Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 22

Fall Strategy Part 1

Since I don't want to bore you with all the fall birding I'm up to and I have undoubtedly poor internet, I am just going to include each of the 50 days as sort of a diary entry, maybe some cool birds and maybe some interesting stories or maybe not.  You can get the idea of the drudgery each day can be, long, more of the same, and generally stuck out here on a remote location.  This isn't 50 days to leave my lover, sorry Paul Simon, it is 50 days of fall birding.  This will, however, be the longest my wife and I will ever be apart....It will not be easy for me.....I apologize Silja, for doing this, I really do, never EVER again.  I will title each day entry in bold....well days I have something to write about.

Day 1  San Diego to Anchorage

A travel day, which didn't work so well.  Delayed flights in San Diego and Seattle meant I got in at midnight where I was going to meet my old birding pal Jim "Arvid" but his plane was even later than mine and we didn't even get to our hotel room until 1 am, it was then a very short night.  I'm sure there could be something pithy to say but well, i was too tired to think of this.

Day 2.  St Paul Island

Lifer Beer!

Our plane left pretty much on time, and Pen-Air actually took our luggage!  We didn't stop at Dillingham and we came in pretty much on time after a stop in St George.  The funny thing was while we were waiting at St George to off load cargo, a guy in row two perked up as they were about to shut the door and asked, "hey, is this St George?"  Out he ran off the plane.  It would have been a week for him to get back if he had slept another minute.

We landed in rain.


But we were ready to bird........We got picked up by Claudia and headed to Pumphouse Lake with a pair of British Tourists and immediately I scored a year bird.

#755 Sharp-tailed sandpiper



But the marsh sandpiper, however, was no where to be found.  Dang.  We ate and tried another place and then Scott texted Claudia and off we went to another lake, it took 5 minutes but I had my major quarry for the trip, the Marsh sandpiper, one that got away in April in Sacramento, a code 5 and a marvelous lifer,,,,I cleaned one up.

#756 Marsh Sandpiper




we also got other birds....one of which was a coded bird..

Ruff
and the ruff being the best one of the evening after the Marsh sandpiper.  I had been here 2 hours and had 2 birds and one lifer and a bonus code bird.  But I was tired, I hadn't slept well the night before sop I went to bed early.

Day 3.  St Paul Island

Rain and More Rain

Scott was the guide today and the pair of Brits hung in there birding as best they could but it was blowing and it was wet, like very wet.  It turned out Martin birded and Jane, read and rarely left the car, unless we were looking at seals, and today was a bad day to visit.

I went and bought some beer as I needed to celebrate the lifer bird from the day before, I had no beer, but needed some, so I bought the weeks supply.

We toured the church.

It was built in 1906.  It is quite ornately designed and it doesn't have any pews, the people stand when they are in service.  It is a quite complete church of the Russian Orthodox Faith, I was impressed.

We tried to find birds the rest of the day but the storm was just overwhelming and so we finished early and I drink my lifer beer.

Day 4.   St Paul Island

The Putchkie Begins

The weather was better and it turned out to be lifer day for Jim.  After breakfast, the British couple toured the seafood plant while Jim and I went to the Salt Lagoon by ourselves and then we planned on doing the crab pots for the first time.  It was a day of many firsts.  Crab pots, putshkie...etc

It took a bit but we dug out a red necked stint for Jim.  Last year in Nome, I had seen one and in passing Jim my scope to see this bird embedded in a large flock of peeps, they flew, never to be seen again.  Jim never got on the bird.  They are easier to see in the spring, with a reddish neck, and now it isn't so easy but with the short bill and other field marks, but carefully we identified it.

Red-necked stint
A few days later we saw 4 of them.  This morning, we struck out in the pots but Jim had learned the crab pot routine.  We birded around the island, doing the usual loop, seeing arctic foxes, the Brits wanted to see them and finally they showed up..

Eventually, we tracked down a gray tailed tattler for Jim's life list.  It was a tattler picnic on Marunich, and we saw 8 tattlers, six sounded like Wandering tattlers, one made no sounds, and the final bird, made the characteristic call of the gray tailed, as you see, it is difficult to separate this bird from a juvie wandering unless they call.  It was Jim's second lifer of the day.  He was pleased.  Very pleased.

Gray tailed tattler

Jim was a putchkie virgin and this stuff is just lush today, think and green

We came back and Jim was going to share a beer with me, one problem, someone had stolen most of my beer, 7 of the 9 bottles I had left, leaving one bottle in each six pack.  Kind of pisses you off, I guess if they had taken all 9 I would have really been pissed off.  I have been here now three weeks in my life and no one had ever stolen anything but that was now over....I drank one of my remaining 2 beers and hid the other one in my room.  Why would you leave two beers if you are going to take them....did they think I wouldn't notice if two were left?

Day 5.  St Paul Island

The Three Amigos

Today we awoke at the usual and headed off for breakfast, a suspicious trail of empty beer bottles of the same brand I had bought ( and not a common brand) was noticed along the side of the road, with the first being just out of the road to the airport.  It took the thief a quarter of a mile to down the first beer.  Sad sad deal.......

Well, we had birds to get, I couldn't brrod over my beer.  I was birding in my back up hat, needed to mix things up but it didn't help so.. I changed hats, I needed some luck, my Attu hat wasn't working, so I switched.

We went to a pond near the airport and refound the Marsh Sandpiper, and then we saw two ruffs, a male and a female and then we saw a wood sandpiper, it is odd on St Paul, we ignored the code 5 bird (the Marsh) as I got literally life poses of the code 2 wood sandpiper, I suspect, I will never see this skittish bird any better and so I almost wore out my camera, and this was even the second one of the day.  I came up her in July to see this bird and well, now I saw it better...oh well, one doesn't know

Wood sandpiper

here is the wood sandpiper flying with the pair of ruffs


how often do you get a chance at a photo like this?
I guess commonly on St Paul
I vowed to never photograph the wood sandpiper again, I think I have enough now.

We poked around and then drove toward Northeast, then, Stephan yelled "thrush!" as something flew over the road in front of us.

We turned the van around.  The bird dived into the side of the road and then appeared and ducked again.  We tried to get it into view.  Piece by piece it came together.  Some times I say I'm too much of an assman, as I seem to always look at the tails of birds first, I need to become a better breast man.....The bird was smaller than a longspur as it walked past one.  The tail was darker brown and then it could be seen it held its tail up, not as far as a wren but not down.  There was no spots on the chest and it was generally gray, When it flew there were no wing bars, and the wings uniformly brown. There was no significant stripe of color on the face or neck....diagnosis....female Siberian Rubythroat, but no picture....this is my 20th rubythroat and I've only gotten one blurry photo in my life.

bird #757  Siberian Rubythroat

Skulky skulky bird.  We chased it trying to get a photo and then it flew to the left into the putchkie, where the putchkie literally had no end and despite a drive into the bird was gone.  It was a needle in a haystack, it was gone.

But other stuff was everywhere...
Arctic Foxes were climbing the walls at Polvina Hill


We started to aggressively attack the putchkie, like down at Webster area.  We kept poking as the hat was starting to get hot.  Don't give up on a hot birding hat, so after dinner we kept pushing...
We went to the Salt Lagoon I spotted a red knot and got a first of year photo of this bird, it wasn't a perfect one but just a juvenile bird but it was a red knot

red knot
and then we heard something else as it started to rain.
We had just seen a semipalmated plover but this was not their call.....we walked back to investigate.
Arvid's lifer 690 was identified and found,

Common Ringed Plover (right of the semipalmated plover) we heard the characteristic call of the two and then sorted out which one was which


7th or 8th island record of this bird so this was a good bird.  I had seen one in Gambell, well four , but Jim was happy but tired....

Day 6 St Paul Island

The Funeral Owl

You know, when you wake up in the morning at St Paul, you have no freaking clue what you are going to see.  I expect anything from smoke from a volcano (1943) to an emergency landing of US Air Force jets (this summer), to French cruise ships and to seeing birds of every persuasion from anywhere, wood thrush (2014) to common redstart (2013)....if a mammoth walked over the hill or a UFO fell out of the sky, I would just shrug and get out my camera.

Today, we woke up to 35 mph northerly winds, and driving rains, so what possibly could show up on a day like today?

Chaucer wrote that "The Owl brings tidings of death."
So what are the odds that an owl would show up on St. Paul Island?
Well snowy owls are fairly common but....well, what about another type of owl?

We drove around and found some birds, a gray tailed tattler here and a red-throated pipit there, then we hiked a lake and we found the marsh sandpiper and then oddly we saw the bird move wait..how could that be?  Then it was clear, we had 2 code five sandpipers....would you believe 2 marsh sandpipers?


So what are the odds I could get a photo of both of them in the same frame?
very rare ABA birds (like 11 sightings) and here I had two in a frame...what a deal, what a deal, this is what birding is about.

Then we drove around some more and we went to the crab pots, Scott yelled at me "get your camera."  I stood transfixed, thinking why?  "Boreal Owl"  he said loudly but not shouting.  "Four feet from me is a boreal owl."

I couldn't fathom this.  "What?"  I said.

"Go get your camera."  He repeated and I did and yes, the funeral owl, Aegolius funereus a boreal owl was right there looking at him and then looking at me from between some crab pots as Scott carefully extracted himself from next to the bird.



It is the owl of the month right after the bird of the month...the marsh sandpiper, a lifer bird for Jim, and just a wow bird for me.  WOW!  Seeing a boreal owl is like one of those lifetime experiences anywhere, but here in St. Paul?  I have only ever seen three.  It had been two decades since one had last appeared here.   I had now seen every owl save a northern pygmy this year, my heard only birds were down to five.

We were unsure if this is a Tengmalm's owl, named after a Swede, the European-Asian version or the Boreal owl from North America, either could have ended up here. 
We ate a happy dinner after I bought some added beer.  Then we found Jim his lifer 692, a spectacled eider, the same one with 9 king eiders I had seen here last month.



A lump on top of a black rock, a juvie male but well, the correct species.

