Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 21

Qidi Vidi Numerari

Somewhere on Duckworth Street, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

Liz Southworth, a birder from Boston I run into frequently on chases, I'm certain, thinks I'm nuts, borderline certifiable.  Liz, though, is too polite to tell this to me directly, but I can tell.

This week, somehow, I talked her into going with me to chase what was slowly becoming a nemesis bird for the two of us. Not only that, it was not a very satisfying bird to look for.  It was a pain and after we dipped out on day one of out quest, which was arguably the longest, most boring day ever of birding, I knew something radical had to be done.  I told her we had to go and say peace with the chocolate mermaid....Trinitaria, as like I said, I knew we had to do something...anything.  We were cursed, or so it seemed, and this was the cursed of all cursed birds.  The locals and even Liz told me... "Do not underestimate this bird."  Bruce MacTavish, local birding legend, told me it was reliable and to plan on two even three days...

Liz and I had spent collectively at least twelve days looking solely for this bird here in our lifetimes...dang bird!   How much "lets go to the dump, then the ballfield, lake, back to dump, scan the roof tops, ballfield, golf course, back to the dump, etc etc." etc days could a birder have?  It was driving me nuts!!  I would admit that to any psychiatrist, too.  "Doctor, it all started with this bird with yellow legs..."

"Tell me more..."  The doctor would say quietly filling up his/her syringe.

Desperate times require desperate measures.  I told Liz, she had to say a prayer too, it was either touch her right breast or say a prayer and I also said, "if we dip out tomorrow, I don't want to be blaming you for angering the mermaid by not believing."  I've had good luck with sacred mermaids over the years.  It was clear, we needed all the help we could get, it seems the weather always shifts when we both come here, and as we arrived, i did that again.  Monday was a nasty nasty day to be looking for gulls and despite hanging with local birder Jared Clarke we got skunked on the gull... so we needed to do something...

"Unless you got a better idea?"  I added.  Liz said a prayer. I don't know if she meant it but well, that was between her and Trinitaria....I only knew what I believed and to be honest, you can't handle what I believe.

Well, we went to bed and at dawn, we were back at it, looking, lurking....and then at 0759, Trinitaria delivered.

It was the morning's fourth stop in the gull parade, some grass near the dog run on Qidi Vidi Lake.  I had just scanned a group of 200 birds and decided nothing of interest was there and then out of a corner of my eye something flew in, I was too depressed to even look at it.  10,000 gulls around and what would that one gull matter...

"Olaf, Olaf, is that the bird?"  Liz said.
"Where?"  I perked up.  She gave me directions like her life depended on me agreeing with her...maybe it did?  This bird will shorten your life if you let it.

Crap there it was....there the &**^%$  n^^%$# %^$$W# bird was....it really was a yellow-legged gull, I can still hardly even write the name...



Darker mantle, bigger gony spot, medium bill, clean head, rounded head and even a look at yellow legs although the grass is too long to get them photographed well....don't they mow parks here? We both saw the legs.

We only had 5 minutes with the bird, but we were able to get closer than in the car a parking lot from across the street, we at least got out and to the fence, we got some identifiable photos, but then a dog came by and the gulls...were gone the YLGU with the group of Herrings, GBBG, and a coulpe of mutts.

It was a lifer bird......
thank you Trinitaira....a monkey was off our collective backs, a very heavy monkey with yellow feet...that was getting heavier by the minute.

Well what to do now, we wondered?  Look at the roofs, dump, ballfield, lake.....to try to get a better photo or do something else?  Get a colonoscopy would have been more fun, and well, this being Canada, there is a wait for colonoscopies so since Liz needed a willow ptarmigan, off we went.  We drive to where my lifer came from, yes, I got my lifer willow ptarmigan on the Rock.
We drove to Cape Race.



Okay, it is hard to think that I got 7 checklist rarities on ebird down here, (Killdeer is rare?)   and I also got to hang with one of the lighthose keeps, Cliff Doran, who invited us over to the residence for coffee and cake.  Cliff got the find of the year in the eastern seaboard this summer, a common swift.....swifts are rare for Newfoundland on a good day, but a code five swift, and get the bastard photographed to show the forked tail?  Cool..way to go Cliff!

So out on the cape, after coffee and cake, out looking for a ptarmigan, what do we see but a swift fly by....


We looked and I begged, have a forked tail, some white, please...anything...we studied the photos....but I guess as we did NOT ask Trinitaria for a rare swift.....she did NOT provide....who would have ever guessed to have asked, though.  A swift, here, now?  But gosh a chimney swift though in the last week of October is a rare bird for here....and in good weather.  Go figure....?
..many of the Newfy elite birders have not ever seen any swifts in the province, now Cliff, Liz and I have something in common, to have sighted elusive swifts on the Rock....Cliff's bird though..still wow!

Some sights of Cape Race......

Rocky crags

Black Gullimot

I posted the swift in the local birdng Facebook sight and I'm not sure anyone believed I saw the bird in the province....oh well,

We still had the gull, so we drove back feeling better and stopped at the favorite pub of birders and drank.....
Lifer beer...cheers!


The name where I got this bird...says it all, Qidi Vidi
You may think I'm stealing a line from Sandy Komito's book on his 1998 Big Year,  I came, I saw, I counted.  I doubt the legendary Mr. Komito reads my blog...

Qidi Vidi  translated:  "I came, I saw..."
I'll add a word....Qidi Vidi Numerari   "I came, I saw, I counted"
Here at Qidi Vidi Lake, I did just that....I like it here, just not trying to sort out this gull

Olaf


Big Year Total:  767 (plus 1)
still trying to decide 1
Coded Birds:  94
Newfoundland Birds in 2016: 76
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  40, 237Flight Miles 191,600
miles on ATV 475
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 181   Different Airports: 60
Near bear/ death experiences 2Hours at sea: 264Miles walked 449
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  69
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  8

Some Beach...Some Where

If I was writing a book on this big year, and it could be titled as anything from the Biggest Big Year to Psycho 2, I certainly even wouldn’t know what to title this chapter.  It was a bit of an odd trip to South Florida.  It was a stakeout trip, not a bird chasing trip.  I guess, in retrospect, it was not a good idea.  In the end, I had not one but two days at sea weathered out—wind and waves, making 7 for the year now, well sort of, one was uncanceled.  I might have gone on the Yankee Freedom II to the Dry Tortugas just to see what was out there, except that it was pulled out of the water this week for a Coast Guard inspection, and won’t run again until at least November 7th. 
To make matters stranger, I had friends send me a link that I am mentioned in News of the Weird, a few above the chronic public masturbator under “extreme hobbies.”  I’m not sure public masturbation is an extreme hobby.  It IS extreme though.  I’m not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing but I did sell 7 copies of Boobies, Peckers, and Tits on Amazon after it was put out there.  If my moment of fame was just being in a Kids magazine I wouldn't sell anything, I guess.
So, I went to south Florida but the only beach I saw was at the Delta Lounge in Miami(picture above) Life certainly is a Beach…
I hired a guide, Larry Manfredi, local guru for no other purpose than I like Larry and maybe, just maybe we’d stumble upon something.  What we stumbled upon was a wonderful German restaurant and it served my favorite beer.  Now, I’ve written about beer before, Erdinger is a beer rarely served in the USA and there are only two 2 places I have found that have my favorite beer on tap—the Black Forest Inn in Minneapolis, not infrequent spot of the Birds and Beers meetings, and Lucy’s in Key Largo, Florida.  
So Larry and I, drank beer for lunch.  In 290 odd days of this big year, this has never happened outside of an airport leaving somewhere.  So another oddity, I drank my lifer beer before I saw the bird.  Now understand, this is no ordinary beer.  I have had special glasses shipped to me.  I have gone to Munich for no other reason than to go to Therme Erding Spa so I can strip off and drink this beer.  With Erdinger hefe-Weiss, I can block out any issues of the day, even a day of slow birding.
Larry and I had, what could be said, was a pretty good day of seeing stuff, just not year bird kind of birding day, but we saw cool avians....we saw a nice yellow Philadelphia vireo,

Many cool warblers like this yellow-throated

Painted buntings…always a tough bird for me to photograph

Then we ended up in the middle of the biggest day of falcons and sharp shinned hawks migrating, I have ever seen, wow!  The kestrels and merlins were about 1 every 20 seconds and at times I could see twenty sharp-shinned hawks in one view.  We also saw Mississippi kites, always a good Florida bird, for me, a good bird anywhere.

Some migrating harriers

It was just a lovely day of birding.  I can’t recall when I have had so much fun birding.  It was a wonderful day off from…birding….?
Towards the end of the day, sneaking around, Larry thought possibly we heard a single call of a La Sagra’s flycatcher, then I heard a single call.  We waited until dark but nothing showed up, or spoke up. Disappointed, we went back for more beer.  I returned to Long Key in the morning to both get a second listen for a possible rare flycatcher but also to check for the Key West quail dove (I saw one here in 2015), and maybe see a fly-by Bahama swallow.  
Well, I heard a flycatcher right away but it wasn’t close, I couldn’t record it, and well, I don’t even think it was a La Sagra’s, so it was all a moot exercise.  I hiked the trails, but didn’t see a single dove, of any stripe.  In fact it wasn’t very birdy at all.  Things were moving past my two observation locations, I saw probably 2500 swallows photographed over a hundred as they sped over me.  I got shots of a couple of martins, of the purple variety all of which probably should have gone through by now but nobody told these birds.  I saw every species of common swallow occurring in the eastern USA, even cave swallows, and then in the middle of this orgy of swallows and hawks, and then something else.  
This swallow had a forked tail, was bluish on tail and wings, the wings darker, it seemed blue green on body when the sun angle was on it and underneath, white, with white even under the interior part of the wings.  It flew different, was not associated with a group and it came while I was eating a snack at my swallow vantage-point.  I saw it as it flew right over me, curving out to the ocean.  “Oh s&%t!”  I said.  I saw it and knew what it was.  The trail bar went flying as I grabbed my camera as the bird took a single circle out over the water before heading east like all of the swallows following the keys.  It was one of the few birds that circled out there, giving me a second chance.   That enabled me to get a lone shot before the bird got too far to my right, but at least I got that. 

I know what I saw.  That forked tail was not from a tree swallow.  Lighter blue and much too white underneath for a barn.  The photo is bad but the white, the blue is visible, I saw white under the head but the photo is darker, not sure if head is turned, shadow, or I'm just plain wrong.....If it is a Bahama swallow...... I’ll let you guys decide….so Bahamas swallow or not?  Count it or not?  It had the field marks, just getting good photos of a fly by swallow…..tough.
The guys at the hawk watch at Curry Hammock have seen some strange swallows/ martins this year, some forever unknown.  I think a mangrove swallow was identified, some were probably just Purple Martins, though.  So odd things are moving through.  I'm almost certain, I'm adding it to my lifer list (drank the lifer beer ahead of time) but here days later, I haven't even posted the checklist.
I stood and/or hiked for 10 hours and I was dog tired when I got back to Florida City.  My private pelagic for Sunday scrapped due to wind/ waves, mine on Monday the same so well, it was time to bug out.  Up in LaGuardia I learned the small craft warnings for Key West………..were for really small craft and they were going out, crap, and the entire city of Key West due to Fantasyfest overrun with naked people with a little body-paint on them...
from Getty Images of Parade 
The Navy seems to have changed a little.  I could have been feeling at home but how do you paint a naked birder?  Maybe I should have been a blue-footed booby?  (Is the Booby the clothed guy dressed like a boy scout? IMHO he could be, unless he is around to help the naked drunk girls getting across Duval Street?) 
Trying to understand my potential "costume" would be way too complicated for a bunch of drunk people on Duval Street anyways so IT IS just as well I left town and I would have been way too distracted and hung over to find any future birds.  Oddly, I got a call from the captain of the boat in Key West when I had connected up in New York, he didn’t cancel and called the captains up in Homestead, wimps, oh well, I don't think the first mate above was on his boat…next time, I guess, I have to go out to find out.
Anyhow, I have not done anything with this swallow, Larry, wishes I had a better picture, so do I, but well, it wasn’t waiting for me to get that, so as I said, I’ll let you decide, count or not.
I definitely need both more boobies and tits for this year, I think I’m good on the pecker departmentoff to the next spot....Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffet say it all....

