Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 17

The Middle of Nowhere

I was in the veritable middle of nowhere.  It was cold, I was lost, and all there was around me was ice and snow covered flatness.  It could be said I was at the corner of Forgotten and Ignored.  Then I saw a sign as I cruised past Tache' township, Manitoba today.  It was a big sign, I really was in the middle of nowhere, here at the center of Canada ...apparently equidistant from Cape Spear Newfoundland  (which I had been to) and some place on Vancouver Island or British Columbia which I hadn't.

This place was overkill to a degree you rarely see, there were flags, more signs, stone markers, picnic sites, yet more signs, and informational plaque, then a second plaque.



But all told it was about as inviting as a cold windswept place devoid of vegetation could be and then I looked it up....this location is the center of much controversy....you see, it isn't the only place to lay such a claim....

This other place is well over a thousand miles away.  The people of Baker Lake, Nunavut, are proud of their coordinates: 64 degrees, 18 minutes, 41 seconds N and 96 degrees, 4 minutes, 8 seconds W. In 1951, someone bushwhacked through the forest on the periphery of town and hammered a sign into the dirt proclaiming, “Geographical centre of Canada.” Billboards at the airport and town hall, as well as the mantra on the town’s pamphlets and website, will not let anyone forget it. 

Their equivalent of the mayor, Denis Zettler was quoted as saying.  “We’re the centre, the core,” says Denis Zettler, the senior administrative officer of the 1,728-person town. “We’ve got the documentation. We all know it. Everybody knows it.”

Then in 2015, tens of thousands of dollars were spent in Manitoba for the above series of signs and a marketing campaign.  From Macleans Magazine, Baker Lake isn't the only other place making this claim.



Well, all I can say is .....Really?  This is that important?

The planned park is being built and can you imagine wi-fi hotspots here and a "meeting" spot?  I'd ask the local officials "what are you smoking?"  But since pot is legal here, we all know what is being smoked.  Wi-fi?  I don't even have a cell phone signal here.  At least in America, we haven't spent much of an effort on this, as the center of America is located out in the prairie in western South Dakota also in the middle of nowhere.



Luckily, it looks like all we've spent about 10 bucks on this piece of roadside Americana, nearby there is a pole and a FLAG out there. Even that looks used.  I can't find my picture of it, but trust me, it isn't worth the 22 mile one way trip north of Belle Fourche.  The farmer does warn online about rattlesnakes....but invites you to look around and enjoy yourself.  

So what the heck am I doing up here in Manitoba?
What else?  I am chasing birds...some I know, and like to find and others I want....sometimes you got to go left to go right, west to go south, or north to go east.

I cruised up to Roseau, Minnesota with the aim of hitting my favorite bog for owls....cause it was sort of on the way.  To get great grays you have to be there at first light so that meant I was hitting the road at 3am.  It was just a little brisk when I pulled into the home of Polaris snowmobiles.  I got to my spot and there was one, then another....


Great Gray owls at dawn....could anything be finer?  Then I looked at my thermometer...



It was cold outside....dang cold......-31F   (-34C)  and that was not windchill.  Burrr!!!.....I've birded up here at -36F, this is cold,  This bog in Lost river State Forest is probably routinely the coldest spot in the lower 48 states, it just doesn't have an official place to record the temperature...

Gosh my "flat tire" warnings all went on when I hit the bog.
then the Canadian Customs official looked at me when I told him what I was up to...."You came up to do what?"  Then..."You are heading where?"  



Here is a road to nowhere I drove on right after the border looking for Manitoba ticks. I'm facing south.  The trees at the end of the road are American trees, the deer standing in the road down there is in Canada, as where I am standing.  If it wasn't so cold, I may have tried to walk 50 feet into America, just to see what happened, but just the deer did...and nothing happened.

So, I'm sitting in a hotel in "The Peg" watching football; waiting for my morning flight out.  Where I'm off to?  A place that is is 50 degrees warmer than here, but that isn't saying much.....

Maybe I'll order room service...

Gosh, even the Eagles/ Falcons game looks warm by comparison, and for me, I'm just going from the Middle of nowhere to the center of nothing...and back again.

The fight for the Center of Canada..  Their out here spending $200,000 on this project so far, and now Baker Lake is starting to spend their own money, personally, I'm voting for the unnamed lake in Nunavut comes complete I hear with their own black flies....now there would be a place on everyone's to-do list, .The Center of Canada fight....who knew?

Don't forget your booties cause its cold out there....it's cold out there everyday

Olaf

The Night They Drove Old Harley Down....

WHEN I WAS a little kid, I was given those absolute rules one needed to know to survive to live to a long and healthy life.  I was told to eat my vegetables, to not play in the traffic, and to not mess with the loaded gun in the corner.  There was that lecture about not playing with matches and of course I was chastised to not run with scissors, or to ever throw rocks and pencils because eventually, someone would loose and eye.  All that was said or implied many, many times.  Oh, and there was one more thing, don’t ever go out and play on thin ice.  I learned all of these cornerstones of life and somehow, I made it to being 18. Christmas 2017 was a typical affair for us, except for three things.  We went to my family first, enjoying the season with 500 card games, gift giving and overeating, then we went to my wife’s family in Minnesota.             I say three things were different.  One was that I went ice fishing with my wife and daughter on both Big Dunham Lake and Big Wood Lake but unfortunately, we didn’t catch any fish.            The second difference was that my family forgot to get out the pickled herring which was truly tragic.  It was the third thing that was really different.  I got this email late Christmas Day afternoon from my family.
I was looking out the window @ 4:40 today, and a truck came across the lake from the south, & broke the ice. The front end stayed up long enough so who ever should have had time to get out. I called 911, and they sent out  ambulances, etc. No report yet! will let you know if we hear anything!!! 
The ”whomever” was a man named Harley Meyer and passenger, Keith Choronzy.  Neighbors of my family  ran out and with ladders and ropes, and rescued the men floundering in the water.  I don’t know Keith, but Harley….Harley is just one of those guys.  It took almost 30 years for my grandfather, Allwin to be proved correct.  You see Harley had a bit of an ice fishing reputation, he was usually the first person each year to drive out on Big Wood Lake.  My grandfather’s prediction:  Some day, some day, they’re going to go in, because you just never know.            My grandfather knew a little bit about going through the ice.  Being about as close to a professional trapper that you could be without being one,  he had broken through beaver trapping a couple times on foot near shore.  On one cold January day half a century ago on 30 inches of ice on Grimh Lake near Frederic, he put the back wheels of the family logging truck through the ice, right where you’d never suspect you’d ever have a problem.              There have occasionally been big things to happen to Grantsburg, my home town.  There were the forest fires of 1959 and 1980.  The Grantsburg area invented watercross, the activity of skipping snowmobiles over open water.  This lead to the invention of jet skis and since 1977, Grantsburg has hosted the summer nationals races in the sport on its mill pond, Memory Lake.  Other races and events have been held at nearby towns. Then there were the Bigfoot sightings of 1985 which led to large scale investigations and then followed by a series of secondary hoaxes.  There was the 7-foot four-inch policeman named Big Gust, and there have been bank robberies.  Many trophy deer and bears have been killed, and even of course, I chipped in, with the Falun Sucker Club.  Everything previously, however, done or seen now seems to be dwarfed by this, but well, it may just be perspective.              So what really happened?  Like any event, there is the truth.  There is the story that ended up in the newspapers, and then there is what will end up being the legend.  When confronted with truth and legend, it is said, believe the legend, always believe the legend.  I asked out on the lake, on January 7th, and well, the legend was already well ingrained in the local lore.            There is a reason I don’t know Keith Choronzy, one of the victims in this event.  He could be the luckiest and unluckiest man around, as it turns out.  He isn’t a local guy, having just moved to my hometown from Michigan.  It even turns out he works at a local company with my uncle Dennis and this story begins with him.  It turns out his wife decided to go visit her relatives in Michigan over Christmas and he, for whatever reason, decided to stay home.  It is Christmas Day, and well, he gets bored and for want of something to do, he ends up in the Rendezvous, Grantsburg’s infamous tavern.  A somewhat seedy place that has been the subject of far too many damnation sermons at the many local Swedish Baptist and Swedish covenant churches over the decades.  In the eye of the holier than thou crowd, that dominated the western Burnett County landscape for the last century, drinking alcohol equals hell, and the ending of Prohibition was the beginning of Revelation, and the center of it all was this single bar located on Madison Avenue in downtown Grantsburg.  I’ve heard so many sermons and comments overt he years that you think the words “sin” and “rendezvous” were synonymous.            It is a lonely and sad situation to be hanging out at a bar on Christmas but well, it happens.  Keith starts chatting with the other bar flies and shares that he is apparently in the market for a fish house.  One thing leads to another and he ends up in a conversation to one of the biggest bar flies, a man named Harley Meyer.  Harley, you see, has a fish house he may be in the market to sell, and well, after a while he offers to drive Keith over to his place to show it to him, and then after that, they end up going for a drive.            How this unlikely pair actually ended up out on Big Wood Lake at dusk and what the blood alcohol level was of the driver was something you can only imagine, but certainly the standard comment about the lack of common sense was plainly involved.  They had been driving a fair distance out on the lake, but went in and apparently the electric windows shorted out on the older GMC Yukon XL.  They also couldn’t open the door.  Keith couldn’t swim but as they were doing 40 mph by witnesses out there, they made a huge hole when the car created a wave and and the ice finally snapped.  Harley now a big 65-year-old retired guy had a hard time climbing backwards in the vehicle towards the end that remained above water.  The only thing they had to break the rear window was Harley’s ice auger, so they used it to smash the window and exit the vehicle, reminding me of why all of our vehicles all have window hammers.  Now a couple hundred yards from the nearest shore,  surrounded in ice, the two men were soon floundering in the water.  They were unable to pull themselves out of the ice as the Yukon finally sunk, engine down torpedoing down the 28 feet of water burying itself into the muck of the bottom.            Keith was going down for the proverbial third time, when, as I said previously, people from a couple house away from my parent’s were running out to rescue this intrepid pair, one of which had just finished a course on water rescues.  They arrived and yanked him out before he drowned and then fished out Harley, saving them both from a tragic death and then brought them into a house to warm them up.  I guess the rest was history, but they were lucky they didn’t drown.  My family still remembers the tragedy of Louis Marek, another local man, who put his car down into Spirit Lake, a few miles away, back in 1962 with his son.  His son crawled out onto the ice but he just didn’t have the strength to pull out his father before he drowned on that fateful December day, haunting the poor kid for the rest of his life.              Car Down 2017/18 will be remembered in ice-fishing huts, hunting lodges, and campfires for years to come, maybe forever.  Not one to miss out on all the action, I arrived at a little after eight in the morning on January 7, 2018, walked out, drilled holes for tip-ups in front of my parents house and came back in to warm up.  

