Del Este.  Then after seeing Uruguay, we drove to Montevideo caught a ferry to Buenos Aires before catching a flight to Ushuaia.  After spending two days driving around Argentina's southern city, we caught a boat, which toured 5200 miles to Cape Town via the Falklands, South Georgia, and Tristan ending up in Cape Town.  We drove over 500 miles to Port Elizabeth, being 9311 miles from home at our farthest point on the Indian Ocean.  We flew to Johannesburg and drove to Pretoria and a week later flew 18 hours to Minneapolis and drove 7 hours to pick up my truck and the dog and got home, seven weeks later.
The next day this is what we saw.....
 This is April 11, REALLY! AND THIS IS not Grytviken
I saw 331 lifer species of bird, from this black-chinned siskin on the Falklands

To the Tristan Thrush on its namesake island

To Rheas and ostriches
Common Ostrich
Greater Rhea
They talk about the big five of Africa, Cape Buffalo, Elephants, Leopards, Lions, Rhinos, and yes, we saw four
Cape Buffalo
White rhinos
My wife has her own big 5--Hippos, Elephants, Giraffes, Lions, and Cheetahs, where again we got four of them

I even had my own African big five.  Cape Sugarbird, Ostrich, Secretarybird, Cape Vulture, and of course, Penguins
We saw 8 species of Penguins, and 7 species or 8 of Albatross depending on which list you use
Trisdan Albatross (SSP of Wandering?)
Best bird IMHO, Magellanic Woodpecker as it was the most thrilling to find
All in all we were very VERY lucky, when one thinks about how many key birds we only saw once and 20 or so purely accidental.  I stopped to scope a river spit and to my left lit a long-tailed meadowlark, the only ones seen, as we never saw them on the Falklands.
 Hawks were the same, not many and were few and far between

I even visited cemeteries, and in one case, was harder to find than many birds.
Grave of Ernest Shackleton, Grytviken South Georgia
Grave of Captain Hans Langsdorff,  Panzerschiff Graf Spee, Buenos Aires
to just a scary cemetery in Buenos Aires with bones hanging out
and we saw a nation that could explode in any moment
and one maligned for no specific reason by the USA

We met a lot of people and of course we saw Tristan da Cuhna, the goal of this crazy adventure in which I cleaned off five bucket list items
and my Century Club count is up to 48, only 52 destinations to go

So what is travel?  Why do we do it?  Why an adventure?
Are they just things to do for me to write a book or newspaper columns?Are they an excuse to read and learn about strange places and people?Are they ways to appreciate what we have and where we live?Are they a way to spend our kid's inheritance?
The answer is yes.
We were truly blessed to be on this trip, and were blessed in what we saw and how we saw them.The trip was generally overwhelming, and I am having a hard time condensing it to wordsnow all is left is the shoveling........We went when we did to get away from winter and yet, here we are..........home and cold
Will spring ever come?
so I sum this up by stealing some lyrics from Crosby S/NSouthern Cross, 
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day
OLAF

What is all this Babble?

We are still travelling with Don and Nancy Harrington, Don is the birding guy with the massively large camera.  One day, Nancy came running up to me.  “Don has babblers, Don has babblers!”  It seemed like an urgent announcement like he had just had an encounter with some strange bug and was at risk for a tropical disease.  Maybe I had to rush him to the hospital?   Was the hospital in Pretoria the correct choice or should we drive all the way to Joburg?   I went over to investigate, and indeed after examination, Don indeed had babblers.  He had a noisy flock of Arrow-marked Babblers.
Babblers....I wanted to see them AND one gets what they pay for, so to speak, as then they wouldn't leave.  They WERE a disease.  If there are more noisy or irritating birds in the this world, I haven’t seen them yet.  These guys once found, ended up at the feeders at the place we were staying and could become quite annoying, so much like a disease, once you had them, you just couldn’t get rid of them.
I apologize for the glitch in my blog today ...
So here we are, Pretoria, staying at a place owned by Lofty and Amanda Lunge.  They like birds, their neighbors like birds, they feed the birds, they feed the impala, and say they got over 200 species at their house(s).  I had my doubts.