The sun is hot and that old clock is movin' slow,
An' so am I.
Work day passes like molasses in wintertime,
But it's July.
I'm gettin' paid by the hour, an' older by the minute.
My boss just pushed me over the limit.
I'd like to call him somethin',
I think I'll just call it a day.Pour me somethin' tall an' strong,
Make it a "Hurricane" before I go insane.
It's only half-past twelve but I don't care.
It's five o'clock somewhere.
Some Beach...some where...
is it 5 o'clock yet?
Olaf
      PS.  My wife thinks I sound like an alcoholic in this blog but only 2 beers were consumed for the research of this text....and I should know how to count to two...correct?
  

My Clown Car and Me

Okay, again, you may say, Olaf, this time you have gone to far, done some crazy hair-brained stuff, stuff no other birder would try.  Maybe that is so but well, who else would dare do it in a clown car?

I flew south on Saturday landing in Seattle just in time for the arrival of a remnant typhoon that hit the west coast, the Pineapple Express they call it and it meant for wind and rain all the way done to California.  At SeaTac, I waited for an hour just to get a gate and then ran for my plane, a flight to San Francisco that was bump and grind, rough, and just wild up in the air.  You don't hear screams everyday and then crying on a jet.

I was a little woozy when I got to SFO and stumbled to the rental car lot.  Usually, I rent "Manager's Special" at Hertz and typically I get nice big cars.  I saw my number on the Hertz Gold Board, #18, cool, I didn't have to walk too far.  I saw a sea of cool cars, one of them had to be mine.  I was soooo excited.  It is about time I got a break from Hertz, whose points BTW, you can never use.  There was a Mercedes, a couple of Mustangs, three nice full sized vehicles and then in space #18 I saw it....OMG, I stopped right there and started to laugh.  They had given me a clown car.

It was cherry lipstick red, small, well puny, but it had four doors, like why would you buy a 4-door of this Yaris model any how?  The driver's seat didn't go back far enough just about for me to get in, but it was tight.  I kind of wanted to drive with one of my legs in the passenger side but that didn't work so being me, I just drove it away, away on another adventure with just me and my clown car Bozo (my wife named her car Batty White, and here I am with a clown car named Bozo.  It drove loud, had the pick up of a lawn mower and fish tailed at speeds above say 45, climbing a small hill, it sputtered and just about died.  It was a clown car.

So I headed down towards Monterey into a real soaker which is VERY good for California, they need rain.  I tried to find a sharp-tailed sandpiper in Moss Landing but I could not figure out the dairy the bird was in and it looked like I had to drive off road with my clown car on some muddy dirt.  Off road for Bozo is a Walmart parking lot and I'd give it 50-50 that I could even drive through that so I bailed and left the sandpiper unseen and went to my motel.


Here is Bozo at the Motel Six in Watsonville.  I ate a place called Round Table Pizza, oddly they only had square tables.  The pizza was good but there was pieces of pizza everywhere like I had just missed a food fight.  Maybe all the round tables were out being repaired or disinfected?

October 16th got me on Debi Shearwater's last pelagic of the season and it was a bit of hell, a bit of melancholy, and I bit of stupidity.  It rained, it blew, there was swells, and generally only a few birds.  Debi told some Brits that there was "No f^&& way" we'd see storm-petrels when they asked but a little ways out of the harbor, that was essentially the only thing of note we saw....go figure.  Many asked what my goal bird I needed here and to be honest, I didn't have any (the stupidity).  I had already paid and my big plan was for Monday.  What else was I going to do?

I like Debi and sort of miss her already, like I said, she has one heck of a story to share in her biography, I'm just waiting for the word and we can write it....

Best bird....Wilson's storm-petrel


We saw ashy, black, and Leach's too.  We had a guy so seasick, like I can't believe anyone that gets that seasick would ever set foot on a boat.  He laid on the floor of the boat and after crawling there from the stern and didn't move for three hours.  It was hard not to step on him....me, I don't get seasick.  This wasn't rough enough for me to worry, but it could get bad out a ways.  One of the birders on the boat wanted us to strap in the old people so they wouldn't get hurt and head out deep to look for rare birds....Debi just shook her head and we headed back to port.  It isn't worth dying out there.

We got back at 1230 and I drove up the coast and birded my way to Half Moon Bay.  I found some young golden-crowned sparrows and lots of wind and rain.


Bozo got pushed off of the road twice by big gusts, I as afraid i'd be a road casualty so I went to San Mateo and sacked out for the day.  After I ate what was a bad burrito.  I need to have a moratorium on eating Tex-Mex food--broken teeth,  Son of Montezuma's revenge, beans and gas....I just have to say no.

The bird I really wanted to get in the bay area was the blue-footed booby and I tried everything to get out there but there was either no room or no boats.  I asked my wife if spending this kind of money for one bird was worth it.  She was understanding and told me she would expect me to pay this and go.  If another BFBO showed up in say Los Angeles, there would be new plane fares, motels, cars, and I was here already, I needed to do this.  On Friday I called a boat broker Scott who said he'd help me and things looked good so I invited a couple of people with.  What I paid for this boat in this time of need makes me feel really bad.  But I guess it is only money.  I don't want to think about it any more.

2130 last night Scott gave me a call, boat "A" was stuck in Santa Cruz and so he had gotten boat "B" as no one wanted to go, thinking it was too rough out there.  The Perfect Storm was too rough for me, otherwise, I can handle anything.  I needed this bird.  Well, this back up boat was it, otherwise I couldn't go, it was just a 30 footer, only held 4 people and had no bathroom, so only guys could go.  I called a couple of Facebook friends I had invited and then uninvited them.  One had driven 7 hours already and was staying a mile from the boat....I was in the dog house.  I was the clown in a clown car.  Sleep was poor, thinking about the lives I had ruined at least for a day.  Sheez!

I arrived at Point Pillar Harbor at 8am stuck for a while in a traffic jam, so was the broker Scott, and the captain, Scott at the party boat rentals called me said, we got a back up to the back up boat, (yes let another boat) and it was a bigger one and so I called everyone I had told not to come and they drove down, I was out of the dog house.   We got out late but we got out.

The ocean swell was 15 x 14, fifteen feet high at 14 second intervals.  The biggest seas I had ever been in short of the Aleutians.  It was not for the faint of stomach.  One of my guests failed pelagic 101, chum the BACK of the boat, not the floor, at least she was outside.  But she was the first victim of the seas.

Mr. Birding Project-- Christian came with, he searched the left side and I the right side of the boat for birds.  There was no team of spotters, we were the team of spotters


It was no pleasure cruise but slowly we made it to the Farallon Islands.  What a neat place!



The seas were too rough to go around them but we got into fisherman's bay next to Sugarloaf and looked for my quarry.

The only west coast northern gannet was found first.  This is the rarest bird we saw on this day. I have now seen this bird three times 25 miles apart, odd bird, how did he get on this side of the ocean, this is an Atlantic bird?


then we kept looking, one then a second brown booby was identified and then there it was... year bird 766, the cover bird for my book Boobies, Peckers, and Tits the

Blue-footed booby



Yeah!!! More boobies, more often, I always say.  I had seen juvenile birds of this species in 2013 on the Salton Sea, well I saw 9, which is closer to their home in the Gulf of Baja, Mexico, but it was still nice getting one this year especially considering all of the logistics and money I paid to even try for this bird.  I doubt I'll ever see the Farallon Islands again, and it was cool to just have the privilege of coming here.  The land of angry Great White sharks, interesting scenery, and cool birds.

We headed back after everyone had seen the birds and found a feeding area of sea lions and whales


one of the birds in this melee was a black footed albatross


The only one I've seen in my last 5 west coast pelagics, there just isn't much food out there and the birds are largely gone. We did see a few Buller's shearwaters and 4 south polar skuas including a rather different looking light phase.  But in general we just surfed the huge swells home and back to port seeing a paucity of bird-life.  The only other boat out there?  A container ship and a fishing trawler, nothing else.  No one else was crazy enough to go out on a day like today, but I needed a bird, and well the captain needed some money.

So after the initial snafu of playing musical boats, my inaugural Booby Charters by Olaf, "the Boob Cruise" was a success!

So there you have it.


I was there and so was Bozo, my Booby Prized Car!  My clown car and me, what a pair are we.

You know there is this band from Minneapolis called Dillinger Four with a Song called Clown Cars on Cinder blocks.  The singer laments December is 31 days too long and this year has gone way to slow, yes it has, but I still have 2.5 months to go to get more birds...

So after doing ebird lists with Christian, eating a very good hamburger, I drove back to the airport and returned Bozo with two warning lights on, a window doesn't shut properly and well Bozo can be someone else's problem from now on.  My ticket says Minneapolis and then home to dentist but who knows if I'll ever get there, I am like my clown car, you will never know what will come out of it or where it or I will turn up next.  Where to next?   Even I don't know that.

Blue-footed Booby, though, is off the board.

Olaf

Think Pink!

Some would say I went on a road too far, others would say the top of the world to you, maybe a road to nowhere, but I would just say whew!  I’ll say it again, whew!  Today, for the second time this month, I came to Barrow, but this time, I came, I saw, and I counted.  
You know, I posted a picture of me at the dentist on Facebook yesterday.  It created quite the stir...

Many thought I was drugged or gassed, or others possibly mentally ill, and one even thought I was the poster child for this particular Dental office (but I love that smile!) but in reality I was laughing at the absurdity of it all. I was also laughing at the story I was going to tell Dr. Johnson. How I got from San Antonio via San Francisco, Flagstaff, St Paul Island, then Seattle and home to have this tooth checked and why. Flying home to get a dental exam from Seattle to turn around again, two days later and head back to the Arctic, just to turn around again for the west coast and God knows where to next, that is a lot of explaining.  "Birds...?"  I said, then I laughed.
Besides the dentist, what did also I do at home?  I played dad, helping navigate my daughter and friend to a Kanye West concert in Minneapolis.  They charge $40 for a $2 printed t-shirt that doesn’t say anything.  I checked out my wife’s new birch bark bag she wove at the Swedish Institute.  Good job Silja!  Here is my lovely lady with her piece of art...

I think it is wonderful!  and well, while the concert was going on, we went to REI and then watched a little football on TV and other things….before that I ate at a Mexican restaurant, and I ate stuff I shouldn’t.  It caused pain.  I got better antibiotics, which worked better, and then daughter safely in hotel, I drove 221 miles home to see the dentist and then....I slept.  Pain always wears me out but I’m pretty tough.
I perplexed my dentist, just a bit.  The crack in #31 is sort of oddly placed if that is indeed a crack but something is going on, and as I lost #30 in 2ndgrade (don’t ask!), I kind of need that tooth.  I lost #19 on the other side when my wife got pregnant with "L" (an even longer story, don't dare to ask) and had to sacrifice #18 as the root canal I got during lunch hour on an Oral Surgery rotation for a case of beer in 1993 had worn out last year, a year a beer, seemed good.  Ah teeth..sigh.  Dr. Johnson says I may need a big project to see if he can salvage the tooth, but it may be too deep, and he doesn't want me in the arctic, so I need to return but the pain is relaxing a bit if I avoid salsa chips.
I have more dental stories.  Just a small one here, I learned how to apply for an appeal of Minnesota In-state tuition (I was still considered a WI resident even though I married a MN resident) from a dentist who had done it before.  I tracked him down to have a crown placed in Anoka, MN.  He worked on my tooth and spoke of what to write, what letters to get, and where to send it and I took notes from the chair.  That was 1991 and it saved me $24,000.  Fixing a tooth was really worth $24,000, the key was knowing who to go to.  I kid you not.  In his case the committee made up of two students, the head of janitorial services, a low level VP and two faculty members approved the appeal and refunded his whole 4 years of out of state dental school tuition in one big check.  In my case I only got 2 years short a quarter reduced to in state tuition rates but it was a great deal, that only a few knew existed.  The year before I started Med School, Wisconsin and Minnesota had tuition reciprocity but that ended during a budget crisis that eventually caused Jesse Ventura to become Governor of the mosquito laden state. That was much better than the $200 I saved on my lunch hour root canal project, but heck, money is money. 
Well, my tooth problems are minuscule and insignificant to the many women who are and have been suffering from breast cancer.  It is breast cancer awareness month and we all are supporting it, even the NFL, so I’m thinking pink.  I’m buying the pink lemonade on Delta, and well, I’m up here in Barrow looking for a pink gull.  It is all pink to me…  


As an aside, I have seen many women with breast cancer.  In some cases some of the most horrific cases you could imagine.  I’ve removed breasts.  I’ve done plastic reconstruction.  I’ve seen the horror that is this cancer and have truly seen the look in many women’s eyes of the dejection that the diagnosis I’ve given them has left them.   People are NOT happy when you tell them they have colon or even skin cancer but breast cancer has a connotation that is different, it is like they fear losing their identity.  I’ve also seen many many women “cured” and out 20 years that have had a stress event in their lives that has caused the long dormant cancer to return.  It is not a good entity.  To be honest, the actual cures haven’t came easily for this disease and the best thing is early diagnosis of this animal so that is what I hope to encourage you to do, if you are reading this.  Mammograms, self-exams (even partner exams if that can help you to do it, why not make it fun!), need to be done as ignoring this is NOT the answer, it is out there and it kills.
One of my very and much too young office workers “Mindy” to have breast ca just finished the whole triple therapy of surgery, radiation and chemo, and luckily is doing well.  Many of you have seen me wear that t-shirt as I proudly support her during her plight.  I still am! 

