Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 18

No Pulitzer Prize for me!

What do you do when you are surrounded by asses?  Do you just watch them?  Do you quickly leave, or do just sit there politely?

What about when the biggest ass looks at you?  Does it make you wonder if you are assuming to much..as in when you assume something, "U are making an ass out of me"?


Maybe this donkey has a deeper understanding of who is where in this world...he is looking dismissively at me....what do asses call US?

In thinking of these higher meanings of prairie life I was thinking....

2016 was a "Big" year for me for many reasons.  One obvious activity was birding and another was that I was keeping up a newspaper column in the Watertown Public Opinion.  As with anything, if I had realized the readership I had generated for that or even with this blog, I may (may is the correct word) attempted to do better.  write more, and reflect a little better my perspectives...IDK.  I surprisingly got nominated for an award last spring.

Well the votes are in:

My resume can now state:

2016 South Dakota Newspaper Association Awards, Best Featured Series, second place

That means no Pulitzer for me, now, I can't advance, oh well, but heck...I won something.

I'm currently working on a bit of a memoir book, "The Year Without Pike" which may include some of my birding year, but has caused me to look deep in the Olaf archives.
I can rank this up there with catching and releasing the 105th largest pike ever in Manitoba (which I did in 2001), I won the 1984 "Largest Hog Sucker Award" at the Falun Sucker club World sucker fishing contest that spring in Falun Wisconsin.  The coveted "Best Orator" award at Ripon College in 1988 went to me and I see, now 29 years later, I never cashed the $25 check, that I won.  Somehow, my National Forensics League  Championship Humerus Oration on "Organic Gardening" deserves to BE forgotten.

Probably my adventures in 2016 also deserve to be forgotten.

It is kind of funny winning a writing award.  Although, I am exceedingly proud of my new Guide to St Martin birds, and it is up on Amazon now, with inventory actually going to be carried by Amazon within days...


I get the booby prize...(bad pun) for timing.  The book was in press when Irma hit the island
and I doubt I'll see enough royalties to cover any modest advances such a project generated.  That $25 dollar Oratory prize might look good compared to this book.

Yesterday, my former business partner, Troy Kastrup honored me by saying "Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to exceed my potential."  At first I thought he was kidding and then I realized he wasn't.  This a day after I found my old medical school application.  Reading my essay, I'm certain that if I was on a selection committee, I wouldn't have let that student in with that essay.  The score system is different then than with my son Tyko's test, so its hard to compare.  Tyko is interviewing at the South Dakota Medical school in a week and I wish him well.  His scores make me look like an idiot.

I took the test a year early and I never studied, I'm not sure my Physics and Chemistry mastery would be able to pull up the rest of my efforts.  Maybe majoring in Ecology for my second major wasn't the best way to achieve a good score on the MCAT?  I don't remember Ornithology helping me much either.  In 2017, I doubt my research internship on leaf-cutting ants and leaf-lining behavior of buteo hawks would give me a leg up either,   Maybe a leg up an then an out of the medical school campus.  A mostly untamed hick from the sticks growing up on the family sawmill I don't think helped my cause, either.  I just think 1987 must have been a nadir of applicants.

So Troy,  we have both exceeded our potentials, way exceeded our potentials

I was at the SD Ornithology Union Meeting last week, not to speak, they are too scientific for the likes of me, but to listen and hang a little.  I had to go to Colorado Springs to a meeting and Spearfish was on the way home.

The research projects seemed soft to me.  Much like my "leaf-lining behavior of Buteo hawks" but mine was just an undergraduate deal, and my Isolation and Identification of terpenoids found in native Central American plants avoided by leaf-cutting ants showing possibly fungicidal activity" was a bigger deal and more relevant.   But maybe I'm biased.  I did learn that the number one predator of sage grouse nests are badgers (damn badgers) and the state population of grouse is stable at near 200.  there are 32 pairs of American Dippers in South Dakota in two creeks.


I also learned that black-backed woodpeckers are increasing in the state, and were not listed as threatened as the dipper is.  we also learned that Russian olives and cottonwoods take over stream banks, and...some birds like them (orchard orioles) and some...don't.  I also learned that prairie grouse (chickens and sharptails) nest where there are few trees.

There were a few other talks but to be honest, i was checking rare bird reports to see if the yellow-breasted bunting was hanging in Labrador was hanging so I could bug out, it wasn't so I stayed.

I did add 7, state lifer birds!

276  Black billed magpie
277 Gray jay
278 Sandhill crane
279 Pacific loon
280 surf scoter
281 long-tailed duck
282 Clark's grebe

My SD  year total is now 257 and that gives me a not so big year but I'm well on my way to my goal of 300.

Some of the bird views.....



 
Maybe I should research leaf-lining behavior of Ferruginous hawks?


I can work on my PhD.  Without any field work on this species, I can tell you they don't do it in South Dakota much but do elsewhere.  Do you know why?  There is a lack of suitable trees and cottonwoods don't have insecticidal properties.  Maybe comparing nestling success of prairie nesting versus forest nesting Ferrugies would be a study, a study that i'm not sure really is needed, though.  I'll just stick with finding them as they are handsome birds.  some answers are better off remaining unanswered

Down the highway, I was out taking a picture of this sign, that appeared to announce 1804 resumes 34 miles ahead....was there this much unemployment around?


Maybe I need to make it 1805 resumes with mine?  Have they really counted them that exactly?  My career as a writer with my award on it, maybe I need to look for work and now some newspaper may want an award winning journalist?

Minutes after this I was stopped by the fish and game department, all lights and sirens.  I had swerved for a pheasant when he flashed the lights.  "Is it illegal in Potter county to swerve for introduced birds, officer?"  I asked calmly.  He admitted he had ran my plate thinking I was registered in North Dakota.  It came back as a black pickup not a red Volvo.  "The plate says South Dakota..." He apologized.  I guess he doesn't see many South Dakota plates there, it is pretty desolate.  I was outdoors without a hunting license, but he never asked anything else.  He gave us a tip on a trio of whooping cranes which we couldn't find.  Maybe he misled us on purpose?

I was also stopped this morning, for something.  Two more passes by the police, number 70, I'm now six tickets for 70....I may be a champion in that.

I guess it is good to be good at something.

...but second place is good and a real honor considering, i'm not a newspaper man!!  It may be my highest writing honor ever.....

I have exceeded MY potential...yet again

Olaf

Last Chance ..out on the range

"Home home on the range...where the deer and the antelope play...."
I have a business meeting in Colorado Springs before I head up to Spearfish, South Dakota for the fall SD OU meeting tomorrow, cause like Colorado Springs is on the way to the Black Hills...

I cruised my way west

Ogallala, NE
I stopped in Ogallala Nebraska to get a car charger and to photograph the UFO watertower...one of those "must sees"



The alien is looking at me.....

You can't make some of this stuff up.

I like a morning drive in the Sandhills of Nebraska.  44 greater prairie chickens....but my camera discharged so I got no pictures until the Walmart in Ogallala helped me out.

Last Chance, Colorado
I decided to check up on my property out in Northeastern Colorado and see what, if anything is going on.  My lease expires this year and I have to find a new person to make a deal.  There never seems to be anything going on in Washington County and nothing ever goes on in Last Chance, well since Hee Haw saluted the town in 1974...and the fire of 2012 that burnt much of the ghost town, but unfortunately not all of it.


The Dairy King and the motel have been dead since the Reagan administration and The Texas to Montana trail... well that is a story in itself.

In one of the most suspicious deals in the history of insider deals, Charles and John Farwell, Chicago mercantile owners received a little over 3,000,000 acres comprised in the XIT Ranch in 1879 in exchange for building the Texas State Capitol in Austin.  It was the largest fenced ranch ever in the world.

Lets do the math:
in 1885, the cost of the Austin Capitol construction was 3.7 million.  In today's dollars that would be 91 million dollars.  A fair chunk of change.

What about the XIT Ranch?

Land:  Using the prices for Lamb County, Texas for the entire ranch (understand this ranch was 10 counties in size), $1200/ acre would be 3.6 billion dollars

Oil:  an 2014-15, the Ranch would have earned 20 million dollars each year from just the production in Oldham County.  This is slightly more than all of the oil ever produced in Parker County which it would have had.  The ranches lands in Hockley County produced about half of the 1.8 Billion barrels of oil produced in the 100,000 acre Slaughter Field.  Despite declining production this would have yielded $200,000,000 in 2015 alone and in high priced oil years in the last decade would have exceeded half a billion a year in royalties.

