Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 24

Start spreading the news...

Upstate New York

Forest Gump once said "Mama said they'd take me anywhere.  She said they was my magic shoes...."

I was told by a non-birding friend yesterday as I was taking a much needed 23 hour R&R to take a 5 hour nap, reconnect with my sweetie, do laundry, buy a new pair of shoes, and do logistics on next phase, "that I must be having the “time of my life.”  I could be, I am thinking, if I actually looked at this year a bit differently and treated each as a challenge and an opportunity for seeing cool things and new places other than an opportunity for defeat.  You know, only four people (one twice) have seen as many birds in a year than I have.  I am doing something few have tried but many have thought about.

Today on a plane in O'Hare I saw a huge guy wearing am even bigger t-shirt.  It read  "The most dumba$$ things I do make the best stories later."  You know... maybe that is a motto for me?

Rested and ready to go....this dumba$$ headed east and now with a story to tell.
The synopsis.     
Big Year Total:  731
Coded Birds:  74
provisionals: 2

number to go to old record:  19
Miles driven.  30,965Flight Miles 98,400flight segments: 103   Different Airports: 42Hours at sea: 172Miles walked 216
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 32
Lifers seen this year:  55
nights slept in car:  9

Well I flew into Rochester NY and rented a car and soon was cruising out the Hertz lot.  Lately, I have been renting the "manager's special."  Today it was for $17 bucks and change.  Sometimes I get a nice car, once in Miami, I got a Pickup, another time a van, but today, I got an Accent for Hundai.  What?  It isn't even a real car just an accent?  I guess it was okay, it was lawn mower with wheels but it WAS cheap. It is like my new game. I guess.  I cherished it, like I did New York, a state I have never before birded.

I drove up to Montezuma NWR near Seneca Falls NY, a town believed to be the model for Bedford Falls in Its a wonderful life, movie and the home of the NY College of Chiropractors.  I guess everyone on the little town has a good back....IDK?   The refuge named after a local doctor 115 years ago that thought the area looked like Mexico City...I kid you not.

I found the stakeout spot for the garganey seen here on East Rd and pulled up to a line of people on their scopes.

Immediately a familiar face poked out and said "hi."  It was Mark Danforth from Connecticut and the ill-fated pink footed goose stakeout in February.  Him and a friend whose name alludes me were over here to see the duck and had seen it a couple hours before being scattered to cars by lightning, the bird heading up a channel and out of sight.  The perils of stakeouts. This is not a real good-looking opportunity as with the grass and water and distance just identifying the bird is priority one, not photography.

Well, I saddled up and set up and watched the grass for the bird.  This reminded me of my second go round for this bird in 2014 at Crex in Wisconsin although hot today, that was a cold one.  The last rare bird stake out with my grandmother.  All told, I have seen this species five times and two birds, once a eclipse plumage bird in Alaska.

The bird didn't show and then a guy named Tim Osborn from Vermont came up and started talking.  he was doing a survey of the refuge.  After two hours the two guys from CT decided to go and then so did Mr. Osborn.  Not a minute later someone down the line yelled.  "Got it!"

We readjusted and I looked through his scope and saw the male head of the garganey poke out of the grass, its white stripe over its eye gleaming in the sun.  Then I found it, lost it, found it in my own scope and helped everyone near me see it.  It wasn't easy.  Mr Osborn hadn't left and walked fast back and looked through my scope at the bird and then left for real and finally as I found the bird for an older woman next to me all 40 or fifty birders present saw it and then...it disappeared into the weeds....garganeys.

Having no picture of the bird, I had a picture of me taken with others looking at the bird.

    
I got it, everyone did when I was there and after a while I just left to prepare for the next location, flights left tonight for points known and birds needed.

Costs of this trip:
Airfare:  $177
Rental car $17.50
Gas 8.71
Tolls $4
Food, $42
Total  $249.21


When thinking of where I am, I need to remember, I have a pretty, no, very sound plan.  I need to let it work and stop worrying about it and everyone else.  I have taken a bit of a chance on this Alaska strategy and it paid off.  I have only found myself out of birding position twice, one I fought back from on the Eastern seaboard in early May and the other, an April fiasco, well, it didn’t kill me, I guess.  You may not think so, but I now need to get serious about this year. 
I like being home, sleeping in my bed, patting my dog, I love my wife, I like seeing my kids, and I hate birding alone, BUT, it is hard enough just moving me around.  I’m not only trying to fit in birds, but trying to fit in an aging grandmother, three children, and other’s, has cost me here and there and if I am going to get anywhere wit this, I need to get a move on.  I do not think many appreciate the sacrifices and the brutal nature of this. 

The next days are crucial, I guess they all are.  I plan to just pound the pavement, the airports, and the bird blinds. I don’t think I can push my number much over 740 this next week but I will try to clean up all the missing birds to my checklist in this period that are found now in the lower 48 states.  I have resupplied, regrouped and now refocused and it took me less than a day.  I have laid the groundwork for something and where it ends up, where these new 'magic' shoes take me...I don’t know, and I don’t know if my efforts will be good enough but what the heck, they will be good enough for me and it can’t be any more brutal than the first 6 months and heck…this could even be fun!           
Garganey gotten, thanks Mark...you missed the second coming by 20 minutes

Olaf

If the shoe fits....

It is clear, I must be a dumbass, I'll be crass and say it upfront....

I was in Gambell and Nome this past week and on Sunday, I found my shoes all soaked and covered in tundra mud.  Now you might not think this is odd, but these are just Keen hikers, they are not waterproof I wore them to Gambell, took them off and put on my trademark snake boots, but on Sunday I found someone had been wearing them.
I am so stupid, I cannot figure out who?
At first I thought it was possibly one of the three bears but there are no bears in Gambell.

Our wonderful guide Aaron Lang, found a boot drier for me but that sort of helped but the inside of the three week old pair was basically trashed.  Aaron wears size 14 like me but only wears his Wellington boots and besides, the person who wore mine, cinched down the laces hard, so therefore has a size smaller feet.

In the morning I hoped the culprit would fess up and offer me a new pair or a cash payment like I would hope my wonderful daughter Lauren Elizabeth would have.  "Dad if it was me, I would just buy you a new pair of shoes and apologize." but alas no....

Maybe it was Hooey the Green Parrot or a Gooney bird....they have big feet

I'm reminded of a little ditty from Dr Seuss, well I changed it to protect for copyright

Oh Say Can You Say
Said a book-reading parrot named Gooney,
The shoes on your feet are all gooey.
When you wear them, your feet
will make slips into a seat
and you may end up in Saint Looey!

apparently this bird or whoever it was operates under a different set of golden rules than we do...I guess I am just a dumbass for being unable to figure this out but who else is here in our group in Gambell?
Ah I guess my shoe mystery must have to wait...this is about birds
Alaska Strategy Part 2  Gambell-Nome

Synopsis:
Big Year Total:  730
Coded Birds:  73
provisionals: 2

number to go to old record:  20
Miles driven.  30,855Flight Miles 97,200flight segments: 101   Different Airports: 41Hours at sea: 172Miles walked 216
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 12states/ prov. birded: 31
Lifers seen this year:  55
nights slept in car:  9
mysterious shoe incident: 1

best mammals: muskoxen, moose, gray whales, ribbon seal, arctic squirrel

lost items, speaker, scope cap

Gambell.

You have to stop off in Gambell for a spring visit to get common ringed plover and maybe, just maybe something else to do a big year.
It isn't cheap to get here, as you have to plan ahead or use a tour group as lodging is NOT easy.  Gambell is on the edge, so near to Siberia, you can see it.

The town is a traditional native village, on the sea, located by a lake, it is dusty when the weather in't truly horrible.
view of house by near bone yard
Then after a tough tiring slog in the hills, the tundra, or a long and very cold seawatch, you hear local birding legend Paul Lehman yell "Chiffchaff!!" on the radio and everybody runs for the location, and in my case, you didn't even hear the location

but we all found the MEGA bird.....common chiffchaff


great bird great bird but it turned out to be a one day wonder.

The crew of Wilderness was awesome, Aaron, James, and Norm were great but a second problem arose that confirmed I am a dumba$$.  I forgot to read the memo.  We stayed in a house, and we forgot to bring sleeping bags.  So to sleep we piled out coats and clothing over us.  There is severe weight restrictions and as such I just assumed....back in 1997 at a moose hunt, I also assumed..........wrongly that bedding was included.  I have now done this twice, that time I just about froze, this time, we tolerated it.

Lena took to Gambell like a real pro...she is such a likeable kid, she rode bike, hiked the hills and found birds.

She looked fit and spry and I just looked and felt old.  But Craig, I did ADD to my biking total of mileage. It was a routine, that was exhausting but it was routine, and routine is good.  I showed Lena more whales...like this gray whale
I got what we needed, five coded birds and three days later, after buying our fill of ivory, we bid our farewells and went to Nome, me wearing wet and filthy shoes....who or what did this?

here is father and daughter for one last look at Gambell

Nome was more of the same, we took a while to find our car, or hotel, (we were in the Dredge 7 annex, where was that?  Other side of town.)

It took us a little over a day to get all the local birds need and then with one on the next day, we got lucky, we stumbled into some Brits with a great knot sighting and pictures, we drove like manics to the spot, it took a little over a day and it exhausted Lauren Elizabeth but I found them on a gravel bar out in the sound, well at least 2 of them, and in the process of nearly freezing in the wind and cold, got a Terek Sandpiper.  I finally find the knots without there heads tucked and then it is way out in the sound.  I made a decision..should I get closer for a better photo (it still wouldn't be very good and the Brits had perfect photos) or do I drive to the bridge and get friends to come and see birds?...I had a pretty good scope view, there was no doubt what birds I was seeing, there were 2 great knots....birding IS sharing............I drove hard to the bridge got them and got back in five minutes.....knots...gone.  dang...we looked the rest of the day....I even told the guides of the competition where I saw them...because birding IS SHARING...fault me for not getting a good photo of them but well...I sorely wished my friends would have gotten the bird...sorry Don H and Nancy.  I was too slow.

