Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 19

A Moose of a catch

The Bird Chasing Moratorium continues.....
Moosetastic is NOT a word.  Moospectacular is also not a word just as tit-tastic from last week’s blog was not a word…but I think I’m getting ahead of myself.   I spent last week in Armstrong, Ontario.  A hamlet located in the boreal forest 175 miles or so north of Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Armstrong (not to be confused with the ‘other’ Armstrong, Ontario over near Quebec) is famous for four things:  It had a NORAD base (or associated system) from 1952-1972, it is a waypoint on the transcontinental CN railway, it is a fly-out fishing takeoff point, and it is famous for its bugs….gosh do they have bugs.
You may think that birding is my only passion but if so, you have thought wrong.  If you read the introduction to my 2013  adventure, Boobies, Peckers, and Tits you would learn that after I didn’t die in 1985, I made a “Bucket List” per se.  The number one item on that list was to catch a 20 lb northern pike.  Something that it took me until October 2, 1997 to do.
I have lived for catching pike at least since as a small child, I saw a shirt-tailed cousin, Gary Brenizer catch a small one. I was hooked.  Since then, I have at times, eat, drank, and slept, northern pike.  My first pike over 10 lbs was caught on January 1, 1978 through the ice.  I skipped school to go pike fishing.  My first date with my wife was that we met at what was basically a small pond, Lone Star Lake north of Webster, WI and went pike fishing in the winter.  I caught a 5 lb fish and the woman of my dreams.  I spent every single winter break day fishing for the toothy buggers during my years in school.  I got saved, pike fishing with Pastor Bob Merritt on Little Dunham Lake, my secret spot for years.  I place that oddly used to have a dance hall on it where my Grandparents (Danielson) met. My first boat at aged 16 was named the Esox Gator, my second Esox Hunter, and third Esox Magnum.  Esox the genus of pike and muskies.  Over the years, I have caught well in excess of 10,000 pike, I used to have detailed notes and lists.  
My favorite family photos are all my relatives holding trophy fish.  Grandma Lucille holding a massive South Dakota pike caught on the ice is my favorite.  My fishing notes on obscure lakes would put a bird lister to shame.  I am comfortable in my pike fishing skills and through the ice or in a boat would accept a challenge from anyone.
I was 31 when I caught my first 20 lb fish (it was actually over 30 lbs and a 48” fish) but I landed from a boat 7 20 lb plus fish for other people in the years previously, driving and functionally finding all of those people their life fish for them.  (That number is over 30 now, almost too many large pike to appreciate fully).
I knocked off my Muskie Bucket list items, many years earlier, so completely that for me, I haven’t even gone Muskie fishing in years as it would spoil some amazing days.  I had a day in August 1988 on the Chippewa Flowage in Wisconsin that defied fishing.  The story is just too much, even for fishermen to believe.   It was the equivalent of shooting a 53 in golf, not just a 59.  When the second lifer sized muskie missed my lure and landed in the boat one would call that the story of a lifetime.  It would have shocked me, too except it had also happened an hour earlier.  That was two of dozens of Muskie caught on the two wildest days of muskie fishing anywhere ever.  When in 1992, I looked at a huge 60” muskie played out at the side of my trusted Esox Hunter, and realized there was no way I could ever get it in the boat, I was longer than the boat was wide.  I cut the line and knew my best days of fishing for that species were behind me.  I have not fished for the species since. 

For me it seemed, with pike now, I never got my chance.  In those years of landing and pointing out the locations of their prized fish, I learned some valuable life lessons.  First, one needs to hang around and be around to get a chance, I knew I would get my chance if I just kept at it.  Fishing is luck, big pike are in areas and sometimes, they are on the left side of the boat when you are on the right and the guy on the right gets it, BUT YOU HAVE TO BE FISHING!
Secondly, it is never good if a life goal comes easily and right away.  Look at childhood TV or music stars or if you buy your first stock for a buck and three days later it is bought out for 30 bucks.  It ruins your perspective.  Muskie fishing ended up that way for me.  My daughter caught what is probably her life northern at aged 15, a 24.5 pound brute, and I shot my largest deer at aged 14, I (her) didn't appreciate the significance of that.   Maturity is good to appreciate things better.  At 31 I could better understand pike than at aged 13, even 23.  After children, a large fish was put in the perspective of importance in life.  It isn't too important...As are rare birds..even big years...
Catching many big fish takes hard work. I've endured exhausting days of casting heavy lures hundreds of times a day, and bad weather, cold days, cut hands, and at the end of the day, 99% of fishermen don't appreciative the work to catch what we do.  I've fallen asleep in the boat driving home, even once driving the boat.   "Hey, I'd like to catch some big pike.  Where can I go to do that?"  Many I've guided have given up after an hour to go fish walleye over the side of the boat as their arms were too sore.  Success in life isn't meant to be easy but yes, for some....it is.
Thirdly, I like experiencing other's joy in catching fish.  My daughter catching her monster, was priceless.  We all have a tendency to gloat and in my case, instead of gloating, it was more of a relief when I crossed off item #1 on my list.  I was actually moose hunting at the time.  Oddly my second and third 20 lb plus fish came just two days later., an hour apart, having given up hunting to hunt big pike....the chance changed to my favor, and since then my boat always has caught the biggest fish on Canadian trips, sometimes I did, sometimes my boat partner did.  Lastly, I learned something from fishing in Sweden, there IS always a bigger fish (I had a pike that was beyond imagination follow my lure to the boat, 40, 50, 60, even 70 lbs, it was so big I couldn't size it.  I freaked out my guide so I knew it was big.....it all doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of life.  Like if my life list is 791 or 855 or whatever.  It is all personal.
With the philosophy of big fishing in tow.....My family trip to Smoothrock Lake came upon me two days after returning from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  I've fished this lake since 1985, and maybe spent 2% of my life on this lake fishing.  In those years, I've caught a lot of pike.   I've flown with drunk pilots.  I've hit rocks.  I've had to wait out storms on islands (once with a bunch of Earlham College students/ faculty where I composed a book on a Quaker student).  i've been attacked by bugs and bears.  I've blown an engine on a boat.  I've been ill.  I've eaten blueberries until I almost burst.  This year......despite my sister having to visit the ER in Thunder Bay on the way up (the 6 hour wait cured her, I think) it was all good.
We ate our fill of walleye and shockingly (sic) caught, and released pike.  My boat caught 9 or the 11 largest pike (of course)

Son Allwin with a 31 incher,

Silja caught a nice 31" Northern pike on a jig, walleye fishing with daughter Lauren at the helm of her boat.  It was a really cold day

 I bested out at 36"  My daughter was worried until she saw it tape a few inches short of her fish, she was mentally spending the prize money already, I think

 daughter Lauren Elizabeth held the lead with a 31.5 inch fish for a couple of days,

 But then it took her a 39.5, 17 lb fish to get the big fish prize, besting my sister, 37.5" who hired the local guide in an attempt to beat us.  At aged 17, that shockingly is just her 3rd biggest fish.

 Not to be undone, Son Tyko caught a 36.5 inch "gator" his biggest fish in his 22 years of life.

he just about fell in the lake releasing it.  We catch and release all northern pike.  No net is ever used in my boat.  All of those years of ice fishing have taught me how to grab pike correctly without dropping them.  I haven't even eaten a pike in 25 years.  I think we have to work on that technique with him in the future or he could go everboard.
 "L" also caught a 23.5 inch walleye in Seamonster Bay (I was involved with the name, a story too weird to share)  on a spoon, winning her the big walleye prize, a little small this year, but it netted her a handful of cash at the end of the trip.

"L" has never not won the biggest Pike prize, 3 for 3.
We usually see moose on occasion but this year, they were everywhere, for me at least....on the road...and unfortunately in all of my pike bays, typically screwing up the fishing wallowing in the water, the big bull watched my daughter catch her trophy fish about 50 yards away from him






This year for a change.....NO BEARS!!
There were a family of woodchuck under the fish cleaning hut...entertaining the younger crowd and frustrating the management.....they were eroding the foundation....I suspect the groundhogs would not be back in 2018



I did go birding, I'm always birding....the best bird was never photographed asI was pulling in a pike when a large white crane flew overhead.  Definitely a Whooping Crane, might be quite the rarity for Ontario.  Not even a year bird for me, and I'm sure the ebird reviewer will just ignore such a sighting but I've never even seen a sandhill on that lake and a single large white crane with black on wings.....hum, hard to miss ID that.
 Bald eagle on the look out for dying fish

common loon
 least flycatcher
 red-eyed vireo in camp
white throated sparrow, in camp
 My wife and son Allwin had an up close meeting with a male spruce grouse, and were just so excited about the close encounter with him watching them a few feet from a log.  It warmed my heart to hear people enthusiastic about cool birds.

Always a little tame fishing with the family on this trip.  No drunken exploits all day fishing tales etc, It takes the men trip in August to get serious, (ly crazy) but we had fun.  I witnessed all of my children catching large fish and I pulled out every one of the gators, that was my highlight.

 The crew

the 4th generation of fisher people...here.


It was a good trip....there was an equal amount of blood in the bottom of the boat from fish and humans (a good sign in my fishing) ...and then the plane came,...