The weather was in a bit of a warming spell, as it even broke 25 degrees, that is -4C for all of you Canadians and Europeans out there.  This time of year that is about 2 degrees warmer than average.  It was a good day apparently, to go car fishing, as in fishing out a car.  You see, Wisconsin allows you  just 30 days to extract a sunk vehicle before they start imposing huge daily fines, which will quite quickly exceed your net worth, should you have the fortitude to avoid organizing a recovery operation.            I’ve done a lot of stupid and crazy things in my life but I’ve never sunk a car.  Once, on a lake named Upper Clam Lake about 20 miles northeast of here, I was standing by a tip-up hole (too close to the open water) when I felt the sheet of ice I was standing on sinking.  Another time in eastern Ontario, having the ice-fishing time of my life, I was walking back to my car with about four inches of water on top of the ice over maybe 24 inches of solid ice.  For some reason, I stopped.  I looked down and six inches in front of my boot was a six foot hole.  I got warned as a kid that if I drove out on the lake, and sunk a car, I’d be paying for it out of my own bank account.  I knew that it would be more money that I had.  Thereafter, I’ve been pretty cautious, typically fishing from shore, or walking out.  That is not to say I’ve never driven on ice.  I actually learned to drive a car on ice.  It is a great way to learn how to counter steer in a spin.  I just never pushed it.            Luckily, Grantsburg is the center of water recoveries.  Due to waterskipping and the ingenuity of locals, an apparatus needed to be invented to be able to float out and pull up sunk snowmobiles in open water or through the ice.  Carl Anderson of Anderson Towing and Recovery from the north side of my hometown does quite a bit of business with his team of water recovery experts.  The FIRM, a float-able ice recovery machine, he invented to avoid the weight of a tow truck to go out on the ice.  It is pulled out by a stripped down open Jeep and has four heavy duty winches mounted on each corner enabling it to extract just about anything. 
     About twenty minutes after I was officially fishing, the recovery crew came out and started getting ready.  First they sent down a camera to see if, I guess, the SUV was still there, as maybe a large sneaky northern pike might have moved it.  

They set up a divers hut, to have a second hole for them to have access, and put up a food hut to feed and offer hot drinks for the crew and the many onlookers.  The lake was a frenzy of activity.  Nothing beats sloppy Joes and cider out on the ice.  

They cut out the ice for the main hole (actually cutting Harley’s ice sled in half in the process which was floating just under the ice).  

They placed the FIRM in the correct location, divers went down, and then began the recovery operation.


Being engine down in the mud, they had no access to anything in front of the doors of the Tahoe so they had to raise it back-end first and then send divers down a second time to attach cables to the front end.   As they raised it, fish buckets, coats, and fishing poles started floating upwards, and then a trailer hitch appeared.  The growing crowd let out a bit of a celebration.


It took almost an hour to actually turn the vehicle to its normal orientation as the excitement of all of us built watching it, and then up it came, quite a bit worse for wear, and of course now, just a $200 hunk of scrap iron.  







Harley’s favorite ice-fishing rod looked salvageable, however clinging to the molding of the back window.  

At the end someone asked…”Where is Harley?”  Harley was actually nowhere around.  It appears, Harley has been persona non-grata and since the event has been hiding in his house and not answering his telephone.  A character apparently unwilling to remain part of a play that was now centered about him.Out on the lake, it was said that recovering a vehicle costs a grand a foot.  So this recovery will probably cost between $20,000 and $35,000 depending on how, I guess, they measure the feet.  It was almost priceless and that is a lot of money for a vehicle that would only be worth $5,000 before it went in and now virtually nothing.  I hope he doesn’t have fine print in his car insurance policy.  Somehow, I don’t think the price of the fish house will cover it, and maybe from now one, Harley may not be the man who races out to be the first to drive out on the lake.  Possibly he’ll just do a lot of his early season fishing from his bar stool in the Rendezvous, eventually telling his version of the story adding in more of the flavor.For me, it was the end of a great one-day trip to my hometown, as it isn’t every day you get to watch something like this.  It made almost want start to compose a song, at least one popped into my head, at least a parody of one.  No, I didn’t actually catch any pike on this crazy day, but I didn’t need to as I already had a great story to share, the tale of the night they drove old Harley down, and the bells were ringing, the night they drove old Harley down, and the people were singin' they went ..La. la, la, la la la... my apologies to The Band…I guess since it happened on Christmas, the bells were ringing and the people were also singing.   Now they just have to write the real song.
Be careful out there and stay off thin ice!
Olaf
PS The bird count during this was two species, American Crow and Bald eagle

Yet Another Year in the Books

Well, another year is history, as is another chase.  Loki had his way with me and well, all I can say, is 2017...and as they say.............that was that.

2017 was a year of post big year lethargy, trips, retirement, college tours, asset sales, asset purchases, baptisms, graduations, weddings (where Pastor Olaf forgot the bride's name), books, fish, big fish, a dead cat, hurricanes, property damage, busted dreams and hopes, friends, and well, I don't know, can I say I actually had fun....can I say that?  If life wasn't fun, you might as well just die.

So...the bad wasn;t bad enough to get me and the good, well pretty good

well like I said, Loki was busy with me this week.  Ian Paulson, a birder, and comment-meister told me so, he was kidding but then it came true.

I went ice-fishing up in Wisconsin on Christmas and nothing bit on Big Dunham Lake


Nothing was biting except the cold on Big Wood Lake next to my parent's house


Then I get this call from my dad, a guy, a local yahoo named Harley Meyer, was driving across my Dad's lake, lifelong ice fishermen, we all watch the lake, and the ice was two thin, but Harley was going like hell as they say, and my dad watched as the ice began to form waves from the pressure of the too heave SUV as the ice pushed up in front of it, and then it happened, it snapped and down went Harley.....my dad called 911 from his window.  The two men, wet and cold got out, but it was in 25 feet of water and the SUV, sunk.

IT has been 4 decades since the last car sinking on the lake, generally, Big Wood is not a dangerous lake to drive on, if you let the ice form, there is usually a road between the two landings cutting off some miles to town.     but this event I MISSED IT!

Under Wisconsin law, you get 30 days to get the car out.  Next Saturday, armed with beer, camera, spotting scope and well, a comfy chair, I'm heading over to watch them cut it out, the event of a lifetime.  Everyone who is anyone will be there.  Even this humble writer.

So I went birding...

I need a white cheeked pintail and after coming home with something bad in the tum-tum from St Martin OR the Christmas bird count, on December 26th, I was medically clear to chase birds.  Someone reported the pintail was back so away I headed to Florida.

sitting in the Delta lounge, I got a message, report errant, it was the 23rd, too late so off to Florida I went.  Along the way, I booked myself from Miami to San Diego.

I get there and...of course, no duck, I hang out, count a couple of year birds and go to Bill Baggs SP, park at nature trial near lighthouse and look around.

I get a Mag. Frigatebird for the year, hunt for LaSagra's and well, by 1pm, it is time to go to the airport.


I get to San Diego and would you believe?  A Loggerhead kingbird at the very same place I parked my car, less than 24 hours away, the 24 hour rule BITES!!\

Well, there was nothing to do but get the bird I had on the west coast and it took me an extra day to get out in the bay to see the target bird here a Nazca Booby with Dave Posey in which I ran into a whole slew of people I knew

Malcomb from Kansas City KS, Greg from Reno, Martin, from Trukee, Larry (number 3 all time ABA life list) from Indianapolis, in which I pointed out the booby to him from shore, how many life birds can you get to that with the great Larry Peavler?  Even Monte, number 6 all time and 1st all time with photos called me....
I met many others for the first time



of course the lifer Nazca booby from South America....we did see that



afterwards I went to Balboa Park....there Loki taunted me while I was looking for state birds.  You see California is my third highest state and although I don't care, I had a few hours, and a greater peewee is a good bird, unfortunately this homeless looking guy at first walked by me...