Hopefully, this owl will not be a harbinger of death, just more rare birds.   What a day, a duet of marsh sandpipers and a Boreal/ Tengmalm's owl....a day a spec eider wasn't even in the top 5 birds.  What will tomorrow bring?

Day 7 St Paul Island

Weather this way or that way

I woke up tired and a bit sore.  I had been going at this now for a bunch of days in a row.  Dragging marshes and walking.  Man I was sore....but birding goes on.

Jim had picked up the remains of a weather balloon and we used it as a front to get a tour of the NOAA weather station, these guys and families keep to themselves and nobody had ever met them.  We met a very nice guy named Hans, he had been here 2 years and had just recently left the island for his first break.  He home schooled his daughter and we met his wife.

I was very interesting and we learned no one in Anchorage that makes the local weather forecast has ever been to St Paul...in a nutshell, don't believe it.  He did give us a bird tip...he had seen a large long necked bird, he pointed at the heron....maybe...a grey heron?  Well we went to search for the bird with a rarity in our heads and then Claudia spotted it on a hill....just a sandhill crane  


Sandhill Crane
But one never knows......

We picked up 2 birders from Alaska, a mother daughter team and then of course they wanted to look for the Marsh sandy, as of course that is a great bird, having seen it 4 times, I worked on adding to my weird combo photos, here is a ruff and a marsh sandpiper, 3 plus 5 equals 8?



So now on my list of combo photos, 2 Marshes, that is 5 plus 5, a wood plus 2 ruffs, 2 plus 3 x 2 equals 8, and this one...
the combo photos are endless, but well, no new birds.
In general, though, today, I was overwhelmed with disappointment as a bird I have always dreamed about, a jabiru, was seen in Texas and here I am, besides a sea eagle the number one bird on my wish list....I don't know, it is hard to be disappointed after seeing 63 life birds in a year, I get over the jibiru especially on my next great bird.  

Day 8  St Paul

Stephan and the Wandering Tattlers

Today we went out with Stephan Lorenz, and well, we'd been birding with Stephan a bit too much.  Stephan said he wanted a nickname.  Well all we could come up with was that he was incredibly punctual so that doesn't make a nickname.  The Honeydripper came out but that didn't seem to fit.  I came up with what we would call his band, assuming he could play anything and I came up with Stephan and the Wandering Tattlers.......I guess playing at a music venue near you.

Oh and the birding...well, the weather was okay, I guess as the wind swung to the south.  I forgot and/or lost everything today, rain pants, room key, camera lens cover which I found in the putshkie, well that was lucky.  I did stpo and smell the roses, well, I guess, the putshkie...



We jumped a pair of common snipe later in the day which was Jim's 9th lifer for the trip, never easy to get a good picture, I at least got something



Best birds of the day, were Baird's sandpiper and a bank swallow, like I said, you never know what you are going to see here....and here is the Baird's sandpiper.



Jim celebrated the day with a whale's jaw bone



we dug the first bird out of the crab pots, a gray cheeked thrush it was a start...but nothing for the year list
so the numbers, 

Big Year Total:  757
Coded Birds:  86
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  35,438Flight Miles 139, 200
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 140   Different Airports: 47
Near bear/ death experiences 1Hours at sea: 225Miles walked 332
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12
states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  63
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5

best bird of period the marsh sandpiper pair and boy was that boreal owl cool!
So three new birds, a good start, one I thought I would get, one I thought I'd never get and one I hoped to get.  The shorebird migration in St Paul really hasn't happened or/ if it did it largely missed the island as there is this swirling wind in the Bering sea and maybe they just aren't stopping.  We had a small drop out of sharp-tailed sandpipers, maybe 60 birds around the island, and a whole lot more of ruddy turnstones, and we were seeing a few trans-Bering migration birds....so that is the update,

birding continues, I'm not missing just birding

Olaf

Pacific Coast Trails and Tears

Pacific Crest Trail, San Diego County California

The PCT was designated as a scenic hiking trail way back in 1968, and spans 2569 miles from north to south along the western states.  The trail is one of the best unkept secrets in North America and it is something to personally behold.  In walking along the PCT the contrasts are stunning, they stunned me--from snow covered volcanoes to harsh mountain deserts, it can be 20 degrees or 120 degrees.  There are a lot of views to jar the senses. You may be shocked to see people wearing full wet gear in the Pacific northwest or the rampant nudity, with people wearing nothing at and around Deep Creek Hot Springs north of San Bernadino.  You will see some of the cleanest hikers there but at other places you will see hikers so filthy, and in such threadbare clothing at either end, it will make you laugh.

My favorite juxtaposition was the gorgeous blooming rhododendrons at the base of Mt Hood, in Oregon and then a mere hundred feet away a man in a Volvo plastered with save the earth bumper stickers and stop global warming slogans, was burning a couch. Yes, burning a couch with I'm sure at least 5 types of toxic gasses being formed, how much of a carbon foot print is it to burn a sofa?.

Ah, it is such a trail, a trail of dreams.  In my hikes, I've tallied no less than 4 lifers on this trail, Vaux's swift in Oregon, white throated swifts at Deep Creek Hot Springs and black-chinned sparrows and mountain quail near San Diego.  I've seen American dippers near to Los Angeles while canvasbacks swam in the same view.  This year, my gray vireo came near the trail and my best shots of Lawrence's goldfinches came a short walking distance off the trail, in a nutshell it is something everyone should behold.


I came here for a reason, well there is no bears here, for a start.  I like birding here, and love the peace and freedom of this trail, wear what I want, go at my pace, just sit and enjoy the space and the view.  I like the solitude, and I wanted to actually see a California quail, I had only heard them this year, and I wanted photos of mountain quail and black chinned sparrows, both late birds to my life list and ones I wanted to be able to re-find just for the sport of it.  I like going to a patch of stuff and have a hunt bird, and today I had three.  The California quail proved the most difficult.

Black Chinned Sparrow

California Quail
California Scrub-jay
My first photo of the bird as a new species!
Mountain Quail
Okay, I missed it, you'd think with 9 total mtn quail seen around the trail, on one day and three the next, I could have photographed one?  Photographing quail is tough, really tough.  Just seeing mountain quail involves patience, luck, and maybe skill but I can find them, I just flush them before I can photograph them or they won't come out of the brush.
Getting the California Quail photographed was a challenge and I saw about 50.
Western Tanager

Okay, now I am getting on my soap box a bit.  Just up Kitchen Creek Road is a very nice National Forest Campground and here we are, less than 2 hours from 20 million people and the campground has 2 campers today, one of which looks like he or she just lives here.  Really?  At $14 a day, the cost to stay here an entire month is less than two nights hotel in Monterrey.  The place has water, views, trails, and shade, and BIRDS....what gives?
This is the problem with America.  Our government says our economy will improve when the consumers start spending more money, I believe the problem is that we are spending too much money and we need to learn that less..is more.  This place should be full.  I was just in the Bay area, The Bay area?  I can't even afford to live there.  1 million a house?  You can't cap rate a 1 million house, the rent would need to be $10 K a month, I can't afford that, so things are skewed. You need to be worth 5 to ten million to afford a house there minimum and the payments, do janitors make 150 a year?  Will 150K a year be enough?  Who can live in San Fran?  Either there are tons of rich people out there and /or something is about to explode as the math...it doesn't work.  
But everyone can afford to come here, to the southern PCT.  and I mean everyone, even birders....
Heck, I hear all the time people need the mountain quail and the black chinned sparrow, maybe even the gray vireo, this place has them.  So I'm putting my time and money where my mouth is...unlike others who are trying to promote a faux cause....Olaf is promoting birding on a budget and to show off a marvelous hidden gem of America.
Next year I'd even be willing to lead a group, maybe pay me $100 bucks each for the week for expense. We'd camp and have a good time.  It takes a bit of patience to get the quail, morning and evening walks.  We could have day trips into San Diego to a trail I know that has all the local birds like gnatcatcher, munia, Bell's sparrow, etc.  It took me 30 minutes for the whole selection this spring.  Ridgeway's rail is easy on another trip, even the same day.  There is a great hot springs/ spa near this trailhead that well once you get the shock of body exposure out of the way you might make you even feel comfortable going to the optional non-clothing optional beach day in San Diego, it is gorgeous at Black's. I'm bringing my wife and it would be fun, so come on birding with Olaf on the cheap, where else would you get such an opportunity?  I kid you not, great birds and enjoyment of the great outdoors, if I could share the PCT and the hills above San Diego, with just one person and get them some lifer birds it would be worth it for me.  Or...pay a guide a lot of money, whatever....I love birding San Diego so much I'm willing to basically give away my time.
That is what my big year is about....I'm doing it for the birds and to get people out here and seeing the birds if I have to come with, so be it.  
Now...my other pet peeve....since I'm on a roll, might as well get them all out in the open

The Salton Sea, the place brings tears to my eyes...literally, they burn from the toxins....that is certified organic, (picture) note in the background, the large desalination plant, the smell where I'm standing is a cross between salt march at low tide and being down wind from a week old herd of dead cows.  You can't photo smells.  Behind the sign, they are drilling a gas well to power the desalination plant that makes the water to make your "organic" plants....is this really organic?  Do you care when you buy this stuff at Whole Foods or your co-op, do you feel good about yourself?  ..

Okay, what is the rest of this environmentally killing operation making ?  HAY!   Hay to feed cows and in my house, I can't give hay away and you water the desert because the government pays the Hay Kings to do it and through a loop hole in the milk pricing formula....all in a state with supposed severe water restrictions.....the %%&^% school 15 miles from the site has manicured green lawn, all in Imperial County, the poorest in the state????   The Hay Baron in that town has a lake in his front yard and planted palm trees.....all because he is supported by our government to legally exploit this valley.......enough rant.  Where is the Sierra Club?  This is what needs to stop, let the rivers run, and grow the food where it can be supported by natural climate.

BTW, there were no yellow-footed gulls on the sea this visit, but eared grebes, cormorants, and lots of shorebirds in the toxic soup.  It has been 120 here, but it was maybe just 105 today, the sea was down 5 feet from last time and the rock where my lifer blue footed booby in 2013 is now totally out of the water....Yikes!