Way to fight this Mindy!!
With all of this breast cancer awareness, not to mention my tooth issues, it is hard to think about flying way up here to get into a pink bird.  I flew into Barrow again this morning in a paucity of Ross’s Gull reports all fall and well, 20 minutes after arriving, bingo, got them, a few minutes later I got a better and closer flock which I chased down the road.  I got stuck behind a local, but got a couple of photos before they crossed the point heading towards Canada.  I had a problem though.  I forgot to put the car in park, and standing outside, trying to take pictures, I got hit by the door as the car rolled backwards and got wedged under the car a little before I got secured and could push it enough to get in and hit the brakes.  The flock was well east of me by then.  It seems, it is always something with me.
No complaints….I saw 31 in total, here is a few flying at distance.  No looking at a bad photo and trying to second guess an ID.  I'm sure the previous gull a week ago was a Ross's but I did the right thing to return.  
Note the pink breast, white trailing edge of top of wings, white diamond shaped tail, bad photos but good enough..

Here is a first year bird, see it still has black wing tips and the top of the wing markings that is typical for many small gulls.



I also saw a hard to get ivory gull but at distance and I lost it trying to get camera on it but I had the bird already for the year, but to blaspheme a fish…wahoo!  Lifer beer tonight!

Well, drank it on the plane back to Anchorage already, and I am having a bad hair evening, but gull is in hand.  I was happy to have ticked the gull, I’m still smiling at the northernmost football field in America.


I have to say, Barrow people are the friendliest.  I had a nice chat at UIC Car rentals.  I guess they have quotaed out on whales harvesting 10 this year…I saw one the previous trip lucky me.  They are warning about polar bears in town, I saw none today, thankfully.  Less bears more often, I say.  The young man at UIC was more mad at an arctic fox in town last night than bears, as they can bite and carry rabies, bears can bite and carry your (carc)ass off.

So that is the story.  I need to go back and get my tooth explored when I have more time than a day in case things go bad and whatever I do, I can’t be in isolated northern Alaska…
I got another bird…man have I tacked on the miles lately

Big Year Total:  765 (plus 1)
Coded Birds:  93
Lower 48 birds:  706 plus 1
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  38, 812Flight Miles 177,200
miles on ATV 475
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 170   Different Airports: 59
Near bear/ death experiences 2Hours at sea: 248Miles walked 436
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  68
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  7
And I hope I have made you a little more aware of breast cancer….get screened!  Or watch the dog or kids so your woman can go get screened….
think pink!!


Olaf   

All Raw and Bare (bear)

Sequim, Washington.  As I was driving around Washington state today, I thought I had ran across another clandestine operation.  You see, Olaf has his peering eyes everywhere and about 200 yards from the above supposed shady operation, I found my 700th Lower 48 bird, an American Dipper, (photo with cell phone in downpour) a number only one other person has accomplished in a year.  This shadiness....?


Selling raw milk retail!  You see more states have legalized gambling an almost as many the sale of pot than to sell raw milk.  Portlandia has a whole TV show on the subject with Fred Ormison getting carried away and addicted to the stuff.  So before I called the milk inspectors, I checked, I guess Washington legalizes this practice banned nationwide after 1957, but relaxed somewhat recently.  It isn't legal around my house (or in Oregon).

So what is the hubbub about raw milk...listeria is one thing as is e.coli but to be honest...raw milk doesn't keep, the cream is on the top, I don't like the taste (although I can be a big milk drinker)

It is the organic and health food people, purporting its goodness....pre pasteurization, though led to many MANy deaths, and after our stomach breaks down the lactose and protein in milk any of these "good things" well...they mostly get broken down too.  It is called digestion and I would love to see a study ANY study showing how raw milk is better than pasteurized milk, I guess it is good for calves.  As adults except in lacto-cultures, (peoples associated with cows, like Hindu, and northern European) generally we can't handle milk.  I don't get this at all and this seems to rank up there with placenta eating, maybe that it seems organic like.  Hell my Springer spaniel eats cat turds...nothing more organic than cat turds but you know, I don't think that is a good thing to encourage either.

So maybe it would just be better for us to breast feed until kids are like 13....that is really wholesome and is the milk meant for humans...not calves....IDK, but I guess, I'm just a birder, and I won't change any zealots.  There are urban legends that milk cause diabetes so I guess those followers aren't into the raw milk thing.  I have though seen two raw milk illnesses in the ER over my life....bet that doesn't appear on the side of this cute little farm or in ads.      

Oh well...at least it is legal...just not a good idea In my medical opinion

Barrow Alaska, October 4, 2016

I had a day off last week so I made a bee-line to find pinkie the Ross's gull in Barrow
Barrow is on top of the world and I broke my northerly record of being at 71.27 degrees latitude, I had been above 68 before in Norway, but this beat that easily.

Barrow is one of the ten most north cities in the world and in the northern language of the native people the place means literally "the place where we hunt snowy owls."  Not surprisingly I didn't see any.  It was a two stop plane, first to Deadhorse dropping off the Prudoe Bay oil workers and then on to Barrow.  I landed just before 11 and found the car rental company and rented a car.

Barrow is a muddier and colder place than Nome.  I wanted to say it is Nome without the charm, but I never thought Nome had any and so maybe Nome without the quirks.  Winter hasn't quite arrived in full fury yet, the Arctic Ocean isn't froze over and it was pretty warm, like 40 degrees, all in all it wasn;t a bad day, the sun even came out and well, that sun will disappear soon enough for the winter.

I had heard that the local bears had been getting grumpy, they want to go out on the ice and well a male bear the night before I got here had beaten up a female with a couple of cubs.  The male bear was looking for action, and was big and mean....and he was right where I was going, prowling the point.  Olaf and bears....I knew it then, it could be the end.

I drove out, looked around and then I saw HIM.  Luckily HE stayed safely, well, 3/4 of a mile safely away.  No bear encounters of the Closest kind for me, but third species of bear in 6 weeks.  Generally, I tried to stay in the SUV generally to afraid to go out but I did bird on the beach and looked for gulls, but I also watched him, I was taking this picture...when

The Lifer Polar Bear

I saw out of the corner of my eye, a gull fly by.  It was on the side of a group of 6 black-legged kittiwakes, smaller and had no black on wing tips.  Dang! (I said worse things) and I swung my camera over and tried to focus down on the gull, it was out a ways and it got behind me.
Larus sp.  (gull sp)
I thought I saw pink but you know, this is a lifer bird for me and I can't call this bird a Ross's gull.  It could be a rarer Little gull (the other small gull without black wing tips that could be here), or something really obscure.  I know some people and even some big year birders might call it but I can't.  I got standards.  Seen some head shaking calls by birders over the years..I don't want to be one of them.
That was it for small gulls on this day. It has been a poor year for these gulls to migrate up here...where are they?  Where is everything?   I looked, explored the grocery store which is much better stocked than Nome. I stayed away from HIM.  I staked out the beach, and had a diagnostic dilemma on IDing a loon, finally deciding on yellow-billed as more common than Common loons here.  I read a great paper on separating the  two and well, this one didn't follow that paper either.  The dark on less than half of the culmen and thick neck lead me to my final ID but you know, you could tell me I'm an idiot and wrong and I'd believe you two.  This loon did NOT help me on my gull either as it filled me with much doubt....too much doubt. This is a hard plumage though.




So if you are a member of Greenpeace, or some wildlife preservation club, you might want to skip this but this became a rather interesting distraction.
I saw this really odd chain of boats.  If you click on the picture and expand, you will see that the first boat is tied to the second, and that one to the third and all the way to number 6.  What was behind #6 being towed, confused me at first but as car after car after truck started parking by me at the end of the old runway, I knew something was up.  

Then they beached it, a bowfin whale!  The locals had harvested a whale.  Two front end loaders, and a bit of organized chaos they got it up on the flat.  Then came the crowd, men in knives, pictures, kids standing on it..



I snapped a quick picture and decided I may NOT be welcome so I left, I wanted to get gas and check in on my flight.  You certainly don't see a whale harvest every day.  Truth be told, I have ate whale...it is quite good and goes with Chilean red wine.  Whale the other red meat...

Getting gas, I noticed something else...fog.  It was coming in fast.  It is like one of those magical days of fishing in fair skies ended by a tornado.  You know how you rush to do something knowing that if you miss it,  your plans get ruined?  In this case instead of running from the rental car agency, I should have walked, or went back to watch the whale butchering. as the plane landed when I returned the car but I was on the later flight, a flight that I feared would never land due to fog (I was correct).  I needed to see if I could jump this Alaska jet so I ran as hard and fast as I could.  In the process I just about stepped on a baby in a car seat, tripped over an old woman but I made it to the check in woman who gave me a seat, I was last on the plane out of Barrow...she told me my fears were right on as i still got the beep for extra security

Landing safely and getting on my flight the next morning to St Paul worked ell, as was my flight to St Paul but nearing the island the weather got bad and I didn't know how we landed the plane.  I got off as most of the birders including head guide Scott Shuette left.  Stephan Lorenz read me the weather report..bad going on worse.  The heavy southern winds made birding nearly impossible, going up to 50 mph, then as that storm abated, an extra tropical typhoon made dead aim on Adak and the weather...would get worse.

I guess I should have spent the night in Barrow..

My tooth hurt from an incident on a salsa chip in San Antonio (something hard in it) and I think I cracked a molar.  I was on pain meds and antibiotics but I didn't have the best type with.  So 48 hours later I begged the woman at Pen-Air to give me a seat, the plane was full for the whole next week and having a tooth abscess herself, she gave me an emergency seat.

I ended up flying down to Seattle as I could, and I was thinking it put me in a better position to think about what to chase and to still get back to Barrow should the gull show up.  I needed to see if this molar would settle down, it wasn't. It was 5am, I wasn't tired, wired on pain.

I had nothing to do in Washington, so after checking out the raw milk spot accidentally, I went to Olympic National Park as I have never been there and looked out on Hurricane Ridge


I was above the fog!  Above the fray so to speak, I guess.  Some cute blacktailed deer, this one hiding in the gllom, but sneak around in the trees as I did up on top I found no grouse.  I also found NO bears.

Well I had an odd list of birds I wanted to see besides the dipper, some up here, some nearer to Neah Bay and the coast,  got them all.

Pacific Wren, Golden crowned sparrow, eurasian wigeon, mew gull, northwestern crow, greater scaup, varied thrush, white-winged scoter, and sooty grouse.