It took us off apparently just before the Game Wardens showed up late and almost waking the baby of my sister, who stayed an extra day....not that we were doing anything illegal but they always have something to scold you about.  Crap this year, my wife actually had 2 fishing licenses.....maybe they'd fine her for that.  Our fire in 2013 had an incomplete ring of rocks and there was too much water with the fish...sigh......they seem to be people who hate fishermen those MNR types.  One year they stopped me 9 miles from camp to do a fishing survey.  I responded.  "It was pretty good until you showed up."  Then they asked me what I caught.  "Two Barracuda and a tuna" I replied "but we threw them back...too salty to eat.  Barracuda is not a fish you should ever keep.  I'm sure you know that already."  They left with us saying nothing about our fishing. 
A final look at the trip that was 2017...my favorite activity, shore lunch!!!   Tyko, Silja, and L...Lonebreast Bay


We drove home in the rain.  We arrived at 0330 AM to the house.  We awoke the next day to my wife's 51st birthday.....her birthday present arrived just in time....

Wife has a new decked out ranch truck.  Happy birthday Silja!   My bribe for 2016.....you have to like a wife that goes pike fishing with you, floats a river looking for rare chickadees, likes to build fires, and drives a pickup truck!  She also likes to listen to the soundtrack from the Muppet Movie but 4 out of 5 isn't bad.
life is good.......Moose tastic!
Take a kid fishing!!
Olaf

Tit for Tat

As Theodore Roosevelt embarked on his exploration of the River of Doubt in South America, he called it his “delightful little holiday with just the right amount of adventure.”  “We left in high spirits.”  He wrote as they began their quest which would shortly turn into a nightmare and which said adventure would bring the great man to a point near his death, and in fact, probably led to his early death in 1920, denying him with almost certainty a second election term in 1921. 
Let me say it here, I am not Theodore Roosevelt.  Theodore needed to get away on his crazy trip and Olaf...?  Where has Olaf been?  I've been busy and everywhere seemingly and I guess on a much needed blogging hiatus....so what was i up to?
My son's Allwin and Tyko graduated Ripon College in May.

I was so proud, 29 years ago a master birder handed me my diploma, William Stott, when I walked across that stage outside Harwood Memorial Union.  I was so proud I cried during "Alma Mater" the school song as I did in 1988.  Great kids I have!!
I went to St Martin twice for business and so ...I went birding........finished photographing local birds for my guide of the island and nailing my 2 nemesis birds, the scaly breasted thrasher and Wilson's plover.

I sold some assets, tidied up some businesses...went to a Niece's baptism...went on a skiing holiday where there was no snow so I went...birding .......and found woodpeckers... 

then a second ski trip to Colorado where everyone got altitude sickness save me...so I went .....birding ......while everyone was out with nausea and headaches....White tailed ptarmigan anyone?

"I was cc'd on some discussions in the spring about the ABA changing the rules or better put clarifying 2016 with regards to Hawaii, which as I said to Laura Keane, "whatever you think", today, I'm not even sure what the rules are for Hawaii exactly now for last year.  Is there a new category added for last year.?...I don't know and I don't know if it affects me.  I suspect that when the new checklist comes out, maybe I'll be smarter.  I do know the Eurasian sparrowhawk in Adak was rejected by Alaska, it doesn't affect me, but things are in motion."
The past is past I guess......
I chased a black-backed oriole to Pennsylvania as I needed to be in Scranton on business, it won't ever count, but was a cool bird and looks like a real vagrant....but it still won't be accepted

I got bored at home so....I went birding....and even was helping a friend Barry Parkin work on his SD big year.....I, though, only seemed to be able to find badgers and greater sage grouse....got to love that badger face



But none of that was worth my effort for a blog....until now.  Again I am no Theodore Roosevelt but...
Last weekend when I embarked with my wife of near 27 years to an adventure on a different river but with no less doubt, this one in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I postulated many things NONE of which could be described as promoting high spirits.  I dreamed of cold, damp, hunger, intermixed with bugs, sleepless nights, and of course…the other thing that bites in the arctic......bears.   No Olaf adventure can be complete without ….bears.  Nasty biting things, those bruins are and like I’ve written before…..bears and Olaf are mutually exclusive…..my spirit animal and when there are bears, bad things will happen.
Sigh…sadly this trip had disaster written all over it.....Olaf eaten by a bear....I boarded a flight to Fairbanks last Saturday filled with doom and gloom…I worked on our will and set up our estate right before we left....Everything needed to be in order....All of this on a quest for the holy grail of North American Birds, the Gray-headed chickadee, the bird formerly known as the Siberian tit.  We landed in Fairbanks in a heat wave but as I left the airport, it began to rain.  The gloom of the north was upon me.  I was like ...cursed.
We went to Creamer’s Dairy to look for birds and all we found were bugs and rain, so we went shopping and waited to meet the rest of the crew on this Wilderness Birding Adventure, the one man who gave a glimmer of hope to bring light to the darkness was named Aaron Lang.  I like Aaron, he runs a great ship in birding and well, he is a Minnesotan, we relate.  His nickname at UW-Stevens Point was “Spam” as he is from the Spam capital, Austin MN.  A town I went to church in once in 1987.  It was a weird church, Pentecostals on the left,  good Baptists on the right.  The left was filled with the Holy Spirit while the other half watched them afraid at what the neighbors might think if they jumped up and yelled “hallelujah!”   Students driving back from a speech competition, we sat in the back in the middle and cautiously waived our arms, depending on who was watching.  One of my ‘mates’ went up for an alter call and we were afraid of him being kidnapped until he waived from us outside a window…he had escaped through the back door and was motioning for us to go.  Two hours later, we were buying the beer of the week in La Crosse.  Wiedemann’s anyone?  It was the “everyman’s beer” that made Newport Kentucky famous, but sold out to G. Heilemann as if any swill in a red and white can or bottle would be accepted by the faithful back home and then when it wasn’t, try to pawn off the stuff to college students three states away for under 4 bucks a case.  

There was nothing like salvation and bad beer….oh the 80s, oh the memories, I have the cans and bottles in my collection but I digress.  
Aaron Lang always seems to find the gold art the end of the rainbow while the rest of us are trying to hide from the rain.

I knew we were in good hands.......but what about the bears?
We flew Wright Air to Arctic Village…a forlorn place on the edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where Sarah Palin wants to “drill baby drill”……….. I want to drill too, but use a smaller bit to make holes for chickadees in trees.

Some words on this 5.5” bird. Poecile cinctus, formerly Parus cinctus, is divided into four subspecies, the US bird may not even be the same species.  I have seen this bird in Hemavan, Sweden where it is called the Lappnes, but it is by far the most difficult breeding bird to find in North America, and is still in 2017, largely a mystery.  
Many who have this bird on their lists have not actually seen a Gray-headed chickadee and in the literature.  In the 1920s the species was noted in a corner of Denali and a specimen was taken and for decades birders "saw" it there.  Then sometimes thereafter someone photographed one of these “birds.”  The pictures were looked at, Boreal Chickadees a very similar species and all of them in Denali seen were Boreals.  Then they found the old specimen, it too was just a Boreal, so alas generations of birders were over-counting their lists by a bird.  The bird is not found anywhere in the park.  Oddly, it is even said that the name itself is wrong, as it doesn’t really even have a gray head.  Siberian tit was dropped on this side as this bird is more closely related to our Chestnut backed chickadee of the Pacific NW than the Willow tit of the Eurasian neoarctic.  Aaron Lang et al found the first nests well over a decade ago.  Cornell then got a recording of its calls and song and now at least we know something.  The bird is in harsh environs, nobody knows if they move much, or even go dormant in the mid winter.....one big question mark.
I did not see this bird in 2016.  One person reported it un-witnessed where the Boreal chickadee also lives in western Alaska and two weeks later in November it was reported again by another person again unwitnessed and nobody produced a single photo.  It wasn’t worth my effort to try that for a five figure bird (more than $10 grand to get it), that in some likelihood was not even a GHCH...who really knows?  This year I was going to make the big journey, do it right, go where only the GHCH lives.  Olaf on the epic expedition for the tit……tit-tastic, or tits-up, would it be colder than a witch's tit, or would I just be eaten by bears…tit for tat...revenge of the ice bear, or something like that....those dang bears….

We flew a four seater Cessna 170 STOL over a pass into the north side of the ANWR and hoped for a few feet of tundra to land.  


It took 5 trips for the gear and the ten members of this expedition led by Aaron Lang and Chris Mannix from Takeetna.  What we found was the Ice sheet of Despair and the Frozen Wallow of Sorrow.  

With trepidation we camped that first night and after breakfast schlepped our gear across the frozen aufeis (river freezes in layers from bottom up).  Aaron told us of 14 feet of blocking ice that needed to be tobogganed across.  At suspicious blind turns in the river, we checked it out but by and large we were lucky.  

The ice did not kill off the expedition for tit-glory, but we had to drag and pull that first day.  All for a 5.5 inch bird that looked like a bird I see every year fishing.


We flew a four seater Cessna 170 STOL over a pass into the north side of the ANWR and hoped for a few feet of tundra to land.  

