Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 23

Going Bare

It is National Nude Recreation week.  Yeah!  It IS Christmas in July.  I have written that this is a great week to bird well within the AANR spirit of the week.  I will, though, neither confirm nor deny that I have, currently am, will have, or plan to bird au naturel this week.  Can you bear to go bare?  I know I'm such a dog in puns and in not answering or admitting anything despite my vow of openness but well..I have what is left of my reputation to hold on to....hold on a moment.

You know, I really must be a dog.  I was on the ferry to Vinalhaven, Maine yesterday after my odd flight through San Antonio to get here and this dog (in a pet-free cabin mid you) sat next to me and nuzzled me.  i wasn't sure if he even had an owner for an hour.  It seems I  am always visited by strange dogs who want to befriend me.  Even service dogs try to crawl into my lap on occasion. A blog I had on Lucy.  Maybe it is that I offended everyone in my last post except pets and they felt sorry for my dying cat and this dog was a representative of all of them and he sat next to me to comfort me in some way.  This dog was from northern California, by phone number on collar.  Its owner found him and eventually praised me for calming the frightened dog down. He had never traveled on a boat so well.   It was me comforting him!  Maybe I should market myself as a dog psychologist?

It was an odd drive to and from Rockland and the Ferry terminal, anyhow.  The radio was filled up of with Clinton and Trump apologists...oh I mean supporters...oh I mean unbiased reporters...yea, correct on that observation.  This one woman, masquerading as an indie reporter...had just written a book on Clinton's Secretary of State years, rising from the ashes so to speak.....yea right....how do you spell PUFF piece!

I had had enough, then I went for coffee and read a text...trying to be safe.

My friend Craig Casper, an old frat brother of mine from college sends me this link:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/201507...

He was thinking doing a big year with extinct attack birds, terror birds would be cool to watch--put a little more danger in it all, I was thinking sort of like the Running Man movie which I say, I don't like. Jesse Ventura in a bird suit.(maybe his best movie).  They are all extimct like the dreaded sloth bear, but say something that you really could do..speaking of bears,.. maybe a big year seeing the world's species and subspecies of bears, and using my nude year rules, you CANNOT be in an enclosed space.  A little danger...the Polar bear?

I have trouble with bears, that might be the end of ME!  It would BE sporting, however...entertaining.

Bares, Bears, I've written a pun loaded blog on this before and a whole chapter of being chased by bears...that is an old story.

So speaking of both politics, Maine, and bears, I ended up in Bowdoin College....what could these three have to do with that?
It is so "Black and White"
If you figure out this pun, you really are a sick one on trivia

Okay, the first puff biography put out in an election year ever was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne about his college drinking chum.....Franklin Pierce.  Came out 6 weeks before his election.

Bowdoin College Class of 1825 and 1824 respectively.  Their nickname:  The Polar Bears btw.  Colors: Black and white  ah! the pun...

Franklin Pierce, arguably the worst president in US History, and he had a son, he had a son, another son, a daughter, I was going to say who gave birth to a man named George Herbert Walker Bush, who lost to Bill Clinton,  Bush who had a son,  good Ole' GW...where is GW these days anyhow?  BUT this genealogy as put forth in a comical but very good college course taught by my hero Robert Wuhl is not correct, I repeat not correct. The Presidential family of the Bush's is not directly in line to the Pierce family, Barbara Bush is only the fourth cousin, four times removed from the infamous president Franklin Pierce.  GW cannot blame his genes well...not on the Pierce genes

Bowdoin College is a nice looking place though....



Lots of pine trees and it is a good school.  But why was I at Bowdoin College anyhow....?

Let me say it right here, my wife or daughter don't usually read this blog unless I tell them to.  I stated honestly that I made a vow to only go on ONE birding trip in 2017.  I was honest... although my friend Thor thinks I lied, lied like a rug, (he did not say that but I know Thor, he thought it).  Okay, the truth.  Honesty will set me free.  You see,   2017 is a college road trip year for my daughter.  I have plans.  Now shush!   My secret...I'm thinking she should tour....University of Arizona (if say a rare bird is around..coincidence?), San Diego University, maybe Texas A&M-Kingsville, Rice University in Houston (after a big spring thunderstorm?), and I don't know...Stetson University in Florida, I'm thinking of looking at schools for her in Canada (maybe St. John's Newfy in late April?)....maybe we'll even tour Bowdoin College....those black-tailed godwits can turn up anywhere, even in Maine.  Sneaky or brilliant....I'll let you decide, but be on the QT!!!!  Please!  The plan is fool proof.  Sly dog, Olaf.

BTW, Pierce had issues as a president but on his way to Washington, his young son and heir, fell off the train and was run over by it and killed, think decapitated.  He was the last of his children, all the others had died previously, some more gruesome. His wife, in mourning or severe depression and TB, was never seen out of the White House for two years all the while writing both letters to her dead son, and telling people God took her son as saying He was against her husband becoming president, and Pierce began to drink heavily for 4 years, mostly because his wife was against it, a fierce prohibitionist and so pious they had to have a pastor come and bless the bed before she would share it with her husband.....his term was dark, he was morose, and well, him and the Mrs. grew apart. Tough to get a pastor over for spontaneous blessings. But that is history.........

Thankfully it wasn't quite so dark in Vinalhaven, but it did rain both coming and going.  John Drury, took me and four birders out to Seal Island again to try to see the loneliest bird in Maine, maybe anywhere, the old man of Seal Island, Tropi the tropicbird, a no show on my previous trip.  I was lucky in that I got the last room on the island after my confirming email went to spam...lucky dog me...

It was a very birdy trip.

We had a raft of Great shearwaters, that was cool.



more than I've ever seen.  Of course the ever present Atlantic puffin

Razorbill

and Wilson's and Leech's storm petrels, A Manx, Great cormorants, and gannets.  I got my Harley for the lower 48, first ever.


It was a good trip, but Tropi didn't show again, so we waited...and waited, I was beginning to figure out how many days I would dare spend here as I vowed to not leave Maine until I got Tropi...then I saw something white flying low over the water.  Tropi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#747  Red-billed tropicbird



Warning!! XXX rated below for all of you sensitive types, and I know as I said before ABA members are way too sensitive, .................so scroll, dang you, scroll!  Before you see it.........


My local abbey's mural at home to cover for fast scrolling.....nothing obscene here...........

ALERT, DON'T LOOK!
Here he is making love to a buoy.  I just missed the act on camera before he fell off of "her." Apparently the red billed and the red-tailed will cross-breed?


Oh Tropi....why did you come to Maine in 2003?  Why Tropi, why?  Was it those Buoys?


Cover picture for scrollers of first view of Elizabeth Lake coming out of Ptarmigan Tunnel, Glacier Park, nothing put purity and goodness here....

SAFE TO LOOK NOW...The guys on the boat asked if I was happy....it was more like a big cathartic after being constipated for a week....graphic but I think the correct feeling....relief, yes, happy, IDK.  Tropi is a really cool bird though and after many US pelagics and two trips here finally...finally, I nabbed the species, oddly it is a species I see every day on the best place anywhere for naked recreation....Orient Beach, St Martin FWI.

The summary....

Big Year Total:  747
Coded Birds:  79
provisionals: 1

number to go to old record:  2
Miles driven.  33,334Flight Miles 115, 100
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 120   Different Airports: 43Hours at sea: 185Miles 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 ticket: 5
rental car 82
food and lifer beer  92 (food pricey out there)
lodging  365
ferry 18
Boat fee  $90
$652
another lifer bird...oh what a relief it is!  Would have paid double

Remembering my past, and the best seat give up ever in Iceland...it could be a book in itself, Alice Cooper, nudity, free massages, ticket to Norway, a $1000 dinner....and more...all free.  I tried to sell my ticket for $500 on very oversold flight in Portland, then the original flight was delayed due to broken tray table for 40 minutes as such lost my original connection, as my seat wasn't taken, the alternative thru LaGuardia would have gotten me home sooner too.....I could be forever in Detroit, the lost stray mutt named Olaf....I could be here for a long time...This was no crazy wonderful night in Reykjavik with Cooper's roadies........note to self...NEVER ever again volunteer to give up a seat.

I'm such a mutt, I'm going to stink like a dog when home.  Call me Dog breath Olaf....enjoy the week hopefully as I will.....

Woof!

Lumping the Splits

It could be titled splitting the lumps too..

An odd thing happened on my way to Maine, I ended up in San Antonio, Texas.  What?  Yes, I geographically think like my son.

 An even odder thing happened on Wednesday, I got an armchair tick, when the American Ornithology Union put out their checklist supplement this year.  An armchair tick is when the checklist changes by a split and when you have both of the splits already, you get a tick from the comfort of your armchair.  I heard about it at my office.  In the scrub-jay complex, having seen the coastal subspecies first, in January Irving Regional Park that was my "Western Scrub-jay" now renamed as the California Scrub-jay (my lifer above from my cache of photos).  In February, in Mt. Davis TX, as well as many times later, Black Canyon of the Gunison, CO etc I saw the new Woodhouse's scrub-jay, smaller, less blue etc.  I had entered my ebird checklist as such, so

#745  Woodhouse's scrub-jay

My daughter was with on two of these so she gets a bird too...yea for her.  More on her later.

The redpolls did NOT get lumped (so no worries on how to handle a lump) and I have seen the new Townsend's storm-petrel for my life list (San Diego 9/2014) and although I am pretty sure I saw one this year, the year is still early so I'm not counting that bird, I want to re-see the bird for 2016..I need something to see while at sea.so my life list bounces up to 774 from all of this madness.  The Leach's was a three way split but I don't think I've seen Ainley's storm-pertrel and not well documented in the ABA area.  The AOU moved species/ families around in the checklist, changed some names and did the usual stuff.

....but another change is the split of the green violetear, into (lesser...could they came up with a better name?) and the Mexican, actually my world lifer is the lesser of this bird.....I had never seen the Mexican nor it ever in ABAdom.

Now somehow it became known to me yesterday that my blog from Utopia was unclear to the point many thought or assumed I had got the green violetear, there.  However, I thought I was clear.  Clearly insanely clear is the word, in retrospect possibly.  That I didn't count it.  The only year bird was the ani.  I wasn't drinking lifer beer and I dipped on the code three.  I dipped on 2 coded 3s, YGVI too.  I did not ever add it to either of my coded bird lists nor my ebird list, in fact, I never even submitted a checklist from there to ebird as I was all wiped out from the wine I drank.  I had no internet and had really seen little new.  It was a text of a picture that woke me up from being passed out.  As I noted, I did see and hear something but it wasn't anything I could call anything....past is past I guess.

Oddly enough, a woman from east of San Antonio reported another violetear yesterday after seeing it the day before at her feeders.  There was an ID confusion over a blue throated hummingbird so it took until yesterday for it to be reported.  I toyed, should I go..?  I had already flights booked for Portland Maine and had even been upgraded to prime 1st class seats.  I asked Barry the Birder....he hedged but said, well, you only can get an hour at most, but then said the guy he was birding with today would kick me in the a$$ if I didn't go (Scott from Pierre).  Christian F from San Antonio, a new Facebook friend who saw the bird on the 7th gave me the pros and cons.  Eric Carpenter, fresh off a Texas big year said go..."I was pot committed."  He quoted me.  My wife thought I was nuts....the office thought I was insane...others...crazy.

"crazy....."  I started singing the Patsy Cline tune, drove through a severe thunderstorm in central Minnesota, and well...hesitated.  I was waiting for a sign if the hail that pelted me wasn't one....I can hesitate like a champion....

At midnight I got up the courage to check fares....it was dirt cheap on United..I closed my eyes and hit, "Book".