Add in cotton production, wind rights, water rights, coal, gravel,  etc


so this might be worth 10-20 billion dollars.  So 90 million OR 20 billion?  I think Texas made a mistake here, a big mistake.
The Farwells and their XIT Ranch, though proved that even with a gift horse, one could get fleas or in this case....  Texas Tick fever.  The plan was simple, at first just drive them to Kansas, but then that avenue closed.  It still seemed easy raise 100,000 head of cattle in Texas, then drive them to lands that the Farwell's owned in Montana to fatten them up and then ship them by train to Chicago, return and do it again  They had to by-pass Kansas because of fear of the tick born disease kept all cattle out of that state once the disease appeared a decade earlier.  It was such a great deal that the boys from Chicago went to England and borrowed all of the money to build the capitol on a 20 year bond.  The ranch never cash flowed, not even a little.  Maybe because the Farwells got distracted.  Charles became a senator and served in Congress in the late 80s, and John was busy building up a department store...1901 came and they owed 3.7 million dollars plus 20 years of interest.  They had nothing to support this.  The land went for sale and the Farwells died....being remembered as philanthropists, although raping and pillaging the range, spreading disease, would be better memories, and well..that is always forgotten about.  
Here is a marker on the trail in Last Chance, Colorado...the cattle came through here

So how did I get to own something out here?

It was at a bank trustee auction in Michigan and the last item up for bid was some property in Colorado, it wasn't why I was there.  Most everyone had left and this property had some title issues that were evident to me and I was bored...so I bid a token amount.  The auctioneer looked at me and said sold in like two seconds, I felt like an idiot, had I even bought anything?   Luckily, after I studied it, some of it had a good title, I chased down a decade of back rent, but I spent a couple bucks in legal fees to get another 80 acres cleared up.  The rest of it ...I now just get a tax bill for, which I ignore, as I can never own it, it is all tied up in a life estate for a woman without family in a nursing home somewhere in New Mexico...the county will get it eventually, probably soon....  A lawyer in 1979 made a mistake, it would be malpractice except the lawyer died in 1981, and then a person added something illegally to a trust in 1985 and he died and well...the trustee kept paying the taxes on something they didn't own....I probably should have left after the painting I was eyeing sold, but well...I was curious.  It was also a project piece, damaged in Superstorm Sandy and it was needing total restoration but the bidders went nuts on it and I never got my hand raised fast enough.  But my "last chance" was SOLD..to me.  The painting went for more money, shockingly, and it wasn't that high a priced painting.  A good used pickup costs more.  So what does this little piece of "heaven" look like?


It looks dry.  WORDS like flat, barren, ans desolate come to mind.....generally it is devoid of life..

Well, there were a few birds out there, I found 2 different Great horned owls


One on the power-line was very gray.  This is like my third lifer power-line bird for the trip.  A greater prairie chicken and an American pipit were my others.


Mountain bluebirds are always pleasant finds


I even have a local herd of antelope which came in across the road.  The bull is pretty nice but I spooked the harem so they went away from me and the road and watched me from a safe distance.


They are drilling an oil well nearby, so that is good, I guess.


They've moved off the massive drilling rig, and here they are swabbing to complete the well.  That is all I could glean from the road.  Going on to a well site without permission, especially here in the secretive edges of the Niobrara shale on the eastern Denver basin.  Trespassing would get me yelled at to beaten up.  It is said, Colorado holds up to a Trillion barrels of oil but as the geologists say, commercial production is speculative at best.  I think the owls and antelope have a better chance for commercial success than the oil for me.

I hope this isn't my last chance.......

My children will realize that some day, this piece of heaven will be all theirs.....maybe I'll wrap it up and put it under the tree?

the gift that keeps on giving...

Well, tomorrow, a meeting about what is the matter with Kansas, or something like that and then up to the Black Hills and the South Dakota Ornith. Union fall meeting tomorrow.

Colorado Springs is on my way to Spearfish...correct?   Maybe I should have brought a map

Fun..fun...fun!!

Olaf

Black Swan Events

It was an odd week.  I'll say it again, an odd week.  It was filled with black swan events.

A black swan is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict

I returned from Oklahoma stopping off in Lindsborg Kansas for some quality medvurst sausage.  I bought 10 pounds.  Lindsborg is a pretty town settled by Swedes and nearby to a namesake of my hometown--Falun KS.  They have a small Lutheran college, and cool town celebrations.  Their bed and breakfast is almost post card perfect.


In this Swedish town, the most interesting looking thing, though was this really odd driveway


Sweden, equals gorillas?  Maybe?  Maybe not!  It was across the street from the sausage shop. and I had to take a picture.

Unfortunately, I think my prophesy of the demise of the masked duck proved correct as on Saturday morning, A group of hunters had taken over the wildlife area and the duck disappeared.  Sigh....hunters.....

What a weird week.  First there was Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico, destroying Dominica, a deadly earthquake, there was the whole crazy NFL thing along with the whole Emmy award thing.  I want to watch football and an awards ceremony, If I wanted politics, I'd watch politics.  All week, it seems, somebody was protesting something and so I felt the need to protest something.  We had yet another flood in my South Dakota home...and I went on a college tour.  My short answer to that teenagers.

We flew into Tampa, I had a meeting, and I went to St Petersburg, FL on a college tour of Eckerd College with my daughter and wife.


here is my youngest at the Marine biology building.  Wow was Eckerd a cool school.....relaxed students (I wont mention the 2/3 of the class that fit nicely into a bikini) and were.  They had a beach, research on the interaction of Osprey and Monk Parakeets.....wanted every student to go abroad and did I mention the beach??  They even allow pets.  Can I go back to college??
I'll pay for it this time.

Unfortunately as my wife and I liked it, our daughter being a teenager, was the opposite.....sigh.  I need to work on the psychology of teenage girls.  Maybe she is a black swan?

It seems some birders seem to report any bird they see, no matter what ignoring ABA rules.  It seems odd to go on a big year or even list and not know the rules and report birds in exotic duck ponds.....or birds that don't count, like the black swan from above.

So here is a tawny frogmouth.....can I count it??


Okay it is not on the list...

American Flamingo?


they are on the list and I'm in Florida....I see ebird "counts" the Whooper swan and the white-cheeked pintail from the Tamrac Exotic duck pond....??

Okay....I'm just sick of seeing the ebird reports of this, so I started submitting protest posts....sure I'm making friends and influencing people.  If the NFL can protest at the National Anthem, I'm protesting these zoo bird posts.  It really irritates me.  This is the time in the history of the world that it seems it is okay to protest everything.  Why not screwy ebird reports?

I went to a local Buddhist Temple for a little Buddhist breakfast ...here we are in the noodle line.  Very good noodle soup.  The fried bananas........YUM!!


The temple was quite nice:


I'm covering all of the religions this year...Wiccan ceremony anyone?  The Presbyterians across the road should figure out that there is 400 cars on one side of the road and just twenty on theirs on a Sunday morning.  Maybe a little Presbyterian Lunch would show their dedication.  Free food (donations encouraged at the temple) to the masses is a great way for outreach in the community.  These smart Thai people got it figured out.  The nearly abandoned Christian church....I don't think so.
 
I ran into an old Frat brother Craig Casper from Ripon College, he is moving from Colorado Springs into the area.  Craig needed a new place to go, why not a Buddhist Breakfast??.


so yes, an odd week....then we flew home and learned that it had basically rained since we left and our bridge was out again.  Just a little water


At least it was not now over the road, but well it eroded the bridge again....

It was not like any of the Black Swan events down south or in the islands but again, our bridge is closed and I have to drive 10 miles around to get two miles.........

Oh and maybe the masked duck didn't get shot... there is a single report tonight, I'm a little suspicious but time will tell....an intrepid little duck, if the report is true.

...and its raining again....

Olaf
 (The blackest of all the black swans as no one can predict what I'm up to)

SOONER OR LATER

As I said before the birding must go on, and what a chase I had.  It was a "Sooner" chase....But before that, I want to share some photos of St Martin...

First, the house we almost sold....shockingly, it survives to be slept in another day


The fence is beat up along our pool and we have some minor damage but It isn't too bad.

The place we were going to keep took a beating but stands, but everything around it is pretty tough.  It may be many many months before water and electricity go to it.  I've been trying to get rid of that pergola for years BUT IT IS INDESTRUCTIBLE.... POSSIBLY though it held the house together.


some other photos of nearby...


It will be years before i get these houses straightened out and functional...love it down there, but we have to go to Florida and Honduras this year...very sad....I've already made arrangements.

I got a lifer SD bird on Sunday at Hartford Beach State park, a red-bellied woodpecker, my 65 South Dakota lifer of the year.....I know a red-bellied woodpecker...why would I ever chase one?  I was just out for a walk and I saw 5


I was sitting in my basement watching our beloved Packers taking a beating when I got the email...Masked duck in Oklahoma....yea, right.   I had just seen a post of a bananaquit in New Jersey with all kinds of explanation except the bird was clearly a yellowthroat....imagination run amok, but for some reason I looked at the picture of the bird...dang, it was a masked duck and it was a hen,...fifteen minutes later, I was out the door, 9pm, heading south, way south...to Oklahoma.