It could be said about this trip that I went in the wilderness filled with certainty of finding bears but all I found was otters, and that would be true.  We saw no bears….a Wilderness Birding Adventure first…..but three otters was a better find and meant good luck.  Olaf and bears….not so.  Day three began with a walk.  One of the party reported a waxwing of unknown ID, a rarity so we slowed and nobody saw it.  We were maybe 100 yards from camp….then my wife noticed a snowshoe.  Half couldn’t see it at the edge of the rocks of the creek.  I never saw it.  As Aaron was pointing out the hare, I saw this bird in the willows….”what is that?”  I said.
Then time slowed as a long tailed chickadee sauntered at eye level across the openness on the creek to a willow on the right.  OMG.  Gil Ewing and I almost broke each other’s hand giving a high five.  It remained deep in the bush mostly but it fed for ten minutes and I took pictures….not good ones, but I got all of the diagnostic shots in bad lights.  Note the white on the wings the face, that tail…





No doubt a GHCH……..wow!  Then it flew off.  We expected more, nesting birds, fledglings, and others we got a hole….nested until 2015…..


a swallow nest taken over for ten years by GHCH……….

This nest proves they do not need cavities in trees to nest but....in 2017, all empty……maybe they follow swallows and use their locations?…..stomping around though we did, the tit, the holy grail of birds, the GHCH was never seen again.   We forded deep frigid rivers in bare legs like my wife Silja, here but notta-tit. We marched everywhere....nothing.

A hoary redpoll was about as good as it got

. Three days later we gave up and looked for other things like Caribou...


But bird in hand, and the gravity of the lucky incidental find we had, I began to enjoy the other things, the majesty of the valley and the river.  I enjoyed the weather, the food by the guides, and I even enjoyed the bear tracks, the outdoor growler (bathroom), and slow mosquitoes.
The ANWR is truly majestic.

We found the back up bird….Smith’s longspur in breeding plumage.




Pretty birds....I put it on my Facebook page.
Us and caribou got bombed by Arctic terns...
We saw harlequin ducks
A rare Rusty blackbird
Fox sparrow feeding young
Rock ptarmigan

Say's pheobes are everywhere in the west or so it seems

many lifer birds for other birders on this epic trip of a lifetime.  I've had so many, I needed to say "savor it, savor it."


At some places, I didn't even know which way to look.  There was stunning scenery everywhere, the ANWR is one of a kind.  In my opinion, Palin can go ^&& herself.  Keep this place wild!
My wife was even smiling after 7 days without a bath, and paddling for a week.
in doing this, you need to relax where you can, even in the raft, 
and a raft also makes a great wall

But alas, we had our bird....lucky lucky LUCKY US!  We looked for Upland sandpipers but they were also missing like the bears and almost all of the chickadees.......day 8 came and then our contact with civilization arrived and it was Kirk to pick us up.

A plane landing on a sand bar....sheez!  Boy did I stink.  We were first out and began a day trip back home.  Gil Ewing got booted off of a Wright Air plane but I didn't have a iphone to film it but it was minus the beatings of United so it was okay......He was even in his seat (as he snuck on trying to take it) .  
It was a once in a lifetime trip......WOW!  Tit-tastic.........lifer beer.........it has been a while and you know...I like this feeling.  I think I just like the feeling of NO BEARS!!!!
I could live with tracks.


Maybe when I get home.....I may go birding.........IDK, something to do.  Thanks to Aaron and Chris and to the others on the expedition as that was what this was and expedition to get the elusive and possibly declining and the ever mysterious.....gray-headed chickadee............
Olaf
Alive and busy in South Dakota

Monkeying Around

FEB 18-25, 2017

I spent last week on the "friendly island" working on my project, The Birds of St. Martin, French West Indies, a photographic guide.  With rare exception it was a great weekwise for weather, I got a nice tan, I drank too much, had a nice visit with many couples we knew from around Minneapolis, and I saw a whole lot of birds, some of which I needed for my field guide.

The cover is a work in progress:


I also saw monkeys, green vervet monkeys, stealing mangoes.  I lifer mammal for the island.


These are troublesome troopers, these damn monkeys, biting beachgoers at Dawn Beach, throwing poo at innocent hikers, charging people enjoying a breakfast baguette, and or generally making a nuisance of themselves, ...as only monkeys can do.  These guys are not native, here, first being "officially" reported by wildlife types in 2001, but they may have been here sooner and may have escaped from somewhere during the Hurricane Luis disaster, but no one is fessing us, most of all these crazy thieves. Luckily, my wife and friends didn't get harassed zip lining....them and I had more problems with ants.
I explored the entire French domain and I got some good shots of birds.  
Caribbean Elaenia

One of those Scrabble or spelling bee words, but this small flycatcher is not easily seen.

I saw a record number of white cheeked pintail, and proved they nest on St. Martin as I saw ducklings in a pond.  You know that with this duck it first appears that only males ever show in Florida but then being southern ducks, the sexes are the same. so those maybe aren't males...but the most handsome of all ducks, is this resident from the Bahamas through Argentina.

White-cheeked pintail

I spent a lot of effort looking for Caribbean (American) coots which are now not a species.  There are 300 at most on both sides of the island and they are wary birds.  I found two, which came back to this pond for three days and then disappeared and could not be refound.  I spent some effort trying to get closer but well.... 
American Coot \I needed a semipalmated plover picture here and found a flock of them.
Stilt sandpiper 
I found an enclave of Mangrove cuckoo, calling, and trying to get them out of the extremely dense cover, and well this one appeared momentarily, four feet dead above me, too close to get a quality pic, although I already had one, so no loss
Mangrove Cuckoo
I got three lifer island birds and a ??  which was a great accomplishment for me.  My St. Martin list is not something quite like Paul L's Gambell list nor Scott S's  St Paul list which are something beyond compare, sort of Pete Rose's record or Cal Ripkin....Mine? It is sophomoric by comparison and I probably shouldn't even bother but I've got some good St Martin birds over the years, maybe someone has seen more than me, I don't know, I may have to add some old birds onto ebird and see....and sometimes these are even on trips that I'm not even really birding.

 Northern Parula
Any over-Gulf migrating warbler can end up here but I've never gotten a parula before, and unlike normal, it even posed for me.
I added a green-winged teal I know big deal right?  Which along with the northern shoveler isn't even on the usual French published checklist of birds on the island but I had seen one of them before in 2014.  There was a huge flock of blue-winged teal on the island this year that had moved into this pond apparently for the winter, and I suspect, brought some friends with from up north.

 I thought I had all the ducks that could occur here, so another one....great!
I guess looking for West-Indian whistling duck will go on forever, so I'll keep looking as seeing one of them here, or even hearing one would be awesome!

In one of those odd birding moments, I  was saying goodbye to a neighbor when a purple throated carib came into his feeder at sea level, "was that purple?"  I shouted as it zipped off..."Yes," the professor answered.....

The purple throated carib is on the checklist as endemic but in 300 days plus here, I've never seen one, of the four eBird posts I've looked at, and curiously none of them are from up elevation where you'd expect this bird, as that is where it is on other island I've seen.  No photos have ever been added to these checklists, and I, for one, have been suspicious of these reports.  I had been thinking, even a few hours before this sighting, that they do not exist here.  This sighting by me and a professor of comparative biology in Canada who now both now have a sighting, has changed my mind....sadly my camera was not handy, and I may have gotten away with using it here at a location not approved for photography and by then we also needed to go.

That wasn't the strangest bird I saw, though, for just a hour earlier, I saw this bird, over the tennis court, and two hours before that, I flushed it off a powerline above the mangroves a few hundred yards from the gate of where we live.  I had flushed a second bird, over near the Butterfly farm five minutes before that.  It's like 'that had a white bar on the wings....?'  WTF?


The second time was a good sitting look if only for a moment.  I may be mistaken, but that is a bare-eyed pigeon, so I say "WTF?"  Native of the A-B-C islands, Venezuela etc. but reported nowhere north of there, what is that doing here and....there are two of them.  Provenance?  There have been other reports this week, but what to do with this bird?  It could be here on its own, BUT..people keep pigeons, people release pigeons.  This bird was a true wild acting bird, all times I looked at it, and twice from almost 50 yards, very skittish.  This bird by its reaction has been hunted, flighty as ever, as bad as the wild scaly naped pigeons which I spent days trying to photograph in the hills, and walking looking, I barely did, one photo in 6 sightings.

scaly -naped pigeon
There is no local approval committee, so count, or not?  Until a couple years ago, 90% of the ebird lists on this island were mine,  so it not being reported here, maybe the French report it elsewhere...maybe worse for other islands south of here and this bird wanders....but I'm not sure....It acted wild, had no bands on it, and a pigeon from a few hundred miles is theoretical plausible, they got a white-crowned hanging around, and they get those flyiong through every once in a while.
 so a ??? bird.  This would be a real lifer bird............

I did try to get a look at a scaly-breasted thrasher, and failed, only pearly-eyeds around the island that I could find.  The pearly-eyes have started singing, which also react to cuckoo calls, so I assume the two are here for the same purpose and cuckoos are utilizing parasitism of this species' nests.


I hiked Pic Paradis, without getting robbed or mugged, unlike the last time I braved it up here in 2006.



I did it twice, and the fear has gone, so I'll keep doing it.  The view is good and if I avoid monkeys and brigands, it is a good birdy place.

Some more birds from my great backyard bird count day, one man's yard bird is another's **MEGA**  (why do birders love the word mega?):

Green throated carib
Black-faced grassquit
Zenaida dove
For a few cool local birds, ....we had a nice dinner party with friends at our place.  We worked on a plumbing problem at our rental villa, I didn't get hurt, I have no sunburn in any hidden locations, I wrote well on my field guide, and well...I avoided monkey bites. 
Well, home now, heading owling here tomorrow, after an interview with Homeland Security tomorrow.  Life and ...biridng...goes on.
Olaf

Peckers, Tits, and Hooters

On Thursday I drove to Sheboygan, WI  to see a woman about her pair of great tits, and let me say it here, they really were great tits!