I called Delta at 4am and made up a story of how I was stuck in San Antonio, scared of the shooting in Dallas, distraught was a word I used....they rebooked me for a sob and a beg....only charging me $150 bucks.  I boarded a generally empty plane at 0430 and by 5 was off to Houston on the first flight out of Minneapolis.  The problem with 5am flights is the coffee, all the coffee it takes to get big fat Olaf going.  it goes right through me.  It takes like 4 cups to get this guy of Swedish ancestry to get going versus like 2.  For the rest of the day, I feel like I never met a bathroom I don't like ...to stop at.

Jan McClintock was very nice to answer my email and she invited me to see her bird, and it wasn't a sit out in the porch kind of stakeout, it was in her home.  I was reminded of the Gibsons BC Canada Xanthu's hummingbird from The Big Year movie tale.  "Stay on the path..."  words in my head.  I have actually ended up once in Gibsons BC.  I saw the ferry going someplace and so one day, I jumped on a ferry at Horseshoe Bay and eventually ended up in Gibsons.  No hummer there that time.

I took my spot on the chair and didn't move.  The thing that caught me in Ms. McClintock's house was the books (turns out she is an editor) and the NSA plaque on the wall....sigh...I WAS being watched, not the other way around, of me watching.  I didn't ask.  Maybe this is the birding police special undercover unit?  When you are invited to go into a house to bird, especially one with plaques on the wall of higher scary powers...you sit still, focus on the bird and try to not ask any questions that might get you thrown out, especially before you see the bird.  I never mentioned much of my past except I was an author. I promised her a fictional novel.

Well it hadn't been seen early but then before I got there, it had.  It really didn't take that long and I was doing Tiger Woods fist bumps in the air.  I even got pictures.....NOW I (we) can count the violetear which has a new name......as of yesterday...The Mexican Violetear. No confusion.

#746  Mexican violetear



The pictures could have been sharper but one, those devils, the black-chinned hummers chased this bigger violetear off the feeder almost every time it tried to feed, and two, I staked out this bird in the living room of the owner as noted.  Both of these photos are through her window.  Not too bad if you ask me.  Like other times I "almost" saw this bird, the first two times on the feeder, all I got was that big tail as it sat immediately opposite me.  I did spot it in the tree so I spent 30 minutes waiting on it to feed.  I was rewarded.

I was back at San Antonio Airport 3 hours after I had left.  I had time to spare...
How better to celebrate lifer 775, lifer beer...LIFER Beer!  It had been a while (the snowcock), well not that long.   I wasn't going through withdrawal or anything.  A Mexican violetear with Dos Equis as San Antonio Airport seems appropriate enough.  Lifer 60 for the year...


Complete with guacamole and tacos, too!!  I love Tex-Mex!

It was a bit of an odd week.

1) My daughter got her 500th bird...a black tern about 200 yards from where I got mine near my hometown.  Maybe the same pair...IDK With the splits she is at 503 for the year.


2) Although the Dallas shooting today was truly awful, it was the St Paul shooting that has unnerved me.  I was in that same situation in February in Florida.  The police stopped Christian Hagenlocher and I for a rather nebulous charge (not moving over far enough for a DWI stop in Key Largo.  Christian did the same thing the guy in Minnesota did, he warned him he had a gun in the car and had a conceal and carry permit.  The cop executed the guy in Minnesota.  It could have been one or both of us.  I was worried I would have to call Rangel Diaz to bail me out but maybe we would have just been shot, with some story made up to protect the living.  It is scary out there.  I used to live two blocks from where the guy got killed.  It isn't a bad part of town, it is near the Minnesota Fairgrounds, a place my grandfather won a new Chevy back in the 1930s, a place of fond memories, but now.....I'm scarred.  Could a colored birder even do a big year?  Has anything truly changed in America?

3) It was Silja and my 26th Anniversary yesterday.  Anniversary of me getting locked out naked of my best man's house chasing his cat during a really nasty t-storm and almost getting late to my own wedding.  I could have been shot then too, I guess, crazed naked man in the city.  I was in Uptown area of Minneapolis.  I didn't even get to drink at my wedding it was a dry (Baptist affair), I needed a drink.  This year...we had lunch, the day before we went to eat dinner and shared a hot tub.  We watched episodes from the 1st season of Game of Thrones....ah....it is all making sense now...well sort of, GOT I mean. Does that show ever make sense?   That is what old married couples do...I guess.  For a present I had to promise only 1 (one) bird chase in 2017.  My wife doesn't believe me.  Yea, I want 800...but....I like being married.   In general, the wife is getting sick of me being gone.  Her tolerance is wearing mighty thin....this and I've been around more since her birthday.....I guess it is good to be loved and needed, but ...these last 6 months are not going to be easy I fear on the home front.  A year is a long time.

4) I ended up doing a pontoon ride with my parents and grandmother on our lake in Wisconsin
I was told all the places for sale...(hint hint)
I saw this family of loons, so peaceful
Then on shore, I heard a mob in the woods.  Hoping for an owl I went and investigated.  I found the victim, a broad-winged hawk

I felt sorry for the hawk and then it looked at me and both it, the mob of crows, and two robins went after me!  Hey, why me?  It is tough up there in Wisconsin.  I could feel the talons or the wings of the hawk go over me and I was almost so mad at the dang crows I almost borrowed a gun from the family..but I settled down.  No not so innocent crow murders, I guess there are a murder...hum? Something was a miss at home and I think it was me on a pontoon boat....note to self.

5) I finished my novel.  The Curse of Panther Creek, off it goes next week


It isn't as good as my last novel but it is not bad.  I learned an awful lot.  The idea came for this when my cover artist sent my a painting and told me to use it for a novel.  This came about as the second try.  Witches in Oklahoma, who'd have thunk it.  I even have a little birding in this one.

As a penance for my bad writing of that blog and for my devoted fans.  If you want a copy of the Kindle Version I'll send it too you when I get the file.  send me your email, storolaf@yahoo.com
I'd (well my publisher) would like for you to send me $2 each but I won't hold it to you.  It will be on Amazon eventually but there it will cost.  If you want a signed soft bound copy, it is like $14, post paid.  Pretty cheap, but those cost me, so I got to charge you.

6) I heard my last Lake Wobegon tale from a Prairie Home Companion, as Garrison Keillor retired.  I miss the story already...it is the end of an era.........I 've been looking for the Chatterbox Cafe for years...now it is gone.  No more Powdermilk Biscuits or Guy Noir.........oh sigh......

7) Nightmare kitty's cancer got worse, I'm afraid we may have to put her down at some point this summer.  I like our 4 cats even though I grump about it and loosing a pet is a sad deal....we will enjoy the days we have left I hope I can have a few....

on that note...to sad to write more...

Big Year Total:  746
Coded Birds:  78
provisionals: 1

number to go to old record:  4
Miles driven.  33,134Flight Miles 113, 100
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 120   Different Airports: 43Hours at sea: 178Miles walked 241
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  60
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  4
Costs: plane change miles ticket  $150
United ticket: 370
rental car 32
food and lifer beer  26
lost plug ion for phone  24
$602
a lifer bird...priceless?

So there you have it, I really got a violetear this time, and that is an update from my life...as boring, opinionated, or depressing though it is.

Olaf

Leftovers

Big Year Hump day 184

I was listening to a guy on a cooking show on the radio describing his mother’s cooking.  “Mother was a terrible cook and cooked only leftovers for 30 years.  One day I decided to try to find out what the initial dish actually was.  Despite much effort, endless research, and fastidious tracking the exact source of her leftovers could not ever be determined.”
Likewise, I have been birding constantly now for exactly ½ of a year.  I have been telling various stories of what actually led for me doing this.  It isn’t that I have been any misleading on my part, in retrospect, it is from a lot of reasons as to how I ended up doing this. I’m now not sure exactly of why myself.  It is much like the leftover statement.  I cannot trace exactly from whence all of this big year nonsense begat.
I do say currently and I said this just yesterday that I am “pot committed” to this year.  Pot committed is a poker term that means that your opponent in poker makes a small continuation bet and because you have a significant portion of your chips in the pot already, you are forced to call him or her as you are “pot committed.”  There is a similar term called a “value bet”—meaning that for the reward, calling a small amount is determined a value since the reward is high.  I guess I have both of these.  I have also committed much time, effort, and money for this year.  Therefore, I am forced to continue on.  For a rather modest some of money, my “value bet” is that I can get to something substantial as well.  You know at the end of the day.......I'm still only going to have a memory to all of this.
But it is July...and I'm halfway done.  I must say here and now, that the long and hot summer doldrums can literally eat you up in a big year.  I feel it and summer is just starting.  There is nothing I would rather do than just take off my clothes and watch the summer roll away while the grass sways in the breeze.  But…alas, I cannot.

My daughter Lena has the doldrums and looks about as enthused for finding year birds as any of my cats now sleeping in the sofa, the deck, a comfy chair, or any of our beds to go hunting for rodents.  Need less to say, if something crosses their lines of vision, any of the five (daughter or cats) may react to it or…they just may not.  It is hot out and well....yawn....
Speaking of the rest of my children...My son Allwin (Twin “B”) has three weeks left of his 14 months in Europe and has just finals left.  In his latest installment of his newsletter to “Comrades and Family,” (which seems a title that Lenin would use) he tells us all of the beautiful melody that the German language is during verb tenses, (more so that Wagner) discussing oddly the German for the House is destroyed, the house will be destroyed etc.  I find that kind of an odd choice for subject matter….but I always got really weird just before finals, once deciding that lemonade contained all the essential food groups, and then only consuming that for a week….Allwin is, also like me, rooting for an Icelandic victory today versus France in the Eurocup.
Tyko, the other wayward son that I have sired, Twin “A” if keeping track, is still in Boston doing research on …something.  I think he is doing computer simulations for proteins in medicine or something like that but to be honest, I don’t know.  He went and visited a friend in Princeton because well, New Jersey is like next door to Massachusetts.  I worry, his geography is starting to sound like mine….like Texas is on the way to Maine etc.   Or I flew to Arizona on my way to Alaska because well, it is on the way. 
Ah the family I have missed so much of in 2016….
I did promise my wife that I’d be home no matter what for her 50th birthday and throw her a party.  After finishing up on what was left on the birding board, having now seen every breeding bird in North America save the red-faced cormorant which I will see in August and probably did see but couldn’t count as I wasn’t sure off Adak.  I went home to a dry and cool prairie, for a needed break,  el Nino’s fading is not helping the farms up here.
I went to my cabin, moved a boat lift as the water level is down, and hooked up my outside shower for the year.  Ahhh…one of my favorite things in this earth is my outside shower.  I enjoyed my cabin for a day watching 2 of our favorite movies, The Good Year, and The Man who Knew Too Little.  I took a picture of my wife, Silja on the morning of her birthday.

the Merc is only 4 years younger than us.
I birded a little around my cabin seeing.....
Upland Sandpipers
Grasshopper sparrows
a Swainson's hawk hovered over my roof, and my Say's pheobes sat on my fence, but I became tired of photos
And we went out drinking and to eat pizza with local friends.  My daughter came with as the designated driver, which was fine, she just got her 14 year old driver’s license upgraded from one she couldn’t drive after dark to an unlimited one now that she is 16.  Yes you can drive at 14 in South Dakota.

Now you may wonder how or why I brought a 16 year old to the Headquarters Bar in Graceville MN (home of Tom Kelly and If you have to ask, you do not know one of the heroes of Minnesota Sports that is some kind of sin).  In Wisconsin we used to say that the drinking age was to be tall enough to see over the top of the bar, but in Minnesota well at least here, they have solved that problem, Minnesota is the land of ice augers, self jigging fishing poles, and well, post-it notes, they can solve any problem.....Here it was simple, they have just ordered high stools so kids as young as 6 or 7 can look over the bar just perfectly?  Now they can say "Hey Mister, a Bud light please, I want to stay in shape, little league is not over yet."  See they can now easily belly up to the bar...