I like Oklahoma, if I wasn't married and in another life, I'd have either lived in Oklahoma or southern Kansas.  I like the people, I like the accents, I like the terrain..I'd leave in April and May to hide from tornadoes but heck...you can;t have everything.  Oklahoma is quirky....weird history.  Even their nickname is after a bunch of dirt poor people waiting in Perry or Enid for the start of a land grab of the Cherokee strip, the fourth land rush in Oklahoma and the largest, of course it was the Sooners that left early and got some of the best land, most that waited got nothing....the difference between 1893 and today...?  The date.

It is a state that we acquired during the Mexican-American War of 1848 with a little from the Texas Annexation, that nobody wanted so we gave it to the eastern Indian tribes, ex slaves, and there was even a piece, the now panhandle that was no-man's land, having no designation at all, and for a time was illegal to even be there.   Some enterprising people even tried to get that area to be its own territory Cimmaron Territory and maybe someday even a state...but those were dreamers...like always it took some fast PR in Chicago to drum up support for it all and as such...here we are....

It was along night but like the Sooners, I had a goal in mind and a bird that might not wait as it is teal hunting season in Oklahoma and there is nothing more prized than someone getting the opportunity to get a rare duck.  That thought kept me going.  It beeter get there soon if I wanted to see that bird.

Hackberry Flat, Tilman Oklahoma872 miles, two wrong turns, a two hour nap in a corn field, and I arrived 15 and a half hours after I left NE South Dakota.  It was 1230, and the day was getting hot.  I was tired but then I saw a group of people way out near a pond.  I just drove over there as three cars were leaving.  One guys said, the guy we left behind knows where it is.  I shuffled over 100 feet and there it was sleeping, head ticked under a wing.  Every ten minutes of so it popped its head out.  Eventually, it put on a little swim by for us for excellent photos in near perfect light.


What a stunning bird!  Even if it is a hen.  These may be the photos of the year!!
In fact, I’m happier it was a hen.  Exotic wildfowl keepers usually have males.  We got to see both legs and it was unbanded.  
I even photographed wings

I suspect it was just a bird displaced by Hurricane Harvey. Great bird!  Lifer bird!!  
Hard to believe that in the 1993 Texas breeding bird survey they estimated a statewide population of 3000 of these birds but then they just disappeared.  The cause is unknown but in the last 5 to ten years there have been like three sightings and those where fleeting.  Masked ducks like to stay in the weeds and can be hard to see even if you know  where one is but this one came out, I felt very lucky.  It could  have came out to a man with a shotgun.  Sadly, it still might.
The four of us there laughed at my long drive they were from Wichita, Tulsa and Fort Worth.  I had them beat....
I had heard the new checklist is delayed by 1-2 months so it will be a while before I know how many I have...in the meantime, I 'll keep chasing birds
Wichita National Refuge, Lawton OklahomaThis is an area I’ve never been to before so despite my exhaustion, I wanted to look around.  I drove into this huge wildlife refuge of 59,000 acres I'd never heard of next to Fort Sill, which oddly, my old company, just started a clinic contract at today, this very day.  What are the odds of that?
WNR is a wildlife refuge with little wildlife save a wild herd of Texas Longhorn cattle.  I refused to photograph longhorns.
I saw a loggerhead shrike and vultures, that was the best I could do.


I went and saw the Holy City of the Wichitas that is tucked back in the refuge.  This is a place where they still do the annual passion play every spring.  I'm not sure how many attend.  They have little parking.


Built in 1934 by the WPA, when Church and State used to be the same thing,  It is billed as a "slice of old Jerusalem"  Although it looks much like 1930s western USA with a painted chariot laying around.  There is also the large modern statue of Jesus and a sign saying the government does not support this....but it is on federal land.  Oh, I'll be nice...I bet the play is very moving.  I've actually seen the REAL Passion Play in Oberamergau Germany, where the seats were hard and the play even harder.... to understand at it was in German.
Views from Mt Scott at 2464 feet high.


It was a nice area that I may never get back to.  I stumbled into Chickasha and found a lo-cal room.  I was too tired to care, and too tired to appreciate an expensive one.  The bed looked as though only a few people had sex on the sheets before I got here, so that is good and it beat sleeping in a corn field.... but I did go out for a lifer beer!!  I had to..

Cheers!  To a damn nice duck!
If I wake up, I think I need some sausage with that beer and the best Swedish sausage spot is in Linsborg Kansas, a little out of my way....... but for one of the 5 best sausage shops in America...I shall take the detour!
yum, I can almost taste it now!!!
Olaf

Ode to a Dying Island

In the last three days, i was filled with worry.  Hurricane Irma bearing down on St. Martin, an island I own not just one house but two, with a closing of selling one house set for next week.  So instead of watching the Weather Channel my wife drove me to the airport to go bird.  I would be better off without internet.  So away I went.

I saw two lifer birds in what could be assuming the ABA adds what I have in the bank to the checklist, my 800th bird.  But..it wasn't so grand a feeling.


Swallow-tailed gull, Seattle Washington, a great code 5 bird from the Galapagos Islands, which I saw a lot of birders I knew, everyone who was anyone was there on Monday.  Some of the people I thought I was friends with gave me the cold shoulder.  I didn't care.  It was at a nude beach BUT this bird is not on my nude life list...honestly, I didn't think about it, I was distracted by Irma.

I flew immediately to Salt Lake and rented a car to drive to Idaho, on Tuesday Morning, I got another lifer, the new Cassia Crossbill, a bird split off from the red crossbill which lives in the Sawtooth National Forest.  I shall be honest, I can add this lifer bird to my sans clothing list btw, as I thought about it, and the forest was pretty sparse of others.



But it still left me hollow.  I went to Shoshone Falls to get a hotdog but they had turned the water off, I can watch water flow for hours...Not today but they did have food though at the park near Twin Falls Idaho.  Tired and worried as the NOAA forecast moved the hurricane turn westward, I drove in a funk back to Salt Lake.  It was a sleepless night at the hotel.


At 0530 I boarded the plane local time, Irma, a hurricane name meaning immense or universal, a really odd woman's name, and one also a derivation of a goddess of war and destruction came ashore on Orient Beach St Martin.  We all drank Scotch in first class as it was a wake for the island.  The earliest I've ever drank hard liquor.

Since then, I watched video of seven story buildings collapse, and many many pictures of the devastation.  Here is a photo from Anse Marcel, one bay north of Orient.


I don't know what to do, I sit here in shock, alcohol numbs but it doesn't sooth the pain, I've seen one photo from the Dutch military copter flying over the Orient Beach Village, it looks as bad as the above photo.  many dead, maybe people I know.  It is bad...really bad.

Here is a comment from the Manager at Club Orient, a place on Orient Beach on the French side.

The island is in complete devastation.
Steve has been able to call briefly by cell, but his battery is almost used up. There is no electricity anywhere on the island, and it will be out for the "foreseeable future."Markets have been cleaned out. There is no food or water to be had. Housing is gone. Some people have set up camp under the pool tables at the casino. The casino is gone but the tables provide some security/shelter. There is no gasoline to be found. Cars are not moving. Steve's car is OK, but all the windows were blown out. I'm not sure any roads are open.Steve and Linda are OK but in shock. Their room started to fall in so they took refuge in the bathroom with their dog. They were not hurt when the floor above collapsed into their unit. Bert (head of maintenance) wasn't as lucky. He was cut by flying glass on the head and arms. He was treated by first aid personnel and will be fine. About 12 people took refuge at the Grand Case Beach Club (GCBC). Anne spent the night elsewhere and has checked in by phone. She is OK. There is no word yet on Florence (reservations). Keep in mind communications are sporadic at best.
Bert's son is trying to get to the resort on foot to assess the situation.
I share this with tears in my eyes.  We've had 15 wonderful years, I've seen exactly 100 bird species, a have a field guide to the island birds coming out (for naught) in a month, but with no tourism on this island in the future it is just something to remember it all by.  They are all gone.
One of two forests that has the threatened scaly naped pigeon is totally defoliated, so I assume they are all dead.

The bridled quail dove??

there were only a couple breeding pairs on the island...so sad so sad....
here are just some pictures I had in a file to copy quickly here, too painful to review much more...

















So sad, my two house, one I'm certain totally destroyed and the second...??  The closing next week on the other one... that won't happen.  There is nothing to keep the French family on the island.  There is nothing, no hope and no future..not even food and water....they and those with that have means will leave.  
The airport is destroyed so how will they even get off?  IDK, but a cruise ship will need to be taken there....I'm certain that before the French Army gets there that desperate means will become the norm, so we can't go down there any time soon.  Tourists better arm themselves with whatever they can, rebar, boards, knives, sticks....  For us?  Pray...all we can do.  I could post many many photos of the destruction, but it is unimaginable....you can't handle it, beyond a bombing...here is the view I want to remember..  A view gone....that is Club Orient below from deck of out villa, what was a chalet we owned is certainly as well as all the foliage, gone.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars and over 50 trips........sigh...I told you all that there is more to living than just birding and well, this is one thing.  It could have been worse, we could have been there.  If this was last year, I would have had to abandon my big year.....Life Bird 800?   Big F$%ing deal....does 800 birds matter?....that is my thoughts today.
so sad so sad
To my favorite island...St.. Martin...it was a good run....
Olaf

Whoops!