"Trump...TRUMP, he is killing all of the birds, killing all of the birds.  You know, he is killing them, killing them all....ha ha!

Then later, sitting by other gods in the trees, "big lens, I've seen bigger, much bigger.  You CAN''T PHOTOGRAPH WHAT YOU CAN'T see!!  I curse your lens.  No birds...trump killing them, he eats them...ha ha!

Then in the bathroom, he wanted to show me a bird...a very big bird....it was time to catch my flight

nice birdy park though, and with all the planes coming overhead, you knew where the airport was

I did get a summer tanager and a Bullock's oriole, a rare bird and a another state bird, so that California passed South Dakota for my number 2 state by a single bird.

Bullock's Oriole


Summer tanager, female type



but who is counting, I guess

A year of lists:

Strangest Bucket list item:  making meatloaf
worst bungled bucket list item:  Tracking down a Thor Gustafson, from grade school, he didn;t want to be found....by me.

BIRDING:

I put in 295 birding checklists into Ebird this year
with 1044 ABA area ticks, so I still got around despite me pretty much taking the year off from birding

In ABA land.  I saw 434 species of birds down 344 species from 2016, but considering I was on a moratorium for true bird chasing, not too bad.

all in all adding 7 life birds this year, 
Bananaquit
Gray-headed chickadee
Swallowtail Gull
Cassia crossbill
Masked Duck
T. Crow
Nazca Booby
was not the worst year.....I sit at a rather irritating 797
which includes the 2 armchair ticks from 2016, plus an armchair lump

Best bird:  Masked duck



Worst miss:
I only had two full on dips on a full blown chase
I also dipped on seeing smooth-billed ani but I was just 30 miles away and decided to go see it

The real miss:  The white-winged tern though on an ill-fated trip to Pennsylvania hurt the most
missed it by "that" much, was there at dark, I was there at first light....poof!

In South Dakota, I saw 266 species, adding 77 state life birds to my cache bringing it to 289, a very sad number but I've set myself up to break 300 in May next year
best bird?

Ruffed grouse



worst miss...
Curlew Sandpiper, put bird in scope to show Barry Parkin standing next to me, who needed bird and Peregrine flew in and everything scattered, never found by anyone again.  Could not count it.

I saw 79 species of birds on St Martin, which is a record for me:
I added a few birds
Best bird...
Bare-eyed Pigeon

worst miss:  Black-throated green warbler
Best spot:  The Brooks Range Alaska

Bets dayRipon College graduation, one day, 2 graduates

Bets fish, Daughter L with a 39.5" pike

coldest walk
the route to Aaron Lang's secret dipper nest

goofiest idea, buying this Frank Lloyd Wright house

last bird was a common redpoll  on last checklist at home
the last photo

last temp will be around -28F or so, tonight, no New Year cheer for us, I'm drinking Gran Marnier 
I guess again, who is counting?
I am two days from finishing a huge novel, "Counting Owls" and that seems like a better project
2018??
You know I will keep having adventures...I need three birds, 
So give it up Loki, you tried and failed
happy New Year, I hope 2018 treats you well
Olaf

On Christmas Bird Counts and Camels

Christmas is the time of eating, giving presents and ugly sweaters, people singing, programs at church, watching the same movie (from It’s a Wonderful Life to Love Actually), and even eating strange fish- inspired meals (lutefisk).  Luckily, we only celebrate Christmas dinner with Swedish potato sausage which, in my opinion, is pretty good.               Something else that happens every Christmas ….is the Christmas Bird Count, the CBC.  This tradition came about as something productive to replace the activity of going out and seeing how many birds one could shoot on Christmas Day.  This year is the National Audubon Society’s 118th Christmas Bird Count, and all counts will be conducted between the dates of Thursday, December 14, 2017 and Friday, January 5, 2018.  This isn’t just going out and counting birds.  These are quite organized affairs.  They are held in Sioux Falls, most of the major cities around, many of the National Wildlife Refuges, and most of the cities in the Hills.  However, there are very few of these held in Northeastern South Dakota.   I’ve never seen data or an invitation of one being held in Watertown, so I don’t know the history there.  There isn’t one in Milbank.I have memories of the CBC in Grantsburg WI as a kid.  I never participated, but my grandmother’s house was just at the 7.5 mile radius line from town, and she had for two decades one of the only colonies of evening grosbeaks in Northwestern Wisconsin.  Unfortunately, they all disappeared in the middle 1980s, never to return, and neither did the counters. On December 16th, I drove over to Aberdeen to participate in their count.  Gary Olson of Aberdeen has run this bird count for the last six years. Talking to the locals, although records have not been kept, this is probably the 34thor 35th year this has been held in Aberdeen starting in the late 70s.   There were periods in which it wasn’t held when there was no one in charge of it.  Doing a bird count in late December in Brown County is a thankless, mundane task.  The weather has a tendency to be nasty, and there aren’t many birds around.  Last year’s bird count was postponed due to a blizzard, and in 2015, the morning started at minus 15 and we even came across someone stuck in a snowdrift on a country road.  Needless to say, most self-respecting birds have long before hightailed it south.  
Getting assignments       
               The count in Aberdeen begins at a McDonald’s at 7:45 in the morning where this year, 13 intrepid souls get the assignments, another was already at watch at a key feeder.  Then we load up and head out.  This year my team consisted of Betty Clay, a local woman from Aberdeen who recorded from the back seat, and Paul Mammenga a local wildfowl biologist for the SDGF.  He drove and I spotted.               The way the bird count works is that one draws a 7 mile radius circle from a stable center of the search area which stays constant.  In this circle, the goal is to cover all of the territory in the area.  In Aberdeen, the center is the intersection of old 12 and 281.  We were assigned the northwestern quadrant, excluding Richmond State Park, which was assigned specifically to someone else.  Others got assigned other quadrants, parts of the city, parks and cemeteries, and feeders—all potentially good bird habitats.  In the winter, there is a paucity of birds out in harvested fields, so one can drive a lot of miles without seeing much of anything.   It took us two hours after lunch to see a new bird.The plan was typical birding.  We lurked in people’s yards, staked out feeders (assuming they had seed), as about 90% of hanging bird feeders are never filled, and drove over 85 miles.  We talked out way into the county dump, and watched powerlines for any signs of avian life.  We tried not to trespass but found a spot that seemed like a good place to get permission to hike around in the 2018 count.  A guy on a four-wheeler stopped to ask us what we were doing, and it is always with an apology that we say…counting birds.  It isn’t normal for people to just go out and count birds.  No one came out to offer us eggnog and yell, “the counters are here!”  It was probably lucky we didn’t get shot at.In 2015 while doing another quadrant, we found 426 pheasants, but this year we just got 9, with only 70 for the whole count.  The numbers of pheasants around Aberdeen is way down this year.  Everyone hoped for some owls or a rare bird, but no snowy owls were seen, and our best birds were a merlin ...


and a lone female red-winged black bird sitting on a fence maybe three miles from the nearest bird or any cover, but a red-winged blackbird is not a very good bird. 


  It was odd that we only saw one.  Mostly we saw invasive species—starlings, house sparrows, and a plethora of pigeons.  It was a long and tiring day driving farm roads.  The most excitement we had was late in the morning, I was getting tired of the same old same old and in a place where I could walk through a frozen marsh, I got out to walk.  About half way through the grass I jumped a white-tailed jackrabbit.  It ran across the road in front of the others in a truck.  Suddenly they were hitting their horn.  I’m thinking, yes, I know I flushed a rabbit but then they shouted that there were birds up.  This silly rabbit had ran across the road and flushed a flock of what turned out to be common redpolls and then thinking dinner might be coming its way, a rough-legged hawk flew up.   It was the most excitement we had.  Luckily no rabbits were harmed in this story.  In Brookings, their best find turned out to be four camels in a field near Sinai, SD.  Camels?  Really?  In a town named…Sinai?  Coincidence?  I might have to look into that more for a later project.


They did find some rare birds in and around Brookings.  White-winged crossbills are a seldom-seen winter bird in the eastern half of South Dakota at feeders and in spruce trees.  I’d never seen one before in the state, so on Monday, following the lead, I found myself in the First Lutheran Cemetery south of the Brookings airport photographing these birds.


As I said, our bird count was not too exciting.  This year the official count for the Aberdeen CBC was 3545 birds representing 45 species.  The record for the last few years was in 2015 with one more species and a 120 more total birds.  In other CBCs already held the number of birds and species was higher.  I think they saw 58 in Sioux Falls.They are many odd and strange Christmas traditions and maybe you think a Christmas Bird Count is right up there with the Yule log and St. Lucia, but at least it is something to go and do.  In my history it beats finding the pickle in the Christmas tree or gagging on Lutefisk.  Luckily, the warm Glögg (a wine, vodka, cinnamon drink) washed down a lot of potentially painful memories.Merry Christmas
Olaf .   