I knocked on her door and told her I was there to see her tits and she look out the window and then showed them to me...wow!  It was another item off of my bucket list.  I took a picture, so you'd believe me and then decided to go outside and check out a very large pecker.....

Wait a minute.  I'm not sure that came out correctly.  I really did see tits.


parus major, the great tit.  This is a European bird and one may ask....what is this doing near Lake Michigan in Wisconsin?

Somewhere in the end of the last century a person began releasing songbirds from Chicago.  These tits started finding each other and they began to breed.  The earliest I can find in the record documenting nesting was from Milwaukee county in 2004 although someone had seen them farther north and west earlier than that.  I guess the Wisc Checklist committee will have something to do. They continue to establish themselves, hanging out with black-capped chickadees, showing up at feeders and Christmas bird counts, and allowing people like me to use them in puns.

It is only a matter of time before this cute little bird will end up on the Wisconsin state list.
Then I can count it!

This isn't the oddest great tit report.  In 2016, there was a photo documented report from Cape Cod.  Okay, that was not one of these birds.  Then I scratch my head, why did that bird get a yawn from the birding community?  Could it have been a ship assisted bird?  I don't think it could have dispersed to here from northern Europe but a ship....where was NARBA or the rare bird reports?   This deserved more than a yawn, imho.  Oh well, the past, as they say is past.  I got this tit.

I also found a really cool effigy mound site with deer and other effigies in nearby Indian Mound park and I need to map these effigies better as I didn't know they were this far NE in Wisconsin, so I need to do more research.    


My pecker was a pileated woodpecker, year bird nothing more.  I drove to Ripon last night after my tit fest and met my sons and decided that even though this wasn't technically a life bird I drank a lifer beer none the less.  Leinenkugels dunkel!


Odd how it looks like I'm seeing the light...!...?

Today I gave a lecture in Ripon Ornithology Class about the perils of the Hawaiian birds and went over the ABA checklist and then to a large crowd this afternoon I presented my big year report.  The Green Lake Birding club and others were there in mass.  I had more questions than I've had at a talk in a while and it was generally fun.  Dr Khan was the gracious host and  interestingly Dr Skip Wittler introduced me by discussing briefly a paper I was lead author of on the Leaf-ling behavior of Buteo hawks, from 1995.  I forgot about that paper, that came off of my senior research when I was in school, and a student a few years later had taken up my project and continued it.  I stopped by Dr Bill Brooks, now retired, when I was out this way interviewing for Position in Appleton.  What a blur.  So learning that was kind of cool.   I met a couple of Blog friends and had a really nice time, thanks Ripon!!!  Thanks to all of the Ripon biology department for being so nice.  I was here last 29 years ago and many of the faculty are still here from I was here.

Between lectures, I went out to scour the countryside and bingo about 8 miles away....Snowy owl!


A nice very white owl.  It is good to know I still have it for digging up cool birds!
I also flushed a great horned over the highway so I had a two owl lunch, how great is that!

I went out with some of the local birding club members later and we chatted and had a cocktail and then  it was time to stop memory lane and drive home.  My goal in visiting was to see my boys before they graduate in May, they are off soon to start their lives, maybe thousands of miles away and well, it was fun to see them.  It is so cool having them go to where I spent 4 years of my life.

Well, it was certainly a hooters, peckers and tits kind of trip....did I really just write that?

Go Red Hawks!  I'm just out owling around in Wisconsin looking for tits....

Olaf

Musings from up north

It has been a busy week, all in all, last Friday, I got to be on live on the Weather Channel, although I wanted to plug Hawaii, I didn't get the chance.  I had a Weather Channel interview cancelled due to bad weather months ago when they wanted me live from Barrow, but at least they came back around.  I didn't make a fool of myself.  I used to be a DJ on the Radio so I'm quick enough thinking to not pause when live, but it was only 2 minutes and I'm surprised so many people actually saw it.


Last Sunday, I was the guest speaker at the Friends of Sax-Zim Bog gala in Minneapolis.  It was well received and I shall continue in my mission to inform everyone about Hawaii.  I think I had 300 people there.  It was fun. I'm glad they raised some good money to buy more bog land.


After a week of accounting, and getting my life back in order, I got bored, I always get bored, so I went birding.......
I did the western spur of the "Willie the Walleye Route" today.  My self-guided tour that can give me all of the lower 48 non-mountain winter birds.  I had a reason to have lunch with some clients in Roseau, MN so I said, 'what the heck' and took off today at 0330.  The weather was decent, however, it was -18F when I drove into the bog I know.  This is not the Sax-Zim Bog, btw, just a bog I know well which is more manageable and typically better, especially for hawk-owls.

It all starts here:

A semi-secret location that is known only to a select few

The trip was fun, there is a dearth of winter finches up this way so except for a few purple finches, there was nothing else of note but I was not disappointed in the owl department.  Below is my first Minnesota bird of the year...Northern shrike.




I saw the Cadillac of owls, the great gray owl, and had him, or her, on a very small branch, before it spooked and flew away.



I go up here almost every year around Groundhog's Day.  It has been since 2013, I think, since I got a great gray here although I may have gotten one in 2014, I forget, it is becoming a blur.  I don't disclose my exact spot for owls up here (unless we've traded info in the past) since some of the other local owl birders refuse to disclose their birds....so sorry.

If the GGOW is the Cadillac of owls, the Northern Hawk-Owl is the Fiat 500 of owls, small sporty, sassy and cute although, how practical?....I'm not sure.


I got to count this next bird twice today.  That doesn't happen too often:


Seen here about 100 feet from Manitoba, it is clearly a Yank bird, but it later flew north and became my Canada lifer Northern Hawk-owl, FWIW.  It wasn't long afterwards when out of nowhere a white SUV with a green stripe skidded to a stop next to me....."Oh.  You are a birder...."  He drove off.

So there was a good bunch of hawk-owls about, all in their usual location, I've still never been shut out up here.  I scarfed a great horned but no snowy owl to complete a grand slam.

I was planning and heading to my second favorite country until...I realized my passport was not with.  So I decided to switch to grousing.   I jumped gray partridge in four locations, and sharp-tails twice.  I had previously flushed a pheasant so was on a roll, but alas, struck out on the spruce and ruffed grouse, and despite about an hour checking fields, all I found was a coyote and no prairie chickens so was only 3/6 on the grouse grand slam.


It would have been fun to trace the whole route but I only had a day and then rest of the tour takes two more, but it was a good day, long, 800 miles but good. It is always fun to see owls.

Well next week is another week, with stuff to do.  I do go to lecture at Ripon College in the Biology department which I've done before.  Maybe I'll even chase an oriole in Pennsylvania although I'm scratching my head on that one.  I giving a lesson on bird-listing and explaining the checklist to students and then for a 2nd lecture doing my Big Year and embarrassing my sons.

Then, I should be done, unless I get shocked and someone wants to hear from me, otherwise my 2016 exploits should be relegated to dust bowl of history right where it belongs.  Hunting for owls with my camera is fun though.

So that is the update from the life of Olaf.

Keep on Birding

Olaf

Quit going Bananas

Well, I went on my second vacation to get away from by big year with my wife, we went to an undisclosed location north of Tampa, Florida for a little sun, visit some friends, and well I did go birding on two days, although one was mostly to chase manatees, lifer mammal for Silja!


The only bird of note I found was a crew of Nanday parakeets which I ended up seeing in Pasco County and Pinellas County


On Thursday I did go on the chase for a lifer bird to Ft Lauderdale, and ran into some birders from my big year, Donna Schulmann from new York and the garganey chase, and Ed Hopkins from Indiana and my Cuban vireo chase.  I got a lifer exotic....a blue-crowned parakeet, fwiw


has some nice views of a pair of painted buntings...


It was tricky but I finally found the bananaquit



lifer bird somewhere between 790 and 846, depending on what the ABA will do with their checklist and Hawaii.  I got a laugh because my daughter was on a cruise last week with a friend and family and she texts me, knowing my life list.  "I saw a bananaquit today, dad!!"  She was in Roatan.  I respond.  "So did I!"  "Really?"  She replies.  I could feel the dejection.  I was able for once to not let her get one up on me and give me the business.