Grenville, SD Aug 18th, 2017

Roslyn has the Vinegar Museum and its resident poet.  Eden (formerly Eden Park),  has Club Eden but the the biggest thing that Grenville SD had until recently was a flood.  Today the biggest thing that nobody ever heard of to happen in Grenville was the arrival of one of North Americas rarest breeding birds.  The near extinct Whooping Crane.

Yesterday, I got interviewed for radio podcast on Animal Radio's Pet talk.  It airs next week and was on my 2013 habit of nude birding.  They got a laugh.

I found it good to be on the lake this week, there is nothing like being home



Up in Canada, a friend of mine  encouraged me to do a book on my fish stories, my first love, pike fishing and so I started that on Tuesday and have a good start going and YES, I am including some 2016 sections on my big year.  Haven't got to that yet, not sure if it will be 10 pages or 100 pages but I'm writing.  I needed a break this morning  and as the rain was coming in, and my wife scurried to finish painting our shed.  We've had a very wet August.  I'm predicting bad crops around here.


So I decided to go and chase a nearby bird, 17 miles away from my house on Enemy Swim Lake.
I drove around the lake and then west, through Grenville, SD  population 59.  Grenville is an odd town, and has not had the best of years recently as Waubay Lake rose up to swallow some of it and for a while literally you couldn't get there until some of the roads were raised moved around the water,   Some roads had to be raised 30 feet in some cases.

In 1915 and for decades, the Soo Line did some great marketing attempts at this God forsaken land on the top of the Coteau to sell land it got along the new spur and the only spur in had in the state.  They named places like Eden Park, and Lake City, as enticements and both cities never amounting to anything and even together, with Rosyln and Grenville combined would not be anything anyone would mistake for a city.  Today Eden is a place of 79 people, lake City is 52 and Grenville the end of the line, was marketed as "an industrial center" in the 1951 Soo Line annual report along with Minneapolis, Duluth, Milwaukee...those three have nothing in common with Grenville,   I think some executives were smoking something back in the day.  Soo Line was trying anything and well 40 years ago they gave up, ripped up the track west of Veblen and left these towns to fend for themselves.  The only thing that was ever in the Grenville was a very unimpressive grain elevator and a diminutive warehouse that today look pretty sad. Such is life in the rural prairie.  Times have past us by...


 The small town has obscure Polish family names for street names that are all one lane wide.  The local baseball team has the cool name of the Grenville Guzzlers.....you can guess the pastime here.

I even saw more white pelicans in town than residents


Dead west of town, was an off again on again report of an oddity.  Nobody but me and Barry Parkin really birds up here so the off again is expected.  The whooping crane, a cool bird nearly extinct but the population is slowing rising, more , now than the four burgs up the old rail line:  Roslyn (178), Eden (79), Grenville (59) and Lake City (52) combined, but just barely.

This crane has been around for a while and using the bands, this is a Wisconsin bird.  Neceedah must not be so welcoming this year as I also saw a Wisconsin bird in Ontario in June.  It took me a few minutes to find it in a bean field but there it was.....South Dakota lifer 272....we can argue if it meets the ABA rules or not since I know where it is from.........





Finally you can see the bands on the leg.  The only better near extinct bird that could come to SD (lesser numbers) would be the California Condor, I shall wait patiently for one of those to show up, somehow, I think on my deathbed, I'll still be waiting.  I'm happy with the crane.  Oddly, I've never seen a sandhill in this state...yet.  Such is my bizzaro world of SD state listing

So there, another SD lifer.....one at a time, someday 300.....but I'm still out there birding getting birds.  Barry wants to go out on the eclipse and hear morning songs in midday, I'm not sure that is what I want to do and I'm not sure if Nebraska is on my travel plans next week either.

maybe I'll see what a whooping crane does at an eclipse....probably ...not much

Olaf

Smoke 'em if you have them.

August 4-14th 2017.   It was a two week period of dips, slips, flubs, flops, bites, follows ....I could go on.  Basically I got smoked.  Sigh...the life of Olaf isn't what dreams are always made of, but then again, it may be just my perspective.  I'm sure you expect me to be perfect, perfectly bewildering would be a better term.

So what has happened in this filled week.  I go in reverse order as as i write this I'm sitting in Buffalo NY.  The airport has free wi-fi so type I do.

Behold the empty piling...............


Yes, there is NO bird on that piling, maybe just bird poo........The Wellsboro PA white-winged tern was put to bed last night at 830 on a snag all happy, nice, and quiet.  The heavy evening fog settled in the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania as the night was still and quiet and at first light all the creatures were stirring..

 Blue herons on the dock........
 bull frogs.......
Green herons....
But sigh all except the tern.   I met friends from Indiana, Tom and Theresa, too.  We had a nice breakfast at McDonald's but no tern.
I have a history with Wellsboro....it is not good.  Not good at all.
The last time I found myself in Wellsboro, it was at the Tioga County Courthouse.  A Pennsy trooper pulled me over on the state highway over Nessmuk Lake (coincidence?) for no registration plate on my boat trailer.  It was being pulled by a WI licensed truck, boat registered in WI, and I had a WI driver's license at the time.  Wisconsin doesn't license trailers for boats.  Trooper Smith gave me a tciket anyway.  I plead not guilty.  The last thing I did before we moved from Williamsport was to appear in this courthouse.  I had WI / PA reciprocity laws, I had Wisconsin statues, I had all kinds of stuff, but Trooper Smith didn't have the guts to show.  I was found innocent and that...was that....
My first patient as a doctor was from Wellsboro, he died at 1130 my first day.  He had Legionaire's disease and was in bad shape.  But by noon, my panel of three patients on my first day had all coded.  It was an auspicious start to my medical career.
My most interesting patient, well the one that mystified us to the point that he almost died was rock climbing near Wellsboro in 1993.  He fell and broke his right arm rock climbing and then became a mystery because he lost all clotting factors.  he was transferred in from Wellsboro to my hospital and over 72 hours sucked eastern PA of all plasma, clotting factors, and well, the grim reeper came knocking.  I was put in charge of blocking the door.  In desperation, I was charged with the most thorough exam I've ever done.  Inch by inch.  On a corner of his forearm I saw a hole.  It looked like a puncture, just before they had cut him open to repair the open fracture, but from what.  Even looking at it it looked like nothing.  I had an off the wall idea.
Crotalus horridus.  Could the young man have put his hand on a snake (timber rattler) while climbing, got bitten and then fallen breaking the same arm and hiding the true problem.  We had anti-venom  for that and the copperhead flown in.  Patient turned around and I got a great mystery case to present all over the place at conferences.  Nobody ever guessed the case as it presented so atypically.
I was once sent an application from a Wellsboro doctor to work in Minnesota.  He had no ER experience.  Kept talking and on the third call finally sent me his list of malpractice cases.  It was a novella.  He had excuses for everything.  To this day the most litigated physician of all time and he just kept calling me.  To think Minnesota would give him a license OR Pennsylvania wouldn't just pull his was absurd.  He called me for 2 years.  Like I'd change my mind or his file could be cleansed.  It would be like cleaning up Hitler or making a manure pile sterile......I had to get caller ID at home just so I could screen for PA callers......
The stakeout at Nessmuk from across the lake.  Definitely the biggest birding thing to hit Tioga county in some time....but alas....that is now past
So dipping on a tern in Wellsboro is just what was expected, I guess.  You may ask why, oh why did I not come on Saturday?
Well. Pastor Olaf was doing a wedding, a "hats only" affair at an undisclosed site in Minnesota on Saturday attended by 143 people at final count.  It was fun and great, lovely and romantic except.........I called the bride by the wrong name.....TWICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   OMG!!!!!!!
Now everyone is calling me JoAnne, since I appear to have Joanne on the brain.....JoAnne was my late aunt married to my uncle who had the same name as my groom on Saturday and my brain would not snap out of it.  If you think you are going to get pictures of this celebration.....think again......I was wearing my Stetson, I bought in Elko NV last year at the snowcock chase, and that was that.  The rest...use your imagination.  It was how you imagined it, trust me.
I should also mention that my wife got light headed and almost passed out during the dinner following and had to lay down in the grass.  There was karaoke in the evening but I was not doing that.  I had enough to embarrass myself earlier during the vows. 


  I had to hurry on Friday to get out of Ontario on Friday as I was in a remote fly in fishing location 400 miles away from the wedding.
On a good note, my boat won the biggest pike trophy for the 7 of the last 8 years, it even won last year without me in it, and this year, I got my spot back.  The bad news is that I missed the prize myself by an inch.  Greg Peer caught a modest 39 inch brute to win the honors.