 I drove out to Neah Bay in pouring rain and back and got the ducks, but hard to bird in that much rain.  I ended up in pain getting the last room in Port Angeles as they were having a Dundeness Crab festival.  I couldn't eat any and I went to bed at 8.

Here are some of my birds:

Pacific wren

White-winged scoter

Varied thrush


More American wigeon in a pile than I have ever seen in one place before, can you pick out the Eurasian bird?  there are 2 in that group.

The oddest thing I saw was this tropical kingbird on the wire near the farm in Sequim, you may ask what that is doing up here, but oddly this is not even a Washington state bird for me, got 4 in Neah Bay in 2014.

I had six small crows speak to be IDed as Northwestern crows near Neah Bay, on the coast although I marked well over a hundred that could have been either, them or American.  Seen them out here before.

So nothing new, nothing too exciting but the views were nice but ticking things here and there.  I'm off to go back home and get this tooth problem solved. I can't go on like this, and will regroup and take off pain-free I hope

O

Take it Easy

Well, this morning, I was standing at a corner near Winslow, Arizona.  A moment earlier, I was actually running down the road, trying to do something, I don't know.  I had seven birds on my mind, four that seem to go from me, two that want to dip me, and one that is somewhere nearby.

"Oh, Olaf, take it easy," I say, "take it easy.  Don't let the marks of your own checklist, drive you crazy."  

Count while you still can, don't even try to understand, just find them in this place and it'll be ea...easy," I stutter.

Back to my corner, I see a girl, a REALLY pretty girl, in a flatbed Ford, (got Nevada plates) she is slowing down to take a look at me, "Come on baby, don't say maybe, I got to know if your sweet love is going to save me." ...and of course take me to get me this bird.

I think, We may loose, and we may win, we may never be here again, 
she stopped.  "You want a ride, birdboy? You want a ride with me."  She says subjectively pointing to a spot below her neck and then slides her finger to her collar and keeps going for a couple of inches.  I take a relaxing breath.

"Open up, I say, I'm climbing in."  I say getting my nerve.  I think to myself, this bird is going to be easy!

Then I clunk my head, then again, I awake and see the city of Flagstaff below and then just as I come to, the plane aborts the landing...."What the?"  Crap, I'm dreaming, this is Flagstaff and American Airlines is going to get me again.....why!  WHY!

Then the plane makes a circle and then in it comes, hard, fast, left right, the girl next door looses it and shockingly, we land.....we LAND! Holy crap...I got to go!
 
It is grab and go time, grab my stuff, grab a car and go.  I race up I-40 to Winslow....having deja vu, I speed by a hot number in a Mustang broken down on the side of the road, and I slow, but I don't stop, sorry girl!  I do mean maybe!  No bins, no ride.  I speed up and I drive over the hills and then dirt road and less than 40 minutes later I'm at Round Cedar Lake, it is windy, dusty, and well, I'm in the middle of nowhere, but then...

there my almost nemesis is....Gotcha!

the lesser sand-lover, a bird that should have been in Alaska, but was never seen in Alaska, but it ends up here...go figure



Lifer bird LIFER BIRD!

The poor bugger always kept turning its head to the right, something is not right with him I fear, poor bird.

Well got to go, got to go.

I stopped out to look at a few of the nearby volcanoes, quite recent eruptions here at at Sunset Crater, really interesting geologically.


This one looks like a nipple, and has a nice cone.  Hard to believe less than a thousand years ago, some mighty big eruptions happened near here.

Here is an odd house near another cone.


I've been to Flagstaff twice, once chasing condors in 2014, and once in 1991 when first married during the only time I left my wife.  I got mad at her being mad on the trip so being mad, I just drove off from the Motel in Flagstaff, near where this bird was today, I turned around and came back, vowing to never leave again.  I don't know, we were having a good trip but well, maybe we were in the car too long together on that Lake Powell trip trying to see too much....25 years later, water under the Rio de Flag bridge.

Well, I was supposed to be on the Weather Channel tomorrow for an interview about birding and weather....Bad weather me.....unfortunately, Hurricane Matthew bumped me and so I guess maybe I should go stake out that storm....go chase the chasers....

you never know, Olaf is like smoke and could just appear anywhere.....today, it is poof! and I'm gone but I'm out there, lurking, standing at a corner near you....Taking it Easy!

Lesser sand-plover....you have been had

Olaf

Big Year Total:  764 (plus 1)
Coded Birds:  92
Lower 48 birds:  696 plus 1
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  37, 019Flight Miles 155,100
miles on ATV 475
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 158   Different Airports: 49
Near bear/ death experiences 2Hours at sea: 248Miles walked 432
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  67
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5

Coming out from under my rock

I have never been away for a month and a half.  It felt like I had been sent out on a ER shift and forgotten about, left to wallow in the call room of self pity and despair, the eternal wait for an ambulance that never actually ever makes it to your facility but keeps calling to say they are coming.
Last Monday, I turned down our lonely road, near a minor town, in a flyover state and saw Urland Ranch for the first time in a very very long time.  I stopped and looked at the place on the road seemingly transfixed by the early South Dakota fall day and didn't know what to do.

I was HOME!

Could I be even afraid to go back home?  A lot and I mean a lot had changed since I had been back here and I even had a new cat named Annie, consensus was to name her Olaf but my daughter didn't listen.  I went in, my dog said hello and nipped me for being gone and then we were buds again, and I effectively crawled back under the rock from whence I came.....at least under my rock, I had a friend or 5 to pat



On the way home, though, besides loosing a piece of luggage that never truly seemed to be able to catch up with me....I did a little birding after my dusky warbler in San Francisco, my suitcase though left San Diego without me to go back up to San Francisco on its way to Salt Lake City

I took a pelagic out of San Diego....

let me summarize this outing...slow

I had a few out here to get and left some out on the table, just very few birds, a scattering of storm petrels, and few shearwaters...

but I got a big one I needed.

#761 Least storm-petrel



Note a haf sized bird in a sea of black-storm petrels, we saw a few but it was a long and slow drive to 30 mile bank

We did see a white-rumped storm petrel of some sort which I saw, and although flew odd, the forked tail I saw turned out to be the feet of the Wilson's storm petrel when I saw a picture.  I clunked someone on the head with my camera and so as they say, no pix for me.

We got a lone Brown booby on the last bouy before port...


We did see a jeager chasing an elegant tern

but to be honest, interesting birds were few and far between but it was a good day and the Grande has food.  I wrested for the bow to see possible murrelets but missed two Craveri's sightings (didn't need) saw 6 Scripp's no one else saw, or so it seemed, they seemed a pretty easy spot to me,  the boat came in and I ate pizza with Liz Southworth and her husband and then went to bed, and left early for good ole' South Dakota.  I looked for my suitcase but it had returned to San Fran or at least was returning and despite ordering it to Minneapolis, it hadn't turned east yet.  I thought about sending it to South Dakota but alas.....

There were NO rental cars in Minneapolis, wife was busy with daughter to drive 200 miles to get me so I went to the stash spot for a company car, there was one not needed for a week, I put in the keys and the battery was dead.....

I had given a tip to the shuttle driver, he came to jump me, no cables, I talked to a construction guy who had cables, he loaned them out but used them everyday to jump his car.  He never let them out of his sight....we couldn't find them jump point of the new van, then the construction guy brought over his jalopy.  Bingo...contact...the car started.  I was off.....................HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, already wrote about home before...

On Wednesday, I got a call from San Diego Delta baggage who then noticed the APB on my suitcase while talking to me and said, oh you just want this in Minneapolis?  "Yea"  Three hours later, I got a call that it was in.  Seems so simple to just look at your teminal.

So at home, safely tucked under my stone, I binge watched the 5th season of Longmire, The series has effectively jumped the shark.  They are repeating story lines.  I watched the first season of Easy.  I like this conglomeration of short stories sort of related.  A little racy, though, when watched with wife led to well...I don't kiss and tell.  I finally watched the finale of Seinfeld  Not a great ending IMHO.  I was only 18 years late....It has been 18 years......"NO SOUP FOR ME!"

I ate, veged (sp?), did some work, found out the office computer system had crashed and was still being reset, and laid out my mother's book on the history of the Sheriffs of my home county.  Then I saw something go by my computer.....code 5 alert!  South Padre Island.  Damn, how is that going to work?

I scoured my sources, confirming the bird which by Thursday morning proved to be no one day wonder, dang.  I thought about going but two things were happening, one, my mother in law had a heart attack and well was doing tests and then scheduled for a cath next Tuesday, my wife had basket weaving class in Minneapolis so I needed to stay home, then she came home and made banana bread and well, I couldn't leave then.  My sister's new baby and her are doing fine, thankfully and I also promised to do my grandmother's taxes.  I was scheduled to do a pelagic in Oregon on Saturday....I couldn't fit Texas in, maybe Sunday, it would be a terrible double back but well...a big year birder has to do what a big year birder has to do.

My wife's banana bread...yum yum, which is like code in the house for well....marriage is great.... did I ever say that?

Friday, I took off for Wisconsin and the 5 hour drive to check up on my grandmother.  If I missed a bird to see my 91.5 year old birding encouragement so be it, and I arrived as she was making potato sausage, another favorite.  Gosh, it is good to be home.


It was a really nice day in northern Wisconsin.  I walked in the woods after completing my taxing assignment enjoying the smell of the woods most


I bid my grandmother adieu and zipped off to Minnesota where I dropped off some stuff at an undisclosed location and talked to a naked man fixing a motor home, it was a nice day but I was antsy to get going, I had a suitcase to find and maybe I could catch a standby of the 4pm flight to Portland.

Driving into Minneapolis, I, for some reason decided to check the weather for Oregon coastal waters and it looked okay well Friday did and Sunday did but a rather under mentioned wind seemed to be coming in so eventually I called the pelagic operator but left a message.  I sat in the parking lot, then in baggage after finding my wayward suitcase, and waited, checked weather....it seemed like I was back on Gambell.  I saw a flight going to San Antonio the same time as my 6pm flight to Portland, finally, I called Delta to rebook my circle tour I had planned.....

I decided to head to South Padre island.  It worked.  I had more open ended flights now than a guy should ever have.  I only had to eat a single night in a hotel in Newport.  As I boarded the plane for San Antonio, the call came in....pelagic cancelled.  Boy if I hadn't got that itch to go get a bird in Texas, I would have been really really mad sitting in Portland but I hadn't got the bonus bird yet.

I landed, then got my car and zipped off through San Antonio for points south ...like 300 miles away south, like I had done this before...then I remembered, I had, 5 times...I wish Delta would fly closer to the LRGV and I guess in December again, twice a week, they will.

I got a hotel room at 1am and crashed at the Best Western a mile from the bird, I was dead on my feet.

I woke, grabbed a coffee and went to the World Birding Center, a place so over named it would make your head spin but...BUT....even I guess a blind place hets a bone, there were 20 people on stakeout 30 minutes before sunrise in the parking lot.  Shockingly, ten minutes later I nabbed the little bugger, a South American code 5, a variegated flycatcher, then Justin Bosler from my common crane hunt saw me and we chatted and the bird vanished, but no fear for Justin, it came back and then I got photos.

#762  Variegated Flycatcher



It was a circus at the WBC, 50 people were there with spotting scopes, fighting for camera windows, people cutting in front of people taking pictures...all the bad birding behavior one would expect....

At 745, it was time for me to leave, bird bagged, I had places to go...

I went down to the Valley Trust lots near Pizza Hut to look for warblers etc. and I got bad photos of many species...

Wilson's and Golden winged...


I talked to some nice birders from Ft Worth Audubon who commented that I was so savaged in a tweet for wasting resources....probably from the Washington Post article...I don't read such things. First, I am not doing this for any cause.  I'm doing this for me.  The planes I'm flying are going anyways, I do not use private jets, so yes, my carbon footprint is big, but not that much bigger than normal.  I am spending less than some big year birders this year, a lot less.  It isn't like I'm using money I would be donating to a cause....I don't believe in awareness campaigns.