.the sun came out giving me a good photo of a long tailed jaeger which I think was responsible for putting the birds to flight

 bad bird!

The days were long and in the end, we got it all.  We ate dinners which tired me out and in the morning we were at it again.  Even writing this blog is tiring me out.  I'm not as witty and I have been gone for oh so long...I need the hug of a good woman.  Mine is the best.

The list of birds:Gambell June 3-6
711.  eye-browed thrush
712.  common ringed plover
713.  common greenshank
714.  red-necked stint
715.  white wagtail
716.  King eider
717.  Common chiffchaff (Siberian)
718.  eastern yellow wagtail

Nome June 6-8
719.  Long-tailed jaeger
720.  Spectacled eider
721.  Arctic loon
722.  Arctic warbler
723.  Bristle thighed curlew
724.  Bluethroat
725.  Northern wheatear
726.  Bar-tailed godwit
727.  Pacific golden plover
728.  wandering tattler
729.  Terek sandpiper
730.  Great knot

Least auklet on rock

eye-browed thrush

common green shank


red-necked stint

white wagtail

bluethroat
Northern wheatear

short-eared owl

One day for almost the whole day, I had my chip in my camera backwards as like I said, I am a dumba$$.  I had a nice photo of my daughter next to the Nome 61 sign..rough legged hawk nesting...other birds.....and muskox but no..nothing.
I am actually somewhat embarrassed to admit, my total has risen to 730.  If anyone asks and if I tell them, I don't say it excitedly.  I kind of look down....it isn't an honor calling attention to oneself, it is too many, and to be honest, I'm sort of pot committed to this big year now to use a poker term.  One thing, I WILL NOT ever EVER tattoo my final number on my chest, my arm, nor even my hairy a...bum.  why?  My life is much more than a number.  I will not have it on a license plate.  I may, MAY in small writing on my birding card write "big year 2016 total 7XX".  Nothing more nothing extra.  The number more important is my daughter's number of 487...WOW!!!!!!  I feel worse we missed a Sabine's gull for her in Nome.
I think my first part of my Alaska plan worked well.  Now I wait for fall, or chase....I will finish up breeders in a little over a week.
Many have asked why?the reason is multifactorial but here is some of my thoughts1) I needed something to do for a year, I'm sort of retired now and at 50, waiting out a non-compete is difficult for me.  2) I needed something to make me work out get in shape and loose a little weight, I've lost 15 #s3) I wanted to bond with my daughter this year as I am doing much of it with her.  In fact I wish I could do all the rest with her.  I miss her when I'm not birding with her.  I also deeply deeply miss my wife plus my two sons off at college...that is hard, but to see her get 500 birds!!!! how cool is that.4) I had all this legwork done to speed through the breeding birds.....that would slowly be lost to time, do it now or never5) could my plan get me to 700?  Yes it has
John P, from Seattle a guide and a man I respect told me that us big year birders should come together to promote the hobby.  As I think about it, it would probably be a good idea which I say again, this is all about the hobby, saving birds, maybe I should just save the money and buy 40 acres of habitat?  IDK...but some thoughts on this.
1) I don't think the other big year birder will do it.2)  I don't think the ABA cares about this or about me to do this.  I doubt very much anyone in the ABA hierarchy reads my blog although I am a member  FWIW.  I sort of don't think the ABA, (or Cornell) or any place would want me as an endorsee.  I tried a little to get Leica to sponsor me, since I proudly advertise my Leica bins...but alas they don't want me, they sponsored Greg Miller and his 2016 efforts not that I deserve anything.  **please note, this isn't a knock on the ABA, more of a comment as to who am I?  which is a fairly insignificant birder who has just seen many birds this year.    3) this is really about the birds..whatever I get for a number, it is the birds that matter...I am featured once or twice a month during this year in the Watertown Public Opinion (SD newspapers) I write this blog....
but well I still doubt I'm ever going to get any calls...there is no movie in my future, Greg Miller, Sandy Komito, Neil Hayward, Bob Oke, Ben Basham....they are the faces of big year birding.......not me. 
Here are two faces of birding...holder of the largest life list Macklin Smith and Paul Lehman (left) "king" of Gambell, Alaska and seabirding expert....these should be the faces of birding....but alas, not even sure the ABA is interested in them either or maybe that is old news.    
 Yea, maybe my year number is higher than some or quicker or maybe will be higher but Olaf?  Really?  No....I am me, there will never be a picture of us together, nothing......and did I also mention I am a dumba$$?So John, good idea, but well I don't expect the telephone to ring.
I really had fun on this trip to Alaska, except one thing....my d$mn shoes.  Now I have to stop in Minneapolis and get a new pair.  This isn't as much fun as my Boobies Peckers and Tits project but it is getting here.
Olaf fans.......If the shoe fits........don't wear them!  Especially don't wear them in the tundra...dang, who wore those shoes?  I liked these shoes.Does anyone know?  Maybe it WAS the gooney bird?
My thoughts as I see them
20 to go, thanks Nome, thanks Gambell, and thank you Lauren, for just being the greatest daughter a father could ever have, let us get 13 more together!
the sign says it all

Olaf  

Ptarmigeddon and the 700 club

Ptarmigeddon.  It is a word that speaks of something ominous, something large and possibly dangerous but it wasn’t.  Joining the 700 club for big year birding doesn’t get you a patch, a call from any of the other 700 club members, a call from the President or even for that matter a call from the president of the ABA. A very few have done it.   In truth is it just gets you tired, a significant credit card bill, and well it does get you good memories, too I suppose.  
For me it brought me closer to my daughter.  It took me 149 days, 19 hours and 25 minutes to see my 700th year bird.  Which itself is a record for speed.  No one has seen 700 species of birds in the ABA as fast as I have.  In the end, though reaching Ptarmageddon was a relief and for that matter a goal, a goal I made by four and a half hours (700 in under 5 months or 150 days but corrected for leap year made it a day sooner and I can’t count)…and I made it just barely but I’m getting ahead of myself….
ALASKA Strategy PART I, Adak
I woke up early on May 29.  Having arrived the night before to Anchorage and we had a morning before our flight to Adak left.  I was sitting at 693 after a perfect swing thru Arizona.  The assault on seeing my 700th bird began shortly thereafter as an attempt to drive the Arctic Valley Road northeast of Anchorage before anybody could get on it, unfortunately the gate was closed.   It said it was closed until 6am so I decided to drive south to Seward.  I saw a sign for the boardwalk at Potter Marsh, at mile 9.5 and we pulled in, and I thought better of the Seward plan.  Most of the Kittlitz’s Murrelets had only been seen by boat so I began to think it was a waste to drive 5 hours.  I couldn’t do that to my daughter.  This was only our second stop on a 10,000 mile journey and I needed to keep her happy.
She got out happy and we added a year Mew gull and two arctic terns for her and then being 6am, I drove back to Arctic Valley.  The gate was still closed.  We got out and walked.  It was then I heard an alder flycatcher calling.  I had almost forgot they live up here.  It was a start and bird #684 was off the board and then we waited for 7, thinking they would surely open the gate then, but alas….the military which I think controls the gate, said no.  It remained closed.  We walked around some more and then something stirred in the grass and scampered with clucks into the alders….willow ptarmigan.  State bird and year bird #685.   It was progress but it was all the area had.  We tried to bird Avalanche Park but we got bugged out.  We made it to the shore, spotted a Hudsonian Godwit, a bird my daughter needed and we both hustled back to the car bit up in the bargain.
We went back to our hotel for breakfast, then having switched my alerts for Alaska to hourly, got a hit.  Short-eared owl seen at Potter Marsh, we were just there so away we went.  Somewhat surprisingly, it was still flying over the marsh when we arrived and I began shooting photos.  After finding a store for supplies, we put on our patches to quell seasickness and headed in the airport.  One last stop at the lakes near the terminal yielded two added birds for my daughter.  We had worked hard, I had added three birds—now up to 696, and my daughter had added 11, and she was up to 421 for the year. 

ADAK the two of us ready to bird

We went to the airport, got through security, I bought a reward for later, and eventually boarded a rather sparse filled non-cargo 737.  I had flown the Alaska cargo planes to Adak earlier.  I saw a Forest Service guy that looked familiar but I saw no signs of birders.  Lena had long before passed out on a bench and resumed her nap enroute.  I apprehensive of the trip to Adak.  It would not be a friendly arrival and in fact, I’m sure the best I could hope for was indifference.  I landed to a sea of indifference, to be honest which was just fine with me.
The weather in Adak was bordering awful, it was raining and apparently the seas were terrible as a storm was pounding the passes with heavy wind.  Instead, we birded Adak.  Would there be enough birds?
My friend Don H had spotted a Far-eastern curlew on the beach today and we headed over to see it.  It was on the beach with a whimbrel.  It was a good code 4 bird, not a lifer for me as I had seen one in Attu in 2013 but a great find.


Next we headed to the clam lagoon, where there were not only sea otters, my daughter loves sea otters, and shot hundreds of photos of them, but birds we needed:Kittlitz’s murrelets,

These critically endangered birds had caused me concern, both in terms that their populations are declining but because I was worried I’d miss them.   Here I was at bird 698 and I didn’t have to drive to Seward.  It was a good choice.
A mile down the road yielded bird 699, Aleutian tern.  