We were dogged by low water, calm hot weather, forest fires, and dormant fish, but here are some of my fish.



Our boat caught and released 261 pike and we called it a down year.  It is all perspective.  I also started to write a book called "The Pike Whisperer"  It will include my longstanding pike passion, which easily eclipses my birding and I will include a chapter at least on my 2016 adventure.  "The year without pike" will be that chapter.  The only year since 1971, I did not catch a pike in.  Pike fishing is ...me.
Yea I catch 96 fish one day between walleyes and pike and I complain.....everything is relative.  Some of the walleye boats easily caught a thousand fish, but well...again.....relative
This year I was champion shore lunch maker. I guess....even using a camp grill 20 miles from where we were at, because...I could, and I couldn't screw that up

the fires unnerved us, even a popular lunch spot had the island burnt up in the last few days



Dr. Jeff Rapp of Duluth made homemade ice cream in the bush...and earned the nickname the "handy man"  Fresh ice cream on an island?  WOW!

The good doctor also caught the largest bottle of adult beverage to drown his sorrows in catching small fish.  Eric Thoreson from Rice lake WI caught the largest walleye, being 16 years since he had previously won the Stan Peer Trophy.

Birds.....nothing exciting....gray jays and some odds and ends boreal song birds
The big rarity was a way out of territory common mudpuppy, curiously being eaten by an otter.  Maybe my best picture of the year.  The Canadian herpetology society is evaluating my rare "amphibian" report.  Yes, a rare amphibian report.  two year amphibians this week and both in this blog!!

There is more to life than just birds....and northern pike....................NO I JUST DIDN'T JUST WRITE THAT!!! Okay strike that I wrote that....
My plane is boarding and I'm smoked
JoAnne
I mean Olaf

Minnesota, where dreams are made

This was a busy week in Lake Wobegon...I mean Lake Olafdom.  On Sunday, I went birding with Barry to a place called Sica Hollow in extreme Northeastern SD in his attempt to put a 300 South Dakota big year together.  After the dust settled, he had three birds and I had SD lifer #270, a blue-gray gnatcatcher.   A good bird for South Dakota and a better bird for Roberts County.  I came home, my wife, daughter, and I went fishing, our first family outing this year, after I fixed a two year old electrical problem in my boat.  Ii was slow but I caught a smallmouth bass.


my  daughter caught a rock bass


and I took nearly 200 photos of birds....good birds.....California gulls, a possible royal tern (great bird for SD), Caspian terns (good for SD), a loon in winter plumage I really wanted to look at the beak as it could have been a yellow-billed, and red-necked grebes but as I got home, I noticed........I forgot to put the chip in my camera.....I swore....those birds became tern sp.  loon sp.  and well that was at least one California gull, but I didn't even bother to submit it to Ebird....I swore, took a picture of a juvenile kingfisher chattering at me, to make sure the camera still worked and threw the camera in my car and decided that there was more in life than birding, putting myself on a week bird photo moratorium.


I finally finished off my St Martin Birding Guide and sent it to the printer on Tuesday and then I went on my annual mission to Alexandria MN, the "Birthplace of America"

My favorite tackle shop is in town and I go twice a year, once to drop off my broken rods to get repaired and then a week later to pick them up on my way to Canada.  I visit Big Ole, my name sake from the 1964 Chicago's World's Fair.  The Minnesota exposition which featured this statue and centered around the Kennsington Rune stone, found near to Alexandria and permanently stored at the Runestone Museum, purportedly from 1362 and an ill fated expedition by Scandinavians that ended in blood at the headwaters of Hudson Bay drainage in west central Minnesota.

1964 World's Fair
It is one of those Americana places that should be on everyone's summer visitation list.
We came into Minneapolis, I met my wife who is off to Paris with her sister as payback for my big year, but we had another stop left.
Have you ever dreamed of owning something outlandish?   We have.  I love art.  I love cool houses--he more exotic and artsy the better.  My wife's high school chum has recently moved back to Minneapolis from Rhode island and lives down by Lake Calhoun.  Nearby coincidentally, is an interesting house for sale.   "The Olfeldt House" is one of the last built authentic and signed Frank LLoyd Wright houses, finished just after his death in 1959 and sat 15 blocks from my wife's buddy in St Louis Park.  We had lunch and the obligate cultural activity was to tour this house.
Frank Lloyd Wright.....he has been gone for 59 years but is still an enigma and is still the architectural icon of American in the good years 
They don't build house like he did anymore.  Each one is a statement.  His prairie homes are cool and this house from his his Usonian House design, I like better, and one of a few more than 400 in the US left was worth the trip to the city alone.  FLW simple uncluttered designs are what I like.

This is a one owner, three bedroom, 2400 square foot signed FLW house WITH a basement (he almost never built basements) and on three large lots including a birding mecca marsh, for just a cool 1.3M.......(gasp!), well St Louis Park is a nice neighborhood.......a vacant lot is worth 350K here.

The house was mega cool.  It was almost how I would design  a house.  privacy, long hallways, storage, useful and no wasted rooms.





The inside was even full of much of FLW original furniture......!


My art collection needs a home and well, this house needs restoration and preservation.  It is a classic and it has a story needing to be saved for the the next generation.  Somebody has to do it, it might as well be me.

We happily walked through it thinking of how we could live in harmony in this house.  We could swing it, and well, we could show it on Saturdays...

"You can put a bid on the house."  My wife said driving back.  We talked about what could go where.  Plans on renting rooms to share the FLW experience....taxes, we looked up grants for preservation....it was all good.

Later, I demurred, the impulse waning to buy, but then we had dinner with friends and as the alcohol dug in discussions reigned.  Our friends have been traveling for a decade selling their business in Wisconsin.

What are your goals?"  They asked.  "What are my goals?"  I asked back.

"You know.  You are going to buy that house and every chance you are going to get, you are going to be up here."  Our friends said.  "Are you going to hang out with anyone ever from St. Louis Park?  Do you even see yourself meeting a single person that even lives in St. Louis Park?  "Do you go to their churches, synagogues or clubs?  Where will you meet anyone?"

"No,...and nowhere."  I said drinking a long sip of wine thinking and then I thought of an analogy.  "Is owning a piece of art requiring total dedication even good?"   In this case the art is a house, and should one be a slave to a house, that is what it is.  This house needs upkeep, money to exist.  I could buy a Anders Zorn oil canvas masterpiece for about 1.2 million.  Which is easier to maintain?  Which is more practical?  Which has the greatest resale potential........etc.

The painting wins on all except the "practical"  Neither is very practical.  My wife looked at our friends and drank a glass of wine and said honestly.  "We are gypsies.  We like to roam."

We ARE gypsies.  Gypsies don't buy 1.3 million dollar houses.  Gypsies camp.  Gypsies live in trailers, gypsies move from place to place.  Home is whatever bed we share together each night.  As much as I love that FLW house, we can't ever own it.  I came home and we sent a deposit for a Grand Canyon Rafting trip in 2018 to the person planning it.  I may have to marry someone on the river next year, and we filed away the paperwork on the house, never to be thought on again...the dream lasted 8 hours and 12 minutes.

At least the dream didn't end up being a nightmare.

My wife left for Paris thinking we had made a great "couple" decision of the future of our lives, one in which we both agreed...and I think we had done a good job.  We will try to keep being net sellers of things....life is an adventure, it is not a house.

enjoy the ride!

Olaf

Don't live in South Dakota if you can't stand the heat

How I survived 2016 is beyond me.  I barely survived last week.  After one week, four flights, 2600 miles in a car, 2 mountain ranges, five states, three days of 100 plus temperatures, two more of over 90,  and 30 miles on foot much of which basically on one leg, at this sign under Harney Peak, the highest point in South Dakota, I had reached my limit.  My %^^ hurt, my knee hurt, and I was hot, damn hot....it was so hot....How hot was it?  "It was so hot, even the dippers were having trouble keeping cool."  It was so hot, the birds were using hot pads to pull the worms out of the ground....it was so hot....it was HOT!

As I am holding up this sign, let me discuss my weekend in the Black Hills.

There are always little bits of history I learn when I go out birding.  There is a hero immortalized west of Custer SD.  He has a camping park named after him.  Unknown to me, there was one member of the US Calvary that survived the Battle of Little Bighorn on that fateful day for the 7th Calvary in the prairie of Montana Territory in June of 1875.  His name was Comanche  and he was Captain Myles Keogh's faithful buckskin.  A captured Apache mustang.  This camp was the last place Custer's troops camped before heading west on that ill-fated mission.  One can picture when the relief arrived the next day when all they found was bodies and a lone horse grazing nearby.  It makes an interesting mental picture.