Having a 16 year old designated driver.....no sweat!
The big party I was throwing was actually on July 1st and was at the same place I officiated a wedding last summer.  Now, as it was apparent to me in Utah, finding venues for activities like this on holiday weekends can be difficult.  I decided to go to an old standby and chose the place that hosted the nude wedding I officiated in 2015 and this understandably made for a decidedly clothing-optional affair as the weather was pretty good and the guests were more comfortable celebrating birthdays as it could be said, in their birthday suits, so it worked out.   This made this birthday party a little different from most parties quite a few of you have gone to, but it was fun....and I drank and ate too much....  
I ran the bbq and we had a gathering of say 50 people.  It ended up being a night to remember and I think…think…appreciated by my best friend and sweetie—the birthday girl.   Many asked what I gave her, and it consisted of flowers, carved ivory from Gambell, some sangria mix, a book on tape, and my endless devotion.   As my need R&R continued the birds kept being found and as I drove into Minnesota I got a note that a yellow-green vireo had been seen at the home of Mary Gustafson not all that far from the National Butterfly Center, and after seen the second day, I realized that I had to cut off my rest and head back to Texas to get it.
Mary Gustafson can be said to be a dean or at least one of the deans of LRGV birding.  I first met her a couple of years back while chasing a crimson-collared grosbeak in Santa Ana NWR after one of my many aborted dips on flamingoes up the coast. I’m sure she doesn’t remember me from this encounter but over the years we have had some email chats as she is the reviewer for at least Hidalgo and Starr Counties and well occasionally asked some much needed questions about my ebird posts like how did I know that female rufous hummer was not an Allen’s….things like that, things I couldn’t answer, things I should have answered or well should have thought about before putting in quick ebird posts that are misleading or wrong....oh well.  Back at Santa Ana a couple of years back, I met her as I scoured the underbrush for that grosbeak and around the corner walked Mary, clad in a cowboy hat making me feel like the actual Texas birding rangers had arrived on the scene to examine my posts before I even made them.  As there can only be one cowboy of birding and as Mary had beat me to it, I quietly put my black Stetson in the closet for all future Texan birding chases and even today, I left my new “Clint Eastwood” style Stetson back in Minneapolis  and wore my time tested lucky Ripon College fishing hat. I was hunting for yellow green vireo and well I needed all the help I could get.  
Kidding about hats aside I am still laughing at one of Mary’s many Facebook posts of an exotic dove she owns (I think or maybe a friend's bird) that she videoed bothering an extremely tolerant sleeping cat.  It was the most tolerant (or highly drugged) tabby I have ever seen, as any of my four felines would have taken care of the birding nuisance in a quite permanent manner and taken care of it quickly.
Mary had reported a yellow green vireo at ...as I said....her house.  One thinks about how alpha-birders like Larry Manfredi, Mary, Ben Basham, and many more have rare birds show up in their yards one then has to remember that they live in areas that see rare birds, create good back yard habitat, pay attention, and have water features.....This has never been an easy bird for me and the best one I ever saw was out of area out of season so I didn't even count it in Texas.  I saw one in San Diego later that year.
Well the bird showed up on Friday and I showed up today and was encouraged that Mary had said it was there as I landed in McAllen at 10am.  But when I got there...alas...it had flown off, north 20 minutes earlier.  We scoured the area and to make a long story short, and it was not much of a story, it started singing in a neighbor's yard, a yard that came complete with dogs, barking, poorly tied up dogs, big dogs that looked to be the biting kind.

We heard it well enough to count it and then it moved into a safer tree (for me) and surprise, surprise, I dug it out of the tree and got a pretty decent photograph for a yellow green vireo, through a hole in the branches....




They like it thick and sing from the middle...small bird, dark hole, with bright light behind...I have done worse....

#744 Yellow-green vireo
FWIW, a code three, and three tries to get a bird that felt like a leftover.

I had a nice chat with Mary whom was quite gracious to help me on her street, and so ends the saga of another tick.........

I spent $575 on this bird as I refused to burn my last remaining United FFlier miles, oh well, at least I'll get some back now.

Big Year Total:  744
Coded Birds:  77
provisionals: 1 + 2

number to go to old record:  6
Miles driven.  33,234Flight Miles 109, 300
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 116   Different Airports: 43Hours at sea: 178Miles walked 241
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  59
nights slept in car:  12
slept in airplane:  4

Thanks Mary!!!

I must confess, I bugged out of my mother's 4th of July party today and well she IS a good cook, and well, now all I get is leftovers, when I crawl into northern Wisconsin tonight...

Olaf   

Finding Utopia

Utopia Texas is sort of a cross between the movie Tin Cup and the Andy Griffith Show.  It is both rural, quirky, and in the end it was just what Olaf needed.  The place came complete with horses walking down main street, above....

Idyllic river setting....

and even like the movie Tin Cup....an armadillo is seen foraging in the front yard of the lodge I stayed at.

It also had that weird Juxtaposition in time....Olaf style, stuff one can't make up.
What are the odds of me tying a great Big Year birder, John Vanderpoel and having a sign telling me this literally seen from the front of the lodge I stayed at.  I'll let the sign say it.


Now there is a slight spelling issue on the Texas sign but let us just give that one a pass.  Now I have never met John Vanderpoel or Sandy Komito, but along with Neil Hayward are undoubtedly better human beings and members of the birding community than I am, and to be mentioned in the same company as they are, for me, is truly undeserved.  It is just that I have this very good plan, many doubted, but it is a good big year plan.  I am also spending well under six figures (unlike some who are way over six fugures) rarely using guides (except where required and a couple of times in Arizona for the company and to go down a road I don't like) and I will see a lot more birds this year before this is all thru and even better, I am getting some of the most wonderful stories.

I had other reasons to be in Texas.  I had a business partner die in Corpus Christi, partner being a strong word, I owned 5% of something he owned 25% and managed.  He was one of those people you want to go to the funeral to make sure the deceased is really dead.  The man apparently never paid any bills (despite me paying him my share) or for that mater seemed to settle any disputes.  In fact, I was notified by an additional problem by a lawyer representing another "partner" texting me at the funeral, he was there also apparently making sure the man was dead. But that is business and this is a birding blog....

More importantly, Utopia and the Sabinal River Lodge had something else....the green violetear.  One of the most striking hummingbirds occasionally found in North America with its dark green body, dark tail, and blue patches on the side of its face.  Well maybe the white-eared is more striking...but well...that was the last bird....

The bird was first reported in later May, I think on the 19th by Cindy Sperry, although that is a little vague.


She was at this lodge when it was photographed and that posed a bit of a problem for bird chasers.  Then it was not reported again until June 10th. It was missed on the 17th but as far I as I know those were the only visits by the birding public to this location.  After being there and thinking about it now, I think this bird comes in very early and very late and maybe once in the middle of the day.  But that is just my opinion based on very little evidence.

The problem again...the very nice proprietor Sandy does NOT let on random birders as the location of her many feeders does not lend itself at all to that and would really interfere with here guests.  There is no place to publically view her feeders.  Maybe someone can offer a thousand bucks and she would reconsider but in the end all you are doing would be to ruin it for the rest of us. She is not a birder and sort of looks at her hummers but isn't like the rest of us to have to ID every bird.  So you need to stay here to get a shot at seeing the bird.  The first openings that fit my schedule were the last two days.

Unlike some hummers as far as I can tell, the two sexes look pretty similar. This particular violetear is a little uglier than most, with more gray on the abdomen than in most of the pictures and of the bird I remember seeing and what I have seen of this species. This didn't make my life any easier at the lodge.  I have seen the green violetear before, in Belize 20 years ago on a trip that involved, a kidney stone, destroying a car, burying a car in jungle, toucans, going off on foot, more toucans, ending up between a rebel and a pretty much non-existent army, being rescued by Francis Ford Cuppola and the man that handed me my college diploma (weirdest coincidence ever), and finding ourselves on a private tour of Carachol Archaeology site.  It was an adventure worthy of an anecdote as we lived to tell about it.  I got three life birds on that day, the violetear was one of them, but I digress.

This bird is a bit nomadic and is not that uncommon in Texas, and has also been seen even as far north as Ontario, but this so far in 2016...it is the only one reported.

After arriving from Utah, I cruised in and set up shop at the porch.  Wine in hand ready for a hummer stakeout


There is another problem with viewing hummingbirds here as you can see.  The area is heavily back-lit.  She has 5 hummingbird feeders and an estimated 25-30 black chinned hummingbirds, there could have been 50, it was very busy at her feeders, most of the time too busy.  I was by myself and what I had learned of the hummer, it came in and out and that was it.

Even being careful, the black chinned hummers can look large and dark and be mistaken for the violetear.  Here is one picture..it made me do a double take.

It was a long stakeout.  I spent hours upon hours watching feeders and the birds tended to like the feeders farthest from me. The first night I was pretty sure I heard the bird about an hour before dusk, but pretty sure does not cut it.  Then a little later there was a dark big hummer at the far feeder but all I got was tail, I stood and I spooked it...gone in a noisy chirp.  These are noisy hummers but with cicadas and noisy titmice, hearing is tough at times.  FWIW.  It was a big hummer with dark tail but well....it was frustrating.

I decided something odd for the next day.  I drove out early for the LRGV and the National Butterfly Center to search for a yellow-green vireo at opening, well and I needed to check on my gas well interest down there, again the same dead dude involved...there was some trouble maker floating around causing a scene at the hotel in Corpus, demanding money from this guy and I wanted to make sure what I owned 5% in was still okay.  NABA was buggy, there were few birders.  I got great local intel and staked the place out in sweltering heat for 4 hours.  I'm pretty sure I heard the bird twice and then a bird by its MO flew from it's favorite tree but got sucked into the forest there...again pretty sure was not good enough.  It could have been a red-eyed vireo...for that matter even a Yucatan vireo, IDK, by noon sufficiently melted I headed back to the Hill County, feeling the whole project was hopeless.  No one else saw anything except butterflies...

The lodge called me back like a siren.  I set up a vigil and made a mistake...

Again, the gang of black-chinned buzzed the feeders.  I drank some wine (the mistake) and fell asleep.  A noise woke me up, I got this picture.....

Hum...or hummer, sheez or sh4t.  I slapped myself awake.  I was really awake after that, I would have gone and made coffee but I couldn't leave, not now....in fact I was so wound well into the night and I was out of strong drink, that I probably needed to fall asleep.  A note:  Utopia is in a dry municipality so no late night run to the liquor barn for my Lone Star Beer.

I had had a nice long talk with the owner of the lodge in the morning.  I had left the AC on and in general, I felt I was a bad guest.  I was tired and luck wasn't helping me.  There were children playing in the river, and there I sat feeling like a stalker of children with a big camera.  I was embarrassed.  I wasn't sure I wanted to fess up whether I should tell her my observation that the bird was still there.  I decided to talk about my writing.  She looked very bothered by an earlier talk all of us birders calling her and in fact on NARBA and TEX Rare birds, that is warned as something to avoid.  In fact, I think it delayed my confirmation of this place.

The lady left to take her husband for an appointment and well there was a violetear around.  I had two more hours to see the bird again and well I was not disappointed, this was not named Utopia for nothing. It always amazes me how hummers get more active around lunch time...hint hint.  It was a long tiring stakeout but one only gets to Utopia once.....

some of the other birds of this trip

Groove billed ani, Mitchell Lake Audubon Center

Plain chacalaca, National Butterfly Center

In the end, I ticked one more bird to 743, tying John Vanderpoel, whom I deeply and sincerely apologize to in any way diminishing his mighty effort in 2011, marred IMHO, by the whole hooded crane fiasco of that fall, a bird he should have been able to count.