The best look I ever had of these birds…which are also on the decline.  I was on a roll but would I get 700?  A guy could be stuck on 699 for a while.We went around one corner and there it was.  I hopped down into the ditch to get a better picture.  It was the first of Adak’s ptarmageddon of rock ptarmigans……..a grouse in all its glory, it was bird 700 and I had reached the promised land!
ROCK PTARMIGAN
then these birds were everywhere, on roofs, in ditches, back yards, everywhere

Cool!  Whew!  My daughter gave me a high five but otherwise it was muted.  It was not a lifer but it would be a beer night tonight (I had snuck one with) with a little private celebration……at least by me. 
The day though was NOT over.  Earlier, a fish processing ship was seen offshore with a mile of seabirds and gulls behind it.  We found the boat in port and sitting on the dock next to the Puk-uk  our home for the next 4 nights, was this coded gull, a Slaty-backed gull, undoubtedly lured in by the stench of fish.  
A bird some chased but I knew I’d see it somewhere in Alaska, that somewhere was here on Adak.  It was dark on wet but I went up and got the picture.   By morning, it was gone.
We settled into the boat as the wind howled, and met the crew, Captain Billy, and cook Nicole, both I met before on my trip to Attu in 2013.  Oxsanna had replaced Jake as first mate.  Billy runs a real top notch operation on his little 72 foot ship and the food was great.  Aboard, it had 8 birders and John Puschock and Neil Hayward as the guides.  Mr. Hayward is the owner of the record some could say I am chasing.  I don’t know what I’m doing.  Let me say it here, I think everyone got along, or at least they tolerated me.
May 30th 31st, June 1 At sea
We birded Adak, and flushed three common snipe during the day. 

This is the first time I have heard them winnow, they do not sound like Wilson’s snipe and are a coded bird, I would see later but here is fine.  Lena got many many birds, but for me, that was it for the day on land before we headed out to sea that evening as the weather improved.
Finally we had a break and as our ultimate destination as unobtainable due to the delay so we followed a lead of a fishing vessel of where to find albatross.  The most entertainment was watching each of us get into our survival suits.  It was fun seeing all of us look silly.  But….it is good to practice in case of an emergency which itself is no silly matter.Chris Feeney in his suit,
Once underway, it didn’t take long to start knocking out the ticks…….
703.  Short-tailed shearwater   
704. Horned puffin
705. Whiskered auklet
706. Least Auklet
707.  Short-tailed albatross
708.  Red-legged kittiwake
709.  Crested auklet.
It was great.  The kittiwake was a bonus bird.  We saw many sights, killer whales, caribou, other birds I’d see before but still cool, and I think, it is just my opinion though, that everyone enjoyed themselves.
Here are some of the sights








We got back on the first to port just as the weather got really bad.  There was still some daylight to go so we all went around the neighborhood and at the first pine tree, we spied not only grey-crowned rosy-finches

But a hawfinch, an Asian vagrant and year bird 710Hawfinch
It was also a lifer bird for me
Actually the sun came out on the last day as we toured the island a last time for any more vagrants and refound the far-eastern curlew.   It was a time for good-byes, and the last time to climb the cursed ladder to get up on the dock from the boat.
Some highlights from the trip include Neil Hayward and Don H holding a Leach’s and fork-tailed storm-petrel that got lost and landed on the boat one night.

We also had a whiskered auklet fly into the boat which impressed my daughter.  I guess a bird in hand is better than one on the camera.

I guess bird 700 was a highlight as well. 
The low point, these ladders

Capt Bill and Chris near the plank to walk to the ladder
I also lost my second university of Minnesota hat, it blew off in the tempest at sea and then was last sen being carried away by a glaucous winged gull, I kid you not.  I tried to get a photo but it flew off behind boat to this stunned observer.

Synopsis:
Big Year Total:  710
Coded Birds:  65

number to go to old record:  40
Miles driven.  30,235Flight Miles 93,200flight segments: 96   Different Airports: 40Hours at sea: 172Miles walked 201
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 31
Lifers seen this year:  48
nights slept in car:  9

best mammals: steller's sea lion, killer whales
Costs
Tour.  $2450
flight $35 miles
hotel  $460 (double booked a hotel by mistake extra $200 in cluded)
incidentals and food $210
rental car Anchorage $55
total  $3210

Let me say, I was a bit grumpy after a weird screw up/ confusing reservation in booking hotel on backside of this but the staff at Lakefront hotel in Anchorage was great, you pay more here but it is one of the few hotels, I think it worth the price.  Hotel.com...not so.

In the end I had added 14 birds in Adak, after 3 in Anchorage, the only significant miss was a mottled petrel which is a tough get at sea, I did get 5 coded birds.  The best bonus bird was the hawfinch, which was bird 710.  I needed a lot more birds, better birds and continued luck.

The smile on my daughter’s face however was more than any number, she looked to be having a great time and the bonding we are having on this trip is beyond words.  I never saw her sulking the whole time, she was happiest seeing otters and the three killer whales we saw. 

Next installment….Gambell.  Today I’m just basking in the trip that was…..Adak, thank you Adak (and John, Neil and the crew of the Puk-uk.)  


Olaf

The Killer Rabbit of Patagonia

The Movie Monte Python, first told the story of a terrible beast, a mythical beast, killed with a holy handgranade but....there could not just be one......then the story continued....really....

It was 1979. and despite the best efforts of the US Secret Service...President Jimmy Carter while fishing on a small farm pond in Georgia was charged by a swamp rabbit and as the rabbit tried to board the President's boat a small skirmish occurred and the beast was repelled with a boat oar, so continues the legend of the Killer Rabbit.  It was thought that the Welsh left King Arthur in search of new land but in reality, they were just taking the Killer Attack Rabbits to a new land....what became America.

It was said by some that the rabbit and it's kin were moved by the US Government to a place where no one would be bothered by these foul ill-tempered creatures ever again....until.........Olaf showed up......

The synopsis:

Big Year Total:  693
Coded Birds:  60

number to go to old record:  57
Miles driven.  30,235Flight Miles 88,200flight segments: 94   Different Airports: 39Hours at sea: 123Miles walked 195
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 31
Lifers seen this year:  47
nights slept in car:  9

Yes, really?  killer Rabbit?....but more on the appearance of "Killer"  later....

A sojourn first into Olaf:

Many of you ask questions....

How much are you spending?
It is rumored that Komito spend 80-100K on his 1998 year.
I'm thinking I'll spend 45K, plus a boat load of fflier miles.  Way WAY below other birders....efficiency....and fflier miles.....this doesn't count my car damage from sons or broken camera.

I will add a new category:  Costs for trip

Arizona, May 24-28
flight RDU to PHX       $174 (cheapest flight I've seen in a while)
Rental car  $210
gas, $76.00
Hotels....$625  (family of three for three nights, two for one, full cost..note should have been $80 camping)
share guide fee  $80
feeder fees for me  $10.  (have National access pass)
$3 donation to museum in Willcox
laundry  $4
food.  $124
lifer beer $5
total   $1301

added stuff.  Lost waterbottle $25, broken speaker cord $18, car is NOT in parking at home airport, postage to send home wife's stuff in Portal,


My favorite books?
Ursula LaGuin The Dispossessed -fiction
Barry Lopez-- Of Wolves and men
Both were the most influential books in my literary and personal development, One was a textbook for a college course.

Where am I from?

I grew up on the family sawmill in rural NW Wisconsin, Falun a Swedish immigrant community.  I trapped pocket gophers and worked on the mill in my youth.  He stressed in me the advantages to knowing how to live off the land.  I have only worked for another person in my life for 5 years in residency.  Grandpa Allwin Danielson taught me to be a deer tracker.  I taught myself to be a proficient pike fisherman.  Grandma Danielson taught me to hunt and clean squirrels.
My grandfather never advocated for the fairness of life outside of our little domain, in fact, he stressed the opposite....you need to make sure you are comfortable in what and who you are because no one else will acknowledge it.

When is the book coming out on this year?

Been there done that...I don't think I will write anything more than this for this year.  Books are dead.  I wish Hayward the utmost success with his, but again, been there done that.  Boobies Peckers and Tits, poured out my innermost fears and thoughts and there have been too many big year books.   Partners one of the biggest distributors of books...Out of business this month...private books stores,,,,dead, dying...Amazon...pays you nothing and gives you headaches.  I write fiction so my kids can appreciate my versions of Utopia and what fears and thoughts I have in my head....if any break even, I'd be shocked.  No one cares...no one reads,...especially, to be brutally honest...no one cares what i think or write, I am from the part of the USA, that is ignored by those on the coasts....for a Midwestern author to get published from a big house...get real.

why big year?
I'll explain more on that next segment, it is complicated.......time to talk about the birding
May 24/25th brought me and my family to Madera, they arrived 8 hours after I did.

The birds kept coming
679.  Varied Bunting (could not get a photo at Santa Rita feeders)
680.  Cordillian Flycatcher

I went out with a Dr Ammann I met and we got his lifer whipoorwill, a nice guy from Vancouver BC.
681.  Mexican Whippoorwill
682.  Whiskered screech owl

May 25
683.  Red faced warbler
684.  Plain capped starthroat
Dig the red-faced warbler.....one of my favorites

The starthroat I had staked out for 5 hours before just before 11am on the 25th, it appeared without warning, and drank a bit, as I grabbed for my camera, it was gone.  I had neither time to shout there it is or anything before it was gone.  The woman in front of me started chanting lifer bird...lifer bird...the two of us were the only two paying enough attention to get the 20 second cameo view of the bird.  It wasn't a lifer for me and I have a huge blow up of the 2013 bird on my wall.

Eventually my wife who had taken Lena back for a nap to Chaparusa Bed and Breakfast (I'd camp if I was by myself) found me walking home....she had forgotten about picking me up.

I met up with Thor, his friend Dan, and Laurens Halsey in Green Valley, a place where Thor had just bought into to.  I was too young to live there, 50 is the new 20 or something IDK.  LOL.  I got a local expert Halsey to show the way to the California Gulch as I hate it down there....long, scary, and windy road.  I had my 16 yo with...Silja went over to visit Joan, Thor's wife.