If you want to know my philosophy in life read "The Enumerator."   My life  story in "Boobies Peckers and Tits" first 20 pages.  E  is a cheap ebook by me.  Religious wise....after much thought on the matter, I'm a dualist.  Not that that gets me anywhere, most of us have been stomped out in the 13th century and I know few other Dualists....I'm firmly a pacifist (Mennonite thinking versus Quaker though) and although I lean towards communal living, but never done it, it is clear that on a large scale like I've written, that is not possible to achieve.  I admire Che, to a degree, but in the end, Ayn Rand sort of says it all, self-determination is the only way.  So there you go, a Marxist Self-determinist heretic.....whatever that is our where ever that is practiced let me go there.  Libertarianism only gets me so far.  There are too many people and we have become so productive our population has exceeded our workforce demands for ever so extra people are not needed, and therefore what to do....wars?  I do not have answers but no politician is going to deal with this ...    
Gosh...now I don't even know where I'm going....My vote?  YES on Hawaii.   Otherwise I believe in third parties, preferably ones with beer.  I would have been a good hippie.....for a while.....

So hate me...loath me....but heck, This is MY money.  What did you spend yours on this year?, I would ask any person.

These fine guys also asked me where I was off to next...

Wherever I was going, and wherever I have been, I always find myself that I should be somewhere else, or so I say....shockingly, I ended up in San Francisco later that night.  I had emailed Debi Shearwater on the fly (literally, as I was flying) and she had a spot on a pelagic the next day.

I got a room, then at 7am sharp, I was checking in on Johnson Pier in Half Moon Bay and then boarded the New Captain Pete and off we went on yet another pelagic.  I chatted with the legend herself of seabirding.  Debi amazes me, someday when all of this is over I need to buy her dinner and chat.  She and I have a lot in common, a lot.  Our pasts are similar and hers, a book should be written on it and to be honest, I'd volunteer to be her biographer...the stories....priceless, all I can say is I wish I was of age in San Fran area in the 70s...I could have lived my theories out and probably been disillusioned like many of my older peers

I had somehow hoped to be in disguise on this boat but it was like old home week....there was Douglas Kibbe (and Mackenzie and friend) from Colorado....reliving my Colorado adventure with me, my embarrasing six mile shoeshoe hike for a American Three toed woodpecker and no white tailed ptarmigan (embarassing as Douglas just ran circles on me at altitude), and stories from my 2015 trek for the same bird on Loveland Pass when I showed them the most photogenic ptarmigan of all time.  There was also Dave McQuade from Florida ...an man of much intel for me on the eastern seaboard who I hadn't actually met yet.  There was Laura fellow big year maniac, people from Adak, and people I had met on this boat before....well at least I had some people to chat with.

Well, there was a problem on this pelagic and it wasn't Debi, it wasn't very birdy
absolutely no...NO albatrosses, of any stripe, apparently a Debi Journey first...alas I didn't need any.
 Thankfully..

We did stumble on a photogenic pair of Scripp's murrelets, oh how I hoped for Guadeloupe...oh well


Of course there were humpback whales everywhere, sea lions abounded, no storm-petrels at all


I only needed one bird, and I was 0-3 getting it and then with two outs in the 9th inning, behind a run and thinking I had to go schedule a Washington pelegic (wasn't sure if I could get one in Oregon as they had no more current trips) I got a curve ball, swung at it, and gosh...I hit it......!!  Debi yelled (and Debi doesn't usually use the com system)  "Bullers 4 O'clock!!!"
Damn...I was in the bow........

They had one cross the bow the day before and few got on it.  These birds are so scarce this year.  A guy can move real fast with a 500 mm lens in waves....but I got back there, then on it, and then lost it, it crossed the bow where I was, then it landed, I got on it and then camera ready (it had been ready) I got shots............year bird!   Also my weakest lifer (2013) was now strengthened up....I may have a beer anyhow....

#763  Buller's shearwater




Ah the sweat smell success!

Success, though smells a lot like fish or the ocean....hum.

Thanks Debi, you snarfed one for me

The numbers:

Big Year Total:  763 (plus 1)
Coded Birds:  91
Lower 48 birds:  695 plus 1
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  36,938Flight Miles 153,200
miles on ATV 475
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 153   Different Airports: 47
Near bear/ death experiences 2Hours at sea: 248Miles walked 432
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  66
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5

Gosh, what a crazy week, 1400 miles of driving, 14 hours in planes, 23 hours at sea, and of course 16 hours on the TV......Netflix....!!  My own bed for 4 nights!

Okay costs?
what does a crazy week home cost?

Lost rental car payment $50
unused hotel in Newport  $90
Hotel in San Fran  $200
Hotel in Texas  $80
Rental cars 230
tip for shuttle guy Minneapolis $10
plane fares/ Penalties, gosh, this is confusing $1200
used some miles, got miles back, got credit for PDX flight phew
bottle of wine at home  $10
I will get credit for Newport
Debi $190
San Diego pelagic 150
cab fare 20
hotel and dinner in SD 200
food 100
breakfast with grandmother  priceless
time with wife...........I let you decide, I could sing Barry White
hugging daughter....cool
vet bills for Kitty.......................I don't want to think about it

$2450  (I think)
four birds (dusky warbler included in costs)

Okay, I'm off to the airport to go somewhere, I don't even know where...yet...

Olaf

Fall strategy: Supplemental A

Let me start off this blog by saying, the 24 hour rule bites, it blows, and it even sucks...there ain't no pot of gold at the end of my St Paul rainbow...okay, it wasn't the end of the world and if I think about it, who the heck else would this happen to, but me, fat, dumb Olaf.........yup...me.

Okay, let me get to today.  I got nothing to say about the last two days on St Paul, okay, I took a pretty fox sparrow photo, or two...to date the only bird seen on Putchkie by me that actually doesn't live on the island, well except for a rather sickly gull which may have lived on the island, IDK



There were reports of a possible Eurasian sparrowhawk on Adak but that plane left Thursday and well if I was going to go there to get it I had to bug out of St Paul on Friday and fly to Adak on Sunday, but that was not my plan and well, going there for a bird that may not pass muster with the state committee or the ABA was not a good idea since there is only two flights a week and the next one is Sunday, and I'd be stuck there until Thursday....but I had had enough of St Paul, someone needed to take it for the team and leave, as then the 24 hour rule kicks in and since I had been in Alaska for a whole month plus three days, that person needed to be me....I was the dark cloud casting its shadow creating a terrible fall for birds...The 24 hour rule states that if you leave a bird you need will show up within 24 hours of leaving....the question is who needs to go?
I needed to see my wife, my family, my new kitten....the whole gang has been treated for giardia thanks to the kitten, a very odiferous little kitty but alas everyone is being treated, healthy now hopefully.....My sister had a baby I need to see, I need to do my grandmother's taxes.....heck, I need to pat my dog and well, a certain booty is calling..........sigh, rocks were looking like my wife on St Paul....I'm so sooooo lonely.
Yesterday I bugged out, it something that only made sense to me but i had to go... but not before the Olaf effect started....a Eurasian skylark was flushed off the road on the way to the airport...I saw it well, not a year bird just a USA bird but was it the vanguard of something?  It was a good look but not a photographable bird but was seen by everyone in our van.  Thinking about the vanguard thing...I hoped not, but well, I had to go.  Nothing was going to come in....
I flew to Anchorage and well, I had no hotel, nothing....but then there was a report of a bird in Arizona I needed....I checked Alaska and Delta, both had a seat on an overnight until I called...then poof............gone.  It was an omen.  I got a room at The Coast Inn, it was so cheap it had to be a mistake.  Sigh....then on my way to Seattle on the 9am flight.....the NARBA alert came out...Dusky warbler in San Francisco, and not just in San Francisco, as close to the airport as any place to ever get a bird could be.  I am a wiz at changing things on the fly in an airport...this was easy peasy for me, and SFO I was now heading.
I talked the woman at the Delta counter to switch my ticket to SFO and she did for FREE, then she moved my suitcase.  I decided to buy a suitcase in Anchorage and put my winter jacket and boots in it as I was too cheap to just ship it home, so I checked it....Olaf, checking luggage has cost you...why why did you do it?  What bird could show up?
Then woman told me the bag would go to San Fran....when I checked enroute over Oregon, I saw it was going to San Diego.  I didn't worry about that and on landing I blew out of the airport to the train to get a car.  It is slow at San Fran, the train takes forever and the rental car place is weird, luckily I am Hertz gold and just drove it the 4 miles to the stakeout I had two hours of daylight left.
Okay, as stakeouts go this was a little weird.  The bird was in this fennel patch on a side hill between an Inn and a UPS warehouse.  There were a few birders below and a few in the middle, some sitting, some on their bellies, and the last view of the bird was just before I arrived.  

I took a spot and watched.  It had been feeding in an 80 foot circle all day, but never seen well.  People tiptoed into the fennel like they were on eggshells.  In Alaska, someone would have just said heck with it and would have just walked through the stuff, back and forth until the bird flushed and was seen by all, here, that isn't considered ethical birding so we waited and watched, the sun sank....then I heard it.  YEA!!!  I thought I saw it but then a flock of bushtits flew in...drat.   

Now every glimpse of a bird had to be checked for being a bushtit, and then it happened, the dusky warbler showed and was deep in the fennel and intermixed with bushtits...I couldn't get on it, then the next time still no, it called again, they guy in front of me had it and I looked over his head and him over the guy in front of him who had it, but not me....but if you took your eyes off it, you lost it, then it flew down, I saw that, then I saw the ass end of the bird, brown, buff under neath, that was no bushtit, then a wing...no wing bars...then the back end again....finally as it was going dark, the hoard of tits came by and then I got on it, again, three deep looking over the head of the guys in front of me.  I saw the eye line and the brown eye brow...dang skulky phylloscopus warblers...DUSKY WARBLER  TICK!!   .I had seen my first in 2014 on St Paul but it was like this view only in flashes of it flushed, multiple times before Doug Gotchfeld got it on camera...I never could catch it on the camera then or now   and this time, 15 birders, most saw it, nobody could ever have hoped to photograph this bird, but I had bird 760.  Some you just cannot photograph.
I saw it again and then chatted with a local birder until dark, surprised at meeting a big year guy, (there aren't too many birders with Olaf monogrammed on their shirts) he had just read Neil's book so there you go Neil, a sell!
I was feeling good and then...I checked my email....not one bird I needed was seen today on St Paul, not two, but 3..........I fell over on the hill, coughing, ugh, why me?  Why??I felt like Hillary Clinton cursed by something.
The guy I talked to told me a tale of a jaguar killing a bear on the Santa Rita mountains....that cheered me up, those damn bears...way to go Jag!!  First ever documented killing of an adult bear, a 230# sow, sweet revenge from last month.  But where I should feel jacked at the dusky, I felt jerked,,,,a blue tail, a yellow-browed warbler,...Brambling....crap....okay, I got a consolation bird and a good one at that but why does this happen to me?
Too late now, at least I didn't go to Arizona, and so now how do I get ahead of my bag, I tried to forward it to Minneapolis but I may need new winter gear, if it doesn't show...San Diego...why did it go there?
Oh well, I'm crawling under a rock for a while, it seems safer.......I got a boat load of birds this year but it is these days that hurt..........
Olaf  

Fall Strategy part 3

September 20th 2016

This is the evening report from St Paul Island:

the high this week was the winds with some days the speed in excess of the temperature
the low was the morale of the birders here looking and hoping
the pressure is high on the guides to keep the birders from considering drastic measures--like leaving, jumping off a cliff, or heavy drinking

I was about to give a St Paul birding-weather prediction..."It's going to be cold, its going to be gray, and it's going to last the rest of your life."

But well, it just seems like this fall birding strategy is going to last the rest of my life....sigh, you know, I did see a year bird this week....and it could be worse, I still could be in Gambell, they've seen even less than here...and the weather is hopeful....

AND THERE ARE NO BEARS HERE!!!!