    Well there is my update, in San Diego....no year birds but still I love birding here and that is what this is about and readers....my invitation awaits..
Olaf

Something Bruin and it's not beer

I'm not even sure where to start this tale.

At 3pm I was singing and walking on my favorite trail in Madera Canyon, thinking about how good I had it in life.  I was on my favorite trail, it was perfect Arizona weather (as in no monsoon), and I was having a gorgeous day birding.  Red-faced warblers were coming in close by me at 4pm, I had seen a year bird earlier, and dug out some really fun birds and then.........sh&t!  I'll just say it if you don't like my vernacular well then....shit!  You are reading the wrong blog.

I will say it here, I am not a brave man., despite my bravado, I do not typically take risks.  I avoid confrontation, I lead life close to the vest, and well, it hasn't failed me in 50 years.  I should have died in my youth from a terrible disease, it tried but well...I didn't.  Death for me was always something real.

I am writing this at the Four Points Hotel near the Tucson Airport drinking, if the words get slurred well, I'm not stopping, I need to get this story out there, but first let me say ....I am alive. 
I AM ALIVE!!  Yes, the good news!

This stupid big year, doesn't matter, health, use of my arms ...now that matters.
I was not supposed to be here tonight but I'm not fit to go on.  It was hard to get here, I need not a beer but many.  I need to numb the pain.  My left arm hurts from just flexing out the muscles, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I don't know if I believe this stuff, but many of us have spiritual animals.  I know a woman who is the beaver woman of Two Harbors, Minnesota, some have a bull, or a moose, mine is an eagle, but I have a nemesis animal, and maybe I've misread my spiritual animal, maybe it isn't an eagle, the one that comes to me when I least need it or expect it, and it is never good.  Is those damn bears.

A little history...

I was plagued by spiritual visions between the time 4 of us went to Glacier Park in 1989 and ended during my honeymoon at the same spot, the vision ...well hard to explain, unless you experienced it, let me say it involved the continual munching of a bear on me when I disagreed with it.  If it ate my leg I couldn't walk right for a while, broke my arm, same thing, I generally stopped sleeping....this is well documented in my Big Year Book BPT, and I blamed it on accidentally sleeping under Chief Mountain, a place the medicine men went for visions...maybe they should have put up a warning sign?

On my honeymoon, I turned around into the belly of a bear standing in Alberta, standing above me on a river bank when my wife yelled for me to turn around, I was fishing. I dropped my chow right there.  For that, I blamed Silja.

I got chased by a Grizzly Bear in Yellowstone Park on July 4th 2013 into Hindu wedding party, wearing nothing but a pair of boots. It was actually lucky I did or I would have been eaten, I fear, I shouldn't have run, and for that I blamed Thor, he told me to go to Beartooth Pass.  The Barrow's Goldeneye was NOT worth it.

I've fretted about bears in Nome, worried about them fishing, and well, lived in fear my whole life from bears.

Today, I have no one to blame but myself....Man I hate f'in bears, I say that here, right now.  Nothing good ever comes to me in my interactions with them, seeing one is an omen of doom, IMHO

I'll leave the birds to later as I'm sure you are now curious, well even if you are not, I'm finishing this, I need to get this out.

I was walking down the Carrie Nation trail and just after seeing these...

Red Faced Warblers


I was working down the trail thinking how lucky I was to be able to bird all year and I heard a growl.

Let me say, I went up the trail in search of Thrush, I knew there had to be berries.  I found berries, lots of them


I don't know what tree this is, but it looked like good Aztec Thrush food so I watched on the way up and waited, listened, and found no thrush, no robins, no birds of any type and on the way down, I saw no thrush as all I found was a bear.

Okay, it is just a black bear, right?  Laurens Halsey warned me and I just pooh poohed him about 9 months ago and I dismissed the Fort Huachuca story about a bear breaking open a car to get a candy bar, these are just garbage bears.  I grew up with black bears....yea, big scary bears...yea right...


Initially the bear was about 40 feet away and after 2013 I decided to take a picture of all bears in case I didn't make it so everyone knew the killer, but that was a grizzly, but I snapped a quick photo before things got weird.  This was a big boar and a very big one but....I stood up and shouted expecting it to run and instead.....the bear walked out in the open and growled at me, no more photos so I put down the camera quick and picked up rocks and shouted and screamed, the bear, just looked at me and snarled.  I sort of made that oh no thought in my head.

Okay, it was time to get serious so I threw rocks, hitting trees and landing them just a few feet away.  The bear ignored them and then stood up on two legs and growled more.  Okay, maybe this isn't just a run of the mill bear.  I, then, not knowing what to do, shouted and waived my hands nothing.  I didn't want to hurt the bear but now only 30 feet away, I had warned it, so I put the smallest rock squarely into its ribs, I can still throw hard.  It didn't flinch, it didn't back down, it didn't do anything.  Then I threw a four inch rock hitting it in its right paw, up on the thigh.  I got a loud growl and then I noticed I was down to two rocks.  None were handy.  I slowly bent over to pick up my camera and sling it over my neck, I don't know why, it is $11,000 dollars of stuff.  Was I thinking correctly?  NO! It came down to all fours, so that was good, I think,  when I bent over walked slowly at me growling.

"Okay you fucker," It was now maybe ten feet from me, I shouted more obscenities at it as wrapping my bins in my left hand, I figured I'd throw the biggest rock and then transfer the palm-sized rock to my other hand and just punch my way through it, maybe it would give up before I died, I had nothing left to do.  I still had my mouth like that would help.

"You know, (Expletive) when you kill me they are going to hunt you down like the (expletive) dog you are and you are going to be stuffed at the forest service office, (expletives x 8).  It stood up again.  I took a deep breath.  This was going to be it, it is amazing how time slows when you face death.  I could sense the anger from the bruin, I could taste its breath, Gosh It stunk.   I don't know, I saw an opening, I started to side step to my left.    We could have reached out and gave each other high fives as I slid slowly to my left and then it growled again. I held up my fists like I was ready to face death, I didn't really want to die here in Arizona, but well we never know where

Then shockingly I was past it, and making space so down the trail I slid, under that tree I took a picture of the berries and it didn't follow me.......whew.  I race walked to the car!  I was only up just above the bench, it wasn't far.  Crap, I can't believe I brought up my family night birding up here, what AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crap, that was close.  My left arm is so sore right now from being totally flexed out.  I somehow scraped my right elbow, I don't know how. You know my finger issues from the strange reaction doesn't seem so bad at the moment.

I was shaking so bad in the car, I couldn't drive well, shaking so badly, so I stopped at Santa Rita on the way down and saw the plain capped starthroat again, getting a picture this time, the guy I sat next to looked at me and said, "buddy, you look like you got a story."  I told him.  He shock my hand after the bird.  He said I needed something good.  Here is a good bird.


I may have better pictures but I don't care.

I was all happy to have earlier photographed a zone-tailed hawk (4th) in Box Canyon nearly running off the road, but I don't care now.  Not even worth sorting the photo.  I was happy to have photographed a Varied bunting east of Box Canyon but again, I don't care.  I saw the Berylline hummingbird at the Beatty's twice this morning without getting a photo bird 754 but I don't even care about that, that all was a long a very long time ago.  Today was a long, a very long day.  Right now I'm starting the next beer, this is a different kind of Lifer beer, my life, ......

I've seen these two hummers before, the Berylline in 2103 with an 8.5/10 picture.  I got a better starthroat photo from the same trip.....I don't care.  Just the same beware of bears up that canyon and Laurens, I stand corrected.

When I'm drunk enough, maybe I'm going to bed, maybe not....nightmares and PTSD, that will follow this, it always does with bears.

oh f$%%

Olaf

Big Year Total:  754
Coded Birds:  83
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  35,321Flight Miles 135, 800
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 136   Different Airports: 47
Near bear/ death experiences 1Hours at sea: 225Miles walked 281
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  62
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5

There is some wine in California

8/15/2016
Central California

This is the end, hold your breath and count to ten, (one two three four...), feel the earth move and then hear my heart burst again, for this is the end.  I've drowned and dreamt this moment, so overdue I owe them, swept away, I'm stolen. Let the sky fall, when it crumbles, I will stand tall, face it all together at skyfall.

I had 8 goals this year

1) be the quickest to ever see 700 in a year (and for that matter see 700) (check)
2) get in shape and lose a pants size (check, Stor (big) Olaf is down to a sweldt 38
3) see more birds than Neil Hayward (sorry Neil)
4) bird naked on nude recreation week (check)
5) meet Debi Shearwater and Ben Basham  (Debi is amazing!) check-check
6) connect with my daughter, the young woman calling herself "L" (check)
7) transition my life into the next phase, (wait out a non-compete, and plan my 2017 activities), (family trips up Emery Peak trail in Big Bend every 4-5 years, race-walking and I'm going to work on my cooking and painting) check
8) My birding goal which I haven't ever written in here, you may think you know but you would be wrong, I'm a sea of disinformation, that phase begins now,
so as the unlike, what the lyrics state in skyfall, maybe this isn't the end
I'm still below budget, had a good profitable week last week at home, got my business commitments in check, back to writing my murder mystery, and...yea AND birding.

So I headed west with the young'n and she was hungry for well, whales, but she would take birds, as stated before, it was just lucky we got there, and we had time to go look for birds on the edge of Half Moon bay

First bird right out of the parking lot was a lower 48 bird, USA bird, and a photographic lifer bird for me, and bird #504 for L
chestnut-backed chickadee, no head but well, you know what it is


We made the departure of Debi's boat, Debi was everything I had dreamt of and more, I'm glad I finally had my chance to meet the seabird guru, and after that the day was sort of frosting.  Christian H was on this boat as he heads wherever he is heading to, somehow I get the idea talking to him he is just trying to show up on Gambell towards the end of the month without a place to stay during high birding season....I think everyone in America will be curious to see how that goes, as most of us would like to show up there without reservations and no money...I wish him luck.