I was sort of thinking it was all talk, BUT, it wasn't.  What a bonanza of birds!  It has been a while since I was so overwhelmed by new species, I was almost paralyzed.  I'm sure i missed a few as I was two birds at the feeder behind identifying them.  I just skipped the bishops as weavers, bishops, canaries, are  all one yellow and green mess in the Austral fall.

I had three lifers getting out of the car, three more pouring the bird seed.  I even saw an ostrich on the farm.

Grey Go-away-bird, great name

red-billed hornbill

Yellow-billed hornbill
We not only saw four species of kingfisher, we saw them in one hour two yards from the Braai (BBQ) we were using.  All lifers for the trip
Brown hooded kingfisher

A tiny Malachite kingfisher Pied Kingfisher

Woodland kingfisher
You may ask what kind of backyard did I have to have four species of kingfisher?
And those are Blesbok feeding by the bridge on the way to the little shop and pub
There were also black crake here, seen just to the left of the picture above

I can't ell you or show you half of the stories and sights so I'll stick with the birds.  It was a true bonanza of birds, all colors of birds.
Black-collared barbet

 Southern Cordonbleu
crested barbet

Crimson Breasted gonolek

Cut-throat

European Hoopoe, we also saw Green woodhoopoes dancing

We saw lots of butterflies including this Gunieafowl, which was not a bird, but we saw Guniea fowl too

Jamieson firefinch

Lilac-fronted roller

magpie shrike

We saw three species of grouse including this Natal francolin which just scream when flushed

Black backed puffbird, all puffed up for us

Red-billed quelea

Black masked weaver of the two species of weaver seen

Village indigobird
Blacksmith lapwing one of three species of lapwing
All this was pretty good since I slipped on the mud in Crocs and feel on my bins giving me an NC-17 bruise on my bum the size of a large plate, but the birding must go on and it did.  
After finding a local guy named Vim to drive us around, we went to the maze of roads they call the  Dinokeng Preserve next door just to get different birds (where a woman was mauled by a lion recently when she decided to walk with the big cats).  There was a rumor of cheetahs....sadly no cats, but we saw....BIRDS!

Cape Griffon.  This endangered bird was a great find, out of area and just random dumb luck

Lesser gray shrike was a  rare bird alert

More rollers

Zebras and red-billed oxpeckers

white winged tern which I had no seen after dipping on one in Pennsylvania


Black bellied bustard, a rare bird alert

brown snake-eagle African jacana blurry in the grass
 Yes we also some mammals
Hippos

Jackals
Giraffes
Warthogs
So no cheetahs, lots of birds........scads of birds.  I'm still processing pictures and entering eBird checklists.So after one last meal on a cold and rainy day cleaning out our supplies
A final good by from the family of barred mongoose (or is it geese?) It is all over but the traveling and the healing.  My A#$ hurts!  It was off for our 16 hour flight to Atlanta, we almost hit a baboon on the gravel road and our driver looked fearful we'd be robbed, but we made it

Bucket List Item: See the Big Game animals of Africa

The lowly dung beetle works tirelessly in its craft.  It is a thankless task, dealing with sh$t and this bug just surrounds itself in sh^t every day and makes it into a ball and rolls it home, making something out of well, just sh&t.  One could watch it work for hours and we almost did until an epiphany happened.  Wait a minute...what is making those huge piles?
. 
We've been winging it across South Africa, staying at Guest homes, a farm, and then we stayed at a club, mind you, a very nice club.  We've been meeting locals, seeing birds, and seeing stuff.  One of the people we met gave us a tip to go to a place north of Port Elizabeth to find some cool animals and almost importantly, they had nightjars after dark, so throwing caution to the wind, we went.  I had a bucket list item that was to see the great animals of Africa before I died and well, we were here, and...they were here

There was just something in the air besides the smell of dung.....something truly odd, but beautiful.  The animals were being distracted
The Lions we stumbled upon were being amorous
And then when done, the male just roared and roared, the call of the jungle.  It was cool, maybe beyond cool.  Then, there was one vervet  monkey trying to rape another, dang monkeys