In the end, I have one less person on my contact list although I'm still getting emails from him (secretary?) which is really odd.  I missed a code three bird.    I have now dipped out twice on a yellow-green vireo but they show up.  I could keep this place a secret but well, that isn't my style.   Maybe other big year birders could get a room here too...?.  Sandy needs the money.  Sorry Christian, no car camping here.

My costs of this trip were odd.  Again, Delta flight to Minneapolis 779, to Phoenix thru Minneapolis, $239.  I had my backpacking gear to check so I stopped at UPS store and mailed it home for $118.  Saving 425 bucks or so, was too much to not give up.

Flight $239
lodging  $260
rental car $198
gas.  $65
admissions  $10
food, $52
postage $118
parking 132
total..........$1074
the memories of Utopia...priceless

That marks the end of this phase of my year plans.  I promised my wife I'd be home to throw her a 50th birthday party and well, just like my wedding I did last July, I expect a huge crowd.  No mass baptism though...no vows, just a celebration of the next half century for my wonderful Silja.  Maybe I'd be back to Texas and maybe soon.  As I said before, that now is the second time I've dipped on that vireo,  and missed it by less than a day...but well, I know, I can't get every bird.

Olaf

Life Elevated

Utah has the motto, "Life Elevated."  They have always thought that they are above Nevada.  The first thing I came to when leaving Nevada was this foot wash.  I never pass up a foot wash.  It was like I was supposed to wash off all the bad the Nevada is and accept the "good" that is Utah....hum?

Was this something to do with Wendover?  The split city with Utah State -Wendover and churches on one side and casinos, strip clubs, and all sorts of sin in West Wendover?  A place that found out you can't have showgirls and strippers in a casino because you have to be 21 to be in a casino and most of the strippers (from Utah State-Wendover, probably) were under 21...hum.  We only bought beer there because well we could.

Ah perfect Utah in all of its splendor.....wait a minute.  The Wasatch National Forest (Little Cottonwood Canyon) bans dogs, and horses, and....at Alta ski resort.....snowboarders....?   A month ago I read about the US Federal Appeals court upholding Alta's ban of snowboarders.  It is a landmark decision about lessors being able to ban things on public land.  Alta hates snowboarders....those evil lots...and of course dogs and horses.....

This is expected to be sent to the US Supreme court, and I guess we'll see.  But dogs....well sort of.  They issue 42 permits for those living over 6 months in the valley, so they are hypocrites.  These are some of the most desired pooch permits in the country.  They say that dogs could ruin the quality of the water which is used for the people below.  Then why not ALL dogs?  Is there a study that dog pooh from just 42 is safe but 43 is too many?  Dog pooh is worse than raccoon pooh, deer scat, goat dropping, rabbit do....?  really?  How about human pooh?  Where do all of those campers and hikers go?   I think they are just mean spirited and bad people!  Who cannot love dogs?   Life elevated...snobs...maybe....the noses elevated nothing more.

okay...okay...rant later, bird first....I need to ask you my well versed and very educated readers better bird related questions....like

Are snowcock chicks...half-cocked?  I've always said snow is my favorite kind of cock, I guess, but maybe that is not questions I want to ask either...I would have had a field day with this trip and the puns in my 2013 year, and I could have easily gotten this bird au naturel...but I digress.

where did I start this trip?

Okay...I started in Milbank South Dakota coming back from chasing a rare Baird's sparrow sighting in Minnesota.  Some of you have doubts....let me restart birding there...last week and let us discuss this bird.....

Many of you say that is not a Baird's, it is a funny looking savanah...

These two photos were sent to the ebird reviewer and on my checklist...mine


Tony Lau's
Many of you complained about a central dot....

It really doesn't exist.

Dr. Bruce Fall  Univ of MN faculty, ebird reviewer, MN OU hierarchy etc responded back to me, after confirming my checklist
Hi Olaf,Nice photos. Diagnostic. Can I persuade you to submit this record with photos to the Minnesota
Ornithologists' Union? Or, give me permission to forward your photos to the MOU records committee
 chair? So far there have been just two reports to MOU with descriptive details, but no other photos.
One included a you tube link, with one song (also diagnostic). This is quite a rare species now in Minnesota,
 although it was more regular decades ago. I've never seen one in the state. I believe the last prior
documented report was in 2002. I probably will regret not making the trek to search for it.Regards,Bruce
This is back to Olaf's thinking.  Song not withstanding and a member of the MN
 rare bird comittee has recorded it......let us look at this bird diagnostically then, 
it can only be 4 things....Lincoln's sparrow, Vesper sparrow, Savannah sparrow or Baird's.  Lincoln's...

I would say the most likely bird this could be if not a Baird's IS a Lincoln, but face wrong and NO central dot, etc.... so I think we all need to go back to Sparrow school.  Baird's can very in looking differently but sound the same.....

I very likely will photograph another, I will end up birding in central North Dakota next week....a birder I know told me to go out and get "proof" of I think a snowcock...not sure.  You know some of you will never believe me, and I can't photograph all the birds and I don't do sound recordings.  So I do my best.  I don't really think that is why I'm in this hobby.  What do you do with the recordings, at least I make huge blow ups of my best photos.  Thank you researchers that have, though...I'm not a researcher, I won't ever do any of it.  But here is a bird, that likely with my pictures, MN OU will confirm it, much like my first flame colored tanager, AND even so many will doubt.  You know....shrug...I won't say it.  I'm keeping it on my list.

June 23  

No sleep on the 22nd, after a nice night at home with the family, I took off at midnight for Minneapolis, flying out at five for Dallas then Tucson.  By 11am I was parked below Beatty's Guest Ranch and was paying my 5 bucks to get in.  The place was empty but not empty of birds I needed.  It took an hour but I finally got pictures of my quarry.

#740  White-eared hummingbird



A lifer bird besides, probably my favorite Arizona hummer.  I have to give you another look...

I was escorted out of the end of the road by the police.  I'm not sure what was up but they didn't pass me despite me stopping to look at birds...maybe the Beatty's had called them...IDK, I was well behaved...really!

It was still early so I drove hard back to Tucson, and booked a flight to Salt Lake city that left by four pm, I drank my lifer beer with John Puschock, birding guide and all around nice guy.  He had a client and was flying home.  It is good to run into people you know, I bought him a beer, sure I owned it to him for intel over the years.

Watsatch National Forest, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, June 23 (PM), 24 (AM) 25 (PM)

Okay, these people hate dogs, and are all around bad people, I guess.  The valley is gorgeous. I drove up the valley after my plane landed.  It was busy with hikers, bikers, fishermen, and everyone not on a snowboard or with a dog....skijoring I guess is banned too?

I looked around and stuck out on my calliope hummingbird search....This is the oddest place.  Everything looks abandoned, sanctioned for private ordeals, or beyond my means.  somewhere near a place called Hell's gate, I ran out of gas, me, I was dead.  No more going anywhere.  I thought about crashing in the car as there appeared to be no place to stay but the whole thing of a multi-million dollar resort complex just baffled me.  I ended up a the Cliff Lodge.  The woman looked bemused by my plea for somewhere to stay.  "We have rooms..."  She said.

"Nowhere in the entire valley does it say we have rooms available.  Nowhere are there any place to eat, and nowhere can I take my dog anywhere."

"you have a dog with?" she said.

"Well no, just saying." I gulped.

"All of the hotels are open and have space."  She looked at me like I was stupid.  Then quoted me 165 a night.  I was still angry over the only rooms in Boston being over a thousand a night and was still mad about the dog policy and then started in about the lack of restaurants and beer.
"Sir we have a restaurant and we serve beer here."  I laughed.  Utah with alcohol, yea...I got a room, they offered me free valet parking, which I don't know what that means.  I have never ever used valet parking.  First the parkers you read destroy your cars, so why would you give it to them.  Secondly, "free?" you have to give them a tip, how much?  Tipping is unAmerican and not a Swedish thing.. What if it isn't enough, do they destroy your car?  These valet people at that moment seemed more evil than the dog haters of Alta/Snowbird.  I sneered at one opening the door for me.  I made him close it and then opened it myself.  I parked a half mile away and happily walked back from a ski parking area.  The guy offered to get a bellman for me and my luggage.  "Do I look helpless to you?"  I sneered.  I found myself in room 858, and asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I woke up a little embarrassed.  I don't usually stay at higher end hotels, they don't let the likes of me in.  I don't think we can afford it.  This hotel is probably the highest priced one I've stayed at in years.  It is true that my wife and I have never used a valet park, or a bellman.  I don't understand thousand dollar a night hotels, what do you have to be worth to stay at places like this?  20 million, 50 million....?  Is there that many people who can come up here and afford to stay and ski?  I don't get it so I went birding.


There were some odd things to see like this hummer feeder made of three ski polls on top of a mound.


this broad -tailed hummer 'owns' this feeder at the village offices, but what is the deal with that weasel in the window?  They had a hummer ID guide behind the feeder too, like who could read that?


I did probably see a calliope hummer displaying near the creek but I wasn't 100% sure so I could not count it.  It looked like one and then it got chased by a broad billed and was gone.  IDK.  Thank GOD my wife texted me that they had landed at the airport and I needed to go get them.  I hoped that I would not have to come back here to these people, dog haters...they say calliope is easy where we were going.....
Ruby Mountains, Elko Nevada.
We had a problem after I picked up my family at the airport.  Lauren E, didn't bring with any shoes. I didn't know what to say?  You got to have shoes.  She gave me that teenage girl look.  We stopped in Elko 4 hours later and went to a CAL Ranch store.  I spent $60 on a new Stetson hat, I needed a new hat, I don't feel like the man in black anymore, so I like my new hat.  I needed shorts and Lena, she grudgingly bought a pair of hiking shoes....great store, this one.  LE hates buying shoes.  Here is my new hat! 
She refused to let me photo here new shoes.
The Ruby Mountains...wow!  Cool place.  This is one of the best kept secrets I have never heard of before, and only heard of it because of one bird, and by the looks of quite a few visitors...the secret is getting out.  Generally national parks suck with too many people so people have been looking for alternatives, this is a good one.  
You cannot believe how many people have asked me whether I am taking a helicopter to go get the snowcock.  Does anyone ever do this?  Did anyone ever do this?  How wealthy do you think I am?  I will use a helicopter and not use valet parking...I got two feet and we enjoy backpacking.  Did that really look like that much fun in the movie?   We backpacked on our honeymoon.  It is a great thing, backpacking, and this time, I got my daughter with too and properly shoed, so up we went...
some views of the area






We stayed overnight at roughly 9000 feet and then in the morning in darkness ascended still further.  I wasn't sure where exactly to go so I picked a rock on a ridge top.  There is a trick to getting snowcock, and to be honest, I don't know what it is.  I relied on my old skill, dumb luck.  In retrospect, they acted like they could see us and didn't come down.  Light and then sun was up and no snowcock.  Eventually eagle-eyed me spotted 2 adults and what ended up being 2 chicks a long ways away on a cliff I wasn't initially watching.  I got the scope on them and showed my intrepid ladies the snowcocks...
741.  Himalayan Snowcock 


There is defiantly a snowcock on those rocks.  One takes what one is given.  We should have been up the hill earlier, maybe even walking up at 3am, and it was really fun watching them.  I assumed they would act like chukars and be more quail like but they acted more like grouse, even putting their tail up and walking like grouse.  I didn't expect that and watched through my scope for over an hour and then was even more fascinated as two chicks popped out for a look. Cool!!
They say the bird is noisy when they feed.  It sounds like a loon mated with a chicken, but these birds...silent.  It is a sound I have not heard in person.  We came and we saw and then we counted to steal a line from Komito.  Later, I celebrated with a beer I hiked up the mountain...IT WAS GREAT!
The ladies celebrated by riding the snow in a homemade toboggan  .