On Bananaquits....one of my favorite birds.
This Florida bird is from the bahamenis subspecies from the Bahamas somewhere and there are in total 41 subspecies of this bird which has uncertain taxonomy as not sure exactly what it is related to.  I am much more familiar with the birds of the Lesser Antilles, considered the bartholemica  group.  Which they are now working on splitting at least into two species much like spindalis species.


here is a St Martin bird.  It is bigger, black chinned, more striking yellow, darker backed.  Their call is a lot different, I would also say more aggressive, and when I first saw the two, I was shocked they were the same species....They don't really migrate but they disperse somewhat, and that I assume is how they get to Florida.  You'd think that over the years (centuries) they should have colonized south Florida but they have not


versus

Anyhow, I finally got one in ABAdom, it was a long day driving but worth it and my wife was okay with my day away from her.  Anyhow, unlike some of the splits proposed this year....eastern and western willet, splitting the yellow-rumped warblers again, and spinning off the southern hills crossbill, this bananaquit spit I have long agreed with...so we will see, the Antillean bananaquit (pick this name) has never been seen in the ABA so it isn't that big of a deal I guess for the ABA listers
So what else is Olaf up to?
I'm giving a talk in Fridley, MN for the Sax-Zim Bog society on January 29th, 2-4 pm
https://saxzim.org/signature-events/
Come and donate money, for a good cause--the bog.  Where would you be without this bog?  If you can't come, donate money anyhow.  
Despite my comments....I have got a couple of speaking gigs....no sermons, however....
On February 10th I will be speaking in Ripon College, Ripon WI trying my best to embarrass my sons, who graduate in May, because, I'm just that kind of guy.  I've spoken there before so this year I will add a second talk on birds.  I've spoken before on business.  I'm giving two talks this year.
They want me to talk on "How Competitive birding promotes Bird Conservation?"
I will answer does it?
I've asked a couple of opinionated wise sage-types like Greg Miller to weigh in so if you have any input, I'm still working on my talk.  Dorian Anderson is composing his essay in response....
I expect to go owling on the MN-Manitoba border next week.....
So Olaf is still out there birding

2016, The Year End Final Thoughts

I spent the last few moments of 2016 not in Adak, not in some forest hoping for an owl but at Papagayo, in Club Orient Resort on the French side of St Martin, FWI well out of the ABA area (old or new).   I was dancing in a throng of people initially wearing less in total than I had carried onto the island in my carry-on suitcase, and mind you it was mostly filled with books.  I was dressed up, well sort of, I was wearing my signature red bow-tie, and well, I had on Crocks.  By 1155 PM, the dance crowd, due to the heat and the inhibitory relaxing effects of alcohol, were wearing even less, if that could be possible.  My wife and I danced to "Say you say, me"  Lionel Richie's signature hit, one I could sing karaoke to from my days in college if I had to.  We danced and people watched.  You always subconsciously people watch here, otherwise you might miss something.

The manager came on and started the count down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6....finally in was officially 2017 at least in Atlantic Standard time, my year was over.  My wife hugged me and kissed me.  As we left the dance floor to walk out to the beach to see the fireworks, my wife grabbed my hand and said, "I'm glad to have you back."

I felt warm inside.  "I'm glad to be back." I said as the first explosion of fireworks echoed near me.  "I can guarantee you one thing....I'm never doing that again."  I said and then thinking our kids were missing out I left her to find the rest of our family to enjoy the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017 together.   When it was over, I said, "I'm tired, it is the end of a very, a very long day."


EPILOGUE

It seems a little odd and surreal having a picture of me with my number on a sign celebrating a USA record wearing nothing but a Calgary Flames Hat and standing on French soil, but that is where I am today.  My day is full of conflicts.

I spent the first day of 2017 like I have all but one year in the last decade, on the south end of Orient Beach watching tanned and red toned and saggy bodies walk past me while I lounged under my yellow umbrella.  I watched some people with obvious tan lines, others proudly showing off their lack there of, and a few gawkers dreaming of having enough fortitude to do what the rest of us are doing...enjoying the beach and the ocean.  I sat there drinking a Carib, toasting my life.  I was really and truly living the dream.

Thinking about it with a detached reflection on what was...I had basically wasted a year of my life chasing and counting birds.  I really had.  It can't describe it any other way.  Others had also done this, and spent much more money than I had.  If I had expected some added sort of epiphany or revelation about the year or life, it wasn't forthcoming. I knew it would never come.  I ended my 2013 nude big year saying in my book Boobies, Peckers, and Tits...

"On numerous occasions, my nude Big Year forced me out of comfort zone, and I believe we all need to push ourselves into something new at least once in our lives.  If I have any advice after this adventure, it is to live a little.  Try that new job, write a book, or start your own adventure.  Life is too serious (I will add in 2016 birders are too serious), and we are often too concerned about what the neighbors might think or what something might cost.  If that is the case, I'd advise you to get new neighbors, realize that life is worth living, and know that some things are priceless."

Here again 3 years later, after an even more involved effort, one that most of the local people here truly couldn't understand, I still agree with this.

As I said, very few people can or will appreciate what I did.  My family would be included in this.  There is no award, no call of congratulations, and I received and will receive nothing for this except....bills, Diamond Medallion status on Delta Airlines, a new cat, a significant ankle injury, and the worst, a cabin with significantly damaged plumbing.  It will also take me some time to purge the bird chasing out of me and go on with life and onto my next fun thing, whatever that is.  One just can't stop traveling cold turkey and besides, I have the highest elite status on Delta this year, I will never have that again.

Many of you may not believe what I saw, what I did, or what I write.  Who really is this Olaf %%$$# anyhow?  My answer to you is, I don't care.  I got better things to do than to make up birds or to pad my life list for no apparent purpose.  I am not writing a book on my year except maybe a how to manual on doing a big year as the one in publication is old and needs help.  I raced through the non -coded birds fast and easily.  My plan was sound for that.  I am writing a birder mass murder mystery, which may or not be any good--too early to tell.  "Counting Owls"  I am 60% finished and I am using some experiences from my year for places to knock off birders. Back to my year though, in summary, this year was not about or for you, sorry there.  This was not about the ABA.  This was not about a record, this was not even about making sure anyone who beat me had to waste a lot of money (much more than I did) that could be used for better purposes than to get a number that coincidentally, the ABA inadvertently made somewhat meaningless and hollow by adding Hawaii to the area in 2017.   Next year, with Hawaii, one could crush any ABA mark above 780 getting 725 old ABA birds and go to Hawaii and could do it by August 1 without breaking much of a sweat.  I f I learned  anything about this year, I learned this is my list and my hobby.  200 birds, 600 birds, 800 birds....in the scheme of life, really and truly...big deal.

This was not even about setting some sort of bar for those new 2017 checklist guys, and it wasn't even really about me waiting out a non-compete/quiet agreement I may or may not have signed in 2015.  I can't say.  To be honest I don't really yet even know what this year was about.  I did it, I persisted and now, it is over.  I'm a mostly retired 50 year old fat guy, with too much time on my hands.  Now, this done, I can go on with my writing, my art history work, I can get my tan back, and well, I can catch more and bigger fish.  Gosh I want a big pike on a line right now.

Further, I doubt very much that my phone will ring or I will get emails inviting me to speak (although it is said I have never met a podium I didn't like) but I am speaking in Minnesota in four weeks and later at my Alma Mater, so I better figure out what this year is truly about.  I fully expect to talk mostly about Hawaii, and the plight of the birds there to raise awareness...that is the least I can do.  Maybe it is about that?  I will also talk about my grandmother Lucille D, still with us now nearing 92 years of age and she was able to participate last year and see the record Blanding's turtle with us.  The best bird of the year will not even be a bird...it will be a turtle, a huge ancient turtle, so old, nobody can even guess how old it truly is.  That will be the story to remember 2016 by.  I hope to spend some quality time visiting her and her feeders in 2017.  I may not have many winters left with her.


As I sit here reflecting about I saw where I went what I did....the numbers are a blur, I will post the total one more time.............I'm sort of embarrassed to do it.

AMERICAN (USA) Big year:  827 (plus one, pine flycatcher)
                 Bishop Museum established list HI



ABA Big Year Total:  776 (plus 2)                 PLUS 2 =  Pine flycatcher, and Common shelduck,                   (I do not think white cheeked pintail, spot billed duck, and graylag goose are real/non-domesticated, and Kodiak egret ...?, I'm not even putting anywhere)
NEW ABA (with Hawaii)  804 ( plus 28, awaiting final exotic checklist)                 should end up in high 820s                 *non-official but well something out there to aim for
Coded Birds:  103provisionals awaiting checklist expansion ABA: 2
I also saw 722 in the lower 48 states (plus 1) but that was never a primary or even much of a secondary concern
Miles driven.  46,735Flight Miles 253,800
300,000 I just made it.  Whew!
Frequent Flier miles used  all airlines  862,500$ spent  on year 95,200
miles on ATV/ scooter 475speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 246   Different Airports: 71Near bear/ death experiences 2near plane incidents: 2One car crash that I wasn't 1000 miles near
Hours at sea: 284Miles walked 545showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states birded: 39Provinces birded 5
Lifer states 49new ones this year 3
Lifers seen this year:  74 ( 2)nights slept in car:  12slept in airplane:  18Airport :3
Hours my house without power 101Cabin without power 148 (still continuing)
Temperature at Orient Beach: 84
I sit here watching my personal goddess emerge from the sea looking more like Venus than even the goddess herself could and I smile.    Life is good.  I pulled up my bins to scour the sea for brown or the occasional red-footed booby (I have seen two here, and not just naked women wearing red shoes either) but then put them down.  I reflect some more.  I am sitting right where I belong, not at a wild life refuge in Texas, not a nearly forgotten Yupik settlement on a barren island, and not even camped out at a feeder in someone's back yard in Oregon.  I belong here. Right here!

My goal for 2016 was to find myself and all along, it is here on this lovely beach with the sun kissing my pale sun-starved skin that I have.  I have a wonderful life, and I am living a dream.  My wife loves me and I have three great children.  I still even have my grandmother around.  One of my children comes up and give me a hug.  "We miss you dad, we are glad you are down here with us."

"I'm glad I am too,"  I said.  "I skipped Adak because I didn't want to miss New Years here if the weather got bad.  That would have been the worst thing all year."  It is true.