But it does have one good sign.
We got there and staked out the night and found
685.  Five striped sparrow
686.  Buff Collared nightjar

Clear as mud...right?  You can see her collar, it was a female.  I had heard her song on proctor road in 2013, just didn't know I had, oh well to late now to add one to my BPT list....

May 26th soon became the number two birding day of the year.  I got my crew out of bed and we hit the road at 645 and drove the Box canyon road over to Sierra Vista.  I was relieved upon arriving late at Ramsey Canyon but finding there still was parking at 0815.  No fights today in the parking lot.  We hiked the trail, and it wasn't a trail of tears or anything.  Just up but either I was in better shape or maybe I given the trail too much credence OR even the flycatcher had moved a lot down but it was an easy hike.

The tufter just appeared in the dry creek bed, and there it was in all of its code 5 glory.

687.  Tufted Flycatcher

 over exposed under exposed but well I had a perfect shot of one of the two last year.

Walking back, a helpful birder pointed out bird #688.
Sulphur-bellied flycatcher

We also saw a cool raven nest
I'm not sure how they fit.  Mother needs to kick some not-so-baby birds out.
I got bird #689.  Virginia warbler in the oak scrub, and well we got back to the car by noon.

We went over to Beatty's for lunch (we brought it) to watch hummers and a blue thorated came in bird #690, but I missed the photo op as it was too close.  Here is a photo from the 27th at Cave Creek Ranch in Portal to document...

Then it was off to Patagonia.  We had a plan, find laundromat, put in load....go find thick-billed kingbird, come back, switch to dry, go to Patton's IDK, because my daughter noticed she needed a brown headed cowbird (really?) and then back.

Phase one, Laundromat
they had one, next to the police station with itself was just a trailer

24 minutes later, #691 nabbed, Thick-billed Kingbird
back to get change at grocery store and something to eat for supper, then drier..

It was at Patton's when I got scowled at by the attack rabbit....
Lena got the cowbird...we saw the violet crowned hummingbird...now a trash bird and no one bothered to take a photo...

We arrived just as the drier had stopped spinning 32 minutes later packed and headed back to Madera...plan foolproof, my clothing didn't reek of me anymore...

We ate and then thinking.....seeing a white buffalo was supposed to be magical....I saw a white buck playing golf one fall at Luck Country Club and well I had a "Lucky" round and then the white rabbit...?

I said let us go owling!  The ladies agreed....wow!  What a crew.

We hiked into an undisclosed place in Madera and nearing dusk heard the whiskered screech owls everywhere.  Mexican whip-poor-wills were singing and I said to LE and Sil that Flamulated owls sound more like owls.  I had only one call of theirs on my iphone and I played it once to show them. Immediately, I saw the flutter of a something land on a dead tree in front of us.  I shined my light thinking it was a bat.....FLAM OWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was beside myself saying..."There it is, there it is!" Maybe like 20 times thinking the two ladies wouldn't notice the little owl 15 feet away. I was in disbelief Wow!  Wow again, wow a third time. I didn't bring a camera.  Who knew?  I thought there was like 10% chance we'd even hear one.

"Try the screech owl song once"  Lena said as the Flam owl went away.  I did.  In came another bird, same branch.  Whiskered screech owl.  Lena was ready with the iphone, she got an owl photo with an iPhone....?
It looked so big compared to the Flam....by the way, Flam Owl was a lifer...and I didn't even have any beer with, just white wine.
#692....what a day, what a day...thank you rabbit.  The attack rabbit portends good things...unless your name is Jimmy Carter

I got 6 birds during Boobies Peckers and Tits at this same spot, and now 6 lifers here, all within 10 feet.  I like this spot.  I love this spot....cool!!!

I drove out of Madera nearing 4am as we cruised through to the Tucson airport, and dropped my best friend, Silja off for her flight to Atlanta and then Dusseldorf.  It was great reconnecting, and now she had her adventure and we had ours, Lena and I had one more bird to find for my list and she had all kinds of stuff.

Willcox gave up a Bullock's oriole for LE and then 20 miles south, I stopped at the side of the road and her year bird #400, Scaled quail darted around the road.


I hadn't got a photograph of any this year either so it was a good stop as it is pretty certain a guy or gal  needs to document everybird they can.

It was a happy car as we rolled up the Pinery Canyon Road, directions were to go exactly 10 miles...and about mile 8.2 from the black top, we came across a birder in California plates, he was looking for the redstart he said, I said "I think the spot is farther up."  I scratched my head and drove on.  Then well before 10, we saw birders.  This looked like the real deal.  We stopped.  It was the stakeout.  They had seen it twice, about an hour ago, and it was just 7  am.  We didn't have to wait long.  It flew out across the road in minutes, then lost it showed back up in the pine tress, spotted by my eagle-eyed daughter., then off it flew.  30 minutes later it came in again, easily noted for its lack of white on wings, and then it flitted from tree to tree, finally...I took a shot with the camera

slate-throated redstart 
 It could be the worst identifiable photo ever, but it was, and it was a life bird....and bird #693.....it was over.....I had conquered Arizona.  I had conquered warblers, I now had them ALL!!  every warbler seen in the lower 48 this year, every one...........cool!
How many is that?  Go count, my friends, go count.

I ran into friendly birders to ladies from Ft Worth Texas, who had spent a period of time at St Paul with Neil.  The California guy came and thanked me for redirecting him and then I gave him tufted flycatcher directions.

It was 8am, we were half way from Portal to nowhere, I needed to mail stuff home, and well I had promised number 1 daughter lunch...well breakfast....AND she needed the Mexican chickadee and I wanted to photograph that and blue throated hummingbirds.

The Mexican chickadee proved difficult.  It took us until after our tour in Portal and an hour eating and then another hour watching the blue throated hummers at Cave Creek Ranch, then 15 minutes to the post office, and ten minutes going into New Mexico, daughter had never been and well, there isn't a sign......, but the view driving back was cool.  I like the Chiricahua Mountain Island.

Even spied many javelina in Cave Creek area.

Some birds I have seen before but now photographed:  As I guess you might not have believed me

Mexican Chickadee

Grace's warbler

Elegant Trogan

May 28
Day 148 of the big year started as normal, up before dark, but one thing was different, I had nothing to get.  There were no birds reported within hundreds of miles, so I took my daughter out to the thrasher spot to pad her year list.  I got lost and ended up at the nuclear power station....
She nailed it with a LeConte's and a Bendire's thrasher, The LeConte's was standing on the road and then I sat in the car and found out Delta had changed their seats into three zone, nixing Medallion people from upgrading any person traveling with them.  Sky cap service in Phoenix is also being nixed at the end of the month.  Nothing like giving the retirees a boot in the bum.  Arg!  Not going to be fun trip to Anchorage.....
We went to Encanto Park on the way to the airport to both pack the car and for dearest daughter to go hunt the elusive yet satisfying Red-faced lovebirds.  They are like a very satisfying tick as they are cool and everywhere, but somehow I had managed to not photograph any this year...I did now.Rosy faced lovebird
Bird  #410 for Lauren Elizabeth for the year..how cool is that!   While there, we got a text that Silja and Tyko had reached Bonn and met up with Allwin, our wayward son abroad.
Off to Alaska, I suspect, to get the jeers or better put the indifference, I deserve, not sure I will even mention it on the Puk-uk when I break 700 on May 30th, not that it matters, 150 days is good, a record but really?  This is just birding....but thank you for following along with my adventure.

I will say though, it is so cool when people recognize me around.  It has given me hope in the kindness of people.  I had lost that in business and in the ER.  In business most people are heartless and ruthless, and in the ER.....it is the views of the American underbelly that I usually see and that is why I don't want to do medicine any more.  It is not puppies and kittens out there.

Christian Hagenlocher is doing a big year because he is worried that he has little time left to see many of the birds before they are gone.  This made me smile....but thinking about it, he may be on to something.  Many of the places I saw in 2013 are already changed..and not for the better.  The Thrasher spot will eventually become hay pasture, as no one will buy it and save it for the birds.  Much of the wilds is being destroyed and all the while as we waste everything....just my carbon footprint, I am laying crusing around seems bad and mine is less than some.....but again, if many of these wild places are closed off to human intrusion no one will even care.....IDK, I hope they never change Madera, but shockingly, you can't camp at Rustler Park on top of the mountain in Portal any more.  Not enough staffing.....very sad.

Well maybe I have been putting in on too thick...?  I saw this a few days ago..



Well to Alaska we go,
14 days with my number one daughter, and that my friends is PRICELESS!

Olaf

One for the Thumb

Northern Wisconsin to Hatteras NC

Hate me or love me, I finally have internet and i'm back!  You cannot believe how few places that say they have internet that it actually works.

I was going to title this blog, Going Spread Eagle using both the double meaning of the phrase, (majestic and opening up all of your junk for other's to see) and because Tony Lau and I started this phase of our trip in Spread Eagle, Wisconsin on the Michigan border.  In many ways the town seemed to have a double meaning itself and for a while, it seemed to Tony and I that we had inadvertently turned off of Highway 2 in Florence County, WI and onto a porn set.  There was "Misty Moors" place, with a sign, which sounded so much like a porn name, I looked it up...It IS a porn name!   We were afraid to find out what kind of place it was.

Then we drove on, and at a restaurant, the sign said something like..."Eat out Spread Eagle at Gia Marie's."  They had an odd 2 for 1 special.  "Buy one meal, and the second one is on Gia"  Was it really ON Gia?  Maybe eating out ...I won't say it. Then there was a strip club, a real live Party Store, and somewhat scared to stop or eat anywhere....Tony and I went to the Spread Eagle Barrens, to bird, we walked 100 feet and observed a threesome on a blanket in the port-coital throws of sex.  It REALLY WAS a porn set.