We celebrate each in our own ways....you won't catch me doing that but it was a good spectator sport.
We went down and then headed out of the beautiful canyon.  I noticed two things.  First there were dogs being walked up the trail...wonderful dogs.  I looked for hummingbirds but found none.  Nevada was my kind of place, and they even liked dogs.  What is it with calliope hummers though?  There were other birds....
Clark's nutcrackers
Lena flushed a dusky grouse but I didn't see it.  I found a red-naped sapsucker, she didn't see.  We both got a dusky flycatcher and Brewer's sparrows.
We drove back to Wendover where I had a photo op with Wendover Will

I had nothing to do with the crime scene tape, honest.
This bit of Americana has stood like a beacon on the west side of the Great Salt Basin luring in travelers (gamblers) for a half century, a large beacon of light stood for thirty years before that.  It is the world's largest mechanical cowboy.  Wendover is also part of the only place that has succeeded, almost....well the US Congress voted to allow it to move to Nevada....the two state solution for these 2500 people is not working well but the Senate has blacked it.  Maybe the Utah border will move...some day.  I must ask, maybe Utah is not nirvana?
Hum..so what was I washing off my feet ten miles down the road?  Maybe I was just numbing them for my return to Utah?
I made a third attempt up in the Little Cottonwood Canyon for the calliope.  The women set up a vigil at the village hall and I went looking around.  I crashed a decidedly non-LDS wedding.  The groomsmen were drinking beer in the parking lot.  No hummers....I found another wedding.  Then the women went to look for food...nope the Alta Rustler closed...wedding.  
I went up past Alta from Albion trails and then I got buzzed.  A tiny calliope just about went between my legs from a patch of flowers near where they parked the snow machines.  
742.  Calliope Hummingbird.  I chased it but lost it.  Then I saw the only red thing around.  Two feeders at Albion grill a hundred yards away AND they were open.  We ordered hamburgers at closing time, 6pm. Finally a bit of luck, the cook began to fry.
I waited on the deck on a vigil, watching the two feeders, one broad-tailed, then another.....finally nachos eaten, things were looking grim and LE said, behind the feeder.  I turned and there it was, I grabbed for my camera as the calliope dove down off the deck.  Photographing that bird is like trying to photograph Sasquatch....the ladies were tired so we went back to the the motel.  I would not photograph this bird.  I was ready to leave Utah anyhow , and I wasn't sure I wanted to return.  FWIW the numbers
Big Year Total:  742
Coded Birds:  76
provisionals: 1 + 2

number to go to old record:  8
Miles driven.  33,204Flight Miles 106, 100
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 112   Different Airports: 43Hours at sea: 178Miles walked 241
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 35
Lifers seen this year:  59
nights slept in car:  12
Airplane:  4
Costs:flights, $720Hotel in Snowbird:  $180not sure what wife paid for place in SLC, I guess that was on herrental cars, $240Beatty's $5gas.  $55hat and pants, $100food, $110lifer beers $30total $1440the memories:  priceless
Nevada was a fine place though.  The Ruby's were the surprise of the year.  It was an enjoyable hike.Utah...the life elevated.....well I guess it was.  No dogs..really?  What really is wrong with snowboarders?  I guess I won't be coming here for a ski vacation.  You can't have it all.  I'm keeping plugging along, three more birds.  742. is my number.  Better still.. Lena is at 499!  Got to get one more that is for sure.
I tip my new hat to her and to....you
Olaf

The Whole Crew

Baird's sparrow was first described in 1843 in North Dakota by Audubon.  My lifer Baird, above, seen on a family trip in 1984 and shot with a Pentax k1000 on the way to Glacier Park Montana. east of Havre MT.  I don't know even where I was anymore.  That and my largest brook trout ever caught were my memories of that trip.  That picture is one of my better pictures as a young birder with film.  However when I look at this bird now 32 years later, having scanned them in without really looking at them like a decade ago, along with the front view, photo, as pointed out by a viewer, I'm not so sure I actually had even seen a pure bred Baird's sparrow back then, possibly I owe someone a lifer beer....


Historically, Baird's wasn't reported again until 1872, a year that marked a lull in the plains Native American wars and just two years before a huge discovery in the Black Hills would change everything in the west where in 1872 in the Deadwood Creek, each shovel full of earth contained a veritable fortune in gold.  This influx of treasure seekers onto Sioux land led to friction, which led to Custer moving west, the Battle of the Little Bighorn, more troops, and the as they say...the rest is history.  Let me be the first to say, one diminutive sparrow had nothing to do with any of it.

When my birding friend Tony Lau told me he was heading to central Minnesota to look for this sparrow, I invited myself with as I said, "I need that bird."  We met in Alexandria Minnesota at 6am on the 21st after a much needed day of rest, resupply, and well, you guys and gals know what happens when two star crossed lovebirds see each other after an absence...this is still spring for one day and the summer solstice, a very important night for Nordic stock, a full moon, and ooh la la!

I digress, This area is steeped in tradition of both Native Culture and the west, well and also the Kensington Runestone...we drive right past my name sake "Big Ole" in Alex a remnant from the 1964 World's Fair near the home of of the stone and met at McDonald's.

Fort Juelson is located not far away which was hurriedly built in 1876 by Hans Juelson to protect the local Norwegian population after settlers began to abandon farms in fear.  These were just resettled after the Sioux Uprising of 1862.  Hans built the sod fort over one of the largest ancient burial mound complexes in the region, further angering the local Natives for years.  These mounds oddly also mimic the Uppsala Complex and other Nordic complexes in Scandinavia, but only I write about that similarity typically.  The only battle that this fort ever saw however, was possibly for a larger portion of lutefisk, and now later, over shared historical significance, and conjecture by people trying to authenticate the runestone as real.  I have a passion for chasing bronzed aged burial mounds all over the world and this is but one site of many I've been to.
 
It is also coincidental that my wife had just finished an ER shift nearby in Fergus Falls, a place I actually have never worked.  As many of you may not know, I have an MD degree.  I don't talk about it as much, even though I have college plus 9 years of training and for a decade, that was all I did.  It isn't like I did anything wrong or am ashamed of anything...IDK.  I ran my group for almost 2 decades.  I have never really been known as Dr. Olaf and don't like the title per say, although I rarely call any other medical colleague by their given name.  Everyone is Doctor or Professor to me.  I'm Olaf, or most hey, you!  I am not sure what to call the great Alaska birder and cardiologist in Anchorage, Dr. Dave?  Should I use his last name.  I don't know.  I think my lack of stories of my doctor experience in print and blog is mostly PTSD.  Life in the ER is like that.

If I do tell the stories, I try to pick the pithy ones, like my month in residency in "Stripper" clinic and what seemed to be clothing-optional Tuesdays for the patients not me, my all-nude delivery, patient, baby, father, nurse, and OB doctor,  (oddly except for me, they recruited me at 1 am to take pictures of all things), or my aborted research into a cancer cluster, where I stumbled upon something sinister that the government didn't want exposed and I made hot dogs burning the research in the parking lot in a bid of self-preservation advised to me by a doctor at Argonne or was in Oak Ridge...or maybe Hannaford....I won't tell.....  I had a residency in Pennsylvania where by noon on my first day as a doctor, my three patients had died and died terrible ghastly deaths.  At one pm my next patient was a famous singer who not only didn't die, sort of jaded my look at fame and what it did to people.

I was trained well in my first two years of head and neck trauma where for example, when I used a piece of equipment like suction cautery to stop a nose-bleed, my attending took it away and then told me I'd be fired if I ever used it again.  The joke as that eventually I could be able to stop a nose bleed with a pen, my clipboard, and one big fat finger.  I never got that far as the place overwhelmed me in negativity.  The goal here, though, was to be able to think on my feet and be able to be flexible.  That training saved my bacon later many times much to the chagrin of nurses as I would frequently head off in the supply room finding new uses for things that would solve problems certain patients came in with.

In the ER, I've worked all over in Minnesota as we were building up our group.  I still have scars in my head.  One case from Sandstone Minnesota involving a birth in a hospital that hadn't done OB for years.  Here, I "ate" a patient--meaning had to deal with something bad as couldn't transfer.  The patient was brought to the hospital by mistake, the previous doctor asked me as I arrived at 8am if I did OB (I replied I delivered some in residency but that was not something I ever wanted to do) and he promptly ran out the door and laid rubber in the parking lot.  I should have closed the hospital and transfered the patient with me in the ambulance.  I didn't.  My famous line when asking what they had the baby warmer set at...the nurse replied.  "Well we use the setting of "5" to melt grilled cheese sandwiches so we decided to use "4".  I recommended 3.5 then.  I was a terrible case, in skilled hands that would be a terrible delivery at a major OB center and here I was in an ER without OB in the middle of nowhere.  My nurse had juts transferred to the ER from a local Psych hospital.  No one in the hospital that day had even had their own children.  I was on my own.  It was bad.  It seems though, I have this "7th" gear where things sort of slow down.  Like an overdrive gear.  I have seen it on tape.  I actually talk slower.  In battle the camera shows this well like in Game of Thrones"  It does slow down in battle.  It even slows down for me in my perception during a big bird finding event.

In that old case, The blue baby born dead, miraculous through nothing I did, the equipment all broke or malfunctioned, breathed at 2 minutes and pinked up. A rare 0/9 Apgar score for any of you who know what that is, without any life support things as we didn't have anything.   Prior to the birth knowing it would be bad, I was thinking if I should drive down to turn in my license after the case, or wait until Monday.  That was 1999....

I have had many other cases, holding a hand of a man in Baudette Minnesota with a rupturing AAA, (Aorta) in a blizzard comes to mind.  I told him I didn't think we could get a plane in for hours and that he was assuredly going to die.  He asked if the TV monitor in the room worked so I sat there watching his beloved Minnesota Vikings loose 41-6 to the NY Giants in the NFC championship game as we gave him the last units of blood the hospital had.  He didn't make it to the end of the game, unfortunately, the Vikings never made it TO the game.  He died wearing his purple hat and clutching his purple jacket and my hand.  I later came down with pneumonia myself on that shift and could barely stand at the end of 60 straight hours of coverage on the Canadian border.  My last act was to xray myself and give myself antibx as there was no relief for me. It took me two days the way it was to drive 5 hours home.

I once had a five hour code on the former cook of the St Louis Rams, who eventually succumbed to the motorcycle trauma. The Rams won the Super Bowl the next year, making me wonder if their diet improved, although I don't like to speak ill of the dead.  I have the odd, the weird, and the scary, and besides knowing my wife will understand, I figured most of you wouldn't, so I prefer to talk about travels, birds, my family, and my idiocy.    

With all of this local history, scar tissue, and after nearly 6 mos of doing a big year, I pulled into McDonald's and then we were off to the fields NW of Alex.

To be honest, in retrospect, it wasn't one of my finest moments in birding especially bird ID.  My daughter needed a willow flycatcher for her year and it took about an hour to actually located the bird after we heard it.  Then we saw it all the time.

You may ask, right now, why I even came over to this part of the world to see a Baird's sparrow?  If you look at a range map, Minnesota?  Yes, always one to do things the hard way, I came to chase a sparrow that has not been seen in Minnesota for 14 years.  I did this to save 4 hours in a car.  This sparrow frequents my cabin in migration but they don't nest there and this sparrow is nomadic and will be found in one year here and not the next.  I saw a whole "crew" in Lemmon SD in 2014 but nary a one last summer.  It is a murder of crows and a crew of sparrows, by the way.  I could have driven towards Bismarck ND but that is 4.5 hours from my house and well, Alex was 2, so here I was, getting a bird I may never see in Minnesota again for a guy that does not keep state lists.