"We are all glad you didn't go, too, dad.  It would be terrible if you weren't here."  This happy young adult ran off to meet up with a sibling.     They are ordering hamburgers for lunch.  I shout an order.  "No cheese!"  I shout.

Then I see a brown booby fly across the bay, hugging the small, foot high waves, before heading off around the point and out to sea....it is bird number 8 for the new year.........but I guess, who really is counting?

Happy New (Nude) Year

Olaf

PS.  Thanks everyone for all of your help and support in 2016!!

Here again, is the bird of the year.......and it isn't even a bird.

My trip to Hell and back...The Bad Weather gets revenge

There comes a time when one has to give homage to who is the most powerful, and in this "Bad Weather Big Year" it is the weather that rules Olaf.  I have talked about blizzards, rain, wind, tornadoes, floods, waves, etc etc etc, but until Christmas day those were just jabs, repeated jabs to the head but the weather had a massive one-two left, a right cross followed by a devastating left hook.....and as they say, "down goes Frazier..oh I mean, Olaf."

December 25-30th???? 

Northeastern South Dakota was visited by Santa this Christmas and instead of toys and goodies, Ole' St. Nick brought coal, coal in the form of snow, wind and freezing slushy rain that well went okay until some time after 4pm on Sunday when the power went off.  This was no ordinary power outage or even ice storm as the ice brought down the main transmission lines into the region.  We have underground power at my house and underground lines, good thinking if you ask me.  I wrote last summer about birding in North Dakota when the power company was putting in underground to my cabin and accidentally cut my underground power line.  I had to rush home.  Well I got a new RV hook up for that but I thought that was a good thing.


But what I didn't expect then or now was such a massive damage to the big lines transmission lines, a substation without power is not a good thing.  We were in Minneapolis for Christmas and well it would not even be possible to get home for 48 hours and then, no heat, no power, nothing....4 nights at the house like this but well, at 1038 last night....I had Christmas lights!!


I was looking for my flashlight when all of a sudden I could see....red lights make a lot of light when there is only blackness.  The house was down to 44 degrees, we had just drained the hot tub, I was pitching the fridge and freezer and I was thinking about draining the water system....but now crisis averted!  Whew!!

The cabin, though, about 40 miles west of here was where the ice meets the road, it is ugly.  "Prepare for power outage for the foreseeable future," the Power Co-op said over there.  They basically had to start from scratch.  It took them 72 hours to even get to the Grenville Substation to even see if it was salvageable.  They had to fly over the mainlines to assess the damage.  It was not good.  I was hearing horror stories so today (12/30) I headed over to see what was up and to make an attempt to try to even get to my cabin.  I prepared for the worst, at least I'd finish winterizing if I could get close enough, it was 20 degrees and blowing 15 mph , so not all that bad weather wise around here, next week-20- minus 30, wind, so the time is now to try to salvage anything.  We heat it all winter and well, being gone so much, the winterizing wasn't complete.

Getting there now 5 days out.....The roads nearby were some of the most treacherous roads I've ever driven on, thick ice, the gravel is covered and it is just rough and pulls the car.  You can't stop, you can't turn, you can't do much of anything.


At one point on County 1, which is actually closed, but the sheriff let me through as I had property....this normal corner, banked, all properly engineered, is totally impassable.


The road is banked but at 5 mph, which is the best speed you can go, you will just slide sideways and off into the ditch.  Even just standing on it, gravity pulls you into the ditch.  It was almost impossible to walk past the orange cones.  I tried until the deputy yelled at me to move along.  They diverted you into a field, then a dirt road, generally the power trucks drove past this point in the fields.  Imagine a truck pulling trailer with powerpoles trying to make that corner, the trailer would just slide down sideways as momentum meets gravity without friction.

I got to the road for my cabin 2 miles away, more like the corner of disaster and mayhem


It took me 30 minutes to go a mile and a quarter, although to be honest, I was distracted, I flushed 6 gray partridge and some grouse (20?), mostly sharp tails but there could have been prairie chickens intermixed, as they are in my local flock but I didn't pick out any specifically, I was just trying to stop, which took over a hundred yards.



I've written before that the way to identify Gray partridge at a distance flying is that grouse just fly to the next field, gray partridge fly to the next section, or the section after that....they go and go, ...and go...

the grays went over the hill and were gone, the grouse stopped a quarter mile across the road.  Definitely sharpies in the tree but the birds in the shelter belt were too far to ID completely at least the ones obscured....I was too geared up for cabin salvage than to get out and scope them.

Okay, I got about a quarter mile from my cabin, which ended up being a mistake as the only way to get out was to drive backwards through crusted snow drifts with my hatch open.  That was tough, actually.  I'd have taken my F250 but it is encased in ice in my pole shed and was too much work to extricate.

My favorite shade tree and I only have 2 shade trees on this property took a beating, poor white ash...not sure what I'm going to do next summer.  Trees here are a lifetime project.


As I feared, large hard drifts blocked my back yard, making it hard to even get to my door.  That fence is exactly 6 feet high, btw.


Eventually I got in, poured antifreeze in the toilets, looked things over and began a laborious process of getting access to my crawl space, removing a 3 foot drift and then chiseling and pounding 3 inches of ice from my crawl space access through my deck.  It took an exhausting hour.  Finally using a crow bar, it gave.  I looked below... 

There in the six feet between me and the foundation, solid hard, snow, so hard, I could not even poke the broom handle through it.  The snow had blown through the cracks in the deck and all the rain made it settle into a cake of hard pack.  It looked like an 8 hour project to get through.  I swore and put the door back.  Maybe my crawl space is sealed so tight it would stay warm enough down there for weeks of no power....IDK.  Sigh.......

I made sure the water remained off, I have no pressure as pump and well on power, so what else could I do?  I walked to my car and went and watched a line crew repairing a line 1.5 miles as the crow flies from my cabin....





Drill baby drill I say as I watched them put in a new pole.  They will just chainsaw that old stub down.  I almost got hit by a sliding line truck so I decided that I better go.....for the area around Enemy Swim Lake and Summit SD, it is going to be a while.....in the meantime, everyone is hanging out at the local truck stop.....here in South Dakota the weather has defeated many of us, but well, Dakotans are tough, no power in winter....no problem....-20 next week, it will be a badge of honor or the saying will be well, it could have been -30 like that blizzard in 1998.....

So where was I when all of this went down?

I was heading to Newfoundland...seemingly away from the storm to get a kelp gull seen on 12-25 morning, unfortunately while I was flying the plane I was heading to meet in Toronto was coming from Winnipeg, Blizzard central....it came late.  We boarded late, and then after circling St John's for 2 hours, unable to land as a different storm hit them literally a few minutes before we got there....we diverted to Halifax.....sigh.  It was 5 hours in the air.....Yet another night, this one unscheduled, in an airport terminal.  What does one do stranded at an airport in winter?  Not much....use up battery power checking things, being on hold for 2 hours (2:04 to be precise) to get your new flight...trying to sleep worried they might just leave without you.

I did make it out the next day getting to the Rock at 6pm....I picked up a car that had the meter running from the day before and checked into a hotel I had also paid the previous night for....glad I had a hotel room on Christmas night (LOL, ha ha...sigh)....some guy did try to sing Christmas carols in Halifax to liven the mood but he was sneered at and so he promptly stopped.

I birded St John's for 2 days. 12/ 27-28th, according to locals, gull numbers were down since the storm and well, finding a kelp gull in a sea of Great black backs is not easy....slightly smaller, legs greenish different bill structure but we had bad flat light they weren't always close on out of the water so what really does even color look like in this light?


You can see it in the throng...correct?   Clear as mud...

Well none of us could....the kelp gull did NOT show....I assume the storm disrupted it....maybe it moved on?  I got a headache looking so hard, all the while tufted ducks swam by....


Not even really worth counting...a code 3 not even worth counting....the kelp gull dip weighed on me...I wanted that bird.

Then a bit of a 2nd storm came in on the 27th and the wind picked up and with the ice storm home, on the 28th, I had to bug out in the afternoon on a three hopper home or I wouldn't get there.  So did I just go home?  After making my flight to Detroit in Montreal, as customs was a zoo, and the security line in St John's was worse and I had misread Newfy time, I said what the heck...
 
 I added the 4th leg of the journey.  I flew to Spokane, say I was crazy, but well, I figured, what damage to my house was done already, I'd get there tomorrow.

I ended up in Lewistown, Idaho at 2:30 am and then at dawn went to look for the red-flanked bluetail, always a fun bird.  Some eastern Idaho birders joined me and then I spotted it for the day, working a Russian olive and then hiding down near the water.  "There it is"  I shouted and soon I had company



bird #776 plus 2, and the rarest bird ever or so the locals say, to visit Idaho.
Cool, I talked to so many Idahoans (and local Washingtonites, as they are just across the Snake River, here at Hell's Gate, who knew me.  They patted me on the back, one thought what I did in Hawaii was great, he actually trained Jack Jeffrey.  Another wished me well.  Still another asked me if I wanted to get this bird nude and why wasn't I nude?  I said I was too tired and had not thought of that yet...I was tired....it was the support I needed.  I had to leave those fine folks and I did it proud, it was the moment of the year but I had to get back to Spokane to make a plane and avoid the wrath of Silja.

My wife texted me and asked how the house was, did I feed the cats?...."Do you want the truth or do you want a lie?"  I replied.  I fessed up I was in Spokane...."Spokane?"  she responded, at least it wasn't in caps.....I needed to get home to check on cats...drain water...etc....the cabin...yea...