I could have put in some pictures....but to be honest that chip got to the bottom of my backpack.  You won't believe it, you don't want it, and there was too many double entendres, even for me....I was too exposed last time for discussion. so I changed my mind.  You know, I'm just a guy who is trying to see a lot of birds, write a few stories, meet some people.....you are going to think I'm weird or I make this stuff up.....like virginity, as Sandy Komito once said, you can only loose your reputation once....mine is probably hanging on by sinew.  That is okay, I know my limitations.

Okay...on with the story...

I loved the colors black and yellow when I was a kid, I liked them because they were the colors of the Pittsburgh Steelers....I also secondarily had a love of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Iowa Hawkeyes.  1979 was a glorious year for Pittsburgh, first the Pirates in their "We are family" year, beat the Orioles for their first world series win since like 1960....Bill Mazerowski....Bert Blyleven and the Candyman were the pitchers I loved and I even changed my left handed batting swing to mimic Willie Stargell.  Then the Steelers won the Super Bowl that January.  It was magical their 4th championship in 6 years and Terry Bradshaw in a post game discussion set the battle cry for the 1981 season...."One for the thumb"  basically a phrase to say where he would put his 5th championship ring.....an event that never happened btw.   One for the thumb......a five spot, a whole hand.....it would be a wonderful thought.....could Olaf get a five handle on his lifer list, even one for his thumb?  

The synopsis:

Big Year Total:  678
Coded Birds:  55

number to go to old record:  72
Miles driven.  29, 563Flight Miles 88,200flight segments: 94   Different Airports: 39Hours at sea: 123Miles walked 185
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 31
Lifers seen this year:  43
Well let me go back to Michigan....
May 20, 2016

We met up with Roger Hill a retired periodontist I ran into in Florida Canyon AZ in January.  Not wanting to try my hand at trespassing in Wisconsin to nab their elusive Kirtland's Roger took us out near Grayling, we found a forest and basically found the birds......

They have basically closed so much public land up here in the Huron National Forest, it irritated me.  Public land not public.....?  They have elk up here, these warblers, like the whole of the Lower P. is closed to the public.....

We went south towards Tawas Point and found a road in the middle of nowhere that had like all the odd warblers singing....I photographed a Mourning warbler for the year, then we looked around, saw some mute swans and I don't want anyone to say my BC Mute swan was NOT an established acceptable bird so I photographed this family below.   We took Roger out to lunch (great perch), told stories, and I gave him a copy of my book.  He was a great help and a positive face for Michigan birding...thanks Roger!

*  equals lifer seen
#669 Kirtland's warbler

This could have been a better photo but well it is identifiable, we had places to go and birds to find.
 Mourning warbler
Mute Swan

May 21, 2016
Tony and I waited for 3 hours for a new plane in Midland MI, landing gear failure....luckily we had a 3.5 hour layover.  While I was there, I had a scheme....Tony agreed, not knowing what he had agreed to....

We would land at midnight in Raleigh AND I was planning to drive all night to.....New Jersey...because it was on our way to Hatteras....Isn't it?   5/21 was a travel day, if I had scheduled a peleagic on the 21st, I may have missed it due to that plane delay so I gave myself an extra day.....

We reached the ferry in Lewes Delaware at sunrise, realizing it is farther to New Jersey than one thinks.  We got delayed for an hour in Raleigh as my Siri would not navigate in North Carolina.  Was it the bathroom law and Apple was punishing them (me)?

We caught the ferry to Cape May, drove 30 miles and found this mudflat on a fast falling tide.....they were having a birding festival and everyone was around....but no one helped us and we ended up sorting thousands of sandpipers for the Curlew sandpiper and eventually found it tucked in a corner.  It was a lucky break on the tides and then also because right afterwards, it started to rain....Okay, I didn't get it Ohio.........

#670  Curlew Sandpiper  *



dipping three times, I averted a new nemesis bird.......things were looking up.  I slept on the ferry back, and then we drove on to Hatteras NC, we arrived exhausted at 1030 in the evening, the pelagic sailed at 0515, yet another short night....but we got the dang bird....and a not too bad photo.

May 22, 2016
Brian and Kate run the best pelagics on the Atlantic in MHO.  It is intimate and they can usually find stuff, but Brian is no risk taker and on the 21st, they cancelled due to a gale.  It is always rough out here when I'm aboard and today...no exception.  It wasn't a gale but...

I like belittling my life list, but I probably can't do that anymore.  in New Jersey, the CUSA was ABA lifer number 750, a bird I was thinking of celebrating with champagne, but we were too tired.  Despite my list, it had this huge hole in Atlantic seabirds that I knew could mean a very special day, whenever I came in May. This could be the last very special multiple lifers I would ever have, but just because you have a hole doesn't mean the birds will be there to fill them.   Today, though was different.  It was like whatever I could dream I needed, lifer or for the year....it showed up.

If this was baseball, it could be said I pitched a perfect game, so to speak. I got a seven spot for the year Including 5 lifers, I really did now have "one for the thumb."  Look at that whole hand in my picture...it was my second best day of birding all year, after with Grandmother Lucille.  I even got one of the biggies, 2 great looks at Trinidade petrels....how cool is that!

Tony got 10 lifers....

And get this....I photographed, and some pretty good, all of the year birds I needed.....it was a grand day.

Lifer beer was good before the exhaustion took its toll and we passed out at 8pm.  I had thought about chasing a white-winged tern in Wisconsin but I was in no shape to drive all night again to the airport...after much soul searching I decided not to bolt...I didn't need anything but maybe something odd would show up....here is my list for the day....and what a day it was.....I was too pumped to even get seasick.

#671  Cory's Shearwater *

#672  Wilson's storm-petrel

#673  Black-capped petrel *


#674  Bridled tern


#675  Trinidade Petrel *

#676  Band-rumped storm-petrel *  
(lead bird, thank God Kate is like a storm-petrel whisperer as not sure i would have made this ID on my own.  They don't patter on the waves like Wilson's, but their longer wings and shorter legs are not that easy for me, to discern in the field or sea as in this case)




#677  Great Shearwater *

The bridled terns were like a lucky break.  Bored and slow birding near lunch, we had this school of fish, mostly dolphin fish, gorgeous blue and yellow fish, Brian was feeding them and it was fun.  Then everyone was watching the fish and not for birds and somehow a small flock of bridled terns came right up to the boat before anyone noticed and then just barely.

After the diversion with the terns...the fish wanted more sardines and then Brian called one of the fishing boats which had no luck yet that day to come over....they were all sitting on their duffs drinking beer and then they passed behind us and chaos took over as something hit all of their lines..


They may have even got one for all of their thumbs.....as a fisherman I was a bit jealous.  I'm sure Brian is now owed one in the close-nit world of the fishing guides....

We went home, Tony looked a bit green but came out to drink lifer beers with me and finally eat a real dinner.....I was in a party mode, even if Tony was just hanging on to reality, he gave up on his snapper.

May 23, 2016

Day 2 at Sea in the Stormy Petrel II.  The day was in some ways nicer, maybe a real night of sleep changed my perspective....it was better weather wise, but it wasn't nice, only one poor older man got seasick.  I was unsure of if I had made the right choice, should I have bailed on today and chased the white-winged tern?

Everyone was surprised to see us, they figured we'd bolt.  At 915, though, it happened..............."Fea's petrel coming down the starboard"  Brian shouted and I ran for the front of the boat.  You could have almost reached out and touched it.  I shot these photos at 150mm.  One pass, it turned and headed away.  It was like it came for me.  It was a magical moment in birding....wow a Fea's!  I gave a birder named Susan a high five.  Did a fist pump and smiled.  I had made the correct choice.  It turned out the tern was a no show in Wisconsin to boot.  Score one for Olaf!  It was a small victory but yet another lifer, number 7 for this trek.

#678  Fea's Petrel *



The rest of the day was slow, like oh so painfully slow.  Little diversity, few birds, not even fish and one extremely pesky pomerine jeager which was probably not a good thing.  It scared away all the birds.  But....he or she put on a good show, was probably with us for 6 hours.


The day ended early with t-storms coming in.  I got a lifer and a year bird so no complaints and for once, had made the correct choice and we still had a five hour haul to get to the airport, it was going to be another short night...too short.

I rolled a seven, for lifers in 3 days, didn't crap out and put myself in the position I wanted, breaking 700 by day 150....day 150 is May 30th and I needed now to clean up Arizona before I began my Alaska strategy.  700 in 150 days I think is pretty good, for many a lifer goal, and it took me 49 years to get Mr 700 last May, and now what a difference a year makes...

The Alaska strategy, Adak-Gambell to Nome before hanging out in St Paul after I got my daughter back home.  I've been studying years of trends and well, IDK, we'll see how Arizona goes and what the Attu birds are ....which at midway didn't look like I had made a mistake.

We'll see.....

right now I'm still trying to determine how I can drink all of this lifer beer I have to drink, which I'm afraid that if I drink too many, I may try to wrap a can around my thumb

Thanks you crew in Hatteras, Brian and Kate, thank you Roger, and also, thank you Terry Bradshaw for well, being the lovable goofy Terry.  Those were some very good years and fond childhood memories.

petrels are sooo cool!

cheers!!

Olaf

Birding with the Legend

May 19, 2016

Crex Meadows
Grantsburg WI

Today I had the best birding day of the year.  It was grand.  It was also grandmother.  Today I was lucky enough to bird with my 91 year old grandmother Lucille Danielson of Grantsburg, the person I'm dedicating this year to.  I can say no more positives than this....except it was a day I will always cherish and remember fondly for the rest of my days.  Whatever happens, whatever number I get I had today.  I came in search of one bird, the black tern and like many this year, it didn't make it easy for us.  We had to play the marsh I've been in for all of my life.