When done, the one on the bottom slapped the one on top, and a monkey fight broke out.  Nothing is like a full fledged monkey fight. 
So why everyone was getting distracted looking for the large elephants at a waterhole, I spotted two crowned lapwings which were lifer birds right next to the blind, I was taking my shots to the hard left and another couple there were perplexed as to what I was looking at,
"A bird." I said.
"You know there are elephants at the waterhole."
I had almost not noticed.
Then I got distracted by a blue crane turning over elephant turds a different direction.
So much to see and so little time.  We drove around warthogs, Puumba I wanted to yell, and break out in song, but this was no cartoon There were birds to see and we had to slam on the brakes for Pale chanting goshawk Cape starling A spectacled mousebird putting up his belly into the sun to help digestion right next to the starling, then we drove around and got our path blocked by more elephants
We drove around more and while i was looking at this Croc, a male hippo "mocked" charged us.  More people are killed by hippos than anything here and this hippo was pretty upset
This was all after a day (the day before yesterday) in which we got some spectacular birds like:
African black-headed orioles
 Amethyst sunbird
Great crested grebe (seen in Europe previously)
Long Crested eagle two kingfishers, four canaries, a woodpecker, a knysna turaco, and a lot of other stuff....So which day is better?A day of this.. or these guys?
I'll let you decide, for me, it is the birds, I stopped photographing antelope yesterday as they weren't birds.So now we've moved up to west of Pretoria, South Africa and the Garden Route is over, and we turned north exactly 9331 miles from home, 9331 MILES FROM HOME!  Amazing!
Also amazing....the birds up here are new again. The first 10 today, lifer birds.Even more amazing, is that we had four giraffes run in front of our car today  
wow and wow, but it is getting time to get home and our trip is winding down
until then, though more birds! and less sh&tOne less item on my bucket list!
Olaf

Birding the Garden Route

Yesterday morning I woke up in a small cabin at the edge of a pasture in a farm near Suurbraak, South Africa, a small town named after very sour vomit.  I'd spent the preceding days seeing the real South Africa.  But just what is the real South Africa?  Was it the big wildlife like the Cape Mountain Zebra (above) or the threatened Bontebok, with populations now up from a mere 17 animals over a century ago
Bontebok
maybe it is the scenery?
Or possibly the hundreds of thousands of people who live in what can only be described as substandard fish houses....  And this town has no other amenities but it has the 'corner market'
Or maybe it was the protest that had closed a mountain pass on the main highway out of Cape Town that blocked our way forcing us to take a narrow coastal route that was covered in trucks?  I just don't know.  Beauty, poverty, some turmoil, and a whole heck of a lot of wildlife, and all that with long names in an old form of Dutch that nobody can pronounce.
THE GARDEN ROUTE stretches for 190 miles from Mossel Bay, South Africa east along the Indian Ocean coast through a temperate region wedged between the coastal mountain range and the sea.  It is a gorgeous area of wide beaches, lakes, temperate rain forest and nice weather all year.  As we pulled out of Hout Bay on the 28th finishing a near week in Cape Town getting our sea legs and starting our assault on the South African Field Guides of birds, we headed east, this was our destination.  As I said, our route ended up a bit longer than normal as a major pass on the N2 as we would learn later was blocked by protesters who were burning tires.  The only other way around the pass was a long circuitous seaside route that was visually stunning but narrow and now full of trucks.  It was like our opinion of Africa, a mixed feeling.  There were some nice views. More African penguins... and traffic, scary traffic on tight highways...And then, we got to the farm. The farm was over an hour east of the official start of the garden route in arid farm country.  Suurbraak literally means sour vomit but I’m not really sure of how it became known as this.  We were the guests of Neels and Petra, a couple that lets out their guest rooms a few miles off the N2.            This was real South Africa, immense country, huge vistas, narrow dirt roads and in some cases made me feel that we were in Montana hosted by Dutch immigrant farmers. There were only a few rules here, wear what you want, go where you like, do what you will, but don't say a Dutch word I'd never heard of before and whatever you do, don't wake the PIG!   There is nothing worse than a hungry porker...
With this in mind, we stayed the night, the next morning we walked to the outhouse, didn't wake the pig and went birding Maxine, the dog was a good bird chaser, not a good bird finder Our cabin
Fiscal flycatcher
Cool Secretary bird
Springbok in the field
It was different than the cultivated gardens of Cape town full of Orange bellied sunbirds and  Malachite sunbirds
This was a place of harsh realities formed by the weather and the seasons but it was really cool but we had to leave.We drove off and saw African fish eagles
Baboons, being a little NC-17 and  Pin-tailed whydahs that I can count on my list unlike those in Los Angeles