Day 29  Anchorage/ St Paul Island Alaska

Contemplative Birding

Well with all the bears around, I just decided to drive to the airport and leave.  My flight to St Paul left at 1215.  PenAir came in on time, I got out, we loaded up the group and 45 minutes later we were stomping the lake with the Jack snipe and 5 minutes later  "snipe"  I had bird 759 but no picture, Scott didn't want to overflush the bird as many more were coming in in two days.  I could say more but well, it was a bit lackluster and not very thrilling

I got settled in, got some beer, and we got ready for days of birding...
this is another marathon location, I needed to pace my emotions

Day 30  St Paul Island Alaska

Another day, another day of birding...I hiked, thought a lot

then I did a lot of hiking, we ate,  and then a lot of contemplating this silly year and my life, I rarely said anything, no one talked to me, did I say I hiked?


We drove some putchkie saw an interesting bird that got a way from us at dark....nothing new and that was probably a Lincoln's sparrow

I don't know, I'm not sure I should be hanging out with birders 24/7...I tried a little to talk about TV, no one had seen Game of Thrones except our guide Claudia, other shows...nada....sports?  Nope.  I gave up, all they wanted to talk about is birding.....well their birding....I've been birding for 9 months...I've kind of been there

that was my only answer to my questions, was I need to go home

Day 31  St Paul Island Alaska

Jack Returns

Again, bad prevailing winds....no birds then a larger group of birders arrived, including Barrett Pierce another biggie in the realm of ABA birding probably in the top 10, but Barrett only counts once a year, and he is another nice guy from Amarillo Texas.

Immediately we went out to look for the Jack snipe and it was within 10 feet of previous flushes,
this time I got photos.....all in all they were not bad.




A tough bird as you about have to step on it to flush it and it is very cryptic...rarely seen on the ground

but as we went around to find stuff we really didn't see too much, largely except for sparrows nothing that doesn't breed here is even around...

Brants anyone?



Day 32 St Paul Island Alaska


We worked hard, continued to hike around looking at crab pots


we found an adult slaty-backed gull on a beach


I spotted a nice king eider in the salt lagoon...


but that was the extent of the day...a good day birding but nothing new and nothing from Asia

We left jack alone....and I was beginning to think I didn't know jack...about birding or anything...still no new birds on Gambell though so that was fine to have left.

Day 33  St Paul Island Alaska

You don't know Jack

It was a morning fit for sea watching as it wasn't easy to do anything else birding and now I was sure I didn't know jack this morning...

I went to find a rock to take care of too much coffee when I saw a photogenic arctic fox

Arctic Fox


I came back and everyone was giddy in that they had a close fly-by of a short tailed albatross only the fourth time the bird had ever been seen from land ...wow!  ...and I missed it,
jacked!!

It was one of those kind of days
The most interesting flying object seen today by me was the 3pm launching of the weather balloon


They launch one every twelve hours, I tried to get in in flight...and I missed
sort of like my bird photography

We went and picked up David Greening a birder I had met in Minnesota earlier in Florida...ah someone to talk too....I know Minnesota.   We went for the jack snipe and worked at it hard, checking every local swamp and marsh...no jack, but with the wind...?


Maybe Jack was lying low...but it didn't look too good....glad we got it earlier, sorry David.

Day 34  St Paul Island Alaska

Reindeer Games

I have spent many a week on St Paul and I have never seen reindeer but after today, I can't say that anymore.  We went to seawatch at SW today and 45 minutes after arriving, the weather turned, wind shifted west, and with it hope.  On the way back, I tallied the reindeer herd, check!


The lumps are reindeer, really...

They are not native but well, they are established....I saw the same species on Adak so not even a year mammal then...but I was happy

There were no birds on the island, flying by the island, on the island it meant for a long day.  We ate, watched from the north beach where we did see an albatross sp. unknown as to which of the two it could be it was dark brown and big, either a black-footed or a short-tailed albatross juvie bird, four at least saw it and with the sighting the day before it was probably a short-tailed but I left it unknown on my list.  A designation I may never use again...albatross sp.

We saw a shrew and hoped for the winds to blow and bring in something from Kamchatka, time will tell....

I did get an USA bird for the year, a white-winged scoter, (750) but who is counting, I have also seen my 131 island bird, which again, I only know as there is nothing else to do...........

wish I could have seen the albatross better but that is birding...

Day 35  St Paul Island Alaska

Seal, it's what's for dinner!

The morning brought heavy wind and waves


They were impressive hitting the rocks

I got bored and then we toured the village and we drove past the rental car center, well I don;t think the old pickup runs...



It is the same rental car I've featured before just $10/ day more and it has a lot more rust and a better view of the roads...through the floor boards....it is still missing the back bumper, the rust is the only thing now holding it together.  $100 a day...you decide

The birding continued as we cleared the island of having any new birds early today, there was no albatross fly overs, nothing, not even a sparrow, but....

I finished seeing all of the mammals on St Paul in a trip consecutive days, seeing both Pribilof shrew (Barrett Pierce took this picture)


they are quarter sized with a long tail, if the boreal owl is still around just a midnight snack even for that

I saw the arctic fox....again


of course harbor seals and then ignoring a gyrfalcon we saw killer whales hunting northern fur seals



watching the killer whales eat made me hungry, so I went to the Trident plant to eat.


It was the best meal ever, but it wasn't seal, it was curried crab.

After 3 days of stomping every marsh I can say that the island is jack snipe clear...it is safe for the rest of us

Well tomorrow is the last day of summer....we do have favorable winds so there is hope that something is coming, otherwise if I have more days like this....I may snap

insanity is doing the same thing every day day after day going out and expecting different results....
basically now, five weeks of the same....at least I got Jack

thank you Mr Snipe

Big Year Total:  759
Coded Birds:  88
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  35,438Flight Miles 147,000
miles on ATV 475
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 145   Different Airports: 47
Near bear/ death experiences 2Hours at sea: 225Miles walked 407
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  64
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5
You have wasted another half hour reading this blog as I have wasted another perfectly good week birding....

thanks for your support

Olaf

Fall Strategy Part 2

Day 28, Anchorage Alaska

Let me just say it here.  I am not dead, I repeat, I am NOT dead.  I am safely back at The Coast Inn drinking a much earned beer, now not for any life birds, but for life....wait a minute....I feel like I'm repeating myself...

I was enjoying my day off after jumping a plane out of Gambell yesterday and surviving the worst stretch of fall birding in Gambell history (more on that later) and I went into the bush north of Anchorage to maybe find myself, find God, and find some birds... nothing in particular just birds. I stopped at this view above and dreamed that I was standing there holding the hand of my best friend, Silja, the love of my life, a woman I miss so much, who with, I have now not shared a moment together in 32 days, our longest stretch apart...something I will never do again and I saw this view and couldn't take it as I knew she would like it too...I had to walk on.

So I walked aimlessly on continuing my search for avian life, God, a meaning in life, answers to life questions, a good plot for a novel, anything....I was a nice day and it all seemed so simple.....but....

and all I found, again, ..................was bears........


sigh...

bears.....again?...the answer to life's questions seems to just be bears, I guess it is a simple answer.  A one word answer that seems to fit everything for me....BEARS!

There is a saying back home about being up to your ass in alligators but what if you are up to your ass in bears?

Okay, I was warned this time (and I am a whole lot smarter, or so I think after Arizona) first there was the yellow sign, like I was warm...but well one goes through yellow lights....well I do.


Then the red sign, maybe hotter now, a smart guy would stop...


You know, I took these pictures BEFORE I saw any bruins like I knew what was coming down the trail, why did I know this?  Because bears and me, well you know, we got this thing....In truth, I kept going because well and then there was this grouse up 20 yards on the trail, maybe it was a grouse, I had not confirmed the species, (Paul Lehman wants confirmation or the sighting is worthless), maybe it was a ptarmigan, or a spruce, or a ruffed...IDK...It was a hen.  .I didn't get that far because then  HE came....

I was going to be no hero....This was a real bear, not a garbage bear.....I stopped and watched and well he came, and kept coming and well, at 50 feet away, I got the puppy dog out of there.....

I couple hundred yards down the trail....I met some people...crazy people...idiotic people apparently looking for bears.

"Hey, you didn't happen to see a bear?"  They asked.  I nodded but kept up my pace (a fast pace)
"Which way?"  They said confused.

I gave the thumb over my shoulder.
"Why are you going the other way?"  They were even more confused.
" 'cause it was.. a bear, a really big bear."  I race walked past them.  "But you got that big camera...."  they said....yeah I thought, lot of good that will do, he'll just spit that out when he is finished. 

I saw a more sane person in the parking lot coming past me as I was breathing easy watching robins, robins in a parking lot seemed like safer birds for me than grouse.  "Hey what you see?"  She asked flirtatiously.

"Just a damn bear."  I said.  She turned  180 degrees.  "I thought you were going this way."  I said.
"Not anymore."  She said and hurried off the other way.

 Sigh.....

I should try to imply some meaning to this sighting but Doug Gotchfeld would just say "why does there have to be meaning?"  Ah Doug......Gambell.....

Yea, 16 days in Gambell, the place where you can literally see tomorrow, today...




That is Russia in the background and on the other side of the International dateline which is about 15 miles off shore.  I would like to change that saying to where you can experience tomorrow's birding frustrations today....IDK.  It was a bad year for birding's marquis spot....again I'll get to this.  First for all you know, I'm still in St Paul...

Day 9;  St Paul Island

Enough Rain for One Lifetime

This was to be our last day on St Paul and we gave it our best efforts, walking celery, walking the pumphouse, driving the roads....but alas we went all day with nothing more to show and at 4pm Pen-Air showed and well, off we went for what could be the best flight ever on that airline, fast, efficient, we were standing in Anchorage at 7pm waiting for a shuttle to a hotel.

To sum up most of last week in St Paul...drudgery, wet and windy drudgery...but well I got something out of it...3 birds

What we saw was the best thing in the sky all year...

we saw the sun

It was so nice in Anchorage, we didn't want to go to bed.  The sun, the sun, the sun............
Jim left and went back to Newark, finally, I went to bed after taking care of some paperwork that needed to be done.

Day 10.  Nome, Alaska

A Boogle of Weasels

Well I boarded my cargo plane for Nome, it was a rather uneventful time in Anchorage airport, although beware, I learned Alaska Air is cutting the size of carry-ons so small, I think Pen-Air may allow bigger, so BEWARE!  Rules change in the end of the year.  Platinum on Delta gets you somewhere on Alaska, like the end of the line but in a cargo plane, but I did learn something and the woman looked the other way for my heavy bag.


I flew into Nome and landed at noon, later in the flight, I started talking to the guy sitting next to me, Dr. Geoff Chambers from New Zealand, a retired University researcher working on the genetics of Albatross.  As my tour had gone out without me, I rented a car and I took him out to get a few lifers, for him, he was waiting for a 10am flight to Siberia, and a Russian boat to Wrangle Island.  Cool trip and I got invited to New Zealand.

We came upon a rarity but it was just a rarity for the area, Caspian tern in Safety Sound.


An Alaska lifer for me, yahoo...wahoo...don't ask me why I know it is #205, please don't.  I will never post my Alaska list again.  Well, then I learned you get a patch for crossing 200 and I did do that in the past week so okay, I'll apply to join the 200 club....It was 73 when I left Attu in 2013.    Geoff got Aleutian tern, his goal bird, and so that went well and we saw muskoxen.

First I saw a funeral owl, and then today, it was a boogle of weasels, yes it is a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, and yes, YES, it really is a boogle of weasels.  Short-tailed weasels darted about me everywhere, I may have hit one but we'll get to that if that is considered good or bad....today, though, it WAS a veritable boogle of weasels.


Well seeing a weasel can mean many things, most of them are bad.  I depends on what culture and what context.  In Japanese culture, it is really, really bad.  There is none that I can find for the local tribes people and in my culture, northern European, it is only safe to kill weasels from August 15th to September 8th, (the French could never kill one safely).  They play tricks on us for the rest of the year and killing one then is a harbinger of the worst omens ever and was more taboo than marrying your sister or having sex with your mother.  But during the special period, seeing one was generally just bad for the weasel as now, we could sing, "pop goes the weasel," and smack one and get a little revenge, although that is not the meaning of the rhyme.  I surmise it feels good getting a little revenge and the pop, well....  I think being in the dates window, August 27th, seeing all of these weasels then, means nothing, and well if the weasel did go pop on my tire, I'm safe, whew!!!!.  Maybe crazy birding if, I didn't pop him? I was afraid to look behind me.