Myles Keogh was an interesting figure.  A major fort in Miles City, Fort Keogh bore his name for decades.  He was an Irish national that served in battle for the Papal states in the battles that led to the unification of Italy, he was captured and imprisoned in Genoa before being released in a prisoner exchange.  In 1862, as the Civil war happened, in need of officers, the Union army contacted the Cardinal to secure possible candidates from Europe.  Keogh left service for the Vatican and then fought for the Union with distinction at multiple battles and became, for a time, the chief aide of McClellan.  Eventually, he became assigned to the 7th Calvary and began serving under Custer.  Keogh gets a fort named after him, but wasn't even an American citizen.  Comanche got a campground named after him and he wasn't an "American" really either....

It was the end to a busy week.  After falling down the mountain and now limping, my knee swollen and bandaged,  I flew home and immediately headed to go birding west.  My lake house was filled with in-laws and to be honest there was no room for me anyhow.  In all of this history, I met up with Barry Parkin who is doing a South Dakota big year.  Our plan was to head to the hills, the Black Hills to bird.  His is no record breaking big year.  The South Dakota record is held by Ricky Olson and Scott Stolt, both of Pierre who each saw 352 species in the year--2 more than Lynn Barber got during the same year during one of her many "Big Years."  Although she claimed to have set the record, the SDOU only recognizes Scott and Ricky's effort and all of this has caused some ill-will in the SD birding circles.

Barry is no wave creator and is just trying to break 300 and I went along with for a second pair of eyes and I am trying to beef up my SD life list.  I will accept no more snickering about my paltry state total and vow to be a member of the 300/800 club (300 SD, 800 ABA) as soon as possible, maybe next spring.  I only list in two states now, South Dakota and Alaska, and even Alaska is not an end-all for me as I have passed on getting good state birds like the Eastern pheobe because well, that bird nests in my backyard.  I'm not sure about even working on my SD list but well, a guy needs a goal.  I started the year at 215 in SD and have added many birds.

The Black Hills is a a place where the the midwest meets the west in birding and is home to many western and mountain birds. beefing up the state list to over 400 species,  I have only superficially birded the hills so I had many species I could get.


We drove into the Badlands in 115 degree heat.  No bird in their right mind was out and about so we had to find them along rivers and just trying to survive on fences.

Burrowing Owls


We saw about 40 around the plateau in and around prairie dig towns
Bell's Vireo
Swainson's Hawk
Black-headed grosbeak with a hidden find seen only on the photo

Not that I needed the nighthawk but always interesting to see something unexpected on a photo.  The car thermometer maxed out at 115........115........OMG, 115!
We camped at Comanche Park Friday night in a sea of foreign tourists.  I had a German walk up to me.  "Do you speak English?"  He smiled.  "I wanted to reply.  "Jag ...sprechen inte English."  I sighed and then told him how to register for his campsite.  He and his wife and two teenagers were from Bremen, and camping through the US.  It may be a majority of tenters in NFS land are not US residents these days.  
I awoke to the sounds of Pygmies,  They can be hard to find and I've never seen one before.  SD life bird, 260.  Blurry photo but at 0530 this morning but was ID able as a pygmy

We went for a hike a few miles west.  We ended up in a sea of hummingbirds.  They landed on my cell phone, they landed on my head, they buzzed me, and then Barry who brought a feeder with, broke it and then I said.  "Just stand there and hold it out Barry."  It took a few seconds and Barry had a new friend.  


State Lifer bird for me.  Broad-tailed Humming bird, Hell's Canyon, SD

The lifer haul continued, not great birds for ABA standards but In South Dakota these birds reside in very limited areas.
Western Tanager
Western wood-pewee
Cordilleran Flycatcher
Violet-green swallow
Most of South Dakota's tourist sites are Kitsch.   Mt. Rushmore was funded by an organized plot to fool Calvin Coolidge on a fishing trip.  Thousands died and were made homeless by the Miississippi flood while Calvin caught record trout, refusing to leave.  (The state was planting trout just upstream all night each day specifically trained to only bite what the President was using for bait.)  In the end, Hoover was sent to deal with the flood and Calvin made an executive order allowing for the tourist trap that is Mt Rushmore to be built.
Crazy Horse will never be finished.  Sturgis is out of hand and is not what is once was (a crazy week of decadence) now it is just a way to gouge the visitors.  Deadwood is a Casino trap and Harney Peak has an ugly view tower on top of it.


The Black Elk Wilderness is great.  The granite spires are cool.  Why did they spoil it by erecting an ugly tower a three mile walk from a parking lot?  Wasn't standing on the mountain top enough?

My favorite site is the mammoth dig near Hot Springs, something not contrived.  South of that is a cool swimming hole, Cascade Falls and nearby Cascade Springs.

A great place to swim and hang out.  Especially when the thermometer is at 104 at 10 am.  They also have yellow breasted chat and a great SD bird, Lesser goldfinch there.

Chat....

Lesser Goldfinch....
One of the few places to ever see that bird in South Dakota.  Definitely a birding hot spot worth visiting.

The water holes and the mountain vistas are great tourist sites, why not highlight them?

Barry is happy because for years all I have heard from Barry is a desire to find the holy grail of Black Hills breeding birds.  It has become an obsession, I think.  I sort of roll my eyes.  The Cadillac of birds as everyone thinks at some point they want one but only a few will ever get one........is the ruffed grouse. Barry dreams of grouse.  Hot, out of water, and tramping through forest looking for jays, jays that were never found.......I flushed a grouse, it was a brood.  "Grouse!" I yelled.  Barry has never ran so fast gto catch up to me ever.

Only the second sighting reported on ebird this year!   If it wasn't for the fact that my entire body was covered in ticks, and I was running on empty, and....i grew up in grouse country, i would be happy too.  It was SD state lifer 265.  Barry wanted to scream, and eventually, did.  I was ready to pass out.


Brown creeper on a tree was in reality, a better bird for me.  I've seen less of them, but not in South Dakota


I made a vow right there.  I was staying that night in a motel, I was having a shower, AND we were eating at my daughter's favorite restaurant in Lead.  The Roundhouse would heal my spirits.  the thought of their steak got my A$% up that mountain and too the car where we had drinks.

Unfortunately, when we arrived, it had closed recently under odd circumstances.  It was busy and it just closed permanently.  The next problem was that all the other restaurants in Lead close at 8pm on a Saturday night in tourist season..........8pm??  Just my luck.  Eating, I guess is over rated.  cold salami in a cooler is my usual fare........so I am used to it.
We did get a room and Barry passed out and I was not too far behind
Our last days in the hills were in Spearfish Canyon and Crow peak.  I was almost hiked out and 3 more miles on foot would be it.
American Three toed woodpecker ripping off bark in a recent burned forest.
A ?dusky flycatcher, finally heard and probably seen
MacGillivray's Warbler
A red-naped sapsucker, hiding under dead needles of a pine.  State lifer bird 269 for me, my finally tally for the trip
We were the closest to Milbank so I just started to drive home from Spearfish after we ate our one meal of Sunday at McDonald's, fancy eating for us.  
I headed home adding 15 state lifer birds.  Barry put 20 on his year list and I left in thankfully as bad of shape as I arrived.  My knee was only oozing the same fluid it had been oozing for three days butgosh it was still hot.  If you were thinking of what craziness would happen to Olaf, I disappointed you.  Generally nothing happened on this trip.  It was just too HOT!  How hot was it?  It was so hot that all of the water had became holy water as all of the heat was boiling the hell out of it.  Okay...enough of that.
In truth, the crops are withering, much of it should never have been planted and well, it was at least good, knowing I'm not ranching out here.

Some call this hell, I guess, but I call this home. Three hundred and twenty miles later I jumped up and tapped my heels and said.  "There is no place like home Olaf...there is no place like home."
Olaf

Thoughts of India

Apparently the naked birder (me) can't have total claim to the name as this sign I drove by indicates that the naked duck has been taken but...pickled goose?  Oh wait, it is picked goose.  In either case, I'm not sure I want to know but maybe this sign is the hidden secret of life meant to answer life's questions.  Why do I think that, you may ask?

My travels took me east this week, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York.  I have lived in 16 locations in my life, Portland, Oregon was the strangest, and three of them, were in Pennsylvania, a state I lived in for almost 3 years.  My twin sons were born in Williamsport in 1995 and five days later, we had passed the border into Ohio and on to Iowa, leaving the past behind us.

Pennsylvania is a place that has always been filled with high hopes and aspirations.  Obama's speech on hope resonated with those people.  Maybe he spoke it here?  When William Penn founded the colony, less than four centuries ago, he thought of it as a place of religious freedom and a good investment for himself, When my Mennonite ancestors (through my Grandmother) --Georg Micheal and Michael Georg, Brennisen (Brenizer) first cousins, who immigrated with their wife Elizabeth (yes, she had two husbands five children from one and six from the other, living situation unknown) to Bucks County, Pennsylvania at the vanguard of the Anabaptist movement to North America over a half-century later,. They were also hoping for a new beginning and God fearing aspirations.   Many immigrants came to Pennsylvania after them looking for fame, fortune, or for faith with occupations in mining, farming, transportation,or  in many of the religious sects that dot the state's history.  I myself came to Pennsylvania in 1992 seeking a career as a head and neck trauma surgeon.