For an hour, we looked but didn't see, I saw sparrows, and photographed them, but no Baird's or so I thought. I thought I maybe heard one a few times but alas I demurred.  I questioned Tony on the authenticity of the sightings reporting it here, and he found 3 truly horrid photos of the bird, but there was a reliable 'ear bird' from a MOU big shot.  Finally nearing 9am I put my scope away and then walked back to Tony.  "Anything?"

"Just this ratty Savannah," I looked at it on a hay bale.  Then something clicked in my head....

"Wait a minute."  I said holding up my camera shooting photos.....I had looked, but not seen all morning.  "That, I think, is it."  We took more pictures.  Tony sent them out and about since I was so wishy-washy on the ID.  We had not only seen it, but we had good pictures.  Tony captured it best...


bird number 739. Then I looked at my photos.  Almost all of my photos are of the Baird's sparrow.  It was like the bird was saying "it's me, it's me" my camera brain was saying take pictures, the rast of my brain was saying, nope not that one.  I felt like Custer, sort of looking but not seeing the bigger picture or comprehending anything in the grand scheme.   This is tired birding and having to dig almost everything out myself or with friends.  Sparrows are hard work on a good day.  My daughter had left us to get away from the birding as she had already had the bird in her mind when it first appeared and figured if we couldn't recognize it that was our problem.

Well, that was that, I now had the whole Crew of sparrows, and had seen every last breeding one in North America on the checklist.....something I've never done before.  my next to last code 1, now I had just three lower 48 breeders and in a week, they will be ticked as in past tense.

 My daughter was up 2 to 494, having found the chestnut collared longspur colony near our cabin and stumbled upon a Wilson's phalarope last weekend.  She was making progress too, 494 is great!  Although she is sort of tired of blogging and has that summertime student malaise, I had summertime birder malaise, too but I needed to keep going.  My dog, Brighid can finally sleep after I'm home and as you can see, my daughter still hasn't unpacked from returning from her trip with me to Alaska.


But alas...poor pooch, sleepless vigils shall return for her as it is off again, I go.  It is a long year and I'm not even half way to the end, an end that will be hopefully spent reveling in not much attire if anything on Orient Beach in St Martin FWI.

I had a nice chat with Big Year historian Joe Lil the other day.  Joe says many birders live vicariously thorough my blog and this adventure.  I honestly don't know what to think about that.  I would advise all of you to go and see America...go see Ft Juelson and the mounds.  Think about who built them and why.  Think about settlers so fearful that you would walk away from fields and houses, and even more, of a life so bad in Norway or Sweden, that you would just jump on a ship and come to a place in the middle of nowhere.  If that is not your thing...go grab a tent and head to the mountains of New Mexico, the shore of Maine....see America and think, think of about what others have endured so that we...don't.  None of this costs much money either.  in the end, maybe you will see a couple of new birds, learn something, and maybe, just maybe you won't have to live vicariously through me.

As my ER exploits have shown me, life is way too short, one moment you are out there walking around and the next, I'm looking at a flat-line with blood all over me.  The weather is nice, get out there....anywhere, enjoy the moment.  No one ever told me in their last breath that they wished they had worked more...no one....NOT A SINGLE PERSON!

advice from you doctor...

Dr. Olaf

Funniest Travel story of the year

Just thought I'd lighten the mood, this is what this year is all about!
Some times I am so stupid.

I'm going through security at Albuquerque. I was happy to have gotten TSA Pre!  I go cruising through the check in guy and then as I'm piling stuff on the conveyor, I realize that I never emptied my water bottle and since I had paid $25 for it in Phoenix, it is PVC free and all of that, it is metal,  I'm not giving up my water bottle!  I go out to empty it out in the bathroom just around the corner.  No one has got in the TSA line in my absence and so I return.  Same guy ...same deal.

As per rules I have to be re-checked as does my license.  I say I know the rules, and I say "rules are rules."  I am quite jovial now and laughing at my idiocy and state "maybe I should give you my passport to vary it up a bit" as he scans my phone for my ticket and grabs my license.  He gives me back my license ignoring my comment or so I think.

His machine buzzes, This is an odd buzz I have never heard before.  Deadly serious he looks at me.  "Hold on a minute, sir.  Maybe you should zip up your fly before you go through security and so you are not subject to getting added screening. I may expose something you don't want exposed."

Maybe you had to be there, or maybe it is that I'm very tired but I thought it was funny.

Olaf

Where to next Magellan?

I was thinking of titles for this blog.  "Hot in McCainland,"  "Bloody in Yuma"  "Bruised and Beaten in Buckeye"  "Sizzled in Scottsdale"  "Destitute in  in the Desert."  I could have settled on just "Why?"  Why?  Because we were mad, as in hatter, or generally just I was insane, being a big stupid idiot comes to mind.  "Where to next Magellan?"  Seems to sum it all up.  We should have died, we could have died, but well...I am still blogging

Brian Johnson of Scottsdale, my intrepid partner in this, summed it all up and gave me a title.  "Where to next Magellan?"  The only thing he said basically during the trying part of  yesterday.  We were lost, standing on broken branches nowhere near a trail.  It would be maybe a hundred yards before we could, if we wanted to, even put our feet on the sand or whatever was underneath us, it would shortly be 120 degrees, we were miles from our car and even farther from anyone else.  I had found a cave that we could maybe crawl into to avoid the extreme heat once our water ran out and had pointing it out to Brian.  That wasn't going to save us short of prolonging the agony of death.  We had no cell phone signal but somehow, Brian's phone gave our GPS location.  I looked at it on the map.  We were surrounded by green, buried in a a see of thorns and brush....I did the next best thing a stubborn Swede can do, I swore and charged ahead, promptly ended up upside down....

The synopsis:

Big Year Total:  738
Coded Birds:  75
provisionals: 3

number to go to old record:  12
Miles driven.  32,445Flight Miles 102, 900
speeding tickets: 1flight segments: 108   Different Airports: 43Hours at sea: 178Miles walked 230
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 34
Lifers seen this year:  57
nights slept in car:  11
Back to birding...

I am not going to say where we went.  We had heard vague rumors of this bird and I mentioned it to Laurens Halsey, he didn't talk me out of it.  He warned Brian (they found copulating nightjars together a few days ago) that my pants may come off, and yes...they did.  Brian's were nearly cut off, shreaded by the thorns.  Not for the reasons maybe he implied tongue and cheek, though.

I was originally going to not mention this bird on my list until fall/ winter.  I had a witness and a picture but you know, thinking about it, this is really not my style, BUT I'm not going to mention where we were.  The ebird reviewer knows and has seen pictures..we weren't where we were supposed to be ..the rest of you, this is all you get.  The ebird checklist will be hidden, sorry.

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons:  first safety and secondly practical.  This was one difficult place to get to.  As noted we missed a turn on foot.  (the road to where we walked was almost as bad as the road to Aliso Springs).  To where we needed to be and where we were after hiking for an hour and a half was about 4 miles to go back and correct and around to get there.  This is after we had walked miles leaving well before first light.  As such, we tried (mostly I) tried to go cross country, Brian followed and I nearly made a mistake that could have killed us.  We should have just packed it in and gone back to the truck.  Both of us were cut up badly.  I had lost some blood, and AND how I didn't get bitten by a snake is only from the graces of my team, a team of guardian angels.  Much of the blood has been sweated off.

It was 98 degrees at 0900 am, and by noon, 120?  I carried 3/4 of a gallon of water, it was not enough.  No cell phones worked but oddly we had GPS, but knowing where you are doesn't help you get to where you need to go especially standing in the middle of a mesquite and tamerisk forest with blood dripping down your arms.  So no one ever needs to think about going here, it was too much.  I would not return ever to this spot.  I would truly trade being shot at or chased by a bear, both from 2013 than to ever EVER do this again.  We were warned but we didn't listen.  We were stupid, lucky....but really really stupid.  I'm pretty sure heat stroke would have gotten us had we delayed getting aback by another hour.   I'm really sun burnt too.  Just don't go here!

We did see birds though...my first photo of a Bullock's oriole this year.



yellow breasted chats, again FOY photo, they called in total darkness..

and then the bird of the year maybe for me

Nutting's flycatcher....Brian's photos are even better than mine.
Reporting birds is about ego, but I'm going to say it here but hide my ebird location, just like the guys with owls do.  Secondly, practically for me, this is a big year, and competition, although I don't care about it, Christian has given me info and I him, but no one else has doing it so this here is all the people need to know as why should I help those who aren't helping me.

I got out and went for pancakes because that was what I was thinking about to keep me happy and from loosing it.  Simply pancakes....you know life is really just a stack of pancakes, nothing beats them, I had hoped to be able to eat them one more time...Brian smiled and ordered a burrito and French toast and an endless glass of diet coke.  In life it is the little things....and man those were good flapjacks!

Jemez Springs, NM

I enjoyed my first shower in days after my ordeal.  I wasn't going to sleep in my car again.  I savored  a rare night lately in a bed although I could only get 5 hours of much needed sleep before I had to get up at 0330.  I was groggy and had a hard time getting going.  There is nothing more sobering, though than having to put back on soiled clothing ( I chose ones without blood on them) before going through a McDonald's drive thru to go birding.  I took stock in my body as I was waiting for the standard, coffee--large, three sugars to come my way.  My right arm was luckily not broken, it was sore from when I fell off a tree truck I was standing on and flipped upside down and I put my arm out to brace the fall on my head.  My shoulder got caught on another branch so that stopped me.  I lost a water bottle in the process.  My forearm, as I now remember it, hit the side of the tree pretty hard.  My arms looked like I had gotten into a fight with a cat, deep and heavy scratches on them.  I had a deep one on my left arm that had closed okay so I didn't need stitches but it was sore.  My left lower leg was bruised, mostly as I used that leg to just elephant the brush, break the small branches and some, didn't break too easily but I would heal.

I again had to be early not only to beat the heat but as I was chasing black swift, the early bird gets the swift.  Black swifts are odd birds, they like to live behind waterfalls and feed high up in the sky so high, you can never see them.  I am no expert but in my experience, there is a method in getting this bird (well I know a nest sight in Montana, that is also a way).  One is to wait for fog or rain so that the fog and clouds forces them down to your level, or get your a$$ out to a waterfall before first light.  In June, that is not easy.  The sun comes up early in June and waterfalls are not always right on a road.

I picked Jemez Falls in New Mexico as it seemed handy to an airport and on the way home.  I had never been here.  I arrived in the parking lot with a nearly full moon lighting the road.  I hiked down to the falls and took a seat with a good view.  Immediately I got buzzed by something dark.  I cowered down into the rocks instinctively as out of the corner of my eye I could see a swift heading down over edge of the falls.  "Bastard"  I said under my breath.  Then I put my heart back in my chest so to speak and I got ready for the show.

I was not early and I turned my ISO way up as two then as many of 5 black swifts, large swifts without a speck of light or white on them cruised high overhead, I never got buzzed again.  They were really up there already but I could see them.



It is 0525 in the morning and the sun wasn't even fully up yet but I still managed to actually photograph my third swift for the year.  I haven't shot a Vaux's yet although seen them.  These birds, and at one point, I could see five, hung around for ten minutes on and off and then....they were gone.  I assume they came off the falls but to be honest it was dark down there and my first notice was the buzz-by.

I hung out until 0630 but it was mostly to try to see which Jay was sitting in a tree I could see until the sun hit it.  Stellers but that didn't matter.