I brought a friend Tony Lau of NW Minneapolis with.  We had breakfast, we saw wonderful birds, I got my year bird, and we saw probably the oldest moving creature in Wisconsin, the biggest, Blanding's turtle I have ever sen and possibly the oldest and largest one anywhere.  This endangered turtle was in a word...spectacular.  I know this is a big year of birding but...you had to notice.  They say this turtle grows to 10 inches and 80 year, (but note this turtle does NOT age).  this one at 16 inches, 200 years old??....it was around long before Grandmother was born in 1925 I suspect.  It could be older...IDK.  wow!!



Enough to give you size.  We rescued it off a road but never touched it.  Didn't want to harm the old gal.  Grandmother either,.... this turtle bites.

We saw my year bird #668 finally  Black tern


Golden winged warblers were everywhere...



I finally photographed a Philadelphia vireo today.  I was not going to sleep until I photographed one.  We saw a Wisconsin record for me, the black throated blue warbler...they are everywhere this year  and the masterpiece bird........................a close view of a resting Barred owl...even grandma Lucille was impressed.


This is now the owl of the month.  Cool bird...great to share and see.

Two days ago I got bird #667 Sprague's pipit ...fifth documented in the last ten years in Minnesota, very near the border as I had to take care some potentially unpleasant business at home, which wasn't so unpleasant in the end.  I also had to think about my Grandfather Allwin's birthday on the 17th, if he had been around.  I had to think about the rest of my year.  I was a little sad thinking about him, the year?  Something to do.  I got a lot of birds to see.

Today was a new day.

You know, I don't care about anything else right now.....I'm just savoring the day.  I may never get to bird with my legend birder ever again, so today...........PRICELESS!!

Thank you "Nan"

Your loving grandson

Olaf

Free the Nipple

Sometimes even I can't believe what I stumble into.  It seemed like an omen following this van from Wickedrentals.com  The side advertised for free the nipple campaign. I wasn't going to speed in front of her to photograph the side.

 Well it was also World Naked Gardening day last weekend.  When I was driving around northern Indiana I heard a report on Insight Radio from Sinjiv Chopra MD (Deepak's brother).  He talked about the 5 things to living longer and healthier.  One was drinking lots of caffeine.  Voltaire drank like 70 cups a day.  Another was eating a Med. diet.  There was meditating and exercise. The final one was walking outside as exposed as much as possible to sunlight.  Vitamin D.  It all seemed to come together.  So was the perfect plan then to walk around naked, drinking coffee, meditating about birds?

The synopsis:

Big Year Total:  666
Coded Birds:  52

number to go to old record:  84
Miles driven.  28, 363Flight Miles 86,400flight segments: 90   Different Airports: 37Hours at sea: 96Miles walked 180
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 29
Lifers seen:  36
I was in Minnesota and I woke up on the 14th and it was cold, very cold.  A tough day for clothing optional birding.  This was not 2013.

Bird #655 the veery was all puffed out


I turned around and heard a single cuckoo call and saw half a beak and the tail of a cuckoo, black billed #656, and then 657, a Bay breasted warbler flitted in the tree.  I decided this was insane, even for me, so I called up my Friend Don H. and we met in Hastings MN and scouted around.  It took me an hour to drive.

We worked hard and found some birds working the big river south.

658.  Golden winged-warbler
659.  Philadelphia vireo  (really this time)
660.  Acadian Flycatcher

661.  Willow flycatcher

Both epids easily ID'd by their calling constantly.  They had just shown up, willows seemed everywhere, the day before...none.

I took off for Ohio on that evening and drove all night. You can't fly cheaply or efficiently to Toledo.  Delta doesn't do that and I will not fly through O'Hare if possible.  The curlew sandpiper was still there.

At 0130 in the morning in a swamp in central Wisconsin not far from where I went to college, looking at the setting moon and immersed in the smell of swamp on a quiet still night, I beat two rocks together and very quietly, I heard the faint reply, tap-tap...tap-tap-tap........YELLOW RAIL.  bird #662.  I wished I could share with you the feeling, the sound, or the smell.  I love bogs on a cold night.  In a few days that place would be so buggy, you'd scream and on this night a joyous thing and why I love birding.  All in my home state.

Well I arrived just after sunlight west of Toledo and started looking for the curlew sandpiper.....nope, wasn't there or was it?  Please see below. ***  It isn't on my list, now, let me say that.  It did fly off at 0745 or so, never to return.  After that I went and looked for warblers.  I documented a few in photos I hadn't during the year.  I have a newspaper story to write here later this week.  I need pictures.

Chestnut sided warbler

Then I went to sleep for 11 hours.  I woke again watched a depressing report on Heroin abuse in rural America and got depressed.  I snooped around Ohio and headed west.  I need to see my son before he goes to Boston, but I tried to finish my migrants.

In Indiana, I found a great spot for Cerulean warblers on territory.

This was bird #500 in my naked big year.  #663 here.  I have never seen this bird with my clothes on.  I looked left, then right.  It was warm.  The free the nipple people were around....and....

I heard a mourning warbler.........I spent a while trying to at least get a look at that bugger.  It was in deep.  I got it and then I moved to another bog six miles away, following the free the nipple people, they kept going....it was then anti-climatic but I got a Canada warbler #664, and a migrant yellow-bellied flycatcher, it was calling, and I couldn't for sure ID it, as there was so much background hermit and wood thrush noises, eventually on second pass it was in an more accessible location.  I slogged through the bog got close, the call stopped, and a epid flew out and across the opening...definitely the yellow-bellied.  Bird #666, the Devil bird...........

Let me make a few comments about my Alaska strategy.  I felt it was impossible to do both Hatteras in the spring, Attu, Gambell, and Nome...and get all the migrants so I would NOT have to worry about fall migration.  In hindsight, I was trying to outdo Neil Hayward, who didn't go to Attu...no one else.  In looking at past years, and I was on the 2013 Attu trip, a perfect year, or nearly so.  I would be minus 3 in this regard.  On one year, the boat broke, so I would be actually plus 4, but it is all moot.  The Attu trip is also not guaranteed.  Now Mr. Weigel, plans on leaving Adak on the 29th, flying all the way and then driving three hours to Hatteras for the My 31, and June 1 Pelagics and then...probably flying right back to Alaska.  He my friends seems capable of doing it all.  Like the Devil, the devilbirder is everywhere all the time.  I called him out and got a list.  I see non confirmed and probable hybrids on it.FWIW.

I will also say it was and is very important for me to bird with my daughter in Alaska and she can't leave until the school is out on the 24th, but that was a secondary concern.

It seems for the last two months, Mr. Weigel appears to be the man who never sleeps.  Getting all of the coded birds on consecutive days, including mysteriously on May 10th, the little egret in North Carolina AND the Bahama Mockingbird in Fort Lauderdale.  Then another on the 11th, flies in gets bird instantly and off he goes....Maybe he has his own Gulfstream Jet?  Maybe it would be better to say he is the man who never dips.  He did miss the skua on our boat as he was standing behind my friend Thor, all six foot three of Thor.  He had to wait for my daughter to get out the door.  At least, I think that was him.  He never introduced himself.

I wish I can can show up somewhere and get the bird all the time instantly.  I'm apparently not a good enough birder to see them all.  Where ever the bird shows up he is there.  He takes a mysterious second trip to Dry Tortugas on May 4th for the view apparently, as he needed nothing as was the only birder to report a Black Noddy from mine on the 18th until the 24th, when he was there on the 20th.  They see a white-tailed tropicbird, the only one reported all season on 5/4.....There is also some odd similarities in travel....hum....little stint on west coast, flies to Florida, for an Antillean nighthawk...then to Key West at dawn.....?  I did that.  Did he sleep in the back of his rental car in the Marathon taxi parking lot and get roused by angry taxi drivers....?

Nothing I can do about that.  I'm doing the best I can.  I refuse to fly corporate.

What will I do?
Well my first goal is to bird with my Grandmother Lucille this week, that is what is important.  It may be the last time, who knows.  We will get a year bird together!!   Not all of this is important.  So....spending six figures on this is like going to change any of our lives?

My wife baked me banana bread, my dog licked me and my son, whom I haven't seen in a while hugged me at 2330 when I drove home 832 miles later.  I have the most amazing family.  Family for me is number one........I'm not sure birding is better than pike fishing but it is close.  Maybe my writing is number two.  Vitamin D, number 3........I'm a better pike fisher than a birder...so what does that put birding, 5?

I am still trying to best Neil Hayward's 749.  I have always wanted to be the quickest guy to break 700 in a year, and unless something bad happens, I will in early June, if not sooner.  My 750th lifer bird will come in Hatteras...if not sooner.  Life lists are cool..........I love my new camera.......and well, I will have 17 days birding with my DAUGHTER!

That my friends is priceless.

Olaf

**from this point on I will be holding back a bird or two, maybe five, maybe more...all photographed and signed documentation if desired as to where and when I saw them.  You know, I'm usually birding with someone.  Maybe I didn't dip on the heron, did I get there a day sooner?  Where was I the two days before?  The CUSA in Ohio....? I was in Ft Zachary Taylor on the day Vireo found....?  Maybe I've seen all the coded birds too?  I need to keep a little mystery out there in my number.  What the competition doesn't know about me is better, but at least, as Hulk Hogan states, "and that is all the people need to know or was it the Baron von Rashke".... I have 666.  The girls in the wickedrental van know the truth and that is not what they apparently want exposed.  I had to apologize for my camera.

BTW, I had to come home to vote.  The SD primary maybe does matter,...? and we have a vote on restricting feedlot operations......GO BERNIE!!!  Did I really say that?

The swinging bunt

Chapter 42;
Eastern Coast of North America, 
almost the whole coast.
Big Year Days 130-134

Many dream to be able to defy gravity like this raccoon.  Some want a superpower like many of my characters in my novels do.  We all have fantasies, I even had one as a kid, and it involves baseball. I used to live for baseball.  Olaf, batting with two out, my team behind by three runs.  It would go something like this....