Unfortunately, my ancestors (One of her husbands was killed by a Native American showing it was good to have a spare spouse) found they were not "Anabaptist enough."  Then from Penn to the great Anthracite Coal strike of 1902, most of those aspirations ended badly.   Penn himself died penniless and was constantly in legal trouble for his efforts.  They all found that Pennsylvania is a tough state.  I even left the state for Iowa in 1995, my ENT career aspirations over.   I left after being prayed for by our Mennonite Church as if we were going to the Congo or someplace exotic.  "It is just Iowa."  I kept saying.  Even HRC and the Democratic party came to Pennsylvania in 2016 with high hopes of a Presidency only to have them dashed due to the fickle voters.

There have been hard times for the residents of this state in the past 50 years and there appears to be no glorious future that awaits rural Pennsylvania, either.  It looks like a 22 year older version of what it looked like when I left, sadly.   In many respects, the betting of the smart money is for it to only get worse.  Coal and steel are dead.  Gas riches are in a hopeless war with environmentalists from the West Coast.  I own stock in a bank in Latrobe Pennsylvania which has almost no money loaned to the local people having it all instead, invested in government bonds. Even for them, the bankers that live in the mountains of the rural part of the state, they think the  people  and the state are not with the risk.

As we landed in Joe Biden's home town of Scranton, nothing has changed.  Joe's heart, I think wanted to help but even he couldn't do much for old Scranton.  The business district is now about 60% vacant with all but the Federal Building being upgraded now, but besides that, it is looking like nothing has been renovated since the 60s.  The old Erie Lackawanna  Depot has been changed to a Radisson Hotel at some point, I guess, to preserve its old architecture from the days when Scranton was a bustling center of commerce and industry.  But as hotels go, this one was lacking in much, and prompted me to go after them on Yelp, a personal first.

Some views of the "Electric City"
Lewis & Reilly aren't "Always Busy" these days, one of my favorite simple slogans


The large Electric City neon sign....


The civil war memorial, makes me think of something European...maybe celebrating Bastille day?


and Tyko looking over the 1945 Pulitzer Prize Memorial when the Scranton News-Tribune won the prestigious award and rural papers had a news staff.


There used to be people on the streets of this city in 1945 but largely no more.  The cafes are closed, windows taped and bordered.  It is so sad.

But before I can talk more about my trip east, let me tie in to where I've been since Ontario and what I've been up to.  It has been a busy period.  It has also been a truly "Olaf" last few days.  As in, odd things happen to me.  I was sitting at a pool relaxing, after volleyball practice.  I was reading a bad Peter Mahler book, (author of the Good Year), when I was approached to do a wedding vow renewal.  As you may or may not know, I am ordained.

The event was off the cuff, had 40 guests and went off a few hours later without incident and of course, it should be noted, was clothing-optional.  The bride danced down the aisle to Love Shack oddly a song I know well and just listened to the VH1 history of its making.  The lyrics of this song are all wrapped up in myth and legend.  Even Tin Roof Rusted has been added to the urban dictionary meaning "pregnant"  even though the B52s state it was sung off the cuff and has absolutely no meaning other than three words that popped in Cindy Wilson's mind as she sung it...or so they say.   Many don't believe them.  The official video features a goat, a band member that died of aids, Ru Paul dressed up as only Ru Paul can, and for me,  a mysterious old man in a suit that has no explanation.  It also has cool costumes and a Chrysler convertible that is as big as a whale.

Later on, I met a couple that wants me to officiate their "hats only" wedding in August.  That seems right up my alley.  I'm wearing my Stetson and I also get a sash.  No worries about a bridal wardrobe malfunction unless her cowboy hat blows off.   It is going to be a big wedding, corn feed afterwards.  Maybe I'll sing "Love Shack" at the karaoke afterwards as that is on the schedule.  I have been practicing, Short people and although a fun song might be a little offensive.  I'll be the man singing without any suit.  A person I know says I should do a documentary on nude karaoke and weddings....maybe.  I'll report back on this in a month or so.  Don't expect pictures.

I also tracked down a rare pair of king rails in west central Minnesota, I will repeat that I was in Minnesota.  I saw one of the rails briefly and think possibly I found their nest.  I am not sure, as I didn't hang around to bother the birds.  The eggs are consistent with king rails but they could be from something else.  I saw a rail within 10 feet of this nest.


 Cool bird and a state bird for me.

I did need a picture of a killdeer for another project and I got that.


With everything tidied up Minnesota and the Dakotas, I got to Scranton on the 10th and dropped off my son Tyko to the hospital to shadow a pathology practice I know.  He is a great kid, going to medical school to continue the family tradition.  I'm proud of my family.  here he is again at the hotel.  The redone waiting area of the train station.


I trained with the director of the lab in my past and we have been business partners.  Tyko introduced, I looked at the best birds locally to see, needing none for my life list and chose, Delaware, it was 188 miles away and that for me was basically a trip for lunch.

Bombay Hook NWR

This name has nothing to do with India so don't expect a name change to Mumbai.  The Raj did not send a delegation of Hindus to Delaware.  The boat from the subcontinent did NOT reach America at the mouth of the Smyrna River (although it is named after the Greek city now renamed Ismir on the Turkish coast) .  No, the name is Native derivation being called Boompjes Hoeck by the regional chief or so the legend goes.  He sold the whole place for a musket, a bottle of rum and I guess, threw in the bugs for free.

I arrived in time for lunch but skipped the pickled goose as I had already eaten.

I worked the refuge and I picked up some good year birds.

Acadian Flycatcher


Blue grosbeak


field sparrow

And a ruff, a good coded bird showing a "bad feather" day on Raymond Pond.  Breeding Ruffs in North America are so...unkempt.

I also saw a black-necked stilt which was bird 300 for the year, oddly a number I had in just three weeks last year.
The local little egret was quite elusive and it took me 5 hours to spot it and at that it was way out barely even in scope view at 5pm after all of the other visitors at the NWR had packed it in.  It was seen late on the 11th as well and only for those that walked in the Shearness pool.  Oh well, not a lifer photo or a lifer bird but I saw it.  My 4th coded bird for the year.

I did see what I think was winter plumaged Forster's and least terms around, prob juveniles, I never thought Forster's terns could make any bird look small but that least tern looks puny in comparison.....but I couldn't sort out the little gull (s) people were reporting



Bombay Hook has the biggest bitiest flies of anywhere but they forget about you on the Shearness overlook which was good.  I even had a yellow-billed cuckoo land above my head calling in the tree.  By 5pm, I had had enough of the bugs and decided to drive back to Scranton to see my son and debrief him of his day with tissue and blood.  As they say in Path, "if tumor is the rumor, tissue is the issue."  I guess you have to be a Pathologist to appreciate the humor.

I got the feeling that night, that I needed to do something different, mix it up, and from the depths of my perception I got a feeling, and inspiration to go and do something off the wall.  I have learned to heed these "gut feelings."

What happened next you may think I may have ate a bad mushroom, like this one I saw on the 12th,


But can guarantee you that no mushrooms were harmed ...or eaten, in the course of this adventure.

I woke up early on Wednesday and drove north and east and into New York and the Catskill Mountains, not to chase a bird but to chase a forelorn Kali temple in Grahamsville.  I've never been to this part of New York since 1982 when on a family vacation we visited Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame--also a bit of a religious pilgrimage to me at the time.  I touched the immortals of baseball that day and found myself on my knees in front of the Babe's statue.

I had written about this Hindu temple in my novel I was working on, "Counting Owls" and I felt an insurmountable urge to drive up to find it and see the supposed Dancing Kali depicted inside.  I knew it was small but I figured it would be revered as it is about the only Kali shrine I could find on the internet in North America.  The website I had used to find it hadn't been updated since 2005 and it was really mentioned nowhere else.

To be honest, I have had easier times finding birds.  The address was wrong and there was no cell phone service anywhere nearby.  The street spelling was Low not Lowe.  State 42 actually goes backwards on 55, the road I came in on, and where it heads west is unmarked so i got lost and turned around.  I stopped at the post office in Neversink, which had been moved in the last half century and not all maps have moved the town.   "Hindu Temple?"  I was advised by the postmaster to drive into the city (New York City).  She directed me to the nearest Catholic church.  But she did put me onto 42.  "Traffic light" in rural New York is a flashing yellow warning beacon.  From there, I just went by gut instincts as I do when hiking or birding and it took a bit of thinking like a rare bird post, but I found it, hidden in the woods.