Africa....I still can't figure it out but we are still moving east, and saw two elephants on the side of the road, only Africa and we've seen a lot of birds...a lot of birds, I've seen a ton of birds
Olaf




  

Nightingale and Inaccessible

We spent two days hanging around the Tristan group of islands which included four smaller islands the largest of them being Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands.
It was a wonderful two days of landscape vistas, birds, and enjoyment of places few get to see, and I am sure we will never get to see again

Nightingale Island
luckily this island is rat free, as in no rats inhabit the island causing destruction of seabirds, despite some shipwrecks there, that is lucky


This small island is actually still an active volcano as it erupted in 2004 on an undersea vent, something it has not done they believe in tens of thousands of years.  In many respects, it has its own ecosystem and is home to endemic birds despite its size.  Landing is difficult and even cruising the island up close with Zodiacs can be impossible but we still had this rare favorable weather pattern so we got lucky.

Nightingale Island Finch, a song bird endemic just to Nightingale, one of three passerines found there.  The species on these two islands are a mess as the finches found on Nightingale and Inaccessible  Islands are sometimes considered subspecies of one larger species complex.  It is quite obvious that they evolved from a common vagrant flock.  The larger billed Wilkin's finch (not pictured) seems different enough to be considered a true species.  I did not see finches on Inaccessible 
Tristan Thrush, I photographed all three subspecies found on the three islands.  The thrush on Nightingale are very dark.
subantarctic fur seals
The local Tristaners go to Nightingale for vacation, here are some cabins
Moseley's rockhopper penguin swimming
And here are more being chased around by a cheeky fur seal

Inaccessible IslandThis larger island is almost inaccessible, and is difficult to even explore.  I had hoped that a Zodiac cruise around would discover its endemic inaccessible island rail, the holy grail of birds but alas no luck in that.  I only saw more penguins and a lot more thrush, finishing the triumvirate of Tristan thrush subspecies


Elephant seal
Moseley's rockhopper penguin, penguin #7 for the trip


Inaccessible ssp. of Tristan Thrush

Tristan da Cunha
Many of you have talked about the "port."  There is no port.  They unload supplies onto pontoons and then small fishing boats tow them to shore.  Cargo ships have been known to come wait a week and leave without ever being unloaded.  They then lift items onto shore using the yellow crane, including the fishing boats, nothing stays in the water very long.

There is a bit of a jetty but it gets washed away every year.  Some smart person thought they should use wind power here.  They put up some towers and the first winter they had a big wind and all the towers blew over and were destroyed.  Such is the life here.         It was almost doldrums calm here mysteriously when we showed up.  The locals even patted us on the back for the luck as we'd have to be ferried by Zodiac to shore and back, but the weather held for two days.  Our last day we circumnavigated the island.  Almost saw the volcanic peak,  Went past the village and gave them a greeting toot and then we turned east and left, literally at that very moment the wind picked up, the clouds returned and the seas got rougher.  The weather gods removed their blocking of Tristan's weather  It was a glorious few days.