We ate pizza and finally I connected with the WINGS people.  Aurora Hotel is the worst, they cancelled my reservation, and told me "WINGS Tour?  They aren't here." and my room-mate cancelled, maybe the whole thing was off, IDK.

I went out for pizza and beer with Geoff and at the tail end of the day finally ran into the group.  I guess I could have just met them at the airport tomorrow, but I was glad it hadn't got cancelled.  Tours and me are not compatible.  Never have, never will, cruise ships, anything I need to follow along things go wrong and haywire.  But I needed the time in Gambell...

There is something called the 24 hour rule, within 24 hrs of leaving a spot a bird you desire shows up.  It happened on St. Paul but to Jim, not I....little stint showed today, a bird Jim desired, I didn't need it, whew....weasel chaos averted, go and plop that bugger!  A group is also called a confusion, which maybe is the confusion of trying to determine the omen, but boogle is the word for me...the word of the day.


to quote my late grandfather, Allwin Danielson, on the matter of weasels, "beady eyed little blood-thirsty bastards."  I think that sums up today in one neat package.

In hindsight, I should have headed the warning.....damn weasel, and never got on the plane.


Day 11.  Nome/ Gambell, St Lawrence Is AK
The Curse of the Weasel
I woke up had breakfast with the group at the Polar Cub and we went out birding...I drove myself, as I had a car.  We stopped at Nome river bridge and then the point Flying in seemed a bit treacherous as there was a lot of side to side movement.  I was very happy to have the plane land as ground appeared under the fog.  The guys the day before, got stuck in Nome for fog.
The group stopped at the cape and I went ahead for a quick look past the bridge in Safety Sound for a arctic loon, I wanted a photograph.  I drove hard.  The Caspian tern was gone and I saw a road killed bird but I drove on, no time.  At 28.5 miles I turned around, I had a plane to catch, but I still had time to photo and ID the dead bird.  I stopped the car.  Got out and then heard a very strange sound in the air, I looked casually as I bent over to look at the bird, I saw a large shorebird....then it called again, what was that?
I went through the curlew and godwit calls in my head and stood up and picked up the bird as it crossed the road above me and then swung to my left fanning its tail showing a black end stripe and white at the rump, with a small amount of white on top of the wings, but only the primaries.  It had large barring streaks on the belly and when it got going east, it closed the tail so only the black tip was evident.
Crap, I ran for the car to get my real camera.  my only shots were into the sun.  They showed.....a godwit.  I don't know, I know what I saw, but what did I actually see?  To be able to count something, you have to be confident, There was some baring on the upper tail after really lighting the photo so diagnosis......GODWIT, sp.
I raced at pushing 100 mph to get back to the plane to get out of Nome and for once Bering Air...was on time.....I have never driven so fast in Alaska, I kind of wanted to get the group to go back and chase the bird and get a better photo, but life and the group moves on....
The plane flight was not nice, although as it is said, we could see tomorrow while standing in today, but with the fog, tomorrow didn't look so good, and I didn't feel so good.
I unpacked, found my stuff I sent in, and got ready to bird.  There was a buff-breasted sandpiper around and the weather was about to turn so Paul Lehman agreed to drive me to see it and I got a good photo of the bird, a photo first.  Get what you can while you can.
Buff-breasted sandpiper

The bird left that night so it was good to see it. I was tired, it was a very long day.  We stayed in the lodge which isn't too bad actually, the beds are nice, room decent and I've done worse
Day 12.  Gambell, St Lawrence Is AK
The Weasel strikes
With the bad luck of the godwit, I had hoped that the curse of the weasel and possibly a dead weasel was overcome but in the end just confusion reigned, the critter wasn't finished with me.  Well the weather report for the island came in as bad, not like St Paul rain and fog bad although we had that, it was wind bad, like a dreaded NE wind pattern, which started just before I got there and then started blowing harder with a NE tempest for later in the week.  At Gambell, on the weather map, we appeared to sit somewhere between  sucks and blows, and it was going right overhead.  It was not good for bringing in anything from Siberia, it wasn't good for anything except...frostbite, boredom, frustration, and well, all of the above.
yuck!!
So, I went out with the group, hoped for the best but expected nothing.  I am not the best tourist with a group and for the first week here, I am with the WINGS group, and my goal became to get the birds for the group, here in Gambell, it is group birding, us and the independents, or well, it should be.  
All of the big year birders arrived by today, we are all here all trying to help each others finds, well...maybe, some of us did.
Anyhow, a gray tailed tattler was called in and so I went with to get the bird, it was close and I got a nice photo of it.
Gray tailed tattler

Although on Gambell, a more fitting picture would be this one intermixed with garbage


Mind you, I like Gambell.  It is a classic reservation village, I can site many similar places in South Dakota, I live next to one, Peever SD comes to mind, BUT really why would they put the dump and sewage treatment pond upwind from the village, and then one would only expect all the garbage to be blown all over town and also into the fresh water source for the town, Troutman Lake....do they not get this?  Do they not care?  Oh well...can't fix Pine Ridge, Eagle Butte, Agency Village, so why expect to fix Gambell.

We looked around finding lots of white wagtails and wheatears, both trans-Bering migrants, that can come through here on their way east.  But after a couple of days the wagtails thinned out, and the wheatears vanished....nothing except for a handful of sparrows scattered over 14 days replaced them.




Day 13.  Gambell, St Lawrence Is AK
Bluebird Kind of Day
After the morning seawatch which produced a yellow-billed loon and again a bit yawner of a seabird show, the sun came out and while we sat there, Gavin, the ever intrepid WINGS guide pronounced the bird he wanted to see today, a Mountain Bluebird.  Before we could all think about that, Aaron Lang called and had a very cooperative Bluethorat which many (not me) wanted to see.  We couldn't find it.
The bird it turned out had been sucked into the birding void as it was nowhere to be seen.  Then we all eventually gathered for the daily 10:30 Far Boneyard drive and there were more birds this time as we drove out a golden-crowned sparrow and an arctic warbler.
Arctic Warbler


We worked a bit so everyone could see it as the passerines are very skittish in this wormwood environment intermixed with holes, but there were a few of the group I was hanging out with that still needed it, so we keep at it with arctics, so I kept taking pictures.
The sun began to shine brightly and I drove around after lunch but didn’t see much, someone in our group created a bit of a stir when asked if that "was a bean goose" on the radio and other birders on the island began to start to fire up their machines to chase the "goose."  Gavin responded "there is no goose, repeat there is no goose."  It was just a pintail, crisis adverted.  Well, we eventually we went back to seawatch and saw thousands of short-tailed sheerwaters fly by, and then on the gravel in the sun, I took a needed nap.
Today, I saw an odd sight.  I found an abandoned textbook on Evolution stomping around to flush up a sharp-tailed sandpiper for the group.



I guess here in Gambell they have dismissed and thrown away the theories of evolution in favor of their own theories.....
The best bird for the afternoon was a Savannah sparrow, which the fact that I took a picture of it shows how slow it was becoming.

We did the near boneyard and Gavin spooked a bluethroat, which looked like the same one as earlier.  It went in a hole and never came out.  Here is Gavin trying to get it out of the hole….it never came out again, sucked into the void.



After dinner, we got word from St Paul of a new species in the Bering Sea….a Mountain bluebird……Gavin’s call, somehow the correct bird…just the wrong island.  How it was done boggles the mind...not boogles.....there is the faux competition between St Paul and Gambell that no one wants to admit to but it exists at least in some and maybe should just end....but that isn't my doing and well, birding goes on.
By evening we pushed the far boneyard and spent an hour chasing a very furtive pipit of unknown ID, there was hope for an Olive-backed….on the 15th flight, it finally called, just a lowly American pipit….dang birds!



The near boneyard....

The evening brought alerts for northern lights as it was actually the first clear night outside of my lone night in Anchorage that I had experienced in Alaska…..it was just a few glows in the north but nothing spectacular…..so ends another day in paradise, I guess…or at least in Gambell.   I was in the Washington Post this day so that upped my blog readership in a period when I was in a blackout on Gambell, we'll see if they keep following me.

This is as good of a time as any to describe the gang here in Gambell

Besides all of the big year birders, 5 of the top 7 listers of ABA all time were at Gambell (Macklin Smith (1), Larry Peavler (2), Paul Sykes (3), Ebbe Banstorp (5), and Monte Taylor (7),  The man who made Gambell what it is as the premier vagrant spot for ABA Birding, Paul Lehman,  Six really top quality guides (Aaron Lang, James Harrington, Gary Rosenberg, Doug Gotchfeld, Cory Gregory, and Gavin Bieber), the biggest lister in Nevada (Greg Siefert) and Nevada OU Secretary and mega lister, Martin Meyers, plus some other big shots...Chris Feeney, a birding chum I know and have written about previously, Susan Clark from Michigan who was on a pelagic with me and some others birders I didn't really get to know...sadly.

I felt like a minnow in a tank of sharks, except, I guess that these guys were not mean like sharks but maybe more like whales....the cartoons always portray whales as nice....now occasionally a whale accidentally sucks in something and maybe spits it out, ask Jonah about that, but well, I was Jonah in a sea of whales, I guess then, just hoping not to get sucked into the baleen and spit out.

Let me go over these megas of bird listing

Paul Lehman has spent more time on Gambell than anyone not claiming Gambell as their home.  He is writing a huge paper on the species appearance on the island and is the king of Gambell.  He isn't in charge really of anything though but well, he is.  He sees almost every bird worth seeing on the island so if you want to become persona non grata don't call in a bird to Paul....

Paul is a cross between The Father in Leave it to Beaver and Marcus Welby.  He is a father figure, imposing yet nurturing.  Tough but fair, encouraging you to do better and yet has all those answers for you when you most need them.  Paul is like Dr Welby in knowing all that needs to be known.  Paul has a doctorate, so to say and honorary of course, from the Gambell School of Ornithology.  

Paul Sykes is sort of that uncle who comes over at a wedding and smacks you on the head and tells you, "to shape up and stop embarrassing the family."  He tells it like it is because someone has to do it.  We all need an uncle like that.  Paul has seen 903 ABA birds.  He has a heavy Georgian accent and has been everywhere and almost seen everything and has spent much time on the Ivory Billed woodpecker finding project and seems like a good guy and I like Paul.  I asked Paul what his favorite bird chase was.  He chastised me a little in saying "we don't think that way."  That was a very deep answer if you think about that for a while.  I was trying to get the higher meaning of it for days when it came to me...he was just Uncle Paul smacking me behind the ear.  Yea, "we don't think that way."  I needed to change my idea of bird listing....they are all great chases, the best one is the next one.  The worst one is the last dip.

 He birds a lot with Larry Peavler (904) Larry is the thinker behind the duo of Larry and Paul.  He is quieter and certainly has forgotten more about birds than I will ever know.  I didn't get Larry to open up much.  Larry is a nice guy, polite and I like his rabbit bomber hat.  

It took me a while to get Ebbe Banstorp (870) talking but then I did.  Ebbe has an odd Swedish accent that took me a while to place as I initially thought he had to be Danish but that didn't fit, as he didn't pronounce things Danish.  He is from the province of Skone, in southern Sweden, they have an odd Swedish dialect down there (Skonish) compared to "08s" which is the phone exchange for Stockholm and the standard Swedish accent, but if you ask him, he is just from Orange County.  Ebbe walks, doesn't ride an ATV, has a fixed birding schedule and absolutely refuses to ever EVER seawatch.  Too cold I think he told me and It has done him well, even his fixation on Frosted Flakes has done him well.  A birding Swede...cool. 

Monte Taylor is the king of photography of ABA birds having photographed more species than all but 6 people have seen, his life list at 860, photo list of 852 is amazing.  He spends all of his time organizing photos in the corner, waiting on the radio minding his computer.  Monte is under appreciated and not understood by everyone.  He is the character from Oh brother, where art thou? played by George Clooney.  Monte has the gift of gab, just like the character and travels with Ebbe so one talks and one listens and well that seems to have worked for 31 years.  I like Monte, and I would not hesitate to call him to help me in a pinch in Santa Ana, California or Irving or somewhere close by.  I hope I meet him and the other Megas again....