Waiting in the dock, I got the fishing report from Smoothrock lake Ontario, the trip I am usually on, biggest northern pike, 42.5 inches won the trophy, by my boat partner, when I'm with, we call that...and good start.
The blueberries were good and Greg ran his temporary partner into the ground by day three, I'll certainly be welcomed back to guide duty next year.  I will also be taking my daughter pike fishing in June prior to the pike hunting trip, it is a low keyed family trip but when L wants to win the pike jackpot she wants dad to go with pike fishing, and we go real pike fishing.  BTW this is her monster pike from 2015


This is the 8th biggest pike in my boat, ever.  This picture from Olaf Danielson now graces the cover of the camps brochure...and yes my daughter both birds and fishes with me, we also shoot carp together with a bow.  She can handle her end of my boat but I don't let her get too cut up, but real pike fishing always involves a little blood, this is her second plus 20 pound pike and she is only 16.  We hand land every pike, no nets, and doing that takes a little skill without losing an appendage.

Back to Half Moon Bay,

The boat cruised out the jetty and on a rock was a Wandering tattler, a lower 48 bird for me


L yawned remembering all the effort to get one in Alaska, which she could have spent sleeping or something....oh well, who knew?

We cruised around, there was whales and cetacians everywhere, maybe 120 humpbacks,
a few blue and fin whales, tons of pacific white sided dolphin, northern right whale-dolphin (lifer cetacian), harbor porpoises (lifer), minke whales seven for the trip assuming I did not miss anything and well counting Sat and Sunday, Steller's, California sea lions, an elephant seal, harbor seals, it was a marine mammal orgy of activity, north of Bodega Bay, there was 250 fathoms of krill, hence the birds and the mammals...whales almost rubbing the boat



Pacific white sided dolphins


In some cases they were jumping over whales, and having sealions and something called a northern right whale-dolphin jumping over them, it was chaos..but cool chaos!

The birds...we saw great auklet and murrelet action as well as shearwater action but the storm petrels were scarce,  I did see the allusive northern gannet on a cliff from far away, which is a local great bird, I guess and we got a good look at a Wilson's storm-petrel close...some pictures

Scripp's murrelet

Craveri's unphotographed by me as I first heard it was a Scripp's pair and I was pointed the pther way and had just taken the above photo only later to be changed on photo inspection, ...again for me and this bird, maybe someday a photo....

Brown Booby

Sabine's Gulls

I love those wing markings on this bird

Day two of the seabird extravaganza was with the RROC (Redwood Regional Ornothilogical Club..I think) out of Blowdega, I mean Bodega Bay (Debi's name for the place), and yes, It blew, and it was cold and it was foggy, and wavy...and....I had an issue....I developed a weird contact dermatitis of my finger tips, I was thinking from either the steering wheel of the rental or the cover on my camera.  In my life, I once developed a latex allergy to a small degree in surgical residency, and my hands would just peel and burn, and in this case, they are again...it could also be a cleaner for the rental or shampoo, but my hands look and felt like crap...but "This is NOT the end" so despite my bad luck on peleagics and bad hands, the birding must go on or maybe this song had a different meaning?  We'll see later in the blog..

We were very low key on this boat, I booked it under my daughter's name, we were almost anonymous, only one guy recognized me and that was later on...I just wanted to bird and munch on mango chips all day, show my duaghter some cool storm-petrels and since this was s club boat and I wasn't in the club, and they graciously let us on I didn't want to get in anyone's way.

The seasickness rate on the boat was about 40%, we weren't part of it on this boat and it was a more independent affair but I was happy they let us tourists on.  Some locals looked like they would just die, the "head" was getting pretty scary as only one person used the back rail like they were supposed to, but well we got into storm-petrels maybe once in a lifetime storm petrels, so many of the sick ones perked up.

Fork-tailed stormpetrels

My daughter had only seen one this year in a hand, and couldn't count it in Alaska, I'd seen a few a distance on the REPO cruise, so this was great.

Ashy Storm-petrels 
rafts of storm petrels

maybe a thousand of each species total, maybe more.  Many came right up to the boat and all of this with NO chumming, as that is illegal now, someone complained and everyone is trying to get a permit, Debi too

I was trying to get better photos and then with my salt encrusted camera, I used up the battery and my daughter, decided it was nap time, so she took a nap and loaned me her camera, then up flew a shearwater, it was close by and very dark, bigger than a soty. I looked at it as it was close, I couldn't even say the words of what it was, and then said "crap,"  yellow bill, black tip, "flesh foot!!" was shouted,  I snapped a quick set of photos, three hopelessly out of focus and one okay, in maybe 20 seconds, then it was team birding so I ran away from the front of the boat as others came to the front of the boat, had to get the daughter, had to get the daughter, I thought as that IS TEAM BIRDING, I found her in the cabin, she was out cold, like she didn't even remember I poked her hard later.  It was all I could do, she missed it, never woke up, I came out and watched it fly away.....

Flesh-footed shearwater


Bird 753 for the year and a LIFER bird, lifer beer, I chanted.  I could taste it, but was saddened about the daughter's miss, finally, a little luck for me, not for her.


It was an oatmeal stout BTW, oh wait, I'm still on the trip

Then we got into a pod of whales, L woke up for that, it was about as good as whale watching ever ever got.  COOL!!  She took back her camera and was off to the edge as happy as a whale lister would ever be, the shutter straining under the constant pushing.....


L's total for the trip, despite the big miss, plus 11, 514 for the year. WOW!
Best bird for the trip, she states, the many in-close black-footed albatrosses
Handsome birds...
Yea, they were mega cool, I agree!

It is back to school for her in a week, yea, maybe Adele's song lyrics from above are for her not me, a majority of our birding together is over so "maybe this IS the end."  It is the end of an era, as I can't bird with her until October, maybe not the whole year, that is very sad for me, we have bonded in a whole new way, a way I could have never guessed, she is SUCH a good kid, it is almost bringing a tear to my eye right here.  OKAY IT IS BRINGING A TEAR TO MY EYE.  I will throw her on a plane to home, little Miss Independent, I watched her 777 being pushed out of the plane  and started crying, my plane to LAX was 15 minutes later.  I am crying typing this.  I love my kids, and they like me!  We texted the whole time she was able before the plane backed off, she as unhappy some old guy got my seat next to hers, and well, she signed off, and that was ...that.... onward I must go.

It wasn't an earthquake:

 feel the earth move and then hear my heart burst again, for this is the end
It was me being sad, I miss her already

Sad on the west coast
Olaf

Big Year Total:  753
Coded Birds:  82
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  35,102Flight Miles 134, 600
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 136   Different Airports: 47
(is the flight over Monterrey a segment or two or none?)Hours at sea: 225Miles walked 279
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  62
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5cost of trip
pelagics 330
flight 460
car 235
hotels, 510
food, 85

total  $1620

PS thank you Debi and the RROC again!

Box Elder Bug Blues

George Bernard Shaw once quipped "
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul"

I would like to change this slightly.  If you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul is quite happy but Peter is mad, and visa versa if you don't do it, Paul is angry but Peter is happy, in other words, no matter what you do, people are unhappy, because people are inherently unhappy and there is nothing you can do about it.  I have long ago understood that I leave a long line of unhappy people in my wake and therefore you all are just going to have to deal with it.

So if you have been waiting for an update from me, you are just going to have to be deal with it.  I was busy...

An update from Lake ..Wob...well in my case The news from Enemy Swim Lake...

In local news the long time CEO of the regions largest industry was recently fired by his father in-law....talk about in law issues, that is tough one to bounce back from.....At Bill's pretty good grocery...they had a special on plums, the first of the season....   The usual hot and dry August has been replaced by torrents of rain, intermittent flooding, and well 100 degrees.  My wife's niece and friends came by to visit and well, they took out the powerboat and took out the prop, now the third prop repair job since I've driven the boat.  Then they took out the jet ski and submerged it, luckily I only own 2 watercraft, nothing else to break, as after 420 bucks of repairs, one begins to about this and then I remember a bed we broke visiting friends and no, sex was NOT involved...sigh, I wasn't even there when the stuff got broken. Well, that is that, I guess.   It looks like there is going to be a big crop of box elder bugs...The local price of sweet corn is up to $4 a bushell if you can still get it, but tomatoes are dropping. It has been an amusement to watch the helicopter laying electric cable on the new powerline east of town and west of town the mysterious 6 foot pipeline laying continues.  No one knows what that is for. There was a false alarm at the firehall when Bo Schenckles accidentally leaned on the alarm, and at The Real Safe Insurance Company building an announcement went out to warn the people to be careful of the mowers as well with all the rain, they will be still mowing the grass.  Football has started although with the heat everyone on the Maroon and Gold looks lethargic and the coach assures everyone that everyone will be fit for the big game with the arch enemy Sisseton, who it is reported has developed a secret trick play so secret that they are afraid to even tell their own players about it.  .  
It was such a slow news weekend that I got to be the front page of the regional newspaper, but again I wrote the story and well, that is my job

In my news....
I did fly off last weekend to Hatteras for 2 days of pelagics although the second day was cancelled.  I saw and photographed

Band rumped storm-petrels

South Polar skua


Audubon's shearwaters


all first of year photographs for the year, we saw 7 species although no new year birds, my daughter which was going with, cancelled  as my sister who is 8 mos pregnant, needed to finish her teacher certification studies before the baby comes and needed someone to watch her 3 year old so Lena decided family was more important than birding, oddly all 7 species, she needed.....
As I said, they cancelled the second day due to weather and so, if I would have came a week earlier I would have tallied 2 birds and then went this weekend to the west coast, would have gotten 1.  It is odd how things just don't work out for me.  Surprising I've gotten what I have gotten.

With nothing else to do, Silja and I stopped by the swamp, got a few chiggers and spotted a prothonotory  warbler and looked for red-cockaded woodpeckers for something to do.

The warblers were everywhere


The woodpeckers were out and about but all I got on camera this time was an odd artificial nest hole for them.

The yellow flies or as we call them deer flies were present but you could deal with them, the heat almost killed my poor wife. I like birded the Carolina and it was fun.
 