The mountain peak is rarely seen, we couldn't have been luckier
At Sea, heading eastThe variety of seabirds I've seen on this trip is quite unreal, they are thinning out as we head east but will change to African species and everything will be new again, here are some of the last to leave
Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross
great shearwater (5 Million nest on the Tristan group)
Southern giant petrel
Critically endangered Tristan albatross, a misnamed bird as only 8 or so are found in Tristan group, the others nest on Gough
White-bellied storm petrel, tough to ID in flight
Spectacled petrel, only nest on Inaccessible , they followed the boat for 1000 miles before abandoning us
So we put Tristan astern and now we have 1510 miles to Africa to continue this epic and possibly crazy journey.  4 meter seas are becoming calm seas in my mind.
Tristan is a wonderful place when it is calm, those rare days.  Debi Shearwater has been out here twice...and not landed.  James Harrington once and not landed.  The head of the exploration on this boat 5 times and landed twice.  We've had exceptional luck so if you want to go this way understand, getting to shore is the exception and not the rule and there is nothing that can be done.  Even the fishermen only can go to sea 70 out of 365 days.  I feel fortunate and at peace.  Now I can move on to Africa and continue on with the journey

Tristan da Cunha, the dream comes true

What effects you and how things happen can be odd and by luck A earthquake in San Francisco led me to be in the south Atlantic 30 years later.  How you may ask?  A bad pitching performance would also cause the same thing.  That seem odder but yet, also true

On October 17, 1989, I do not remember where I was, but I sort of remember what happened.  The third game of the World Series was about to start and an earthquake hit the Bay area.  I was studying Pathology and I wasn't watching the series that night.  The series got postponed for 10 days and even though I wasn't the biggest Oakland A's fan (the Twins won the western division in 1987 and 1991 with Oakland winning the three years in between), I decided to go home and watch the third game with my grandfather Allwin.  This idea changed my life, the earthquake changed my life, the fact that Oakland won game three and took an 8-0 lead in the 6th inning of the fourth game, changed my life.

So let us start there, ....With Oakland going ahead 8-0 in the top of the 6th inning on October 28, 1989, ahead 3 games to none, my grandfather gave up and walked upstairs and went to bed (they won 9-6 and clinched the series about an hour later).  It was just 10 PM.  I got bored at the game and trolled channels (we only had 5) and my life changed.  A show as just starting on PBS was a special about some great Journey.  It was to a place I'd never heard of and I knew maps.

Here is the link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpPes...

The words that started the show, have been etched in my mind for now thirty years as said by John Heminway, documentary writer.
"Tristan da Cunha.  It is hardly a place.  It is a destination of the mind.  Tristan da Cunha, it has become a sing song folk music theme of this show.  I am beginning to have my doubts and am not sure I want to get there any more, just in case I'm let down.  Tristan da Cunha.....Tristan da Cunha.....Tristan da Cunha."

I'll let you watch it, just saying the words is causing me to cry, to have goose bumps, and I'm beginning to be overwhelmed.  Tristan da Cunha....

I watched that TV show and I was moved.  Maybe it was the way the host continually repeated the destination Tristan da Cunha, many many times.  I don't know.  I do not know if I ever saw John Hemminway do another documentary but I saw this one.  I was 23 and I decided that life is about adventure, no matter what, somehow, some way, I'd get to Tristan da Cunha, because it was Tristan da Cunha, the greatest place to go on earth.

A lot happened since then.  I got married in 1990, I graduated medical school in 1992, we moved, moved again, moved again, had twins, moved, moved, had a daughter., started a business...
along the way my first email contact was the newsletter of the HMS St. Helena, the only way to get out there and I bought a rare 200 dollar book about the place, as it was out of print and well, Penguins, Potatoes, and Postage Stamps was a great title and only one copy was available on Amazon.

I never added this to my bucket list as I didn't really add things to the list in my 20s, AND it was so improbable, so impossible, so impracticable....,10 days at sea after getting to Cape Town, South Africa and a wife who gets seasick?  It would take a six week block just to try it AND not always does the ship even go or land, in fact, bailing on Tristan is more normal.  6 weeks to go for your dream and then have it dashed?

Tristan da Cunha, maybe just getting there is a let down, and I shouldn't have tried?  Maybe it is the dream that is important NOT the journey itself.
A tiny speck of land, a 7600 foot high mountain, 1510 miles east of Cape Town, the most remote settlement on Earth, why?  why?  Why is this important?