It was a neat spot, and looked like yet another place I'd like to come back to if it wasn't for this dang birding year.  Bird #738 in the bag, I went back down the valley and stopped and snapped a picture of Jemez Springs, it is a bit of a throwback town

This is the Stage stop

As I was taking pictures apparently one of the tribal police was taking pictures of me for apparently going 42 in a 30.  You know, this scofflaw from traffic court, me, has no reason to argue.  The Jemez Reservation can use my $75 bucks and the cop was a fisherman, wanting to go to South Dakota to get walleye, I gave him a lead or two.  My perfect birding record over.  I had never NEVER gotten a ticket or arrested while birding, naked or otherwise and now...that is over.  My 67th stop, 7th ticket.  I didn't deserve this one but I deserved one the last 10 stops and didn't get one.  Oh well...

Some clean up items....

I had heard through the grapevine that those arm chair people out there, had doubted my knot sightings because for one thing I had waited two days to post it, well it was just a day, AND I was in Nome with no data access.  I was a little short with the guy who told me this but I was really tired and all covered in blood, really, sorry there.  The stewardess on my flight moved the person sitting next to me to an open seat, as I must have looked bad.  The day I left Nome, I finished a bunch of ebird postings at the Alaska Executive lounge in Anchorage as I did my blog the very next day.  I will add, I'm pretty sure I saw the third knot tucked in a cove on one of the ponds and watched this bird for 30 minutes with head under the wing with my daughter.  I never saw the bill but it had longer black legs and then distracted I turned away, as the bird popped its head out and flew away, I never got on it in flight but my daughter said it was a long narrow bill, she counted it, I didn't.  I couldn't tell even with the long legs and until later I didn't know these knots had black legs.  I was only 90% sure.  I had all my photos of it, which it turned out I didn't, as in the extreme cold somehow I had not put in my chip correctly.  My daughter was through birding....

When I came across the two knots two hours later, about a mile from this encounter with the single bird, I went to get friends I left on the bridge....I saw these birds well on the gravel bar,  50x scope versus my 5x camera in very windy condition and harsh light..I watched these birds walk around some loafing eiders, had light abdomens were long and wide versus stockier surfbirds, had the bronze on the wings folded....IDK.  I snapped two photos and blew it up to this....they aren't jeagers...IDK



Would I have called them Great knots if there hadn't been a previous report?   No.  I would not have called this a slate-throated redstart with out a previous report if this was the only photo in existence, either, but I had watched the redstart for a while before i tried to shoot it.


I showed this exact same picture to the Wilderness guide Aaron Bowman a hour later on the bridge and his partner....I wasn't hiding anything, in fact, I was really wound up about seeing these birds and I wanted to share....I stayed out until midnight trying to help my friends get it.  I worked hard on that bird, over 24 hours I walked quite a bit of the shoreline around the sound, thinking that with the wind they were tucked in somewhere.  When I screwed up my first encounter, I literally cried like a little kid.  .I do wish I had snapped the picture two feet earlier when their feet and lower bodies were exposed or had brought walkie talkies.  Oh well

In the end believe what you want, I'm getting nothing out of this...maybe a bill and a headache.  You guys are reading this drivel.
I guess that is not true, I have sold 114 Boobies Peckers and Tits, since this started, thank you very much.  Those royalties paid for my Motel 8 shower and bed last night...cool!  I don't expect to be respected as a birder.  I have said that repeatedly in this blog.  That is okay, this is my hobby.

I will say that with the black swift not even counting the knot, I have now taken more pictures of ABA birds in a calendar year than anyone ever has.  I know Laura Keene is trying to break this record (I think) and I don't know where she is at, I now have more than the current record...but for me I couldn't give a rat's ...well you know, ....about this record....big deal, horray for Laura, if that makes her happy, just note to whomever,  I'm out there and I got a lot of pictures.

Another nice meaning guy told me to sneak off for a week in Hawaii to get a big island total and with that I could crush the USA record.....

Is this only about the records?  If so how very sad all of this is if this is just about that.  I kind of think I had an epiphany in the desert this week.  It was very VERY good for my soul out there even before my mishaps.  Let me say this here and in all honesty, When it is said and done, I will be buried in the Anscarius Cemetery 4 miles east of Grantsburg Wisconsin or at least some of my ashes will be (I hope to be cremated in the long Nordic tradition, ashes spread at two other locations, Orient Beach and Smoothrock Lake Ontario) near my beloved Grandfather and mother, Allwin and Lucille Danielson. The previous story teller in the family, uncle George Danielson, my Great grandmother, Ellen Danielson, and my great-great grandfather Henry.  Hopefully near my immediate family, but I will have no control over that.  I'm not sure I would wish to be near me for eternity either.  There will be no mention of any damn birding records on the tombstone.  The only record I really care about is my nude birding record.  I wrote a book on that.  It has my inermost thoughts and fears in it.  When I told birding stories to Brian, it wasn't 2016 stories I largely told, it was 2013 stories, that is a record I cherish and had a lot of fun doing.  This year is fun too, but in a whole different sort of way.  This record is not not going to be mentioned on my tombstone either, BTW

I am not going to Hawaii and I am NOT going to mention my photo tally ever again, unless I am forced to.

Olaf

FIRE!

Fire!  Don't yell this in a movie theater but if it is coming over the mountain at you, yell it and run! Well, I'd be too stubborn to run, like this time.   Of all the stuff the birding gods have thrown at me, fog, ice, snow, wind, rain, they had skipped one, but not now.  On June 16th 2016, I ran smack dab into a forest fire....the 12,000 acre at the time of this writing Cedar Creek Fire near Show Low, AZ, problem is this is where I'm birding....gosh I forgot to plan for fire season....the bus ahead of me BTW was carrying a fire crew in from farther west.  How was this going to go?

The synopsis:

Big Year Total:  736
Coded Birds:  74
provisionals: 3

number to go to old record:  14
Miles driven.  32,245Flight Miles 102, 400flight segments: 107   Different Airports: 42Hours at sea: 178Miles walked 220
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 34
Lifers seen this year:  56
nights slept in car:  11

Mammals cool:  Elk, lots of elk
Santa Rita Mountains, Soniota AZ

The Pine Flycatcher or Empidonax affinis is a bird of lore.  The name means "related to" empids, and it is a poorly understood bird that typically resides well south of the US/ Mexican border but in an area of drug trafficing...who is really researching it.   In 2008-9 an individual from this difficult to identify family showed up in Choke Canyon, TX, and was initially thought to be a pine, and many came and ticked a bird that was ultimately identified as a least flycatcher, the commonest of the lot.

Well when I was in Alaska, word of this bird and an ID by the expert in this family confirrmed, a true rarity was in ABAdom.  It looked as though it was moving in, building a nest, so I waited until the prospects looked perfect for something more.  After, Maine, I flew in to Phoenix and rented a car.  Now I was orginally going to hitch a ride from a non-birding guide who was trasporting people up what has been caled the worst road in Arizona, and I would tend to agree, it is bad, really bad.  High clearance...at least.  But this man said his car was fuul, the had an opening, then full again, so I didn't really even know if i had a spot so Hertz helped me out. first, it turned out, my rental was in Boston.  The computer glitched.  Then my Carolla was out of stock so the guy said, well, we'll upgrade u to a ...Tahoe.....yea, big, 4WD, and I took it as an omen.

I slept in the boot of the SUV but under an elf owl, it was a long short night on the side of Arizona hwy 83.  I got up at first light and drove to the head of the road and who do I see standing along the road but Liz Southworth from Boston, she was on my flight back from Alaska.  I stopped.  Then Laurens Halsey came by to pick her up, I got invited along and well, misery and birders love company so in I hopped, besides, I wasn't sure where this bird was.

We got to the end of the road, I put my lungs and gut back in my body and out we went and found the cute little bird.....first one in the ABA..

Pine Flycatcher

Obviously this bird is a female and is sitting on a nest, now what she is sitting on?  Everyone wants to know..but as not on the checklist only a provisional bird pending addition of the checklist committee.

There had been an Aztec Thrush seen here a couple of days ago but none today.  We looked and scoured.  I watched a rufous capped sparrow and by 8 we were out of there.  The only bad news is i lost a screw in my glasses and I was subjugated to using only sunglasses or being unable to read.

After visiting an optometrist office in Green Valley I was back on the road and driving up to Phoenix not thinking.  I ended up in a Barnes and Noble before I decided what to do.  It was then I realized that where I needed to go for the only two birds in the state, I needed was closer to Tucson and so I had driven 150 miles the wrong way.  I then stubbornly ignored my Siri and drive to Camp Verde then east to avoid the traffic again in the big city of Phoenix

It was shortly afterwards that I saw the smoke....It looked to be just where I was heading....dang.  Then I stopped and looked it up.  Evacuation orders....double dang.  Then a busload of firefighters passed me....triple dang.  I was pooped and I went to a hotel to sleep but the knock on the door could come at any moment I was warned by the night person...

I decided to eat a final ...maybe a final meal,...gulp


I guess this a provisional lifer beer....can I drink another when it is added to the checklist?  I need a ruling.

White Mountains, Arizona

I was up in the white mountains at first light having drove around the fire to get to my goal spot from the east.  I had told my wife my exact location in case i got trapped but i was too stubborn to just go somewhere else, actually there wasn't anyplace else for these two birds.  The dusky grouse is rare in Arizona and the other bird I needed, a sapsucker was also scarce.

I avoided the elk all over the road and still no fire over here so I climbed up a mountain and hiked around.  It took a while for me to see anything after seeing an initial northern pygmy owl.  I can never photo that bird and then I wasted time taking shots of mountain bluebirds


The I heard a tap, a woodpecker tap, I sat down and tried to wait out the woodpecker.  Sapsuckers can be fickle, then it gave itself away and I stood, it flushed as did a second one.  I ran after them and I got a photo, I beat this one, sneakking sapsucker.  I have never photographed a red-naped previsouly buggers...no more.  ha!  Score one for me.

#735  Red-naped sapsucker

The testosterone was flowing on the mountainside a bit later as I ran into a fire tower spotter, totting up two weeks supply of water up her tower basically to lock herself in in case the fire was coming her way as she said, no one was coming up to evacuate her.  She had a lot of testosterone carrying up maybe a thousand pounds of stuff up a couple hundred feet.  She parked her old truck in a corner so that when the gas tanks blew, it would not damage her tower.  23 years of experience, I guess.  She worried about the big white Tahoe nearby until I admitted it was mine.  My tahoe was close enough that the blast could affect her tower.  She was relieved that I was only looking for a bird and would leave shortly.  To hurry me up, she gave me some help.  Run the powerline clearing.

I did and shortly I found more testosterone, this time the hormone was raging inside a large grouse, displaying up in a tree.  What a show!

#736 Dusky Grouse

It was a great scene, and I watched for an hour.  He made sounds I could barely hear, low and spooky, in the hopes of attracting a hen.  None came, and eventually I climbed back up the mountain and got in the car, notifying Silja that I was leaving.  I told her where I was going in case, the fire got me.  I hope the big boy in the tree will be okay but I needed to leave.

I drove back down the 83 erosion protection mounds into the valley.  The lady had counted them in the tower and she gave that "Get the F out of here" look when I started down.  I was...


The view away from the fire is gorgeous but as you can see, hit a mogul wrong and the trip down will be very quick.

Show Low had not been evacuated as I drove back in but they were under a pre-evacuation orders still.  The town was very smoky and in the end, I sort of felt like I had been in a barbecue--literally in it, slowly smoldering.  Everything I owned now smelled like a campfire, a huge campfire.

All was not lost....for me....Two year birds and a provisional....a good trip.

The forest service was bringing evacuees into my hotel as I write this blog and am wasting more time thinking of where to go next.  I have a scheme, I'm bugging out of here before I get burnt up both due to the 115 degree heat expect in the valley and the dang fire.   Another busload of fire fighters are coming in the valley....got to go, I need to get the fire out of here..........before I become a burquet, a piece of charcoal named Olaf.

I wonder if I'd be the quick lighting kind?