La vie pas facile

Baie Orientale, St Martin, French West Indies               I have been writing about the damage to our property in St. Martin, French West Indies in a multi-installment of my column in the Watertown Public Opinion.  I went down there this last week to survey the damage and this blog condenses and also expands Silja and my adventure to the island.  I know it is long but I decided dividing it for you my blog readers didn’t make any sense.  I also know many of friends also have property destroyed on the island and are NOT going to like my brutal honesty.  This was NOT a sun and fun vacation.  This trip was designed to survey dead birds and destroyed property and to see if there was any signs of life.Let me bring you up to speed.  We have two properties on the island, One house was a week from closing to sell when Irma hit, and had some exterior damage but survived, our other house was destroyed….C’est la vie.   There is a better French saying which I saw printed on a back window of a small pickup.  La vie pas facile, or “life isn’t easy.”  That about sums up what we experienced and what we found.


September 6th, 2017 is a day that will live in infamy, at least for my family.  I can remember exactly where I was, too. I was sitting seat 3C on the 0530 Delta flight from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis.  I was watching the CNN feed into my video screen as the forward eyewall of Hurricane Irma hit Orient Beach on St. Martin, the Friendly island of the Caribbean.   I was in shock.               The Stewardess came and asked me if I wanted something to drink and she looked at me like I was ill.  ‘I have two houses on that beach.”  I said pointing to the screen. “I was closing on selling one next week.”“Oh, my.”  She said and then I asked for Scotch.  Funerals deserve Scotch, I thought.  “Dewars it is, sir.”The guy in front of me hearing what was going on, said.  “Scotch all around.”  As the plane pulled back from the gate, we had a little wake right there in the first class section of an airplane, toasting to the bad luck of a poor man in row 3C, whose dreams had just been shattered. You know, one sees devastation on the television all of the time, from all sorts of disasters, but no matter how empathetic you feel, and no matter how much it moves you, it still isn’t quite the same until it happens to you.   I knew the news from the island would not be good, and we waited for quite a while to get the status of our home we had for sale, which was not as bad as it could have been, the 10 foot wall of the Atlantic ocean that met our other house was a pretty one-sided affair, the house lost.  Then came the other realizations including that there was French fine print on the insurance policy for the destroyed house including caps on total damages for the entire neighborhood to a number about 30-40% of the cost to rebuild and restrictions to the condo association bi-laws that could paralyze any response.  Adding a little salt to my wounds, I had just finished a birding guide: Birds of St Martin.  I spent hundreds of hours in the field in the last few years compiling it.  The book had gone to the printer on the day of the hurricane, and it was too late to stop it.  I knew all the information I had compiled including birding locations and the best places to find species had instantly become obsolete.  I was on the hook for the first 500 copies which at least, I guess, it could have been worse.  I now knew what everyone would get for Christmas.  My publisher graciously allowed me to post it on Amazon, despite the fact that I would be surprised if I sold many, but it was a nice looking book. It took 9 weeks for the airport to reopen after the winds destroyed the main airport.  It took us exactly three months to the day to get the courage to return last week along with Janet and Neil, Canadian-St Martin neighbors of ours, and a suitcase full of birding guides to give as gifts.  It was hard to know what the proper emotion was coming down and then when we arrived, it was so surreal, like I was reading a copy of National Geographic.The airport experience both coming and going harkened me back to the days of yore, maybe 1995, maybe earlier.





Arrivals went to one tent, departures left through another with the gates now being in the bowels of luggage of the old terminal.  There is going to be a SIGNIFICANT problem with this airport trying to get more tourists in here as hotels and things open as this airport can maybe handle one more departure a day.  I did like the naked statues in the departure area, it was an interesting touch.


The island…it was as bad as I imagined, and this was after much had been cleaned up….but it was also better  The villages had generally hauled away the debris, and the roads were cleared.
storm surge destruction..


broken windows on cars
\


damaged ecosystems...


business devastation



there is gas and some restaurants are open


but the island isn't able to handle many tourists but they have done a lot of work

HERE IS BAIE ORIENTALE ON THE DAY AFTER THE HURRICANE FROM A GETTY PHOTO.....


HERE IS THE SAME VIEW YESTERDAY....



Our place on the hill, as suspected, was livable and slowly we got things sort of working…more on that a little later.  We got the storm shutters that had withstood 185 -200 mph winds open, the subsequent bow had pushed the outer set off its track, luckily we had a second set behind the first ones to protect our house.  We got in and we got the lights on but it turned out our water was disconnected somewhere down the line.  It ended being a campout in our house, but that was okay, many on the island had to do worse for weeks, we were just here for an action packed week. Views from the hill...



We only really lost a single tree.

Then things started to happen.  Janet, managed to cut herself on broken glass and we spent much of the first day on the island, in the Emergency Room as she got stitched up.  Finally, on the first afternoon, we got down to where our other house was, near the beach, got hit with 10 foot storm surge and well, was a mess.  It was like walking into a war zone.  To say the area was devastated does not give it justice, what was worse, now three months later, absolutely nothing has been done and it was like it had just happened.  Debris was everywhere as abandoned structures stood like dead hulks to a bygone era.  I had seen a similar view in Croatia years after the Bosnian war.  The locals acted like the area was abandoned and to be fair, it looked abandoned as grass and vegetation have grown through the debris.  We observed looters coming through now for the tertiary loot.   Just after the hurricane, looters came through for things of value like food, alcohol, and the like (primary looting).  During this phase, every safe in the buildings were punched in, one by one, including ours.  Ours was empty.  Then they came for the secondary looting, slowly and methodically checking out abandoned closets for anything of value, taking repairable appliances, and especially, removing any circuitry or wiring.  I looked in one junction box.  They had clipped every inch of half inch or smaller wire, obviously the one inch main cable coming in was too big.  I was sort of surprised they hadn’t pulled up the main cables out of the ground, using a truck.   They had picked our cupboards of every unbroken plate and glass, neatly stacking the cracked ones on our only counter top that was still present.  Now with the tertiary looting happening, roofs are being picked for steel roofing and undamaged lumber.  I saw two guys hammering out roof beams for whatever rebuilding project they had.  I met a car that had two useful closet doors in the back seat.  They stopped and the friendly looters got out picking the dregs out of the former gift shop at the resort. It was a family affair, three generations picked at the piles.  The gentleman found a useful straw hat.  “Nice hat.”  I said. 



“Hey, I found two, you want one?”  He asked me.  “No, I already have a hat.”  I said pointing to my Duke University cap.  He looked happy to go away with both hats, a bag of treasures, and two useful closet doors.  I left with just pictures and a really odd feeling.  It was not like it was even real.  On a beach that even this time of year could have a thousand people on it, twenty people walked the beach like things were somewhat normal.  Police helicopters flew overhead.


Where the resort used to rent beach chairs and had a bar, an enterprising employee of the resort (still being paid) had built a beach bar and was selling drinks and renting recycled chairs for his own profit.  Unfortunately under French squatting laws, it might become impossible to remove this venture if and when the area is ever rebuilt.I salvaged some brass cabinet handles for mementos of our destroyed house, and marveled at all of the toilets left behind where houses once stood.  The walls and everything else have floated away in the storm.  The neighborhood?  I'll let you decided....
My place....

go Packers!  My Cheesehead hat...





The neighborhood....










Janet and Neil by their freshly painted and former house across the street from us


they have more trees...

As there was nothing to do with my destroyed house, I headed off to see the status of the birds.  The water birds are still alive but one of the best waterfowl areas, Baie Lucas was an unreal scene.




A floating shipping container had scoured out the mangroves destroying the blind.  A pile of cars sat across the road and the Coralito Hotel, the few rooms with at least three walls on the second floor came complete with squatters.  Abandoned power wires laid strewn everywhere.


 At least there were a few white-cheeked pintails in the pond


In the nearby Orient Salt Pond, one of the best winter habitats for shorebirds, (where last winter I saw thousands out here, this day I counted 3 ruddy turnstones as a fifty foot wide channel (above) had been carved reconnecting the body of water to the sea, changing the whole habitat.  I walked around and saw few if any resident songbirds.  Where I saw 50 to 60 doves in May, now I saw one.  Where I saw hundreds of song birds, I saw none.  Even the intrepid local flock of royal terns looked diminished.


the mangroves here are such a mess....you can't get your hands around it to be honest




Earlier, I found a woman who had a single hummingbird at her feeder, so at least one of those survived, but as of yet, it is the only one I’ve found.                 I sat there at the end of a road now blocked by the channel and I was overcome with the emotion of the moment.  I had to sit down, get a drink, or even leave the entire island, but I couldn’t.  There was so much damage and so much loss and the wildlife….it was terrible.  I had surveyed quite thoroughly the bird life on this corner of the island before, I knew what was supposed to be here and it didn’t look good.  I wanted to have hope, I needed hope.  I had to go into the mountains and search for pigeons—my next project….well not quite, I still had this nagging water problem of our Villa Plage d’ Elan (house of the beach of the Elk)               There is also an old saying.  “Water, water everywhere but nary a drop to drink,” or something like that.  We arrived at our house in St. Martin and we didn’t have water.  This wasn’t because of Hurricane Irma, and in fact, we had water and power right after the storm, or so I was told.  The water company had turned off our water, but they wouldn’t admit it.  Their computer showed that it was on, and the French believe what they are told. They refused to come over to turn it back on or they just didn’t understand us, as they only spoke French.  Eventually, they told us that they’d have a someone drive by.  The second morning we did have one of their trucks stop in front of our house for 15 seconds, but before we could run down the steps to grab them, they just drove away, apparently, here, having our technician “drive by,” means, they just drive by.  Luckily the pool was full to use to flush the toilet and we were thinking that we should only drink bottled water anyhow.  This made up our minds.  There is something about giving your spouse a shower by pouring cold pool-water on her in the backyard that says vacation fun.  
           There was plenty of bottled water on the island so we bought a car load to drink.  We went to our French speaking neighbor and tried to call again, then tried to get a plumber to come by.  In short we even tried to drive around in the hopes of coming across a person that worked for the water company.  I came home from going for a walk scouting and eventually a second water guy came back, if it took us laying down in the middle of the street to make them stop we would do it. He stopped and yes, our water was turned “on,” as it was the regional main that had been turned off across the street.  The French are never wrong.  A turn of a four foot tool gave us something that seemed like magic, water.


one of the best views of the trip....