We arrived early to Sanford NC to visit my wife's cousin Tim, now retired from Ft Bragg and the US Army.  Tim is fighting a bad back from too many parachute jumps but I appreciate his service for us and hope it improves.  It was a nice visit and they live in a nice part of NC.

On the flight home a facebook picture of the duct tape on the plane engine went viral

I guess it was something called 350 mph tape but still, it made me a little weary of flying, more on that later

This week was a big week, (well big for Peter (life), I didn't rob it to pay Paul (birding) ) It was a big week for me and it wasn't because the in-laws came to visit.  This is the birding blues period, the doldrums and nothing of note is or has been around to chase and I needed to do some things, like....taxes for one.

This was the week I usually chase big pike in Ontario, but alas I gave up my spot and my 4 year run as the biggest pike champion, cry cry

 This 2014 pike was the biggest on the lake for the decade.  Biggest since my 1997 brute, and three pounds bigger than my 2013 monster.  Oh what I gave up for birding.  I live for wrestling with the big ugly green slimy things. Nothing beats the smell of pike in the morning or a boat with more of your blood in the bottom of the boat than that from fish....I could be there... and I do bird when I fish though, but alas, I'm committed to this whole thing.

Well, like I said I also had to finish taxes, with no time to do it later, and I also still had a couple of company returns.  I also had to lay out my mother's book on the sheriffs of Burnett County Wisconsin, she is such the historian.  One can't forsake everything, you know this is just something kind of silly I'm doing.  I also had to come home to sell a business.....yea, I am no longer storage king of the region....sorry about that.  Two business sales in less than a year, not bragging, just is.

This was one really odd deal, and thank you big year, you actually made me money..but in an odd way.

The fact that I built up a storage company is sort of an odd deal and luck in the first place.  It was the depths of the hell they called the great recession.  I needed office space and so there was one with storage attached and well, it was like eating Doritos...you can't just stop at one.. So, I (or the company I manage) bought one in bankruptcy, then another, them I built one, then two, acquired another company, and begged a U-Haul franchise for one, and had big plans, but then I had employment issues...zoning issues, and a unrecord easement in a deed of a property I was negotiating from a bank... and it stalled a bit, and well I think I wised up... in what I had basically started as a joke with no hope to grow it when I spun off our office buildings into a separate company with a lease back, and then stumbled into real estate in a big way but well that was then....now I'm 50 and tired of the rat race

Back in April I got contacted from a guy wishing to purchase the storage division.  This had happened before, they didn't know how much I had.  There is a savings by getting bigger, and I had just sold the office division as we decided we needed an open space design (oddly they are now making offices to get rid of the open office design)....only 18 mos later....?  Anyhow, I was open to selling as well, I had been selling stuff, so he asked me if it was for sale, I said "anything is for sale, except dog and family and one painting I own"  and I gave him a price I wouldn't refuse. Then I went birding.

He countered but I was still birding so I never got the call or message, then thinking I ignored it, he went higher on offer, now birding in Texas I flew all day west, still no message, and no internet for 3 days as cut my power cord in a door....well then I had to get back east....where he was thinking I think, that I wasn't negotiating thinking I didn't like the counter, eventually he just paid my asking price when I just didn't have cell service for a week, and I would have possibly taken less, but alas, the big year paid for itself in what I spent or will spend by me playing the "no reply" method of negotiating which wasn't my intent, but I got extra for selling it so some things are good.  Oddly he is doing what I wanted to do, and is merging two companies and creating a better monopoly, but well, he is hungrier than I.

I closed on Wednesday, I then, had to go and say good bye to my property.  Here is e of the building I designed and built in Madison Minnesota in 2014,  it feels like an old friend, now gone, tear tear, I had to make my rounds to say goodbye


I am a good buyer but a very poor seller, usually beset by guilt, should I have gotten more?  Did I screw up?  I get anxious selling anything, DO I HAVE THE START OF A HOARDING PROBLEM?  Please intervene if I start taking home dozens of cats or something

IDK, I still feel odd, but I have sold 19 buildings now in 17 months and well, I don't really want to manage property into my 5th decade, no one is happy and dealing with renters is not my Idea of fun, something is always wrong, the checks bounce.  The unit behind the sign above...., we got a search warrant in the spring and it was filled with meth house equipment as he was moving locations, BUT he had paid his rent.....let me say it here, the abandoned units.....we rarely even get enough stuff to pay off the dump fees, let alone the effort to get it there.

so I guess...good riddance...IDK, what to do what to do...too late now I guess
I did it

Madison Minnesota BTW has a great mascot, it is Louie The Lutefisk as it is the Lutefisk capital of the free world and I took a picture of it but it will not be accepted to myself on email from my phone so well...I'll spare you Louie

I did chase a bird while I was down there...45 miles from Madison is my favorite Chinese spot...
my favorite festival in Minneota
 a town I worked in one day and got to even watch the bug races!  I could photograph this sign.
and receive it BTW
..and farther south, in the Lyon County dump...a black-headed gull was spotted, a lower 48 lifer for me, and a lower 48 and USA year bird........good bird....it was 101 degrees on the road and the bird was too flighty for a photo after I sorted it out from the Franklin's but it was a continuing bird and well, I had to get back for the second half of my 60 hours of tax work.  It is very light for a Black-headed gull, winter plumage already, all white gull with black wing tips, bright red bill and a small black spot behind the eye, can't really be anything else.

Okay, the 12th came today and I finished up an Oklahoma tax return at 11pm last night and started to pack, then I was notified that Delta had delayed my 5am departure from Sioux falls until 645.  I'm flying Delta because I am not doing Monterrey and so San Jose I can use my new Platinum status to be somebody so I will actually get there....right?
and Sioux Falls for if I have to leave a car at the airport for a month, I'll save 900 bucks
We slept a little longer and took off, then at 0509 when I walked to the counter, just as I got notified that my delayed plane status was changed...to new time, it just left at 0507,..................I had missed it.  REALLY?  Is that the best you can do Delta?

Damn airlines.....why notify me of the change after it leaves when you had notified me of it earlier that it was delayed..now it wasn't even delayed, it took off early...I was told that those are estimates, and one shouldn't come late even, so then why do they send it out?

So I used my status to rebook, as everyone else in line came in to learn the same things....only people to make plane were those non frequent fliers who don't have the Delta app....us elites...we ended up screwed. The woman helping me on the phone told me she would expedite my upgrade which I learned later, never happened, she was just being nice to get me off the phone.

So now I'm flying to San Fran and my 8am plane is now delayed the same 1 hour and 51 minutes, hum, just enough so if I run, I maybe can make connection in Minneapolis...does this sound familiar?  This is deja vu all over again to the Bay area, maybe I'm just not meant to ever go out here....my daughter is just smiling and well there is nothing I can do about it.  She is a great kid.  I moved my car rental and found out the difference in price is 370 bucks (more), so then I cancelled and rebooked cars online and saved money, amazing again......I just couldn't use my gold status with Hertz on the phone, they tried to screw with me...Hard to fathom again, first is last and the last....first IDK, why screw with your best customers?

so if I ever make it anywhere, I'm back on the road for birds...taxes and property sales done, oh what a relief that is.  

here is an update on my stuff, no new birds

Big Year Total:  752
Coded Birds:  81
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  35,102Flight Miles 132, 200
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 134   Different Airports: 46
(is the flight over Monterrey a segment or two or none?)Hours at sea: 201Miles walked 278
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  61
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5

Oh well, I HAVE figured out what happiness is this year and I think I'm happy.  I have maybe even figured out 2017.  I'm taking up race walking, going to Jackson MS in January to learn correct technique.  I need to get in shape, stay in shape.  My old punter knees won't take running.  I have also started to enjoy my retirement as the week alone with accounting has made me reflect as to how great I really have it....and I guess, I have a lot less things in my backpack to weigh me down....no longer will I get a nasty call from the weed commissioner in some small town that I have noxious weeds growing in my storage properties as they aren't mine (well not owned by the company I was managing partner for any more).

Well, I continue with the Box Elder Bug Blues....I need to check on my plane, maybe it left without us?
That would be my luck....damn airlines, they make a living out of robbing Peter to pay Paul
Olaf

America's Worst Airline

Well, I remember a nickname for America West Airlines as America's Worst Airline.  Multiple bankruptcies and ill-timed mergers of Eastern Airlines, Allegheny, Ozark Airlines, America West, US Airways, TWA, and finally American Airlines have cobbled together the "New" American Airlines.  Whose culture is it these days?  I'm not even sure they know.

Their logo is "We are glad you're here"  That I'm certain, they do NOT believe.  I don't believe it

Truth be told, 10-15 years ago, I liked American.  They flew me and my family all around the Caribbean, had a professional staff, and generally were the airline to fly....I used to belittle United and say when in doubt do NOT fly United.  I'm a half a million miler on Delta as from their Northwest roots, and Minneapolis hub but American was the airline to fly....but no more, never again .

Let me say it here.  I will never fly this airline again, EVEN and I repeat EVEN if it is from rescheduling on a cancelled United Texas flight.  The airline is not safe, they are NOT professional, they are NOT reliable, and to be honest, some businesses like Eastern, Ozark, etc etc, just need to go away.  TWA and PanAM fought for 50 years to be the monopoly airline and where are they now?  Where is Bethlehem Steel?  The Rock Island Railroad, MCI...Dead, gone, buried.  In many cases, thankfully.

My day started yesterday with a cat funeral, Nightmare kitty, a family pet for 11 years needed to be put down (such a way to say it).  After a Glenlivet in her honor, I dug a grave on the ranch.  Animals need to be part of the land they roamed.  We have a family tradition of pet funerals that maybe border on the pagan, but I don;t care.  It helps us.  We can argue the pros and cons theologically of whether animals have souls and I have with my very well read family, but let me leave that for a different time.  I'd give you a picture of her but I don't have one on this computer, she was a black torti shorthair....I had a similar kitty as a kid named Uglikitty.  Allwin picked her out at a farm overrun with kittens up the road in 2005 with our exchange student at the time from Norway, Ingvild along with two others, Whiskers and Grey, Whiskers didn't figure out the road and Grey still roams my house.