The volcano erupted in 1961 causing everyone to be evacuated and then 2 years later, they returned, but why?  It just added to the mystique.  I had to go, somehow, some way, and then I saw a trip, I talked others into going, it was the convincing of my life, I could sell a religion easier but maybe Tristan da Cunha, is a religion.

Silja and I have been on a month trip with the ultimate goal Tristan da Cunha.  We left a month ago and when the boat headed north in South Georgia I looked at the weather, and it didn't look good.  One woman leading excursions had came 5 times and landed twice.  We had a native Tristaner on the boat and he even seemed doubtful.  Two days ago in Gough, it looked impossible and then
it happened.  The clouds parted, the waves ebbed, the sun shone, and wow!  WOW!  WOW!

Tristan da Cunha!

I came, I saw, I was there.  Let me say it.  Every wave, every rock, every scheme, every step, every roll, every thought, every doubt, everything, was worth it.  It was the best day, the best day I've spent anywhere.  It was glorious, it was wonderful.  It was fulfilling.  It was great. It was marvelous, it was an adjective I haven't learned yet.

We walked the village of 265 people.  We climbed a couple of hills.  We could not climb the 7600 volcano, just what erupted 50 years ago.  We found a rare bird.  We drank beer.  We stretched on the grass.  We ate lobster, and we bought stamps....it was Tristan da Cunha!

My wife had a southern painted lady butterfly light on her and as such, we had wonderful luck.  This is a place many try to visit but few even making the 1500 mile journey can't land, the weather Gods frowning and keeping them at sea.

We came and we enjoyed, we smiled, we left, and now ...we remember.

Some views of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and Tristan da Cunha.

Original house surviving volcano behind
view of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas
government residence

potato patches
sign about mileage
Tristan Thrush, the rare lifer endemic bird I climbed the mountain for lifer beer at the pub, best lifer beer ever We got a private tour of the new hospital with the doctor just arrived from Pitcairn, he likes isolated places



The local working dogs get rides, the dogs look all related
Don trudging along
Our ship in the harbor
Nancy at overlook
Ah Tristan da Cunha, the photos do not give it justice, we spent 7 hours of perfection on the island and we were the last to leave.  It was like I was leaving my dream, but it was a good dream, a great dream.  It was time to wake up.
We met a man who remembered John Hemminway and that trip to Tristan in 1989.  He rode out on the HMS St Helena to Cape Town in 1989.  He thought the special was a good one.  He remembered waving a towel on the ship as it went back from Nightingale to Tristan.
The people here are warm and friendly, I enjoyed every conversation I had, every hello, in reality, they have little here besides their island only making on average 200 pounds a month  but yet they are rich here.  Rich in where they are and who they are, not in what they have.  Any where else and they are poor but here...they have this.
As my show from 1989 ended, so my day ended for me, when setting out to realize a dream, I also found something unexpected, Tristan da Cunha, and that is why we travel and why this whole 30 year odyssey has moved me
It has taken me 30 years to live this dream, while I was here, a family friend died and with that and this, I am lost in emotion of Tristan da CunhaThank you John Hemminway!  Thank you Tristan da Cunha!the smile will never fade
Olaf

Trisdan da Cunha, the dream comes true

What effects you and how things happen can be odd and by luck A earthquake in San Francisco led me to be in the south Atlantic 30 years later.  How you may ask?  A bad pitching performance would also cause the same thing.  That seem odder but yet, also true

On October 17, 1989, I do not remember where I was, but I sort of remember what happened.  The third game of the World Series was about to start and an earthquake hit the Bay area.  I was studying Pathology and I wasn't watching the series that night.  The series got postponed for 10 days and even though I wasn't the biggest Oakland A's fan (the Twins won the western division in 1987 and 1991 with Oakland winning the three years in between), I decided to go home and watch the third game with my grandfather Allwin.  This idea changed my life, the earthquake changed my life, the fact that Oakland won game three and took an 8-0 lead in the 6th inning of the fourth game, changed my life.