  Then the plumber stopped by…everyone seemed to stop by.  It was a minor victory but then I refocused on the plight of the wildlife.As I wrote before, I just had to go into the mountains and find pigeons.  Water was one thing, but I had to find the pigeons.  I just hoped that they had survived.  In short, I feel all of my work making a field guide for the island was for naught, but if species had become extirpated on the island…it would be so much worse.


Hey, someone bought one on Amazon yesterday....a shocker.

I also had doubt about the hummingbirds.  Three species used to be found on the island with the purple-throated carib being extremely rare.  I heard about the “crazy bird woman,” a local, who post-hurricane went door to door, bumming sugar to feed the birds.  She lives a block away from our house we had for sale. Her feeding station was like a packed tavern, with 100 bananquits drunk on sugar, as many as I’d seen in total around the whole rest of the island.  There are some flowers starting to come back out so the critical period of time for these birds to live or starve has past.




I had put up feeders right when I arrived but only attracted a handful of bananaquits.



I staked out the bird woman’s house and then I spotted it, a lone male green-throated carib, which was the only hummingbird I saw anywhere on the island.   Eventually, probably the same one, found its way twice to my feeder before zipping back towards its previous confines.



My treks to find pigeons were more of a project and would involve me getting up into the forests where these skittish birds lived and also where danger lurked.  In 2002 on Pic Paradis, we were robbed.   There isn’t as much lawlessness around the island as a few months ago, but looting is still ongoing on our other property.  I used the term looting but to be honest, that property has been abandoned.  The management did not and has not put up a sign that states “occupied.”   There is no one watching anything.  I believe the French (or at least the locals) operate under the laws of the sea and if a boat flounders and is then abandoned, it is fair game for any person to lay claim to it.  Therefore, the term for what we were seeing might be put as “salvaging,” and not looting.  I didn’t initially get what a local meant about that property.  This is all ours now.  I guess it might be and so is what is left of our house.   


"salvagers"....pulling aluminum roofing off nearby houses to my destroyed house

Early in the mornings, my wife and I explored Anse Marcel, an area devastated, and climbed Pic Paradis—the central mountain.  It was a search for the threatened scaly-naped pigeon, that don’t typically move around much from island to island.  The other migrant species of pigeons, bare-eyed and white-crowned were never on St. Martin in enough numbers to breed.  All we found up Pic Paradis, unfortunately, were local hikers, a few resident songbirds including the rare scaly-breasted thrasher, and migrant North American warblers in for the winter.  A cheery Northern parula flited in a mango tree before posing for me in a bush.  There was a dearth of pigeons.  I have never not seen them up there before.  



We inspected the tourist stop called the Lotterie Farm, which had zip lines between huge trees that are now a mangled mess.



To be honest, though, the forest looked better than I expected.





 The mountain was littered with suspicious looking characters loitering about, and when the local hiking troop from Marigot left (they hike to the top every Sunday from the sea) we also left.  No use taking chances.  I then concentrated on the mountain by Anse Marcel.   It took until the last full day, and after finding a mongoose pair, an established pest,



and many, many green iguana, also non-native, we flushed two scaly-naped pigeons.




Like many encounters with this bird, it was too quick for a photo, but at least they were here, a couple of them anyhow, so it gave me some hope.  It could have been so much worse.  It seemed quite odd to me then and almost like the birding gods spoke to me as I waited to leave for the airport the next morning, not 50 yards from my villa,  there appeared on a snag, in a perfect photo opportunity, a single scaly-naped pigeon.  I’d never seen one anywhere near there, and to have it wait for me to photograph it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Coincidence?  Fate?  A gift from the birds?

Except near my destroyed property, the island is cleaning up pretty well.  Insurance payouts are slow as it takes at least 90 days to get payment after a report is filed.  We haven’t seen the report on the property we had for sale.  We are unsure if the sale will ever go through.  I don’t expect to get anything for our other property except a large bill and what we will do with that is unknown.  We had planned on living there all winter but now we are getting the feeling of moving on.  This does not seem to be our island anymore and the places we liked to hang out will never be the same.  Many of our North American neighbors down here are still clinging to their dreams and seem hopeful, but the reality is stark and staring them in the face.  They do not live here full-time and I think all of the memories may be clouding their judgement.  I have other dreams and ambitions.   To them, all I can say, is good luck.  They are going to need it.Life isn’t easy, that is true.  Birds, iguanas, mongoose, and even the local population are tough, much tougher than me.  Many thousands of birds died on that fateful day in September and in the weeks that followed, but eventually, the birds will multiply and come back.  I watched five endangered, Caribbean subspecies of the American Coot making nests.



 I viewed a juvenile pied-billed grebe and a parent on a small pond.



This young grebe had to be born after Irma as it still had the juvie plumage.  The 13 red-billed tropicbirds that live in the crevices of Green Key until they emerge in the late afternoon were chasing each other in a prelude to mating.  I have never seen them so close to the beach, maybe it is that there were only 20 people on a beach that typically has thousands...maybe next year there will be 18....it might be a good year for them.



A small flock of ruddy ducks have stopped by in migration


and despite the mortality of 90 to 95% of some local species and the destruction of the shorebird and mangrove habitat...It could have been worse


.In February I tallied 37 pearly-eyed thrashers in the same areas this visit I saw three (above).  I saw two in Anse Marcel on a trail I've never seen under ten before.  I did flush a lone unphotographed scaly-breasted thrasher, an ultra-rare resident bird here and my third sighting ever....so I guess  life goes on.
Material possessions are just junk we think is important when, in fact, our lives are what matters and we luckily weren’t here.  Living for a few days without water was bad enough and a reminder of the stark reality that others had to face and in some places, are still facing  and heck...I found pigeons........  
La vie pas facile, My friends …life is not easy!

Enjoy the day,
Olaf  

Of Swans and Volvos

When I wrote my first novel in 2005, Marks of the Forbidden, my main character at the start of the series was Daniel Nielstrom, a young banker at a fictional bank in Watertown, SD.  He was the oldest son from a very odd Nebraskan-Swedish immigrant family.  They were proponents of everything Swedish, from herring to coffee to even the family Sunday sauna.  His mother spoke Swedish when she was happy and English when she was mad or sad and of course, they drove Volvos.Although, I grew up in a Swedish immigrant community in northwestern Wisconsin, some of that had worn off in my four decades until I wrote that novel.  My wife bought me a Sweden travel guide as a Christmas present and soon, we were renting a motorhome camping around Sweden.  When I needed a new car in 2006, of course I had an urge to buy my first Volvo.The dealer in Minneapolis told us of an interesting program—Volvo Overseas Delivery.  It was almost too good to believe.  We could get the car I wanted, 2 free plane tickets to Sweden and a night in a hotel.  We’d also get to drive our car around for a couple of weeks in Europe, have free shipping of it back to the US, and…AND about 10% off of the price of the car.  Why would I not sign up?That spring of 2006 brought us to the Volvo plant in Gothenburg where I picked up my first Volvo, a cute blue S60.  We went on a wonderful vacation to Denmark and southern Sweden, finding places that in the years to come we would explore further.  In the decade that followed, I would become eastern South Dakota’s biggest Volvo advocate buying many cars.  The dealer in St. Paul even sent us over as ambassadors once and we ate dinner with the man in charge of North American sales.  It was just a magical trip after magical trip.  