I had an odd feeling of doubt as to what to do on my travels to Monterrey today and a Debi pelagic. The cheapest flight was from Bismarck (5 hours away) through Minneapolis, but to San Jose the most direct, American from Minneapolis through Phoenix, Delta doesn't do Monterrey and well, I had to leave late to bury the cat and build a stone cairn.  I laid in my bed and plead my dilemma to a not understanding wife and finally I held my nose and  I chose American, took the miles on Alaska and went to bed on Wednesday.

It went okay until we backed out of the gate at Minneapolis.  A maintenance guy was trying to attach a piece of duct tape in the back galley of the 737.  It made us 15 minutes late, then we got out of order to take off, and were 12th in line.  It took 30 minutes to take off.  I cannot ever remember such a delay in Minneapolis is perfect weather.

The stewardess forgot about us in rows 28-30 before we were descending. I got my soda just before we had to give them back to land, BUT we didn't just land we had to circle Phoenix a bit to make us late and then due to construction we had to wait to get a gate.

The same stewardess pleaded for the 67 who had tight connections like me to allow us to go first, those so in front of the plane got out but then a high school kid (was in Minneapolis for the Junior Golf tourney, I had heard earlier, Tiger Woods in the making??) he stood and blocked the aisle, looked clueless and then everyone got up.  For the first time in my life on a plane me and a guy just in front of me shouted at the people in the aisle.  He finally, walked up to the kid and said, "Get out of my F^&%% way you little..." and gave him a push to the side and I followed in his wake.  The run from A8 to B19 is surprisingly far in Phoenix and I went into excercise induced asthma somewhere near the turn for the lower B gates.  I was having chest pain by the time I got to B19 as they were making the final call.  If I would have just passed out, everything would have strangely worked out.

I got on the plane, left my suitcase outside as they said they had no room....they closed the door in my wake, and I took my seat.  Then a minute later, they reopened the door, I could here the bridge being replaced.  "We are over loaded so we need to offer for two of you to not go on tonight's flight."  The captain said.  There was a moan.  Then they announced the rear bathroom was broken.  Another moan.

Well, then I saw my suitcase come aboard, then then two stewards opened the overhead and began along with the captain and co-pilot a laborious project of filling overheads with 21 pieces of luggage left outside for gate check.  I have never seen such a thing.  They put suitcases under seats, in closets, and I even think they put one in the closed bathroom.  "Weight load now checks out."  So they closed the door again.....It took us 40 minutes to get out of the gate and through a construction project

Well we were off and I finally could breath easy (literally and figuratively) as we flew over Barstow then to the coast.  We descended, and heard the weather for Monterrey, 10 mile vis, 55 degrees, landing in 15 minutes.  I could see the lights of Monterrey and Carmel and then, the plane began to climb and without so much as even a second look--diverted to Phoenix.....Phoenix? Why not San Jose as we flew over San Jose and then Fresno and Bakersfield airports.  There was some continuing turmoil in the first class bathroom as that was the only one and as the 1.5 hour flight became four, and they ran out of bathroom water over Bakersfield. They ran out of alcohol over Riverside and that may have been a good thing or a bad thing, depends.  The anger grew.  People were talking behind me that at least going to Phoenix would leave teams of American reps to help them, I knew that would not be the case...I thought it would be lucky if they even had a gate for the plane.

We landed at midnight, the Steward gave the stock landing speech about welcome to Phoenix and if this is your final destination or wherever your travels bring you speech.   There were jeers like I have never ever heard on an airplane.  One guy up front bordered on causing the FBI to show up.  We had to of course wait for a gate, 30 minutes as the midnight construction started as no planes come to the B gates at night....The captain did not greet us, there was no one from American to help advise us, we as they say were on our own, as there was a stack of phone numbers for a hotel and American customer service.  Old people were crying as they didn't know what to do or where to go.  It was bad....being abandoned by an airline is always really bad.

Then as all the gate checked luggage was somewhere on the plane (I had seen where mine got put so I grabbed it on way out) and nobody knew where, I had thought that the crew would help locate it but they sort of made themselves scarce and there was mass yelling and pandemonium as they apparently forgot about it and how in got into the airplane saying gate checked luggage would be delivered to gate.  Were they that stupid to forget that 30 minutes?  As I grabbed the phone numbers I could hear some serious anger from the jet bridge.
I was too tired to care.

It was 7 hours of flight to go nowhere....I got a $70 room at the Sleep Inn to go with my non-refundable room for $250 in Monterey, my $169 dollar trip on Debi's boat and my non-refundable Hertz fare.  This is not to mention my cost of my ticket.  I finally got through at 2am to American, who told me the next seat to Monterey was Tuesday........Tuesday?

I didn't care as I could have driven all night to The jetty in Monterrey from any airport in California, EXCEPT not Phoenix.  I would miss the boat.  I emailed her as I couldn't do anything else, I didn't want to be banned forever.  I told the woman at American on the phone, I just wanted to go home and she booked the flight back.  a 4400 mile circle, but American wasn't done with me yet.

I tried to check in at 6am at the airport, they had no record of my flight.  I got in the line and literally let out my frustration as I had an email with the flight.  Someone at 4am you see had cancelled me and put me on a San Francisco flight on Sunday.......WTF!!!

I got my seat back, was placed in zone 4 and when they said I couldn't board with zone 2 people (as I didn't want my camera checked) I just put my ticket over the scanner and said.  "I'm with all of them."  Pointing to the people in front of me.

It was a wasted 48 hours a wasted thousand bucks, but I learned something and I didn't even see a house sparrow in the airport..........
first, never ever fly American, 2) fly where you have status, and leave a flight after yours, 3) never fly to Monterrey and 4) avoid saving money by prepaying stuff...............I possibly missed a bird, maybe even THE bird...but I had to come home for the family to be there in the funeral..........I guess I going back home now....no where else to go, I guess......

If I had just walked to the gate in PHX, I would have missed the flight but made the boat (I would have been put on a San Jose flight).  what is up is down, and what is down...up.  The flight today to Sacramento someone booked on last night to get home, cancelled due to lack of a crew...another to Glendale and one to Long Beach...same thing.....American...you are not making any friends....save us all the trouble and just shut down.

When in doubt NEVER fly Un....um  I mean American...
good luck on your travels, and if your travels take you on American....GOOD LUCK with that.


Olaf

    

More of everything

more, More, More, More, More!

All I got to add today from Alaska is more.  You wanted more, I wanted more and now here...you got it!  More and More

There was a lot of "More" in St Paul as I waited out the days to get off the Pribs.  I came for one bird. There were more to be found.  There was also more wind, more rain, more mud, more fog, more damp, more cold, and more, more of the same...

There were...
More meals at the Trident seafood plant

More incredible scenery

well, the one day for a few hours when the fog burned off.

More Arctic Foxes


More Northern fur seals

They of course wanted more territory and more females,,,and more fish

There was more Rock Sandpipers


Many more.  More semipalmated plovers


there were more views of the wood sandpipers, more red-faced cormorants, and especially more tattlers, like this wandering, wondering if more of me was such a good thing, even once when i accidentally threw a rock and almost hit one.  More accidents...more stupidity.


There were of course more seabirds, kittiwakes, more of everything in the sea...


In general there were a lot more of unfocused bad lighting shots form all over the island
like more of these king eiders


I even saw a rather scruffy looking immature male spectacled eider in this group of ten but well, it was tough enough to pick him out with a scope.  You know, I've only ever seen one adult male of both species in breeding plumage.

There was even more wolf's bane or northern monkshead, I did not touch the plant, at least not enough to kill me, I did get more tingling in my fingers after rubbing my pants...maybe too much more symptoms?


There were More sights of things around the island Including...
 more crab pots



More narrow and bumpy roads that go seemingly nowhere

More flights leaving the island without me on them


More religious shrines that time, and the locals, have seemingly forgotten about, this one I was actually thinking of bringing some green and yellow paint with to paint next time I'm here


What is that Thomas Moore paint?

There are more pictures of guides thinking of the short comings of their clients, like the master of St Paul, Scott Schuette, (right) looking at Olaf wondering why I am looking at a shrine's disrepair and not at more of the ducks in Webster Pond.  Jeff (left) a photographer / birder from Pittsburgh is wondering if his luggage will ever arrive, and wondering can there be any more rain and how many more days until it comes in.

And Allison, the student from Unity College in Maine who is wondering why Olaf isn't counting more rock sandpipers on the Salt Lagoon, I just stopped at "x"  On an ebird checklist what is X + 1?  It is just X. More of the new math of birding.


She eventually needs to decide if she wants more of this or after one more semester, more of something else.

Yes, another quality birding destination, and MORE utter disappointment left in my wake. but for that I can't provide an adequate picture.   I am certain I am a bad client, plain and simple, but I cannot change who I am, more or less, I am what I am.  Here in St Paul, being left there for extra days as I tried to fly standbyto try to get out, I was doing more "birding" with photographers and my needs did NOT outweigh the needs of them, so I went along cheerfully snapping a picture or two, biding my time, staying loose.  When I could maybe see and add something I put in more of an effort, when it was photo time, I took it easy.  They wanted more inflight shots of puffins with fish, when they looked, I took a nap at the cliffs, one always needs more sleep here, not more puffin photos, you can have too many puffin photos.

They almost went insane with me seawatching so after a while I was just dropped off, and after they got sick of photographing more of me, they went on to scour for more puffins with fish....I kept at the scope.

there was more signs telling others to beware of rats, there was a wall of kid posters of drawings of rats, dead rats, bad rats,
I had more pictures but alas, I needed more power on my cellphone.