Now I wanted the Kelp gull as that is a life bird....this is mostly, in my opinion, about lifers, year numbers...oh well....I've seen bluetails before, but I seemed easy enough....I could have went and seen the graylag goose in Rhode Island but I don't like that bird's story....the story is strong...very strong for a domestic bird.  They say it was with a flock of Canadas, but well then it was by itself, near a golf course, not far from a repeat sighting in CT which disappeared just as this one showed up AND also another bird across in Long Island, in fact domestic graylags are seen all over the eastern US Seaboard, look it up on ebird, it will shock you.....give me that bird in Newfy or Nova Scotia...maybe but heck, they don't even see that bird all that often in Greenland, the two Newfy records....Oil derrick and a ship, not even seen ever on land......I don't think it is real, just like I won't count a white cheeked pintail in VA--- Delmarva....and that bird is closer to the Bahamas than that goose is to Iceland.  Maybe Rhode Island will accept it, but I honestly don't know how they can.  I hope I'm proved wrong but well if it is accepted, I guess, anything really and truly goes in the hobby.

If so, I'll add this bird to my lifer list ....

 
Looks an awful lot like the Rhode Island bird and well this Minnesota bird could be wild, it was with Canada geese following behind it.  It flew off with them and oddly it too, was at a golf course.   I don't see a band,....I only chased that reported spot-billed as it seemed so odd and few are kept in captivity but well, I also needed something to do.....I guess if others want to add this bird, it IS their list, and well, I'n surely not the birding police.  The end of the day, all I got for this year is a severely injured ankle, a wife needing TLC, and a cabin that may be in need of new plumbing...oh and don't forget the credit card bill.

Many people  have lost their property and even their lives in this storm, as such dwelling on air miles and bird numbers, etc. doesn't seem to matter.  I'm just lucky and feel lucky really that I only lost a freezer full of food and maybe a couple grand worth of plumbing.  When you go to bed tonight, think of the linemen of your power company and what they do to keep your lights on.  Electricity is a wonderful thing, very wonderful, without it, life sucks, Hell even.  I have gas and hot water heat, but it needs power to run, the water needs a pump and well, I am using my new power to write this blog.

Thank you Ottertail Power Linemen for putting your life at risk to lay out that new feeder transmission line I documented, and all of the coops and other crews from all over the place, Lake Region Electric Coop and Whetstone Valley, my power companies....thanks, I wasn't swearing at you, just the situation

Olaf

Conditioner versus Softener,

The waves of mountains and fog!  I like this picture.  I found myself returning to Oregon, and chasing a bird I seemed to never be able to see, at least this year, the brambling.

As I believe I already mentioned, I lived for six weeks in Portland in 1991, training at Oregon Health Sciences.  It was a trip of stories, involving: getting lost in Wyoming in a wilderness, the second part of my Cody-Grizzly Inn story (read my book), picking up a screw driver in a tire in Idaho, staying at my brother-in-laws, an attempted motel break in on Sandy Avenue (my wife and I hiding under the bed), an odd Llama Ranch B&B under Mt Adams, a terrible learning experience at OHSU (when I presented my final paper my adviser stopped me saying, "Did you just start?" I had worked with him for 6 weeks and he forgot I was even there...), Narrowly avoiding getting run over by a logging truck in Idaho while sleeping under car, and my lifer Long eared owl in Montana.  It could have been a great summer of vacation but I ruined it going to Portland! But I have out sized memories and stories for such a period of my life.

I do always learn something in Portland.  That is a good thing, I guess.  Today, the big discussion was that the millennials don't use fabric softener.   Proctor and Gamble sales of the stuff has fallen 100 million dollars this year.   P&G wants to rename it from Softener to "Conditioner."  They think that will help.  The radio personality, discussed various reasons including P&G assumes they don't even know what it is.  These people discussed that maybe there was some environmental reason behind the avoidance but I agree, they don't know what it is....really what is it?  What does it do?

The discussion went on to remind us all of the Snuggly soft bear, and then how the DJ had tied up the arms and legs of her stuffed animals as a kid to subdue them when they came alive each night...trying to kill the members of her household...then luckily, and thankfully, I was in Florence, OR and it was time to bird.

It took me a while to find the location as there were at least two similarly named and numbered streets near Sutton Lake but I found the person's yard where they had found a brambling in the Christmas bird count.  Another birder had beaten me to the stakeout and so together we waited, and waited.  I sat on a retaining wall and watched a rather unbirdy bird feeder.  It took an hour and a half for juncos to show.  First one, then five, then 15, and then...Steller's jays came and everyone left.  Dang!  I spotted an Anna's hummingbird....??  That seemed odd, until the local birder said they winter here.



Another local birder came.  We waited, we talked, we moved to keep warm and then a junco came, then 2, then 10, then 20 and then...



Brambling!!  Bird 775 plus (+2), yeah, a monkey was finally off of my back.  It wasn't a great photo but well this was like my 200th brambling, but it was a photo and I should have went and got the Ohio bird and then how I missed one in Alaska was beyond me, continually wrong place wrong time...but this is a needed bird no more, week 51, is better than never.  Branbling...TICK!!  All three of us saw it in the grass and then...Steller's Jays showed up and poof, juncos and the brambling...all gone.


But I had it.  I decided I had been shivering enough so I drove past a pretty section of Oregon's coast


Then I drove around Mary's Peak area west of Corvalis looking for my USA nemesis, sooty grouse.  The roads were a little scary as they had a recent ice storm and the roads had some ice left on them. Then I drove past a female grouse, almost forgetting what I was doing up there.  I did like a 20 point turn trying to turn the car around and try to get a photo.  I was careful on the narrow road to not drive over and lost the bird's location, I stopped and then four feet from my door, it flushed, no picture.  Isn't that the way these go?  I got out up a ways and hiked a ridge for a while and flushed a 2nd grouse out of a conifer but had no more chance than just to see it.  But...I had seen my last missing USA bird.....the other Canada birds I had seen this year, are three rare actually code 4 vagrants....and one not even on the checklist, otherwise every bird I've seen has been in good old USA.  Neil Hayward missed 9, I was now basically down to 3, plus my huge Hawaii list moved my USA total up 2 to 826.  That is a number I am really happy with.

Big Year Total:  775 (plus 2 plus 2)
**New ABA  803  (+28, +2)*
*will always be unofficial, to them,

USA, The American Big Year, 825 (+1, +2)
Coded Birds:  102
provisionals: 4
first number :checklist 2
second number: IDs pending 2

Miles driven.  45,741Flight Miles 266, 700
miles on ATV 475
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 241   Different Airports: 70
Near bear/ death experiences 2Hours at sea: 284Miles walked 573
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 38
Lifer states 49
new ones this year 3
Lifers seen this year:  74 (+2)
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  17
So, after crazy traffic in Portland, the worst traffic town in the USA, I made it to my hotel by the airport and sitting here writing this I am still wondering.....what really does fabric softener really do?  Conditioner?  That seems stupid.  Have we all been sold something the millennials have figured we don't really need?  Gosh are they smart!! Oh the things I learn in Portland.  This does beat the Bee funerals, I learned once here....Oh and I forgot my Naked wine bottle, maybe next time...

BTW, I am featured in the Watertown Public Opinion this weekend....Christmas cheer and Olaf, sit down and read it by the fireplace celebrating the Holidays.....maybe better add some rum to that Egg Nog while you read, but if you read this, you already know my stories, I write it here first.  In that case just drink, drink heavily.  Tonight is St Lucia's Night, the longest night of the year, hang in there, it will brighten up!

Merry Christmas

Olaf

Paradise Revisted

Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii December 11-15, 2016

The legendary Pueo, the Hawaiian owl, a subspecies of short-eared owl.  The protector in many Hawaiian legends.  In general, after my sad report from Kaua'i and Maui, things are maybe a little better on the big island.  Myabe the pueo is protecting what remains, but I don't think so.  Not unlike this owl that appears to be just about everywhere in the world even in places it boggles my mind how they ever got here, so is Olaf everywhere and like a bad penny, I have returned to the 50th state---Hawaii.  I had work to finish up and well, I was mentally ready for more depression.  Coming here and thinking of what was and might have been takes a mental toll on a birder.  Besides, I told you I had two tickets to paradise....

I sped over here from Seattle.  I was coincidentally closer but that was lucky and unplanned.  I landed in Honululu and basically went to bed at 6:30.  It was going to be another three island swing.  I planned on spending a day on Oahu, then Maui, before finally going to Hawaii. I had avoided the big island due to a disease called Rapid Ohi'a Death, what a name, and a disease so feared and scary just going to the big island keeps you from visiting certain preserves on the other islands. This nasty fungus just appeared out of nowhere and no one is sure from where although there is a similar variety that attacks sweet potatoes.  Everything, it seems, is conspiring to kill off the last remaining Hawaiian forest birds.

The Wakamoi Preserve on Maui pretty much has closed down to visitors because of the risks of this fungus which could destroy the few endangered birds that were left.  It took me 3 months, and basically a miracle to get a trip with local docent Chuck Probst, I went through the media department as well as direct and I'm not sure what worked but I got the rare permission.  Chuck is a cool guy but it is clear that the boardwalk in this preserve will be visited by few from no one, and if the fungus spreads in the big island, all the rare birds on preserve lands will be off limits.  It is a bad deal, but so is the fungus.  Poeple can't be trusted to clean their shoes and the state....the state worries about fruit and plants being brought in but actually don't even inspect your stuff.  Exotic insects have ruined agriculture here to a large degree.  