O

Sorrowful in New England

Let me say this upfront, I have really been unmotivated to blog in the last few days as after what happened in Orlando.  My exploits don't matter.  The families of 50 people, 50 young people are grieving and the families of just as many are worried about the health and recovery of loved ones. and still more are trying to quell the PTSD from being there. I don't like stereotyping this as the LGBT community as these are just people...people out having fun on a Saturday night until they weren't.

I can't relate to this tragedy.  I cannot know how those affected, feel.  What I feel is different.  I can say that I understand their losses but I don;t know if I can even say that.  I was very surprised to see that even in northern New Hampshire on the morning after this event, flags all over were half-mast. This is not just an LGBT issue this is an American issue, if the LGBT community wants to be part of a cohesive society and not a separate society they need to understand this and I think many do.

Unfortunately crap happens in America, but we do have too many guns and this is from a gun owner, but guns were not the problem here.  How to integrate these 1st generation immigrant children into our or English, or French society seems to be something that somewhere we all have forgotten how to do, maybe it is religion, culture, but IDK.  We are not and have never been safe anywhere all the time here--be it a night club or a school. Terrible stuff has happened in the last 150 years, it is just that we have more people and more people means bigger and more events, and more media means we learn about it.  We cannot have metal detectors at little league games this summer, we cannot have malls locked down like airports, if it becomes that, the bad guys have truly won.

Save the countless recollections of this tragedy, and just before, I have contributed my worthless opinion, I continued on into New England and really enjoyed myself.  It wasn't easy birding, as the weather....well what else would it be?

So here is my story of birding if anyone still cares:

The synopsis.     
Big Year Total:  734
Coded Birds:  74
provisionals: 2

number to go to old record:  16
Miles driven.  31,501Flight Miles 99,100flight segments: 105   Different Airports: 42Hours at sea: 178Miles walked 218
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 34
Lifers seen this year:  56
nights slept in car:  9

 Boston MA


Whatever was happening elsewhere on the early morning of June 12, I was not aware of it as I was hopelessly lost in Boston.  Nobody cared about me not even Siri, as I lost it when she deposited me in a dark alley and then when reprogrammed gave me directions to Rhode Island.  Is Peabody MA such an alien concept?  Is my accent so bad?  I found the hotel an hour later, and then 30 minutes after that, I figured out how to actually get to it.  You can't make cross traffic turns off of Highway 1.

What was important in Boston was my son, Tyko, with his brother Allwin in Germany, this was the only twin we could visit for their 21stbirthday.  Now many of you, if you actually read my book, Boobies Peckers, and Tits will recall (well maybe) my great Chapter:  Flashbacks, where I retell my epic father getting to the birth of his twins story.  I still feel somewhat guilt over all of this and apologize to my wife.  21 years ago this morning I was blissfully knocking off an item on my bucket list on Big Wood Lake Wisconsin catching largemouth bass like a pro, on nearly every cast.  It was a day fishing dreams were made of and then, later when my wife called me to pronounce the breaking of her water….I had driven to Iowa to start a shift and she was in Pennsylvania, and shortly I was off on a crazy chase…the details are well described and I shant not repeat them.

Today 21 years later, I was picking up the twin known for a while as twin “A” for a breakfast rendezvous and a year bird, all at Revere Beach north of Boston.  Tyko was doing a fellowship in Bioinformatics at BU for the summer and well, we hadn’t gone on a big year birding adventure this year with me.  Tyko was my son to accompany me to Attu in 2013 so we have spent much time birding together just not this year, college and being a busy young scholar.
  You haven’t met this one of our three wonderful kids in my blog yet.  He likes orange, computers, science, reading, and well, his thing is cool hats.  Tyko specializes in hugs and is a truly nice guy.Here is this fine young man on his last day of being 20, we are so proud of all of our children, it will be nice to see all three back together soon.

After Siri took us into a small backyard instead of Revere Beach, we found the oldest public beach in America…who knew?  We looked on the rocks and struck out and then we scoped the bay and just off of the beach and pretending that they were a raft of ducks, we spotted 20 Manx shearwaters, bird #732, and one I got a photo of.  Not a good photo, I may add.. 

Tyko then hiked with me to get a piping plover, a lifer for him,


And then another birthday photo,

You can fault me for be fat and ugly, and a bad birder, you can fault my many shortcomings as in my life, my choices, my bad attitude, my opinionated opinions, and just about anything about me.  You cannot, though, fault my three bright, friendly and wonderfully adjusted children nor my very special and extremely nice and loving wife.

Finally we ate and in characteristic fashion, I tipped over his tea, then we picked up mom at the Airport.  Tyko decided to use Swedish speaking Siri, but is was some sort of Google Siri on his phone, it had to be better than mine.  I could tell when I was going wrong as she got very excited, even for a Swede.  Then she got us lost and directed us to a Memorial at Logan Airport….is this that hard?  I took matters in my own hands and we found the terminal and Silja.  I could see the airport for Pete's sake, and who is Pete?

After lunch and time with a beloved son, it was sad to head on the journey.

Mt Washington, NH

My bad weather big year continues, it is June and as I ate pizza in Gorham NH.  This was my 48thstate to visit in my life and for Silja, state 42.  I got a call from Sue the Bicknell’s guide on the Mt. Washington Road that the weather up the road was horrid, it was snowing at 2800 feet and the wind………let me just say it WAS BAD.  She tried to talk me into cancelling but I had no real place to go.  I said a prayer to the birding gods and hoped the morning weather report was wrong.

New Hampshire on there roads gives road numbers and directions to the liquor store.  I needed some, as everything now hung in the balance.  It was Sunday and they were closed.


Why do we advertise this in this world of DWIs etc?

The directions were simple, take a right at the moose and drive six miles to the sign.


I was going to ask if it was my or the moose's right until I figured it out that they were both the same, think about that, how could that be possible?  Well I'm in the car, not folding a moose's antler...

 We arrived before 6am, met up with Sue Wemyss.  The weather WAS wrong, it had warmed overnight and it wasn’t below freezing on top so up we went in a “Stagecoach” to get the much desired thrush ......split off the gray cheeked thrush in 1995.  We were the intrepid birders for the year.  If a Yellowhammer was reported in Gambell on the far boneyard with winds like this even Paul Lehman would have not gone out and try to find it.

Let me say some things on Sue Wemyss.
Sue was an Olympian, 1984 Sarajevo, she got 28th in the woman's 20km ski race, how cool is that!!, Plus she competed in 3 other races.  All this and she took us up the hill to see a bird, and put up with lowly Olaf.  She still directs the local ski trails and has helped many of the teams giving back to her hobby.  I hope to do that with birding, although doubt I'll be in much demand.

Back to the weather....I was going to say that at least we weren’t at the top when the gust measured at 105 MPH hit, BUT we were at 4500 feet and not far down and I would estimate that the one gust the hit us was over 80.  Probably the same gust.  Many were over 60.  Sue put her head down in a perfect down the hill skiing posture, and I just braced myself.  I wanted to use a Robin Williams line about foreplay with spouse in the movie “Mrs. Doubtfire” to joke to my wife and say  Brace yourself honey but she couldn’t hear me….but shockingly we had heard Bicknell’s call twice, once in a lull between gusts up at the tree-line and later when we were packing it up down lower a few times before it started to rain and the road opened at 8 for a motorcycle outing.  Driving a Harley up today....priceless?  Pointless is a better word but then again i did go birding in it.

....Tough day and tough birding.   Interesting place though.  I actually liked it enough to buy myself a t-shirt. I rarely buy souvenirs occasionally a sticker, but rarely a t-shirt.

It says “If a man speaks in a forest and no woman is around to hear him, is he still wrong?”
The comments I get on this shirt!  The stewardess just stopped me to read it on the plane...

Scarborough Marsh, Portland ME

Silja added another new state....43  After braving more wind twice at this marsh where we once saw a Nelson’s sparrow and later heard another one…I have heard of hybridization in this area but it sounded like a Nelson’s and the view sure looked like one….bird #734.  This area we stopped though was not a very birder friendly spot despite the Audubon center as there is too much traffic noise and to be honest it was tough birding with the heavy wind.I was able to photograph a black duck family.



We argued about where to stay but not in a bad way, one motel was open but the office was closed, another in Saco, had a disconnected phone number as I got only as close as next door in an Assisted Living facility.  Neither were conducive to the modern way of booking hotel rooms.  We thought about it for a while eating lunch in Saco.  Then I took a chance on another room, which had the rank of month old pack of Camels and the bed was like Granite,  Mt Washington was softer.  We took a nap for an hour before meeting St Martin friends John and Michelle from nearby for dinner in Saco.After a fun night it was to bed for an early drive...they are all early.

Vinalhaven ME

Just going out to Vinalhaven island was an adventure in itself.  We arrived just in time to buy tickets and to get organized for the hour and fifteen minute ferry crossing.


We arrived in Vinalhaven just before noon, found our inn and checked into our first room, which as it turned out, had a broken toilet, undeterred by that we made it work and went looking around.  Silja bought a book at the used bookstore about the regulations in family farming and sustainable agriculture and we both bought lobster rolls.


At 2pm, I met up with John Drury and we headed out on the Skua to bird.  Silja went biking and read her “new” book.  We headed out to Seal Island NWR in the hopes of seeing the loneliest bird in North America, the red-billed tropicbird.  This male bird, and they know it is a male as he has mounted lobster trap floats and a decoy, has been showing up since 2005, making him at least 12 years old but he had a full tail feather on his first year so he may be older. 

We saw Atlantic puffins

Great cormorants in full breeding plumage

Razorbills

And thousands of terns, well the colony has 2500 pairs of arctic and common terns

They have 5 researchers staying there and we met two who rowed out to the boat, it is a long and lonely summer IMHO on that barren rock weighing tern chicks...

but alas…the tropicbird was a no show.

I don’t see the rare target bird every time.  I am just a human birder.  I dip, I dipped here, I’ll dip again.  I saw the bird's hole…it didn’t work out to stay for another day at this, it is a waste to leave and come back if needed but I might have to.
  I came back and my wife was gone, the room abandoned, the key on the door and a note on the bed…….It didn’t read, “sorry sucker, met a lobster trapper and decided to leave you for the smell of fish and his name is Earl.”  I am NOT living a country western song and my wife and I love each other.  No, she had got us a new room as the toilet was unfixable despite efforts and we were in a nice cabin, across the road.

The wine bottle was open, the cheese was out, and the juice glasses ready when I arrived.  Life was good despite no bird.  I am living the dream....We ate and drank the night away on the deck and then at the Sand Bar, not much else was open..the service was about as bad as it could be even a little drunk, it seemed bad.  This is no party town.  We watched the tide come in and went to bed.

The morning was filled with beauty and we lounged until the ferry took us back to the car and I to Portland for the next leg of my adventure.

My lovely bride....

we really liked the hinged floating docks

and many of the boats were cool.

It was somber in many ways and we discussed the events.  I did have a strange liking for all things New England.  Lobster rolls....I felt an urge to buy a Bosox hat and even a Bruins hat.  I know both team's histories well,. We looked at college websites for Bowdoin College for Lena.  I looked at New Hampshire and Maine property.  I guess I like everything New England EXCEPT the Patriots....Nope, I can never be a fan of them....go green.  I just need a longer visit than a day to get a better feel for the place.

I'm now at 734......not bad, the tropicbird isn't in the clear yet, I'll get a shot again, I got a couple of bothersome birds and a garganey on the way.....where I end up next...well, I may not even know.  Silja dropped me off at the airport in Portland and away I went, I'll say I'm heading west or south as there isn't much east or north of Portland ME..or maybe I'm off to Pond Inlet Baffin island NWT?  I may be prone to not saying...

I'm still sorry about the whole of Orlando, my condolences, if that has any value.

O