I spent more hours at the scope since ....since I was in Connecticut with who else but Darlene Moore. Here, I looked and looked, one shearwater, one fulmar, then another, more more more, shockingly as the hours rolled by at SW point at the scope.   The strong headwind blowing onshore from deep in the Bering Sea continued and the fog came in and out mostly in.  As the clock ticked, the wind and the rain continued, on one foggy day the total nearing 5000 of each bird, a gray ghost flew by with high arches after erratic flight, the bird was a little smaller and a whole lot faster than the many shearwaters and had a big black stripe on its leading edge of its light gray under-wing...it was a mottled petrel, one more bird I guess than what I had seen in a year before.  It was hard to think about, though,  as something else happened to dampen my mood.

Sadly,, I also saw more tragedy in a Native community, where there seems more despair, it is something everyday here in South Dakota--the hopelessness, and self-destruction grows everyday in the souls of the inhabitants.  Just before I got there, there were two suicides, a man and a woman at the same spot, they had a family, I don't know the details.  One reached the breaking point and when the other found her, he too took his own life right there, leaving children behind.  It was a sad depressing tale and then as I watched local friends and family solemnly build a memorial to them I was deeply moved.


I had a hard time sleeping after this, thinking of this and what, if anything could be done in such a place where the future is like the weather--tough, bleak, and seemingly endless.  Depressingly,  I think the problem will get worse before it gets better.  I saw an advertisement for a canvas painting class.  One can fight the bleak times with art and crafts and I hope these people will come and let their inner selves and creativity shine through. Maybe that is a start?  I don't have any answers.  Suicide doesn't seem for me to be one.

It made me think of my own past, and I vowed to make more paintings, more art.  You see I used to paint or draw all of my life birds where I saw them and either as I remembered them or I drew them right there.  I have always appreciated field guide art


Here is my 1989 rendition of a Canada warbler, it isn't very good, obviously I need more work, much more work, since I pretty much stopped in the early 90s.  Now, I won't even be this good.

More this, more that, and then the plane came, and they had one more seat, a few more minutes and then they boarded, and one more airport, later, we landed at St. George, then I began a 9 hour odyssey homeward.

so more numbers that have little importance in the big picture of life, art, and anything to help these islanders. but here....

Big Year Total:  752
Coded Birds:  81
provisionals: 1

Miles driven.  33,934Flight Miles 124, 800
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 129   Different Airports: 46Hours at sea: 192Miles walked 273
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  61
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  5
There were more costs, and I need to add more to the budget as this excursion ran $3645.  So I think the year total will be be expanded by five thousand.

It was still more, more, more...

I began to think of great quotes to sum up this excursion, ones by Thomas More in Utopia, a core read to anyone learning the classics of literature

"You wouldn't abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn't control the winds"

I cannot control the weather on St Paul, so I should not just abandon it, It was good I stayed and me staying for 4 days gave me an extra bird and I cannot control it, so I need to stick to my plans and not be a defeatist.


I also was upset with myself, more self-loathing I guess, I should have kept still about my big year number.  The photographers got it out of me.  Thomas More also writes...

“Pride thinks it's own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of others.”

I told my number on the island to the photographers when they asked and they don't care, this was pride and this is just a personal thing.  John Dunn summed up all the big year books in a broad not flattering nutshell of narcissism.  I said it before and I wrote about it, that these have been there done that and I will keep my resolve to refrain from such an undertaking.  I write this blog to entertain and to share what this is like.  Maybe to keep you all from doing this.  I still don't have a reason to do this, it used to be why not, now I just ponder why?  Maybe writing about this helps me to find more answers to more of life's questions but maybe not.  This is NOT philosophy, it IS just birding.  Maybe I'm over thinking, again this is just birding....

I guess though, this is a big year blog so I'll put the number in here but I really don't think I should be telling anyone else in the field or truly highlighting it.  It diminishes other efforts.

When I got home, I found out I had more dogs, sigh, lonely wife with all this time on the road
Here is Silja with the new addition to my pet supply

I shake my head, more pets, in two days I need to put a cat down...more bad news....

I like St Paul, though, I just want a lot more good memories and a lot LESS nightmares and depression about tragedy, ...

Olaf

The Wolf's Bane

July 18-??  St Paul, Pribolof Is. Alaska

Walking around St Paul Island especially the Zap Cliff area is fraught with peril.  The Puschkie is thick and wet.  It covers up many holes, which if you step in them you have two choices (assuming they just don't suck you in, one I looked in I could not see a bottom).  The first choice is to just let your ankle break.  The second choice is to fall.  But that has too added choices, you can either fall off the cliff or into the grass.  That latter choice is also fraught with peril.  For if you fall and accidentally touch any of the Northern monkshood (of the family aconitum), you very well may not make it off the hill.  The stuff is everywhere.


It is one of the most poisonous plants in the world.  It works fast and easily absorbed through skin. It is without any antidote and close relatives of this plant have been used for eons for murders, suicide, and other nefarious purposes.  DON'T TOUCH OR PICK THE FLOWERS!  I do have use for this plant in a new novel...

Here I am sitting in a patch, cheating death

I came up to Alaska to pick up a bird I missed this spring, because it is here and well, I am pot committed.  I got weathered out of where I wanted to go for a tit, so I caught an open seat on Pen-Air out here.  It was touch and go, even to here.  Luckily, the Wood sandpiper did not disappoint.

#749 Wood Sandpiper



Stephan one of the St Paul guides watching one of the two as it flew away.  They always flew away, here and Attu when I saw this bird previously.  I was clothed this time.  I hate wood sandpipers, skittish flighty birds.  This bird is identified by its call and the big white rump as it flies away...Sorry Sandy, I hated to pass you but, IDK, here I am

Later on the 18th, we went and spotted another year bird...

#750  Red-faced cormorant



A common local bird and I guess seeing one for the very special 750 was a bit of a downer --no ultra rarity or epiphany moment.  It was a foggy, wet moment in the history of birding, the birding Gods could care less but heck.  I had reached the big milestone, at least.  Sorry Neil, I can't say anything else, but sorry.  There wasn't champagne,  I borrowed a small bottle of chardonnay from a woman visiting the island and I hate chardonnay.  There is no bar to drink at, it is a 3 mile walk from the airport.  I don't know, it was a goal 750, but it is hard to celebrate anything alone, especially this.  It is a number of species never seen before in a year until this one and here I am.  It doesn't make me any better than anyone else, isn't changing my life, and in fact, possibly it makes me worse, I DID this crazy thing, most think I'm nuts.  What did I do?...I went to bed early.
  
The fog and the gloom continued, in fact even getting in here was a gut wrencher, landing in the fog.  seeing all the poison in the grass scares me, and well just walking....

I have no home leg out of here at the moment, I'm just hanging out waiting on vagrants and standby seating, and luckily, on the 19th, I nailed an early shorebird migrant

#751  Gray-tailed tattler


A Siberian bird not infrequently seen here, in fact my lifer bird was from here.  It got down in the rocks and I had to almost sacrifice a leg to get it out but what the heck....I have two, correct?

So now I sit, waiting watching, hoping not to die from accidental poisoning or from boredom...hoping for a flight.....should I just stay?

In the interim, I keep going out and looking, taking pictures, seeing stuff, waiting...hoping....

Red-legged kittiwakes


Pacific wren

Northern fur seals


With one even nursing a calf.

So there is my update.  I may be here for a while....yes, John Puschock, I have now broken the record for what it is worth.  You asked 6 months ago.  751, IDK.  It is only July.  I am the Wolf's Bane I suppose for Neil and Sandy, sorry guys.  So I guess, I just keep going....what else is there to do?  I can't leave.

Send messages....I brought nothing with to read
I don't want this to be the bane of my existence.....bad pun

751 yea!!....more like yawn, I'm going to bed

Olaf

Lemons to Oranges

I went down on Saturday for an Orange County pelagic.  I can never get on Alvaro's website so I didn't know they had one but to be honest even though they saw a Buller's and some whale trip up north saw a Nazca Booby, I was happy to remain south, I was concentrating on the 3 missing southern species, I'd go up north soon enough and the Buller's, it was and is, way too early for them anyhow....so they saw one....well, that I cannot change....

Initially I concluded that this was yet another strike out, a big lemon, but this was a really fun trip, and this year is about the people and NOT the birds IMHO.  Big deal, I can see all these birds, maybe I will see the most, probably not.  In the end, who knows who saw what.  I know what I saw and I know which birds I saw were iffy, and I've tried to find back up birds.  I had a comment on my blog last week about my really bad photograph of a "sprague's" pipit.  They were rightly concerned that it was a imm. horned lark.  Tough ID, I agree, expecially with such a bad photo.  It could be, but I sure remembered white flanges on the tail which I know is not characteristic and as I causally looked at it but the beak/bill left me with my only thought was that it was a pipit, not a lark.  In fact, that was what I studied before I decided I better dig the camera out of the passenger seat.  I have changed my ebird on that to unidentified.  The one I saw ten miles from there I am certain was a Sprague's.  I saw that one well very thin flesh bill but I never got it in focus on a one fly-by shot I took. You can barely tell it is a bird, but I can't prove that bird to everyone else.  I can't prove the initial one in Minnesota however, being May, not much chance for a imm. Lark then.   So you know, who the heck knows what I or John, or Christian, or Sandy, or Neil saw?   This is an imperfect world.  I'm trying hard and I appreciate your input.  If you are not certain, I am not.  There have been a few rare gulls seen this year that will never pass the scrutiny of state checklist committees and some of them have shown up on lists.  I'm certain I have listed no hybrids, and I was careful to make sure my sharp-tailed grouse and GPCX were 100%.

What I did see on this boat trip were two important birding people.  Dorian Anderson is a legend in my mind.  Where I have made this huge, large, painful carbon footprint, he didn't.  Like the Forest Gump character (although Dorian is most unlike him) Dorian went on the road to leave his troubles behind imho.  He may or may not agree with that statement but I really admire his footpowered journey.  I ran into him on the boat, he was also on this boat in January and we had some nice chats.  Dorian was sporting a new camera, recently made his girlfriend his wife or maybe it was the other way around and he is doing well.  If no where else Dorian, I salute you for 2013!!!  GREAT YEAR!!