Mark "the Bird" Fidrych stood behind the mound talking to the ball.  He then adjusted his Tiger cap and addressed the ball again.  I could not hear what he was saying but them immediately he mounted the rubber.  Looked at the man sneaking off of third base, and threw me a fat one.  For a moment I could see the seems stop revolving.  The bird was a right hander so I was batting left.  The ball just hung up there as it came.  Time seemed to stand still.  The bases were loaded.  Although a big guy, I rarely swung for the fences.  I'm conservative by nature and live by singles and doubles, but here I could get 4 runs.  The change up came in slow and I took a mighty Casey swing....I missed it.  I swung so hard, the force brought me to my knees, even in this imaginary game.  It took me a while to compose myself.

The bird came again, this time knowing I was swing for the parking lot and the ball missed my left ear by an inch as I ducked to get out of the way.  Unnerved, I took a second strike and then a ball.  It was now or never.  "What the heck." I mumbled as he threw me his signature fastball.  I swung hard.
 
I could feel the vibration burn my hand as the end of the bat knocked the ball straight down into the plate and then up.  I paused for a moment seeing the ball bounce fair.  I ran for first.

The catcher, Bruce Kimm, caught al of his games and instinctively ran after the ball, but The Bird himself fielded it towards third base.  He moved to throw it home but Kimm was too far off the plate to get the runner who passed him to reach.  But I still had to make it to first.  The Bird reached back and threw the ball which slipped out of hand just a little and for some idiotic reason I decided to dive head first into the base.  Me the ball, and the first baseman's glove and for that matter even the base all ended up in a pile.  The dust settled and the ump looked down on me laying half across the base.  He was looking for the ball.  I knew where it was, it was not in the first baseman's glove, it was under me.  I reached down and grabbed it and gave it to the ump.  I could hear, "runner scores."  It wasn't pretty but I got one home at least.  As they say, I left ducks on the pond, but at least I got one.

The synopsis:

Big Year Total:  654
Coded Birds:  52

I'm adding some new categories

number to go to old record:  96
Miles driven.  26930Flight Miles 86,400flight segments: 90   Different Airports: 37Hours at sea: 96Miles walked 173
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 28
Lifers seen:  36

other animals seen:  gray whale, baird's beaked whale, humpback, dolphin, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs, iguana, woodchuck, red fox, muskrat

The above was a baseball fantasy of a ten year old, played out over and over again in 1976.  I didn't dream about the big homerun.  I batted 7th in my imaginary league.  I hit .287 one year and .292 the next.  7 home runs was my best year and unlike Big Birds 19-9 record in 1976, my imaginary record was a rather tame 13-11.  I had a bit of wildness in July.  The ace on my staff went 31-3 though.  He threw heat, I threw forkballs.  Largely though, 1976 was a magical summer for a young boy so i won't complain.

Such was also my birding this last week.  I had essentially a free week, but as the man who set the world big year record says, he birded every day....therefore, I, Olaf must bird every day.  I decided to take a swing for the fences, there was a rare gray heron in Newfoundland, Curlew sandpiper and/or white winged tern in Nova Scotia and Massachusetts and a Bahama Mockingbird in Florida.  The birds threw me the pitches and largely I missed.

Oh well.  I tried.

Cape Bonavista Newfoundland

I blew in at midnight on a Porter Air flight, crashed three hours and drove 200 miles to the cape.  I arrived and immediately noticed two things.  The was no heron in the beaver pond and no birders looking.  I then spent 6 hours:

finding every body of water a heron would like and then bushwacking a mile of river took 4 hours.  By then I found another birder named Ed, I met him in February.  I warmed up in his car then.  He had not seen the heron either.  It was a full strike one!!

I did see an iceberg, my first

I saw an interesting rocky coastline

and a milestone bird, Atlantic Puffin #650

It was a long way out on an island.  Later I learned this is a puffin watching spot.  I just went up to look at the sea as I was bored.  Then I spied an arctic fox,

and well I drove around until 1 looking at the ponds again.....all in vain.

April 11, Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

I came into town and slept like the dead, but had to leave at 4am, as it was 200 miles from Halifax down there to get a curlew sandpiper, but the finder of this bird, a generous resident named Mark Dennis, didn't see it in the falling tide the night before.  I had no where else to go so i came to the holiday area....

well we never found the bird but Mark came and helped.

I did find piping plovers, they are cute little guys.


Let me say something about this area.  It has nice beaches, BUT NO, and I repeat NO public bathrroms...at least that I could find.......none of the parks, beach access points, or even the base ball field had one.  There is no convenience store nearby either.  The only food is a take out shack.  They had no one either.

Never shy, I just went on the rocks on a breakwater.  A woman nervously drove by.  I didn't care.  Give me an outhouse....then.  I watched what this woman was up to and then two other came in cautiously, I thought it was the rough road.  Nope!  They began exchanging things way up in the parking lot.  I turned my spotting scope.  Drugs?  I got to see this.  Housewives selling weed like the Showtime show.

Nope...dildos.  The lady that drove by me was a distributor.  The first woman bought a big purple one.  She held it up.  Seemed a bit floppier than I would suspect.  Never held one...Nothing says love me softly, like a huge purple dildo.  Mark had joked how conservative people were here.  They cannot even exchange sex toys in a home.  The second lade had a vibrator.  I couldn't tell the brand oh and some crotchless lingerie.  You don't see that out birding.  Pretty red with a bow on the but.  I guess it was too cold to try on.  They held it up in the wind as I looked.  The sex toy drop spot in Cape Sable Island.  Hawk Beach....who would have thunk it?  The things you see birding.  No wonder she wasn't going to give me crap for urinating in public.   She didn't realize I had 65x spotting scope.
  
April 12, Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, Fort Lauderdale FL

I left Nova Scotia at 6am.  The computers broke in Customs, but I got through anyhow.  I hubbed through JFK airport for the first time since 1979 when we had to land a wounded plane emergently coming from Europe.  I remember it as a crash landing but I was 13 and maybe my baseball fantasy and my plane fantasy were similar?  We were neglected in an abandoned terminal for nearly a day.  I remember that.  I have not been to NYC or JFK ever since.  It scarred me a little way back then.  I was still nervous about being there now.

I survived and landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at noon.  Fort Lauderdale and Halifax are like always in the same itinerary, right?  I headed to Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, it was like 12 miles from the airport.  It could be an easy bird.


Okay, let me say that Hugh Taylor Birch is a hero of mine.  It is time for a little history, much of this is from a 1987 review of this in a New York Times article.  Birch at the turn of the century collected three miles of of isolated beachfront property when land was cheap and settlers were few and far between.  He had the area to himself.  He brought the governor to read by his favorite tree and in his older years many remember him as a tall, white-bearded man, vexed by encroaching civilization, using a rifle to shoot out new street lights installed by the City of Fort Lauderdale at the edge of his property.  You got to like a man shooting street lights.



So angry was he at the city fathers for intruding on his beautiful tropical paradise with roads and taxes that in 1942, the year before his death at the age of 94, he snubbed the city and deeded a 180-acre parcel of his property to Florida for use as a state park. Except for 35 acres that went to his daughter, Mr. Birch left the rest of his Fort Lauderdale property to his beloved alma mater, Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  That seemed good.  Antioch was a liberal school founded by Horace Mann in 1852 trying to help liberal causes like the environment.....NO you say?In 1987 Antioch College filed suit saying the gift of the state park is null and void and asserted in a lawsuit that it has become the rightful heir to the 180 acres. This is no small matter. Commercial real estate appraisers calculate the land is now worth a half-billion dollars or more in 1987, 3 billion today to commercial interests for development. #2 Sides of Debate That translates into about $1 million for every student enrolled at Antioch in 1987, which was the first college in the nation to admit women to an equal curriculum and one of the first to admit blacks.The college is saying that the state has neglected the park, allowing it to become a rundown patch of green space; therefore, they should be able to sell it to developers.  Those greedy rotten pigs!  back then, the state contends that the park is in exceptional condition, considering its urban setting, and that the college's lawsuit is nothing more than a bare-fisted grab for valuable public land to enrich its endowment fund.As it turned out.  Thinking for the present like the grasshoppers the college was.  Antioch long ago sold its own share of Mr. Birch's Fort Lauderdale beachfront and learned to regret it, though at the time it was seen as a phenomenal windfall for the endowment fund. Eighty acres was sold for $4 million in the 1940's. The last parcel was sold several years later to commercial developers and it is now occupied by Galleria Mall, the home of such fashionable stores as Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.The NYTimes article states:  "Hordes of weekend picnickers have changed the character of the park from a nature preserve and bird sanctuary created by Mr. Birch to a badly managed, overrun public green space that has lost its secluded charm."This, Antioch officials say, is why the college is suing to acquire Mr. Birch's 180 acres. They cite a clause in the deed transferring the land to the state that stipulates that if the state ''abandons'' the state park for more than one year it would revert to Mr. Birch's estate, which is now controlled by Antioch."Thankfully the college lost....the park lives on and a few days ago, a code 4, Bahama mockingbird was reported.  Honestly, the park looks okay to me.  Maybe they cleaned it up?  But the ranger looked bored and said to me as he walked up to meet me and I paid my 4 dollars.  "So you are here to see the bird with the injured eye."  I hadn't said a thing...did I look like a birder?It was mid day and the bird was not around.  I looked for an hour.  Another guy was there, he had looked for two hours.  This was his third trip in.  We spotted a raccoon eating fruit in a tree. he finally gave up and left.  I could hear his car go into forward in the parking lot when the mockingbird flew in.  It was odd.  I definitely don't want to bird with that guy.  What ever my luck is....his...is worse. #651  Bahama Mockingbird



I had it, it may have only had one good eye, but I could drink a lifer beer, and well, I got at least one bird home, it was a bit of a swingling bunt but a bird is a bird.
It was tome to head north, a yellow green vireo was only ...200 miles away....is everything 200 miles away on this trip?