I never ate at a restaurant on this trip, no beach, no sun, and I just birded and slept.  On Oahu, I needed the Oahu elepaio and on a tip, I went up a new trail, muddy with a rope to pull up and after slipping in the mud and hurting my ankle, I saw one.  I wasn't worried I didn't get a photo as I would see another....wrong.....I missed my flight to Maui in a traffic jam at the Hertz rental return lot of all places but I got to Maui.  That was my first missed flight of the year.  I was NOT going to miss my trip into the preserve.   I had worked so hard and was thinking, I'd rent a helicopter if needed.

I got to Maui and went up to the volcano to look for Hawaiian petrel but I found 40 mph winds, cold, fog, and loud foreign tourists who were improperly dressed.  No petrel.  sigh.  I went to my hotel 30 miles away.  The Hawaiian petrel was not to be.

The morning brought the first of 48 hours of wonderful weather.  We met and went to the Wakamoi Preserve.  I had spent months trying to gain access and the day I arrived the birds were out singing.


I met Chuck again.  Chuck is the uncle I needed.  War veteran, paratrooper, orthopedic surgeon, all around cool guy, and has a life list over 7400.  He has two artificial knees and goes like a goat in the woods.  His house is a dream house on the base of the volcano in Maui.  I do not know how to repay the help I had getting two heard only birds but the Akohekohe was tough.  The trip into the preserve was one of high hopes dashed by the reality that is birding.  We dipped on the Maui parrotbill, a bird sadly I will never get to see in my life but well, I hope it hangs in there.  I would like to thank the Nature Conservancy for letting me in.  I will work on my next newspaper story and it is good they saved this forest, a bird sanctuary that was actually found accidentally by Jack Jeffrey (next).  I drove down and grabbed a plane to Kona.  I was done on Maui and finally could now visit the big island.  This was not what I expected.  I expected something like Grenada, forests, trees, green but what I got was western South Dakota, dry treeless hills.



I started to chase exotics and then on the 14th, I birded with the same Jack Jeffrey, the Hawaiian legend and Hawaii biologist who has witnessed 7 extinctions.  But he states generally things are looking better on the Big Island, well in the area we were at.  It took us until exactly 10:02 to get all the Hakalau forest birds including a couple that are beyond endangered,


The Akiapola'au, so specialized to eat the larvae of one beetle off one tree, and have a bill that is unlike any other passerine bill, it is a evolutionary relic.  Super specialized animals do not survive change.  Even Mauna Kea erupting could have killed off this bird but yet, 800 survive and we got one!


Dig that crazy bill, he can move each one independently.

I also birded with a Ball State Wildlife Professor and we learned about all the rare plants found, the evils of over-grazing. It was a good time.  Jack showed what could be done if overgrazing is stopped and the right trees are planted.  The local Hawaiian homeland owned land has this fascination with Japanese cedars which help nothing out, so maybe as they have land around this forest overgrown with Scottish Gorse, maybe someday someone will plan for the future of all Hawaiians, even the flying ones.

Also, by the way, don't smoke the pokeweed!



an old pathology toxicology lesson from medical school, and here is a native variety.  THIS STUFF KILLS YOU IF IT IS SMOKED BUT YOU GET A GOOD HIGH BEFORE DEATH.  It was a botany lesson as well all day in the forest.  Best day birding in a long time.  I was so overwhelmed by it all.  I learned more in decades walking through that largely reforested tract.  It gave me hope.

My final day in Hawaii, I spent the early morning looking in vain for a chestnut-bellied sandgrouse.  I think I heard them but I wasn't sure.  I gave up and then spent three hours in the mamane forest looking for another ultra-rare bird, the Palila.  Crud.  That was work.  I could not walk when I finally found one, and in the tree next to my rental SUV.  At a backup spot I had been told.  I great look at a great bird.


 The mamane this bird needs doesn't look so impressive.


Numbers on this bird..1000.  Down from 4000 in 2003, up from 200 in 1950, down from 40,000 mid 1800s.  I guess better than 1950....
But what a cool cool bird!  Wow.  My busted ankle almost didn't hurt...no, it hurt like hell.  I just forgot.  I'm glad I only got 2 weeks left of this madness.

In the final summary.  I got 28 of the possible 31 endemic Hawaiian birds, missing the Maui parrotbill, puaiohi (the small Kaua'i thrush), and the Hawaiian petrel.  I got most of the exotics, missing a couple but some of those are very scarce and I doubt will be added to the ABA list, but IDK, that isn't my call. 54 species on my 2 trips here in total.

endemic birds

H20  Oahu elepaio

Seen in darkest part of trail below me and could not get anything on camera.  White seen on tail and it is pretty hard to miss ID an elepaio.  I figured I would see another one.  I figured wrong.  This was the only one.

H21  Akohekohe

Heard only and about as well as you can hear this bird with call and song.  Saw it head out the back door of a tree and despite efforts by Dr Probst we could not see

H22  Hawaiian Hawk

Endangered native buteo.  This is a dark phase juvie bird.  The female I saw was a light morph.  They are small act like red-shouldered hawks and have a rather odd soaring pattern reminding me more of hook-billed kites than buteos.  Harder to find than I thought they would be.

H23   Hawaii elepaio


here is a juvenile bird note the orange on this young flycatcher's bill.  They have a lot less color

there are three subspecies on the island representing 3 isolated populations on three mountains

H24   Akakane (Hawaiian Akepa)


Although I saw two brilliant orange males, this endangered bird is difficult to photo as they are so small.  I was lucky to get photo ops of these two female types.  The two related species (were subspecies went extinct on Oahu and Maui in the mid 1990s.

H25   Akiapola'au



What a crazy looking bird.  Sadly maybe 800 are left but as I noted, they eat a single larvae from a specific bug on ohi'a trees.  This is a younger bird.  They act a little like woodpeckers.  A very tough bird to find.  They have home ranges in the hundreds of acres so need a large territory.

H26  Hawaii Creeper

BIRD #800!!!  well with the new ABA, without exotics!
cool!  This endangered bird has maybe 12,000 birds in number.  They poke around like nuthatches.

H27  Oma'o


One of two of Hawaiian thrushes not extinct, but the Kaua'i thrush is on the verge like the other two birds that died out in the last century.  These guys appear to be doing well and are instrumental in spreading tree seeds.  They have a really cool song.

H28  Palila


They eat only the toxic bitter seeds of the mamane seeds AND a caterpillar that feeds on the trees that concentrate the bitterness but are edible to humans but reportedly one of the most foul tasting things ever in nature, but the palila thrives on them.  under a thousand in existence, down from 4000 ten years ago which was an improvement from 200 in 1950 but there were 40,000 150 years ago.

Winner of the lawsuit in the 1970s "Palila versus the State of Hawaii," which forced the state to comply with eradication of goats and game that were eating the trees.  The state was trying to make hunters happy.  This is the only lawsuit that an animal was the plaintiff.

I was so happy to see this bird.  Did I say this?


Exotics seen:

HP 22  Japanese bush-warbler

heard only, with Dr Probst, skulky bird

HP 23  Kalij Pheasant

HP 24 Saffron Finch

HP 25  Yellow billed cardinal

HP 26  Red-masked parakeet


I saw the Hawaii Amakihi (Hawaii) subspecies for a bank bird for some year if they split the Maui and Hawaii Island birds.  Here is a pretty male.  The numbers of these birds seem adequate.  I assume thousands lost but not critical yet.


At least the sign doesn't ban birding, it seems they ban everything else.


Well Hawaii is now done.  I can do no more so time to bug out.   The missing endemics I do not have access to 2 of them and the petrel is largely at sea, way at sea.

the numbers fwiw

So ABA is still #774 (+2, +2)

but with the 9 new edemic ones and 6 exotics
New ABA 802 (+28, +2)*
*will always be unofficial, to them,

USA, The American Big Year, 823 (+1, +2)


Second number in provisional is awaiting correct ID, first number waiting checklist addition

Thanks Jack and Chuck!
Thank you Hawaii!  Well, somewhat, get your act together and save these birds!
I'm heading east.....

Some thoughts on Hawaii.  The big island can be saved, but it needs help.  Time, I fear is short.  It needs people on the ground to convince some intrangent thinking of land owners and governmental agencies that this is important.  People need to buy land and preserve it.  Ranchs need to be bought out and that isn't cheap but it has been done.  Get the cows off the land.  I told Jack Jeffreys that we should write letters to Warren Buffet, I guess his sister is a birder.  The carbon people should come here and promote trees, trap carbon in new forests.

The island also needs money to replant and root out all of the exotic trees and shrubs.  They need money to eradicate pigs and put up fences.  The USFW is trying in Hawaii, BUT they get ignored nationally, I think.  Everyone in the lower 48 has pet projects and they get the money, but none of the lower 48 problems compare to the problems here.  Hawaii is bit one of 50 states.  In Maui, the Maui Forest Bird recovery project is trying, but short of funds, as is the Nature Conservancy but everyone seems to be holding their breath with R.O.D.  If the ohi'a die off, this fight is over.  In the end of the day....I think I'd recommend going to Hawaii and see what you can now, get a feeling of things and plan accordingly.

Olaf