Macklin Smith came in a week later.  One word describes Prof. Macklin Smith, "Genteel."   Macklin has an amazing number (916).  He lived through a disease that would have killed him just a few years before he got it, living in extra time is a grand thing as it beats...not living.  Heck, I'm going on my 36th year of extra time.  Life IS good.  Medicine, I like it! ....Macklin knows poetry from the Middle ages, was a professor at Michigan....I would have liked to have studied "Paradise Lost" with him in college or the "Inferno" from Dante.  My college president at Ripon, Bill Stott, also was a man with an advance degree in English Lit and a master birder....English and birds....go figure?   I bet Macklin has a lot to say and not just about being the birding chef of Attu... 

I hadn't seen Doug Gotchfeld since 2014.  Doug was a young gun back then, which was only 2 years ago, it seems since then he has transformed into a bit of philosopher, he seems to have grasped deeper meaning in life, wise in his young years.  Maybe it was a trip to Israel, maybe he is like Scotch, and aging well, even though he is really just a kid. Maybe...it doesn't mean anything, it is just Doug being, Doug and there doesn't have to be any meaning.  I just want to say, I like it!   Doug is the best field photographer I have ever seen, just does amazing, amazing things with his 400 fixed lens on a Canon...I think He could get a clear photo of a fly going across the room....

I last birded with Greg Siefert and Martin Meyers (sp?) at the tail end of the amazing 9 days I had with Thor Manson on St Paul in 2014 with Doug....and Cory.  They were still licking their chops thinking of what we had as when their plane landed the winds turned and the birds switched to warblers and robins from Asian code 4s and 5s.....I sort of think I jinxed them again....sorry guys.  This is birding.....I think they are okay, even though I kept reminding Greg my daughter has a dusky grouse up on him in lifers in Nevada......everyone has a nemesis....even him.  When an Arctic warbler showed in Nevada last week, he looked a little peeved at it all and he wasn't nearby....even when we tried to be supportive and stated one couldn't prove it wasn't a Kamchatka Leaf warbler as they look similar to an arctic and without a call who knows...?  I don't think he appreciated that and he looked at us like we were insane.

So that is a bit of a snapshot of the crew....and they are a good crew, the Gods of birding in many respects.

It is hard for me to sit with a group of birders for as long as I did on Gambell....I don't like to talk birding and weather that long, I like football and baseball, and 1880-1930 history and art history of the same period, fishing, .....and we only had one TV channel and no alcohol is allowed on the island...I could have used a beer.....IDK, but I survived and best of all they didn't kill me.....I doubt anyone will invite me back but I always say that. 
back top birding...

Day 14.  Gambell, St Lawrence Is AK
A NON-Starter
The day had an odd aire to it not even considering the view with the sun interacting with the fog on the cliffs. The morning at seawatch was even slower than the day before.  It was really windy in the north, and cold air came in with the wind.  It was clear nothing and came in overnight.  I played around with my digiscoping attachment and saw 39 pelagic cormorants, counting them to pass the time.  The wife of the teacher from school walked over and introduced herself.  They are here for a year without an ATV, which seemed pretty hard to get around, I was thinking.  I should not have thought that.  It was damp and cold and on the way home my ATV failed to start so we called the owner.  Maybe I jinxed it.  
There was a report of a lesser sand plover so we all went out like the US Calvary looking for the bird.  It was an organized assault by Col Feeney with most of the best bird chasers in the world, these guys could find a lone mouse in a building.
I rode pillion, or "bitch" using a US slang term on Lt Col Chris Feeney's (US Army Ret.) ATV as we charged around and my bum was sore after a while, really sore. That is an odd term as I think about it, and I'm not sure if it is really offensive or it being a biker term makes it okay....ideas?    But I felt like a bitch....IDK
I (we) looked for hours.  Before lunch in terms of shore birds...only a single sanderling was located, Greg Siefert got a really good photo of a juve bird that had some color to it.  I saw it, it looked funny but well it was a sanderling.  The sand plover remains UNREPORTED in the ABA for 2016 and not on Paul Lehman's official list, even though it may appear on a big year list or two.  Chasing up a shorebird on an ATV into the wind and trying to ID it flying off somewhere is next to impossible, rock sandpipers were called westerns mistakenly and heck I had a dozen I had no idea what they were over the period, but to ID them and even call them as a rare bird?

The total shorebirds this day was the same gray tailed tattler and a couple of long billed dowitchers, there were even few ruddy turnstones about, but no plovers.  No one saw the bird, someone would have if it was there. 
I counted a single sanderling to my day list    
I got my ATV back and now to start it I have to take a pliers and cross the two poles of the starter.  I get a large spark and it starts. The pliers brand Fukong, and it was a Fukong odd starter I had to deal with for the rest of my stay.  It was Fukonged up, I said....everything Fukonged. 
We had another Bluethroat sighting in the near boneyard.  Gavin announced it was definitely cornered this time.  Then we looked....it had vanished a third time.  It made me laugh.  Bluethroat 3, Gavin 0.  
On a scary note somehow Norm, a really nice guy I had met from North Carolina who drives for Wilderness Birding had an accident falling off an ATV, but I was relieved when the word went out that it wasn't serious.  I like Norm, loaned him a book for Tristan de Cuhna, my daughter liked him too, so glad he seems okay.  He did well during his stay...yet another educator in the written arts....birding and English
Well, the cook, Greg made a wonderful cheesecake tonight, so well, all was not lost for the day.
It has been another week, and no new birds that I can honestly count.  Maybe I can see a sanderling and call it a sand plover, maybe I can see a rough legged hawk and say it is a white tailed eagle, which I kept doing in my mind for a moment....maybe I can see an arctic warbler and call it a dusky warbler.....or maybe see a pintail and call a bean goose, but then of coarse one would have to distinguish a Taiga versus Tundra Bean goose and those are hard calls, especially without a photo....sigh....no, I can't do that.  Sanderlings are sanderlings, hawks, are hawks, an arctic warbler is an arctic warbler, and well, Bean geese should be lumped in the ABA as no one can usually ID the two 'species' anyhow so it is actually better just seeing pintails.
Day 15-22

Gambell, St Lawrence Island

NE Winds

It blew, blew some more and the crew got surly.  We watched the weather like clockwork at 530, and then notcied at day 23, it would shift to west.....there was hope, but for the WINGS tour people, they ran out of time and hope and went home at day 17, but nothing changed, nothing did.



We looked at the turbines every moment and hoped they would change from NE to something... anything...the wheatears and arctics left....we hoped for even a sparrow....then we looked at alternative weather models...during all of this three things happened.

First...we discussed a white cheeked pintail in Virginia which Paul L called "squishy" meaning that it was probably an escaped bird and you could count it but...well it was "squishy".

second, we discussed the Tropical storm on the east coast which didn't bring in much, a couple of tropicbirds in the Chesapeake Bay area but not much and then shockingly we discussed the remnant hurricane in Arizona which produced the most amazing fall out of odd seabirds I expect to ever hear about....things never seen off the coast of California let alone in Arizona.....and I was stuck here. but well I wouldn not have gotten there in time to see anything anyhow...just wishful thinking of what could have been.

Thirdly I thought of bugging out, but there was this great weather forecast for vagrants....

Day 23  Gambell

Accentor 

The wind shifted 40 minutes ahead of forecast at 210, by three a report of an Siberian accentor, came out and we missed it being in the south, Chris and I passed the time each day counting rock sandpipers and harlequin ducks 5 miles south of town.

But...we found it, good bird, cool bird, but this was not a year bird for me, then we spotted a second bird, my 3rd and 4th all time of the species, they are kind of neat...code 4s too.





They stayed for two days....unfortunately an hour later, the winds shifted to pure south and defied the weather report and any predictions....and the other birds...never came....they never came.  I wanted to cry....

Day 24-25 Gambell

Counting Owls

In the morning fog, I flushed a snowy owl, unfortunately I had no witness, no photo, no proof, shoot, I even lost it in the fog....it was just a snowy owl but the bird was not counted, sigh, these guys are tough.  I didn't even report it to Ebird....Paul L would reject it, so why bother.

I worked on my novel which I named "Counting Owls" but as the depression grew and my loneliness expanded, I found the writing becoming more lustful even pornographic and weirdly like one had 30 porn channels and were switching them fast, it didn't make any sense.  I couldn't even focus on one steamy scene so I switched to murder scenes and the murders became ghastly, grizzly, all blood and mutilation so I had to stop writing.  Is this what being stuck somewhere does to people?

Mostly I just felt I had to get out of here, the people nice, the natives fine, but the weather was still hopeful, so I demurred and stayed and as the guys studied new weather models, things could be okay....

I went out and saw 7 short eared owls getting enough photos to satisfy but they had been seen before.  My best...



Then on day 25, Chris found the snowy owl.  He confirmed my sighting!  I wasn't seeing things....then I went out and saw 5, a flock or a parliament, I thought we saw 5.


  
Paul L looked at the photo and counted 4 owls, daily count was 4, as we could only prove 4.  It was still a parliament of owls, though.

I got a better in flight photo later....



I also saw many pacific golden plovers



I rescued a least auklet chick stuck on the ground not making it to sea and I carried it to the ocean and threw it in flying off, I hoped that would appease the birding gods but alas, all I did was saved a least auklet chick, they were getting blown around all over as the adults just leave them and eventually hungry they fly off the cliffs but well, they aren't too bright and many die.  Doug G said why does there have to be a meaning in saving a chick or seeing a bear...maybe, it is just that you saved a chick and seen a bear.



I walked the dogs, chasing us on ATVs, I'd say I spotted a wolf here but you'd see the tag.  Our best boneyard stomp had 7 canine helpers



Depression grew...and I think by day 27, the weasel had won.  I wished I hadn't seen it, but secretly hoped it was dead.....so I called Bering Air and I left....I got all the way to Anchorage sitting by Nicole from Nome for the 3rd time.  She said I needed a beer on the plane as all the internet was out in Nome and it was lucky we got out of there....she talked about her moose she had just shot....a 60 incher, he was battle tested with healed wounds that would have killed an ordinary animal...any talk was better than talking about birds and the weather.

I woke up on day 28 to calls from my mom and wife, text from sister, Jena, she had given birth to a nine pound 6 oz girl, her 2nd...named Lucy.




I'm an uncle again, maybe I can be a Paul Sykes kind of uncle...LOL....IDK.  

When it is all said an done, what number we have doesn't matter.  A Wikipedia blurb means nothing.  All we are remembered by is really our children.  I think of my grandfather Allwin everyday and if I think too much, I start to cry. I like to tell his stories as much as possible as it makes me feel like he is still around.  He would be 101 if he was around and I loved my grandfather.  He thought I was special, and told everyone that, that I think was what made me move forward in life.  I have not really felt as safe and secure in my existence from anyone else, to be honest.  I don't want to dish on anyone it is just the way it is.  One of my bucket list items was to name a son after him, Allwin was born 5 years after his death.

 Lucy is named after grandma Lucille Danielson, the other half of my grandparent duo....Lucille gets to meet her namesake, still kicking at 91...she is also the person I dedicated this year to.  My grandmother has outlived all of her siblings and for that mater a vast majority of her nieces and nephews, memories are fading of many people who walked on this earth.  I see grandpa Allwin "Bop" in my son's eyes, every time I look at him. My sister makes me proud, way to go girl!!  Husband Jon is okay too!  I hope they see Grandma Lucille in this child's eyes for the rest of their lives.

I am having a hard time writing and seeing the screen as tears well up.  I want to go home.  I miss my wife and my family.  My wife got a new kitten and I haven't seen the kitty either.  But alas I cannot, but I have to stop writing or I may become morose.

Damn big year ...

Gambell was a bust but maybe those left behind will get something....hard to tell. 
It isn't for lack of trying.  You know...maybe next year.

That is my update,...I continue to fight the mundane and the loneliness...today, I found myself photographing downy woodpeckers and red-breasted nuthatches, well...and then bears.....
damn bears...

Olaf