So let us start there, ....With Oakland going ahead 8-0 in the top of the 6th inning on October 28, 1989, ahead 3 games to none, my grandfather gave up and walked upstairs and went to bed (they won 9-6 and clinched the series about an hour later).  It was just 10 PM.  I got bored at the game and trolled channels (we only had 5) and my life changed.  A show as just starting on PBS was a special about some great Journey.  It was to a place I'd never heard of and I knew maps.

Here is the link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpPes...

The words that started the show, have been etched in my mind for now thirty years as said by John Heminway, documentary writer.
"Tristan da Cunha.  It is hardly a place.  It ii a destination of the mind.  Trisdan da Cunha, it has become a sing song folk music of this show.  I am beginning to have my doubts and am not sure I want to get there any more, just in case I'm let down.  Tristan da Cunha.....Trisdan da Cunha.....Trisdan da Cunha."

I'll let you watch it, just saying the words is causing me to cry, to have goose bumps, and I'm beginning to be overwhelmed.  Trisdan da Cunha....

I watched that TV show and I was moved.  Maybe it was the way the host continually repeated the destination Trisdan da Cunha, many many times.  I don't know.  I do not know if I ever saw John Hemminway do another documentary but I saw this one.  I was 23 and I decided that life is about adventure, no matter what, somehow, some way, I'd get to Trisdan da Cunha, because it was Trisdan da Cunha, the greatest place to go on earth.

A lot happened since then.  I got married in 1990, I graduated medical school in 1992, we moved, moved again, moved again, had twins, moved, moved, had a daughter., started a business...
along the way my first email contact was the newsletter of the HMS St. Helena, the only way to get out there and I bought a rare 200 dollar book about the place, as it was out of print and well, Penguins, Potatoes, and Postage Stamps was a great title and only one copy was available on Amazon.

I never added this to my bucket list as I didn't really add things to the list in my 20s, AND it was so improbable, so impossible, so impracticable....,10 days at sea after getting to Cape Town, South Africa and a wife who gets seasick?  It would take a six week block just to try it AND not always does the ship even go or land, in fact, bailing on Tristan is more normal.  6 weeks to go for your dream and then have it dashed?

Trisdan da Cunha, maybe just getting there is a let down, and I shouldn't have tried?  Maybe it is the dream that is important NOT the journey itself.
A tiny speck of land, a 7600 foot high mountain, 1510 miles east of Cape Town, the most remote settlement on Earth, why?  why?  Why is this important?

The volcano erupted in 1961 causing everyone to be evacuated and then 2 years later, they returned, but why?  It just added to the mystique.  I had to go, somehow, some way, and then I saw a trip, I talked others into going, it was the convincing of my life, I could sell a religion easier but maybe Trisdan da Cunha, is a religion.

Silja and I have been on a month trip with the ultimate goal Trisdan da Cunha.  We left a month ago and when the boat headed north in South Georgia I looked at the weather, and it didn't look good.  One woman leading excursions had came 5 times and landed twice.  We had a native Tristaner on the boat and he even seemed doubtful.  Two days ago in Gough, it looked impossible and then
it happened.  The clouds parted, the waves ebbed, the sun shone, and wow!  WOW!  WOW!

Trisdan da Cunha!

I came, I saw, I was there.  Let me say it.  Every wave, every rock, every scheme, every step, every roll, every thought, every doubt, everything, was worth it.  It was the best day, the best day I've spent anywhere.  It was glorious, it was wonderful.  It was fulfilling.  It was great. It was marvelous, it was an adjective I haven't learned yet.

We walked the village of 265 people.  We climbed a couple of hills.  We could not climb the 7600 volcano, just what erupted 50 years ago.  We found a rare bird.  We drank beer.  We stretched on the grass.  We ate lobster, and we bought stamps....it was Trisdan da Cunha!

My wife had a southern painted lady butterfly light on her and as such, we had wonderful luck.  This is a place many try to visit but few even making the 1500 mile journey can't land, the weather Gods frowning and keeping them at sea.

We came and we enjoyed, we smiled, we left, and now ...we remember.

Some views of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and Tristan da Cunha.