There is no  better party than Midsommar in Sweden.
Olaf greeting a new Volvo at the plant in Gothenburg, Sweden in the past
here are various cars we've picked up in Sweden


Gosh....once we even left South Dakota that looked like this...

to fly to Hemavan, Sweden above the Arctic circle to go to a place that looked like this.....
But the ski resort had a fun lodge with a nice fireplace and lots of beer...and I really liked that car we picked up along the way
My current Volvo is starting to take a beating, just turning 100,000 miles in its short 3 year life.  I love this car and it has only been in 19 states, 4 Canadian provinces,  so one might assume it has more life in it but alas all mechanical things reach the end of their time with Olaf and soon, my little red “mountain goat” as I’ve named it, needs to  be replaced.Despite all of the Scandinavian heritage we have around the upper Midwest, Volvo dealerships are few and far between.  There are no dealers north of a line from Minneapolis to Denver to Seattle.  A few weeks ago, I noticed something that made me scream with happiness.  They are opening a new dealership in Sioux Falls!  One would never think such a thing would make my month but it did, so I went car shopping.  Graham Volvo on 41st street in Sioux Falls would be my next adventure.                 A professor I know at South Dakota State, KC Jensen, reported a mute swan, a very rare bird around these parts, this past week.  It was in the Oakwood Lakes area north of Brookings and on the way so I made a 25 mile detour to see a bird I had never seen in the state of South Dakota.  This would be the second appearance of this bird in South Dakota with the previous bird that came last winter to hang out in the Missouri River near Pierre.
Yet another SD State lifer mute swan,  #284, first of five on the week
For birders, a mute swan is a bit of a problem.  You see, these birds are considered established exotics just like pheasants, starlings, house sparrows, chukars, and most parakeets down south.  This swan is a native of Europe and Asia, first released in parks on the east coast over 100 years ago.  They didn’t just stay at the parks for long, soon escaping, finding other habitat largely abandoned by the declining population of trumpeter swans, and bred more swans.               The American Birding Association has criteria in place before they add non-native birds to the official checklist and then can be “counted.”  This involves establishing a population over many, many years, and that it is self-sustaining, and are not kept in zoos and the like.  This swan has been on the national list for a long time but only this year for South Dakota due to that bird in Pierre.  It can be difficult to determine if a bird is an escapee or a lost bird.  Waterfowl are notoriously tough as many people like to raise exotic ducks in their farm ponds and parks.  Of course any bird at the Bramble Park Zoo or other exotic duck pond doesn’t count, but if a bird escapes and shows up somewhere, how do you actually know?   People like to report rare waterfowl from an exotic duck pond in Florida all the time and to be honest, it just drives me crazy.  I did NOT count a Grayleg goose (another frequent park bird) I saw last year in Rhode Island as I doubt it’s origin.  Largely, the choice is up to us, unless said bird is a state first and the state votes against it, then although it is still up to us, although in such a situation, it would be hard to count it.Mute swans are not rare in this expanded region and are seen quite frequently in Minnesota, especially along the Mississippi river and two were seen as far west as Litchfield and Willmar area this November so one appearing near Brookings doesn’t seem such a stretch.  There is a need to check for banding and any clipping of toes or wings that might be done for captive birds but this can be difficult to see on swimming or flying birds.  On my bird, I saw one leg was unbanded so it looked like a wild bird but the bird never extended the other leg for me to see.  This was also a very skittish bird and acted wild. Having a duck, goose, or swan swim up to you and beg for a handout is never a good sign to call something wild. In the end, I counted it and it was my 284th South Dakota bird.  Last year, I would have not counted it for my big year.  My lower-48 year mute swan in 2016 was a Michigan bird swimming to a nest on Lake Huron.  It left no doubt on provenance. Not everyone likes mute swans as it is currently locked in a love/hate debate.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has stated that this swan is harming aquatic vegetation due to overpopulation and eating the vegetation.  There is a plan to significantly cull the population in New York, which was vetoed by their governor.  Ongoing euthanizing of swans is happening in Michigan by their DNR.  The “Save The Mute Swans” is an organization with unknown motive that is out publishing information claiming that this swan is not invasive and that the bird came here naturally from Russia, ignoring evidence to the contrary.  They are threatening legal action in court but to be honest, that seems like a tough sell to me.I understand their concern as this is a very pretty bird …but, they don’t belong here.  Our native trumpeter swans are now coming back after being almost extinct and we also have a large population of tundra swans that migrate through.  One of my friends from Aberdeen emailed me that he had a swan tag and wondered if this swan was in a huntable area.  I thought about it for a moment and then…sent him a reply, I think it is.  Mute swans, pheasants, chukars, and even gray partridge, are not native and bad things happen by letting non-native animal populations expand, so I have no guilt, even being a birder.  This swan’s days may be numbered. Now you may be wondering how a swan and a new Volvo are related.  Let me bring it full circle.  Volvo is working at making driverless cars.  This new car, it was reported in June, can avoid all of the deer, elk, and moose that it encounters but there are two animals that it is having trouble distinguishing—kangaroos and …..swans.  During tests, those two animals have provided 100% of the animal/ car collisions. I don’t think there are many roos hopping around this continent but it makes one wonder about swans.  I was thinking that if we adopt driverless cars, we can solve the invasive swan problem at the same time.  Maybe this will be something else the “Save the Mute Swan” organization will need to campaign against.  Volvo’s  driverless cars might take care of a mute swan problem…who would have guessed?  All I know is that I’m NOT buying a driverless car …but I am buying a Volvo.  I’m sure there will be more on this in a later adventure.
In fact my world lifer mute swan also came while we were picking up a Volvo...but that was just a coincidence....and I guess another story....


Kiss and hug your Volvo...

Olaf

Author, adventurer, venture capitalist, religious guru, and retired  former professional gopher trapper, Olaf is currently a columnist for the Watertown Public Opinion in Watertown South Dakota. 

AN EPIPHANY

In looking back at the past year, I have a lot to be thankful for.  One of the most important things to be thankful for was my health.  Last year on this day, I severely hurt an ankle.  This year, things could have been a whole lot worse.  I could talk about the updated ABA checklist,  but instead, I'll put in here what is going to end up in my newspaper column this week.
I've mentioned this story before here, but last summer I was hiking around the Catskill Mountains in New York when I stumbled upon a Hindu temple out in the forest.  It would be an odd find, except that I was looking for it and soon, bits of a murder mystery involving kali worshipers began bouncing around in my head.  
Brahmanoor Kali Temple, Grahamsville NY
A writer sees something and it stimulates those creative juices.  The day was young, so I continued up into the hills looking for birds, eventually ending up on one of the highest mountains in the area.  I found the threatened Bicknell’s thrush totally by accident.  Walking back down the mountain, I slipped on the scree and fell down a cliff ten yards below, landing hard on a big flat rock.I laid there on my back in shock taking inventory of my body parts.  I was still holding a pizza shaped rock I had grabbed on the way down after dropping my camera.  I threw off the rock and noticed blood around me, then I felt the pain in my right leg.  Initially, I figured I had an open fracture of my leg but surprisingly, I could bear weight on it.  I limped the four miles back to my car.  Down at the bottom of the mountain in the small town where I started, I dragged my leg into a convenience store looking for first aid supplies.  I was a mess.The clerk looked at me like was toxic.  I talked her out of calling 9-1-1 and she went and grabbed what I needed.  “What happened?”  She asked.“Well, I was at the Hindu temple and then went walking up into the mountains…”“Hindu temple?”  She looked at me as I was bandaging my leg.  “We don’t have one of those.  This isn’t the city.”“Yes, you do.”  I said.  I then told her the rough location I was at, no more than four miles from where I stood.“You must have hit your head, sir.  Maybe I should still call 9-1-1?”  No ambulance was called and I limped off to the car, I looked at my pictures to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. I drove back to Pennsylvania and had an epiphany, it amazed me how people had such a lack of knowledge of things in their own areas.  They were missing cool things, or so I thought.  I vowed to stop and check out any roadside attractions I came across.  All historical markers would be worthy of my attention.
The other day, I had a meeting in Colorado that took me south through a slew of points of interest.  I photographed a UFO shaped water tower and looked at lots of old houses of former congressmen.  Eventually I ended up in a place called Last Chance, Colorado, a town now located at the corner of nowhere, and forgotten.  It used to be a cattle boomtown, but now it isn’t much. 
Stephen Penrose Statue, Colorado Springs, CO, 


There are many boomtowns around the west.  Some are from mining, some are from oil and gas, and some are even from the changing tastes of tourism (thankfully not from birding).  Epiphany, South Dakota, however, could be the only medical boomtown around.Many cities have grown due to having a very successful hospital and medical practice.  Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota comes to mind, but no one ever thinks of Epiphany, South Dakota.  Mostly because no one has ever heard of Epiphany.  I asked a few people and all I got were shrugs and zero recognition of the small hamlet northeast of Mitchell.  Epiphany is a 101-town, it has a population of 101 and is located exactly 101 miles from the offices of this newspaper.  It isn’t Deadwood, but Epiphany has a bit of a story, in fact, quite a bit of a story.