The driveway was a bit overgrown, I walked up and I saw a faded laminate sign.  "Love Begets Love."  Good words although it looks as though they were shared a decade ago.  My love of my wife begat a wonderful family of three children, one of which I had left behind in Scranton cutting up a lung as I would later learn.  Then the temple turned out to be a metaphor.  My entire existence, it seems, is a metaphor.  If answers to life's questions were to be found inside, by praying to Kali, possibly.  The door was locked and so, sigh...I could not get at them despite my thousand mile journey to this location.  I did not know the combination.  I was a code to gain the secret knowledge, I needed to be shown the combination.  It was like I was almost there but alas....no.   Many of life's journeys end up at a doorway that is locked with the answer seemingly just a breath away.  I didn't knock, I didn't go to any nearby house.

I just demurred, looked at the generally unkempt area, and well, with no signs of anyone with the combination, I drove away.  I stopped at the baseball field in Neversink to use the outhouse and to plot my future.  I still had no cell phone coverage, the Catskill Park has no roadside maps I could find.  Granhamsville had NO gas station and I had just 3/16 of a tank.  It was nearing10 am so I figured  I'd drive up mountains to find a place to hike up and find black-throated blue warblers, a bird I needed better pictures of and should be in the mountains somewhere I could see.

Then I got a feeling, was Kali messaging me?  it was hard to tell.  I don;t know the Black Goddess.  Route 55 was closed east of Grahamsville but it seemed the road closed was always my path so I turned on that, then seeing 55a I turned on that, I got on roads without numbers and then, roads without black top.  I climbed up and down then around.  I saw very inhospitable signage.


Sheez.....I then thought well, they can't patrol all the town roads, but I kept running into NYC EPA officers who kept telling me to move along or they'd call the police.  So, maybe they could.  One officer told me that the reservoirs are all NYC water so read the signs and if I'm not hiking, fishing, or hunting...keep out!


The officer wouldn't tell me "what birding is considered?"  Was it hunting, hiking, or none of the above?

I had to get off of the NYC land and so I kept driving.  Finally I found a dirt pull out on the side of the mountain.  Which Mountain?  I did not know where I was, but was in Ulster county.  The mountain looked hikable so I stashed the rental car and thanked that it had New York plates.  Maybe I wouldn't be harassed.  I climbed, hiked and climbed more.  When I was thirsty, I found a spring.  The threatening skies never broke open and I stayed dry.  I was a marvelous afternoon.

It didn't take too long to find black-throated blue warblers, either.  Not the best photos, but I saw them.  Females and males all carrying food for nestlings.



A nice year bird and then an hour later, I heard a thrush call.  What was that?  I stopped dead.  Now I had just been in Ontario and heard Swainson's thrushes make all sorts of calls almost continuously fishing.  I had never heard so many.  This was no Swainson's call but what was it?  I was going to go through the wood thrush calls as I am not that comfortable with that species as I rarely see them due to where I live.  I Ibirded Swainson's "similar birds" and somehow I ended up on the Bicknell's page and hit the sounds.  It was a total mistake.  Bicknell's are nowhere near here, I thought.  This was not the Adirondacks.  My phone made the "beer" call and instantly the thrush was five feet away in the thicket and looking at me.  Could it be?  I had read that Swainson's will respond to a Bicknell's call about 20% of the time in a study but not the other way around.  I watched the thrush work its way away from me and then I decided to do the experiment as it disappeared.  It was too late to get a photo, anyway.  I played the Swainson's calls, the bird never showed and so I sat there perplexed and then I played the Bicknell's again, just one call to recall if that was what I had heard.   In came the bird and looked right at me.  It just stared.

It was shedding its beak, was very brown....  


When I got home, I looked up the bird and felt like an idiot, I see not only are they found in the Catskills but they were initially identified in the Catskills by Bicknell when they were a subspecies of Gray cheeks.  This just a few miles from where I think I was.  I was not on Slide Mountain.  I could see it in the gloom north of me and just a little east of me.  I was in a Bicknell's region and I didn't even do my research.  Like I said, this wasn't a trip to New York to chase a bird.  I'm thinking it was a recent post breeding/ fledge dispersal bird.  The lay to fledge time is less than a month so this species could very well be done and the young birds are out bulking up for migration.  It sure didn't look or sound like a Swainson's and Gray cheeks are still up north.
I got a little skip in my hike.  I didn't know where I was but a hour later still at up elevation I got like a bar on my cell phone and sent my wife a text of what state I was even in.  Nobody knew I was in New York and something told me I should tell someone..  She got it told me to stay safe and then I went  down the hill looking for wood thrush and more warblers.  I wanted more.  An hour later somewhere, I was  working my way back to where I parked using nothing more than dead reckoning.  It was good to be a tracker in the woods, always look behind you when you hike.  
I was thinking of Kali and my story.  Unknown, I stepped on a damp boulder in a steep part and instantly down I went.  I landed hard.  I'm not sure how far I slid or fell, fifty feet?  Maybe more or less.  All I knew was that I couldn't breathe.  I opened my eyes to the pain in my lungs.  I was holding a large rock, maybe 20 pounds of a black flat stone and I was on my back.  My camera was nowhere near.  Had I blown out a lung?  My breath came back and the chest pain subsided.  I pitched the rock down the hill and listened as it bounced many many feet down.  "Sh&&t" I swore.  Then with the pain in my lungs cleared I thought that my ribs must be intact and then I remembered deciding to roll on my bad shoulder instead of landing on an extended wrist.  It is a volleyball maneuver.  We play for keeps in my league on the sand.  I have saved many a broken arm doing this but once tore my AC joint landing on my closed shoulder in the grass in St Paul, in 2014.   the grass was too thick to roll and I just stuck. 
I remembered rolling.  Luckily, I didn't hit anything and then I felt the pain in my right leg.  As the lung pain improved the leg pain worsened.  Then I saw the blood on the rock above me.   I sat up and looked at the hole in my leg.  I worried about an open fracture, but as I cautiously tried to stand, it hurt but it was stable.  I had just left some skin on the mountain.  Whew!  bruised and battered but intact.  At least I had let someone know where I was.  I could have died up there.

I limped and hopped the final mile out of the mountain.  If I had been severely injured, I had no cell phone signal, was off the trail, and in a place where I had no local knowledge, I could have been in trouble.  I hiked about 6 to 7 miles in total but had found some birds.  I stopped back in Neversink at their general store and bought 1st aide supplies as the cashier looked over my bloody leg.  He directed me to the bathroom and I did wound cleaning under a faucet in a bathroom sink and bandaged it.   My son just shook his head when he saw me in Scranton two hours later.
 Morning today came early and I was in a lot of pain and I'm tough.  The trip home still required me to make a little religious meditation since the Kali temple had been locked.  I was feeling I should have tried harder to get inside the temple and I felt like I needed some quiet time to reflect.  Was finding the Bicknell's enough guidance?  Why wasn't I happy with the gift of knowledge, "love begat love"?  I still felt I needed more.  Was there more?  Christian Hagenlocher just Facebooked me the link to a guide of nude recreation for Oregon, but even that was not enough.  he was picking on me, I knew.  I went to the meditation room at Wilkes-Barre / Scranton International Airport.

It is a really nice meditation room.  It had the coolest door.  The yoga rooms at many of the west coast airports are also nice.  The seat is hard and the literature is very "Watchtower" but that dove.......I looked into it.  There seemed to be a deeper meaning.......it was like a screen to my future....THE DOVE HAD THE ANSWER!

then I walked out filled with anticipation of a secret so easy, so basic, I could see it....

The next screen I saw, about the same height as the dove....



Was Kali telling me the secret of life....?  If so the secret is clear.....Don't FLY UNITED!  I checked my ticket for Detroit on Delta and smiled.  Prophetic words I already knew.  The United Chicago O'Hare flight cancelled.  In fact the flight to Scranton on the night I arrived from Chicago was also cancelled.  Luckily I was hubbing through Detroit.

Love begat love  OR Don't fly United?  Two good pieces of advice.  but could there be more?

I think maybe before one makes a religious pilgrimage, it might be advised to call first to see if they are open.  Maybe also call and tell someone where you are before you go hiking in the woods is the message from India?

Today, I was also leaning on a vow to eat no pickled geese in Delaware.  Maybe that was the message?

I don't know....the world has too many messages for us, I guess we all need to pay attention more.  Maybe we should all spend less time looking for answers and just go out and do something.  I just did.
I have a busy period of birding going forward so I need every bit of help as I limp my way forward..

then I thought of how this week started...the B-52s, Love Shack

"Sign says (woo) "Stay away, fools"
'Cause love rules at the Love Shack
Well, it's set way back in the middle of a field
Just a funky old shack and I gotta get back"
Glitter on the mattress
Glitter on the highway
Glitter on the front porch
Glitter on the highway

This sounds like a story about the temple I found.  Oddly, outside it there was glitter on the highway and an old mattress in the woods.  all the signs around there told me to stay away.  But I didn't knock at the closed and locked door.  I didn't go bang, bang at the doorway...

maybe LOVE BEGATS LOVE, is the meaning after all.  Love shack sugar........maybe...I am over thinking all of this..........

stay safe


Olaf