Original house surviving volcano behind
view of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas
government residence

potato patches
sign about mileage
Tristan Thrush, the rare lifer endemic bird I climbed the mountain for lifer beer at the pub, best lifer beer ever We got a private tour of the new hospital with the doctor just arrived from Pitcairn, he likes isolated places



The local working dogs get rides, the dogs look all related
Don trudging along
Our ship in the harbor
Nancy at overlook
Ah Trisdan da Cunha, the photos do not give it justice, we spent 7 hours of perfection on the island and we were the last to leave.  It was like I was leaving my dream, but it was a good dream, a great dream.  It was time to wake up.
We met a man who remembered John Hemminway and that trip to Tristan in 1989.  He rode out on the HMS St Helena to Cape Town in 1989.  He thought the special was a good one.  He remembered waving a towel on the ship as it went back from Nightingale to Tristan.
The people here are warm and friendly, I enjoyed every conversation I had, every hello, in reality, they have little here besides their island only making on average 200 pounds a month  but yet they are rich here.  Rich in where they are and who they are, not in what they have.  Any where else and they are poor but here...they have this.
As my show from 1989 ended, so my day ended for me, when setting out to realize a dream, I also found something unexpected, Trisdan da Cunha, and that is why we travel and why this whole 30 year odyssey has moved me
It has taken me 30 years to live this dream, while I was here, a family friend died and with that and this, I am lost in emotion of Trisdan da CunhaThank you John Hemminway!  Thank you Trisdan da Cunha!the smile will never fade
Olaf

Not Tough Enough for Gough (7732 miles to Graceland)

The birding gods giveth, the birding gods taketh, sometimes the sun shines and sometimes the wave hits you in the face.  That is life birding.  What can I say?  We've all been there, sometimes we've been there too often

Gough Island was tough, really tough but just when I had given up, I got a taste, be it a very little taste...but then, it rained harder, it blew harder, and the swell grew, and we had just gotten out in a zodiac, AND just seen the Gough Island Finch and then we had to go back to ship because ten minutes later, it blew even harder.  Crap, was that an unsatisfying look at a rare bird.  No photograph, everyone a little crabby as the person who had it best was my wife and the guy driving the zodiac was a geologist.  "It is by the penguin looking at us."  Really?  What the F^%%$  is that for directions but...I saw it....we were the only ones.

Gough Island is an isolated volcano 1500 miles southwest of Cape Town, it is uninhabited except for a weather station manned by South Africans.  They told us the weather would hold until 4 pm, they were wrong.  I guess what do they know?  It is a lonely yet gorgeous place, that has been taken over by house mice, that have mutated...have eaten up and almost destroyed a dozen species of birds, finally, finally, in 2020 they have scheduled a rat/ mouse eradication plan, that IMHO should have been done earlier but I guess better late than never.  We seem to be lost in the clouds of huge environmental concerns (global warming) that are tough to fix when we lose sight of the local problems that can actually be easily fixed.  I worry about concerns like plastic and introduced species like rats, and these Gough super mice.

Gough was wet, and a gorgeous place to see for someone if the weather was better

Weather station
Lone elephant seal front with subantarctic fur seals in background

raft of great shearwaters that breed here.
Mosely's Rockhopper penguin, over 3,000,000 in 1955, now...maybe 100,000 birds, thanks in large part to a bunch of fat mice.  Lifer bird but a frustrating situation.
The place is steep, unforgiving and well, a place I doubt I'll ever see again, it was a little like Jurassic Park.  I guess with mutated biting mice versus mutated biting dinosaurs.
Antarctic terns 
Gough Island
Sooty albatross chick in nest, damn mice haven't found this one yet
A bit of a lucky find, Sub-antarctic shearwater (split of little shearwater)
Trisdan albatross (Gough)
We've been seeing some really cool seabirds...Birds I'd never thought I'd see
Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross

 Spectacled petrel
So we bailed as the wind picked up to 55mph and headed to Trisdan da Cunha, just 240 miles away, the place I've been dreaming about for 3 decades..  I am exactly 7732 miles to Graceland, but only 232 miles to Trisdan, I think even Elvis would be impressed.  he liked islands.
Olaf