I also had a nice chat with John Dunn.  The other legend.  Birder extraordinaire...etc etc.  He was calling birds for the local Sea and Sage Audubon for the trip and he was congenial enough to chit chat with a pee-on like me.  I appreciated it.  John spent many years on the much maligned ABA Checklist committee and was right in the middle of the 2011 Hooded crane fiasco.  I don't have any skin in that deal but I have heard the story many MANY times.  Dunn voted no, and I can guarantee he has received many very negative emails.  To be honest, I see his point.  I also see the state points, and what always troubles me is the inconsitency, like the wood-rail and the sungrebe accepted, but this bird rejected.  IMHO the providence of all three birds is uncertain at best and suspect at worst.  As such knowing nothing more than just enough to be scary, I would have voted no on all three, it is such that any and I mean ANY doubt should be a no vote.  Alas, I would never be on such a committee, what a thankless task, joyless, task...what really is the reward for it.  Let me say it here, thanks John for serving, thank you very much.  Maybe if the Pine flycatcher gets rejected, I would be like the crane people but IDK, there is too much anger misdirected in this world.  Hate those that are killing birds and wildlife and direct the anger there....Monsanto et al. might be a better place to start.

Well what did we see on this voyage?
We saw 6 Brown boobies on the oil derick like they had never left.  Two were flying around as above

A thousand elegant terns

hundreds of Sooty shearwaters

a lot of Pink footed sheerwaters

I had my best look at black storm-petrels

Even saw an ultra cool, fully luecistic black-vented sheerwater, we saw 4 white ones in maybe 5000 birds

Long-tailed Jaeger

A lower 48 year bird for me (who is counting)

Earlier in the day, John Dunn called out two fuzz balls (I think that was his term), could be Craveri's could be anything... flying off when we were poking around trying to find storm-petrels out at 14 mile hump or whatever that place is called.  I saw them, thought they looked white underneath, but I couldn't tell exactly which of the two possibilities they could be, guess they could have been a third.  I moved up with my camera and couldn't relocate them.  Later when we saw Cassin's it was clear that these weren't them.  But were they Craveri's or Scripps?  I couldn't say...John Dunn couldn't say, so I just shrugged it off and kept looking.  After 3 later Cassin's we saw no alcids.  Nearby however, Jeff Bray had snapped a picture.  For a day I figured the day ended up being a lemon.  Later under scientific conditions like a computer without a glare.....photo from Jeff Bray and the trip checklist


Craveri's!  year bird #748, I had made an orange out of the day.....cool!!

I keep hoping someday that I will see this bird sitting on the water sitting there so we can sneak up to them and get a great picture.  but alas never....never....they are always white bottomed fuzzballs flying away.  I have a lot of fantasy dreams, my wife just shakes her head.

Cetacians

I and I think everyone on board was impressed with a blue whale chase, the captain spotted it way off and counted 12 minutes from its dive and closed the gap.  It came up really close.  A LIFER WHALE!!!  My 16th cetacian species for the year!!

Blue whale



Fin Whale
Two really huge whales!

Well I had a day off so I decided to chase the berylline hummer, so Off I went to Beatty's Guest ranch in Arizona.

As many of you know, me and the Beatty family go way back, Tom Sr.s brother was a chemistry professor on mine for my term in college.  I was his lab TA in 1985-86 school year.  When a student named Scott Biederwolfe committed suicide at the end of the fall 1987 term in his PChem class just before the final exam, we all got our final exam grades adjeusted higher due to the PTSD of it all.  I was involved as I let Scott take the sodium cyanide that killed him out of the stockroom two weeks before.  I didn't realize it until after the event (I was at UW Stout that weekend speaking having the speech tournament of my career).  I got a B on that final for real, was adjusted up to an A and my A- for the class became an A.  It was the only grade I didn't deserve, and to be honest I deserved an F for that whole stockroom deal.  I was so filled with self-loathing before that exam which was the day after the funeral, I just sat there unable to open the test booklet until with just an hour left, I began.  I had realized just before I came in that I had caught the student in the area and his finger prints were found on the jar of poison. I know he would have just found it somewhere else.  My supervisor, his wife Anne at the time, was my boss from 86-88 when I was stock room attendant.  Anne died from cancer I think not that many years after I graduated.   She was a nice lady.  I wasn't found to have violated anything.  Scott was a biology TA and was not infrequently getting things in our stock room but I have lost sleep over that day ever since.   A scene from that event is in a novel I'm working on now.  It helps me to talk about it.  Maybe that was why I went into medicine?  I owed a few lives saved for that one.

I was also a study partner of Tom Srs. nephew in German class.  I have heard North Dakota stories about the Beatty past for years.  Seeing Tom in Arizona is a small world.  Tom came and chatted for three hours, as we hald a vigil for the rare hummer, which never officially showed.  I saw a black billed dark green hummer in the trees before it was chased off by a broad billed and it could have been a berylline but I could NOT call that bird.....it was never seen again.

I did point out a violet crowned to some novice birders though, they were very happy

   
it was a female..still my favorite hummingbird..that is what birding is, sharing.
Well, I stayed so late, I almost missed my flight out of Tucson.  I'm going to go and find a chickadee, I got some inside intel.

List is up to 748, my 80th coded bird......what I said I needed to best Neil's mark which is my goal.  I still need three non-coded birds, so that will happen

Big Year Total:  748
Coded Birds:  80
provisionals: 1

number to go to old record:  1
Miles driven.  33,934Flight Miles 119,200
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 124   Different Airports: 45Hours at sea: 192Miles walked 242
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  61
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  4Bird sex:  1

Costs:
Delta/ American ticket: 780
rental car 138
food   80 (food pricey out there)
lodging  265
fees   5
Boat fee  $60
$1360

The value of an orange is NOT priceless
Expensive for one bird......but the value of talking to Dorian, John Dunn, and Tom Beatty Sr, that was priceless

Tits Up

Oh humor me...would you not expect a pun?  Tits up......broken; dead in the water, floating
It is a long and windy road I'm traveling much like this one I found 4 miles back in central North Dakota.  Things always happen to me.

Why was I even in Central North Dakota?
First, I like birding the prairie.  Secondly, I had two birds on my list that are review birds in Minnesota, I was losing sleep over them.  Sprague's pipit which is the 4th in MN in 10 years and that Baird's sparrow...yea that one.  I NEED to sleep at night.  Third, I really know NW, North Dakota and eastern Montana well for birding, all those chasing of petroglyphs (like this one of an eskimo curlew in NW NDakota) and mounds,


I seem to know every weird rock, mound, everything up here.   but I have not birded central North Dakota but it is a lot closer, so well, prairie is prairie, I like driving to see what is over the next hill.



I took off on Tuesday.  It was blowing about 35 mph but was a nice day up here.  You got to know how to bird in the wind up here and typically you have to bird in little hollows.  Unfortunately I needed my flushing spaniel but she was getting a hair cut so, It was just me.  Brighid is a great sparrow flusher

North Dakota is just like Oklahoma where they reserved sections in every township for the schools.  Typically, these have the best prairie as they rent it out for pasture.  I think you can access them as a birder and I haven't been thrown out yet.  Some of these are in the middle of nowhere, though and after all the rain up here, it was a muddy 4x4 drive.  I hey some puddles that just kicked up so much mud...it was kind of fun.

Well to birding....I spotted a Baird's and heard two more, I could not get a camera on the one I saw, it wasn't for lack of trying.  It seems only the grasshopper sparrows came up when walking but heck, a guy can only do so much

I did get a camera on a Sprague's pipit through a muddy car window and dang thing was spooky in the wind, so only got two shots.  This is about as SE as you ever see them in the summer


 I got a photogenic dickcissal


We've had a big eruption of them this year
Well my work done in North Dakota I was enjoying myself.  It was a great day to bird.  I stopped in Jamestown to buy an extra pair of boots, someone knifed my snake boots in Alaska and I ordered a new pair at Cabelas but decided I needed a second pair, I rarely shop so I bought a new pair of pants  ..and then....the phone rang.  Lakes Region Electric is putting in a underground powerline near my house and they accidentally cut my already underground cable.............


Getting late they wouldn't get to fix it until tomorrow....I needed to get home to save the stuff in the freezer and fridge...geez.  My wife and daughter were in Minneapolis.......I hustled home furious, so they are moving my camper hook up for free off the powerpole.

While home I still birded in my back yard today

Swainson's hawk anyone?

I have to ask...which county is this Eastern Kingbird actually in, head is in Day County but mid body and tail is in Roberts County.  The pitfalls of listing on a county line and living on one...


What about year birds?  I did get a link about gray headed chickadee being a Euro birder shall be forever the Siberian tit to me...on a blog from a recent tour...it is pretty good

http://www.david-w-shaw.com/the-myste...

I'm glad I wasn't on that trip....lucky me!

But...I'm now thinking I want to go chase this bird especially in the Yukon.  This bird needs to be found and documented better and I got a new Yukon birding friend....can I bring guns to Canada to protect from bears?  I'm not so dishonest to say my year is for anything, other than myself.  How can it not be?  But I want to become the tit man, I really do.  My first word was water but second was chickadee.  Really..they are such cute little guys.

My lifer tit came in the Lapland region of Sweden one winter skiing, when I gave up and went into a pub on the side of the trail and watched the Swedes do well at the world Nordic Championships, somewhere after third beer and outside (Swedes will go outside and sit at a table any time of the year) cheering the team a pair of tits came by....cool!  But as they are declining on this side of the pond, and no one can find them, this looks like a productive project for me, maybe if I can get enough data, I can write a book or an article on them....

So my last goal for the year, find a bird to dedicate my life too....the Siberian tit...gray headed chickadee it is!  I'll try to help them, but first someone needs to find them, and well in that, I can help.

so anyhow, I covered my pipit and Baird's with extra sightings so now I can rest easy.  Power back on...so I can write this blog, and I got my new mascot bird.....at least I pickd a bird I can find...well maybe....

The Dakotas are 600 miles of really fun birding intermingled with a near disaster.  Some call this hell, I call this home..........I'm more comfortable with my list now....

My life as a big year birder, something is always tits up, hopefully next time it won't be me

Olaf