Four years after its founding, a rather unique man appeared into the prairie town.  A Cincinnati priest named William Kroeger was assigned to the fledgling parish.  Unlike most priests, coming to save his parishioners, Kroeger also claimed to be a doctor and started healing the local sick and ill people.  This attracted many other sick and ailing people to the town.  Soon, he was forced to choose, priesthood or medicine, and as a result, he set up his medical practice in town.   This was no hang your shingle operation.  He integrated the healing experience and the money began rolling in, Epiphany-Kroeger became a company town with the father’s enterprise having 90% of the property value of the area.  Everyone around was involved in the business.  He built hotels, set up a bank, developed tranportations, started a newspaper, and built medicine manufacturing facilities.   He even founded a box making factory to improve shipping for the various elixirs sent using the mail.   In fact, he even negotiated bulk passenger and shipping rates for the various railroads that served the area.  When he got into a price war with the Chicago & Northwestern, eventually banning them.  It is hard to realize that in a short period of time, this Priest controlled the economy of this part of Hanson County,There are some interesting findings in looking up Kroeger.  He wasn’t just a pious dual trained priest.  Kroeger claimed he had graduated at the medical school in Cincinnati but there was no record of him ever attending that school.  Even the South Dakota Board of Medicine knew this marking his application as fraudulent but granted him a license anyway.  Initially, Kroeger treated his parishioners for free but then set up the Father Kroeger Remedy Company and began charging.  He became very wealthy, spending three months every summer traveling overseas with his companion, his live-in secretary/ former housekeeper/ whom he trained as his pharmacist.  As the company grew, to treat more patients, he trained his office manager to be also be a consulting physician.  Kroeger bought the first x-ray machine used in South Dakota in order to treat skin cancers, then added two more.  Thousands of people made their way to Epiphany each month from all over the world seeking cures for anything and everything.  Surprisingly, unlike 3500 practitioners during the period, Kroeger was never investigated by the American Medical Association and is rarely referenced.  Things were booming in 1904 and then something unexpected happened.  He returned from his summer of 1904 tour of Europe with his female companion, and he got ill and died later that fall.  The boom went bust.  He was barely over 40 years of age.  The cause was possibly due to radiation sickness.  On his deathbed, he was ordained back into the priesthood by the bishop and buried in Epiphany. 
His companion tried to keep it going but she was unable to convince the state medical board that her training with Kroeger was sufficient to be granted a license and eventually sold everything off at auction.  One newspaper estimated that his wealth was about $250,000 which would convert to about 7 million in today’s dollars, not bad for ten years of effort.At the same time period, there was a similar healing center located in Almena, Wisconsin, a small village located near my home town in western Wisconsin.  This one was led by a barefoot Austrian healer named John Till.  Till never ever wore shoes, claiming they caused disease.  Till, it was reported by the Wisconsin State Historical Society archives, would work 16 hour days, seeing up to two train loads of patients a day, sometimes seeing the very same patients seen earlier by Kroeger in South Dakota.  Till was not as integrated and his treatment involved sponging on a harsh oil concoction onto the backs of his patients.  This would inflame the skin to the point where it would ooze apparently in an attempt to draw out toxins.  Unlike Kroeger, Till never charged his patients nor set up manufacturing facilities.  He did take donations and was reported to deposit a few thousand dollars a week into the local bank.

1906 Almena, WI John Till's clinic courtesy of Library of Congress, below 1908 photo of the barefooted "healer"

Entrepreneurs built bakeries and a hotel to serve the estimated 5-600 patients a week that made their way to Almena.  Many businesses and people profited thanks to Till.  Unlike South Dakota, however Wisconsin never granted Till a license to practice medicine and arrested him many, many times for practicing without a license.  In 1922, when he was deported back to Austria instead of serving a jail sentence due to a public outcry for leniency.
There is a lot of history out there.  It is everywhere and sometimes in some rather unique and unassuming places.  All it takes to learn It seems, is to stop and read a sign.  Epiphany….who knew?
With many thanks

Olaf

Down in the Dumps

I told my family I was going to Texas to go get a bird, and when they asked "where exactly?"  I should have told them a recognized tourist center, IF, and that is a big if....you believe this sign.  Instead, I told them I was going to the Brownsville dump, nothing says travel "fun" than traveling over a thousand miles solely to go to a dump.

To a person, they all thought I was insane.  I think my wife encouraged my son, Tyko to come along just so there would be someone handy to commit me, but yes, I headed off on Sunday to the Lower Rio Grande Valley's most famous trash heap.

The bird?  Some call it a garbage bird.  I prefer a junk bird.  It is a bird that for the last 9 years had found itself on the trash heap of history, well so to speak.

I could keep you in suspense during this blog which will end up being the backbone of my column in the Watertown Public Opinion Thanksgiving weekend, but well, I won't.

Monday morning my son and I were having a bad day.  We headed off from South Padre Island to Brownsville to be at the dump at opening but we were greeted by the dump maestro at the main gate driving up in an old ambulance and came out to give us the once over.  He radioed ahead and we were told mud and rain made it closed to visitors for a while.  "How long was that?"  I asked.  Another guy got a little pissy.  Said he had came a long ways and I didn't mention my South Dakota start.  The man shrugged and drove off in the dump's 9-1-1 vehicle.


The other guy stayed, Tyko and I went driving to find other birds.  That seemed like a good plan until we got lost trying to get to Laguna Atascosa and then as their circle tour road is still closed since someone(s) killed two ocelot down there three years ago.  Apparently, they are moving the road a mile north.  We have had a new phrase in my family for a few years, "driving at ocelot speed."  This is a speed so slow, that if you'd hit an ocelot, he wouldn't notice.

This whole deal seems bizarre to me.  Moving four miles of road....Would it be cheaper to just put in 50 speed bumps?  Trust me, you put in serious speed bumps every hundred feet, no body is going to run over a silly ocelot.

Besides being the premier (or one of) wildlife loops in the USA, the issue with this was on Monday, that 3 crows were seen on Sunday, unfortunately 7 miles down that road.  To hot to walk although the woman at the Visitor center talked it up as doable.'  We then drove around, saw a couple of birds and narrowly averted trouble when a scorpion found itself on my field guide.....whew!!

After scrambling from being hit by a nearly out of control vehicle on Hwy 100 filming Aplomado Falcons



We arrived back at the dump at 11:15 and they let us in no problem, we drove up where anther birder was and we looked over some ravens, some garbage


some other birders came,


and then it popped up on a fence.


Tamaulipas Crow, a life bird.  Now, I know, this looks just like a "Crow"...

A older woman birder ran up to us as we were looking at the bird.  "Which one is the crow?"  She asked and then before anyone could answer.  "Oh, the one that looks like a crow."

Yea, it is smaller, a little more of a bluish sheen to it, when it isn't bathed in such harsh lighting that it is in my photograph, but it really isn't a garbage bird.  They haven't really been seen in almost a decade when probably west-Nile virus killed off the ones frequenting the dump back them or the habitat destruction south of the border has move their range south. (I've always tongue and cheek said that the dump employees got sick of birders and went on a little crow hunt one Sunday when the dump was closed.  No one knows for sure.

In fact, this crow was unknown north of the border before the 1960s and many think it is so similar to the Pacific slope crow in Mexico, the Sinaloa crow, the two may be the same species.  I leave that to others to decide.  On 11/13/2017, if was a reason for another lifer beer and a story.

Afterwards, Tyko and I tracked down battlefields

The last battlefield of the Civil War, The Battle of Palmetto Hill, where 5 weeks after Lee surrendered a fame seeking incompetent colonel (or one trying to steal cotton) tried to force his way to capture Brownsville and got defeated soundly.  There are more rumors about this battle than almost all of them, including French aid to help the Confederates.  Yes, the Confederacy won the last battle of the Civil War..and that is about all that can be proven now.



Would you fight over this?

There was a photogenic white-tailed hawk down there....


Then we also went to visit the Battle of Palo Alto, which is the first battle of the Mexican-American War, fought basically on the same days, but in 1846 (19 years earlier) than the Palmito Hills battle.  That war, now like my crow and the Civil War Batlle is thrown in the trash heap of history but basically allowed us to steal six states from Mexico, including the LRGV, which wasn't part of Texas or the Alamo traditionally.....



The odd thing about the leaders of the Battle of Palo Alto is that General Arista and Zachary Taylor would both become Presidents of their respective countries within three years and both would die the same way, from Pneumonia not long after that.  Taylor would be our second shortest Presidency leading to his VP Milliard Fillmore becoming our 13th President.  Not sure what if anything save answers for jeopardy can be said about that but neither them nor this battle is remembered by much of anybody else these days.  Like the crow, trash heap matterial

Now, I've had a lot of potentially things happen to me while birding, some in South Texas, so I decided to keep those teaching points to myself.  I gave my son the basics.

1) shower after a day in the field in the LRGV, to avoid chiggers
2) put on bug spray for mosquitoes
3) watch out for snakes
4) Don't speed in Starr County

then we added number five.....beware of scorpions on the field guide, then six, beware of traffic, then seven, don't tell the Border Patrol, why you came to south Texas, if the answer is "I came to go to the dump to see a bird."


Crisis was averted in time, by the way.

What could possibly top going to a dump to see a crow?
How about going to a H-E-B parking lost to see parakeets?


Ah, my son is getting the joys of birding.  Next maybe a sewage treatment pond, Donna anyone?

Well this is the life of bird chasing, go when you can where you need to,
the Tamaulipas crow, one bird closer to that coveted but of no real significance 300/800 club

and as for my family....

Recycle more my friends....recycle.....

Olaf

Mission Aborted

It was a long 24 hours.  You know, as I have repeatedly said, I get stopped all the time from the police and other authorities, occasionally I even know why they stop me.  I might be the only guy driving to have blown four zero breath analyzer tests, once when the first came up 0, a second trooper was notified and he brought a second device thinking first one was defective.  Driving slowly at 2am with my head out of the window listening for owls must not be a common traffic encounter for the poor troopers.  Maybe I should NOT have told them what I was doing?  If I had been stopped today, I'm not sure I'd would even answer the usual question I get, "so what are you doing in my county?"  I'm not sure any one would believe me--they'd just send me to the hospital on a 24hr hold..
"You did what?"

The day started good enough, I got South Dakota year bird, #260 (no where near a record) a common redpoll.  My first redpolls since 2012....it was going to be an expensive winter.  The flock of 250 that came that year cost me over $500 in bird seed

I also have pine siskins for the first winter ever



I cannot live by bird feeder birds alone.  A corn crake was reported on Tuesday on Long Island and yesterday, it was reported still on location.  Being not an easy chase, I wanted to make sure it had stayed overnight to go.

Yesterday, at 9am as I was booking my afternoon flight to JFK, New York, to go get it, a Facebook report came through.  A mystery hummer was reported at a friend of a friend's feeder in Berkeley--the opposite coast.  I looked at it, female Xanthu's but it looked different, somehow.  I'm not an expert on those birds.  A Baja bird only reported once before.  Later an argument of whether it was a female mountain gem, one of two species that are indistinguishable in the field rose up.  A Xanthu's is a great bird but a "Mountain Gem??"  That would be a "wow!" bird.  Always chase the better bird, I say.

I texted a California friend for details and chasability and went to winterize my cabin to give me something to do.

You go driving up here and you see things. I drove past this Merlin and made the birder U-turn to go back for the picture



It was so close, it looked big and well, I initially was thinking Prairie Falcon before I had sense knocked into me.  Typically we get Taiga subspecies here or I see these birds in the Caribbean and they are much darker.

The cabin looked good and Silja was first person to be out on the ice on Enemy Swim lake this year.


Winter isn't coming, it is here.  Deciding to get ready for ice fishing, I loaded up the truck with equipment to get ready for some fishing action before the end of the month.  Nothing beats fresh ice.  Back in the day, I'd fish on ice like this cruising around on an inner tube tied to a tree on shore.

It was about 1230  when the definitive word came out on the hummer.  Birders smelled a rat and those masters of observation recognized the feeder and triangulated a broken perch on it to one in Panama.  Intentions unknown, bird was at least not an ABA area bird, so no need to go to san Francisco.  I got home at 1;30, and because of last flight out of Minneapolis to NYC, leaves at 630 PM, with the 200 mile drive,  I had missed out.  I booked first flight out today.  I got a ticket to Islip which meant, I could leave 45 minutes later, 0630, and I could avoid New York
City.

It was an early morning, I left at 0120 and arrived at the airport driving in snow, arriving at 5am.  There was no line at security and by 0530, I was eating breakfast at the small terminal in MSP.  I had time so I checked Facebook.  i ALMOST DIDN'T.  What new could have happened?  Hey, cool a friend Justin Bosler, we share birthdays, he was going today so I texted him, maybe we could share a car, even a hotel room.  He texted back, he was at Houston, flying to Newark...no luck.  I saw the clock, 0545.  damn, my flight left at 0605, I had to run but I had read the ticket wrong...it boarded at 0605.  I sat back down on the floor leaning against a wall.

My sound was turned off.  Then I noticed a second message from Justin......"Bird Dead!"
"Really?"  I texted back, "call me."
Was he joking?  I thought.
"Aborting mission."  We connected after he had deboarded his plane.  It WAS found dead.  Dang.  If I had flown Delta or if it wasn't for the dang hummer report, I'd have been out there this morning much more disappointed than I was.
I un-checked in, felt happy Southwest doesn't charge change fees, left the terminal, paid my $6 parking bill, and drove home.

I was tired but well, had saved most of the trip.

Bird chases.....two rare bird reports and for Olaf....no birds...it could have been worse.

I kept hearing a quote from Austin Power's movies....."Abort....Abort....ABORT!"

Mission Aborted....

Olaf

The Big Wave

We were in Orlando having a reunion of sorts, with other displaced St Martin couples.  Discussing the present, and the future.  It was a total of 20 refugees that all showed up, it was a great week, sad in a way, but great.

I got on an elevator today with a man wearing a University of Michigan hat.   I looked at him as I held the elevator to get to the Delta Sky Club at Orlando Airport and rolled my lip and as usual, said something pithy and snarky.  I despise Wolverine football like I despise nothing else in this world.  "I hear Ohio State has a good team this year," I said.  I can't use my team so I have to improvise.
                 You see, as I've written before that I am a University of Minnesota fan.  Being a Gopher fan is about five steps below being a Cub fan for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here.  We are a pathetic lot as to be honest, the Gopher football team sucks, it more than that but I can't say it here.  Their last claim to fame was winning the 1960 National Championship in Football even after losing the 1961 Rose Bowl.  Despite tying for the conference title in 1967 and not even going to a bowl game that year, it has been 56 years since UM had Big Ten immortality that being a seat in the New Year's stage, a second futility mark only to Indiana University, a team steeped in absolutely NO football tradition.  I will never see a Maroon and Gold Rose Bowl...never.
           These years of woe have had some respectable season's, but they have been few and far between and Murphy's Rule comes into play during almost every season.  Our principle rivals are the University of Iowa.  The Hawkeyes and the Gophers play every year for a bronzed pig, "Floyd of Rosedale" but although I am firmly in the Maroon and Gold camp,   I have a UI hat, a sweatshirt and a diploma on my wall from the University of Iowa, for Graduate Medical School Education in Family Practiced.
             Minnesota plays for unequaled, four official travelling trophies--with Iowa (Floyd of Rosedale), Wisconsin (Paul Bunyan's Axe), Penn State (the Governor's trophy started by Jesse The Body's bet with PSU), and Michigan (the Little Brown Jug) this is not counting the dreaded "$5 Bits of Broken Chair Trophy"


Which was reportedly destroyed by Nebraska in 2016, but there is rumored to be a replica in place for the 2017 game.  They won't sanction the trophy though.
      Rivalry Games are fun,  I still remember the many years Minnesota knocked Iowa out of the Rose Bowl, once with Jim Gallery kicking four field goals in Kinnick Stadium beating the Hawks 12-10.  Again, though, I despise the Wolverines.  Anybody but Michigan...I always say.
       Today, Iowa plays Ohio State and Minnesota plays Michigan and I of course will always root against Michigan, but it is futile, so I'm hoping for Iowa to do something with another team I don't have a lot of time for, the Buckeyes.  They play in Iowa and in this day of rampant academic fraud committed by North Carolina, and others, something magical will happen like it does at every Iowa home game.
        Before the game everyone stops, turns around, and waves at the windows of the Children's Hospital built recently right next to the stadium.  It involves everyone in black and yellow, even the players on the field.  It moves me to tears just thinking about it.
       Maybe it was that 20 years ago, my Son, Tyko sat in the old UI Hospital having surgery as a toddler.  It was the lowest day of my life as a parent, that night was longer than any other.  I always have a special thankfulness of that place and I can only imagine what a child with cancer must think having 90,000 fans waving at him or her.  It is special.  Nothing greedy and self-righteous like other sporting events.  It isn't always about 'me.'


It brings tears to my eyes just writing this.,,,,,,,go Hawks!

Well I need to change the subject to Florida or I will just be incapacitated with emotion.

That really was a fun and happy week
well despite our family cat having lost another "LIFE" but that will be in the Christmas letter...

I was crowned Strawberry King for a moment at Parkesdale Strawberry Farm in Plant City Florida


Here I am with my lovely Queen

Then I went to see some sights.  Of course I went birding...what kind of guy am I?

I wanted better photos of a snail kite........



I guess I still do.  Always a good bird and then we went to Spook Hill, one of those gravity distortion places that i never seem to get.



Oddly, three other cars were there.  Considering the legend involves something akin to Paul Bunyan, I don't think, I'll use this "legend."  The cars do roll backwards though.  They come towards the sign which is an illusion of sorts.  One guy did it six times....he needs to find birding or something as a hobby.
I got a pretty view of Mottled ducks there with some white Ibis

After a great  Halloween party at an Undisclosed location, we went to find some hard to find birds.
Florida Scrub-jay


Always a favorite.  The Catfish Creek State Park was deserted and a great spot for them.  We then staked out the Disney Preserve for Red-cockaded woodpeckers.   We may have seen a pair in the distance but could not confirm them, seeing a black swallowtail butterfly instead, almost as good as I'm on a mission to see butterflies and ID them this year.

We did get brown-headed nuthatches


 My second spot for them in Florida this besides (or in spite of) some noisy walkers.  They just talked and talked.  Again, the place was almost deserted.  How this place even exists is a story of corporate greed and basically a cop-out from everyone.  It is managed by the Nature Conservancy, who, I might add isn't usually happy to have people looking at their wildlife.  They open late, have trails that don't go where the critters are that they are protecting, that is if they allow people on their land at all.
So...in a second try for the woodpecker, I thought like this and when the trail went left, we didn't ignoring the "Authorized persons" sign and kept going.  Sure enough, a half mile later, we found marked red-cockaded trees.  

More of them were just a tramp into long grass away but well, it was late and they were off feeding and I didn't need them of anything so we went back for lunch.  It was just nice finding where they hung out if I ever need to find them.
During the week, no great birds showed up in Florida so I had nothing to chase, just the rays of the sun and warmth and since it was snowing at home, that was enough. 
I still got an unidentified butterfly to ID

A guy needs something to do...
Anyhow.....GO HAWKS.  BEAT them dang Buckeyes because my boys have no hope versus those Wolves....and that loathsome Harbaugh and company, even Tom Brady (he was a Wolverine...too...once) is in the bottom of my barrel
And if you are in Kinnick some day....give those poor kids a WAVE!!
Olaf