Columbia Ave Hammock, Cocoa Beach FL

I came for a yellow-green vireo, the other big year birders shall be happy as it flew the coup a few hours before I arrived and did not show up on the 13th
But...I got a good consolation bird

#652  Blackburnian warbler
#653  Connecticut warbler



The picture is bad, but is is definately identifiable as a CT warbler...Good bird!  I said it to everyone, Thursday night.  I just saved myself from a bug infested crawl in mud through an alder swamp in NW Wisconsin to get the bird.  I do it in crocs and with little clothing to enable hosing myself off at my grandmother's  It is not a place i truly wish to go...now, I don't!!

Good we got this on the 12th as the next morning next to the spot we saw the bird, a homeless man had moved in a ramshackle tent and was loudly shouting, "They charged me with assault and battery and with intent to kill.  No I'm free and they think they can spy on me with all these poeple sneaking around...."  Later to the relief of all, wearing not one, or two but 6 hats, he left for the day...where do homeless schizophrenics go in Cocoa Beach?  I don't want to know but it is a problem.  People should not have to live like dogs...........It isn't just the psych care it is also the psych rules, we can;t force medication on people........

Merritt Island NWR

I went to look for white rumped sandpiper and I was not disapointed

#654  White-rumped sandpiper



other birds not photographed in 2016

Stilt sandpiper

Roseate spoonbill

glossy ibis

I even took time to move a eastern box turtle (I think) off the road

The Florida subspecies is near threatened.  So it was a good save.  I try to rescue all turtles.  It is a never ended thankless task though.

I cut my trip back to the airport too close.  I was forced to drive 95 on 95, but...I made it.  it was 200 miles back.  It took me 2 hours 25 minutes and i stopped for gas and three hamburgers at McDs........we will soon see if my plan works for this big year, the birders are heading to Attu tomorrow, gathering on the 15th in Adak...without me......I think of Attu as a 2 week plus trap in prime birding time, I will spend my 2 weeks wisely.  I will start by finishing off all of my migrants...all of them, with the CT warbler seen, I can do it, I can....I must.  With Aussie record holder John Weigel out here on the prowl, my 750 goal is not nearly enough....that is way I put # to old record above.  760 will win the year, but it could be even higher....I need to have every bird and leave as much time for pure chasing....I have to run the table in Minnesota this weekend.

I can rest when I'm dead, I guess

Out there...

Olaf

Home Cooking 2

Chapter 41;
Coteau des Prairies, South Dakota
Big Year Day 129

Big Year Total:  649
Coded Birds:  51

Miles driven.  25610Flight Miles 79,200flight segments: 83   Different Airports: 34Hours at sea: 96Miles walked 167
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 27
other animals seen:  gray whale, baird's beaked whale, humpback, dolphin, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs, iguana, woodchuck, red fox, muskrat

A quick update:

I returned home from my last three adventures.  It had been a while.  I was tired and hungry.  I needed home cooking.  My three suitcases had been used up of clothing, and I needed a bath.  My right big toe was swollen.  My camera chip was full.  I had bills to pay for upcoming birding treks and well my dog needed a pat.

In a family moment, I watched one of our favorite movies with my wife Silja...
"The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain."
It is such the travel and romantic comedy.  It made my wife very happy, even after we cried at the end in joy.

My daughter, Lena needed a hug and well, so did I.

Feeling confident and re-energized with only one night of sleep and an evening of family life, I went off to my cabin to restart birding.  The year must go on.  I cannot rest.  My cabin view from the hill to the north.  Seeing the trees gives it a false sense of where it is.


My back yard birds are not what normal back yard birds are.  This is prairie country.  I have a chestnut collared longspur colony nearby, and sedge wrens overpopulate my backyard at my cabin.  I saw 8.  I nabbed 4 species and then I was thinking I was one day late for the arrival of the Bobolinks...miscalculated due to the leap year day, I drove home and spotted probably the only one in NE South Dakota for bird #649 sitting on a fence post.  The black terns are not in yet and I still need a white-rumped sandpiper, which is also not in yet so I will just have to wait on them.  All the while, my wife kept me company as I communicated with birders in Maritime Canada to plot my next move.  It was a rare calm day and to be honest I fell in love with the prairie all over again today.

The Gray Heron was calling me and well, it will take me an entire day to get there from here but I threw my laundry in the washer and began to pack for multiple trips.  As I said before, I need to charge and not plug, so off I will go charging to the Northeast. I have no time for deep thinking or pithy stories, I got to get to an isolated spot 3 hours from St John's Newfoundland and if that works, Nova Scotia.....tickets booked....I need to get to bed...tomorrow is going to be a very long travel day...

Olaf

The list:

645.  Wilson's Phalarope
male

female

646.  Chestnut-collared longspur
male

female

647.  Virginia Rail

I flushed one behind my cabin, it never called but was a half way decent look at the secretive bird.

648.  Sedge wren


649.  Bobolink


Other birds

Forster's tern

Yellow headed blackbird

clay colored sparrow

Bi-coastal craziness

Chapter 40:
Big Year Days 122-28

The Impossible Chase
San Diego-Vancouver-Victoria, BC- Newark NJ

I sit here writing this blog at the Delta Sky Club in Newark, New Jersey, a state I have not visited since 1994, and watch it rain outside.  My trip started in a Sky Club in Minneapolis and it looks like it will end in a Sky Club, a full circle.  I sit here and think about how did I even get here?  If you would have told me that I'd head west and end up here 6 days ago, again on the Atlantic, I would have laughed at you.  In fact, even if I knew, why...  What bird I was chasing, I would have still laughed.....a fork-tailed flycatcher, the most unchasable of all birds....one I missed just 28 miles from a fresh report in Florida, it would be unthinkable, I would not be so stupid as to waste my time chasing one, but here I was..

But.....one surprisingly it was a bird I now had.  But what didn't I have?   A Philadelphia vireo, that is for sure.  I even heard about that missed call in Texas from a birding guru on a ship.  Word gets around.  I posted a correction after I thought about it an hour later but the deed was done. I  also didn't drive a car this whole period. I was helped by birders.  I didn't have a Hawaiian petrel nor a fond memory of the cruise ship industry.  but I'm getting ahead of myself....this all goes back to May 1st...when I sat on a plane in San Diego........

Big Year Total:  644
Coded Birds:  51

Miles driven.  25490Flight Miles 79,200flight segments: 83   Different Airports: 34Hours at sea: 96Miles walked 167
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 27
other animals seen:  gray whale, baird's beaked whale, humpback, dolphin, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs, iguana, woodchuck, red fox, muskrat
     San Diego, CA

The trip started innocently enough as Bill Thompson, a birder from San Diego I met a couple years back in Key West picked me up and we headed out to clean up what I needed locally which wasn't much.  Bill had some distressing news, he had staked out his favorite Gray Vireo spots and even hiked three days in the Pacific Coast trail and had heard nothing.  Well, we decided to start simple and he took me to a couple of cool lagoons.  We found elegant terns and then a warbling vireo and then we started seeing hummingbirds with rufous on them.  Allen/ Rufous is best you can say about them as they can't usually be told apart but as an expert told me, that 99.9% of them are Allen;s now. I looked at one.  I snapped a picture of it flicking it's tail.  I blew it up.....there was a noticable notch on the 2nd feather and wide 4 and 5s tail feathers indications for a roofie, or a rufous hummingbird so I entered it in ebird, somewhat cautiously.....

okay....before you go and hit me, call me names or we get back to this Philly situation and think I'm over calling....yes I claimed my rufous hummingbird from Southern California, indicating I think I saw the .1%.  It had green on it too, a male.  I'm sure the notch is NOT absolute, or it could be a hybrid, IDK, but I saw the notch, and I can't put down it as an Allen... BUT, four days later I saw 4 in Victoria BC, so give me a break.  I'm not totally daft, but I saw a roofie in San Diego.  Maybe it showed me its tail feathers so it wanted to be counted?  I have given you pictures of both below.  I made sure I had a back-up bird in their prime territory in the northwest.

Bill and I went home to his house north of San Diego for beer....no lifers, we just needed beer.  We plotted theories about gray vireo, and I went to sleep.

The morning found ourselves in the Kitchen Creek area up the mountains east of San Diego and the Sunrise Road, this latter place, a place I had birded in January and got in trouble for throwing snowballs.  We looked for gray vireo and stopped at mile 14.5, whee someone was sleeping in their car, we called the bird, I am not too proud to admit that....Bell's sparrows flew, Bullock's oriole sang, but no gray vireos sang.....we moved on.  We went to the Pacific Coast trail, we walked.....all the historical nemesis birds came, black-chinned sparrow, mountain quail, Lazuli bunting...a year bird...Scott's oriole...it was a really good spot....problem was....no vireo, notta.  We gave up and went to Yellow rose  springs area up the road a half a mile, it had big trees and didn't look like a good gray vireo location.  There were warblers in the trees, Hermits, Townsends, Wilson's....Lawrence's goldfinch, another nemesis, that let me take its picture, and then we got a couple of year birds....western wood-pewee, and a late migrant, an olive-sided flycatcher, and more Lazuli, the olive-sided got away from my camera efforts....

then Bill saw it fly in, it sang only once, four rounds of its call and then flitted around in a tree with a friend ..........WE HAD THEM  gray vireos!  I said, a couple of big year birders from years past just felt a little unexplained pain in the chest, as the moist worrisome breeder IMHO had just been seen and counted by me.  I'd get a dusky grouse, this bird if it goes quiet, and they seemingly have already, can be big trouble, ask Sandy Komito.  But that pain, would in a couple of days, be mirrored by another seemingly unexplained feeling of joy, such is watching a big year from afar and even being in the middle of it.  A moment of joy and relief can change to anguish in minutes...today's victory, tomorrow's failure.

I took Bill out for breakfast...maybe my last meal, I didn't know, Bill was a great host for a day and was going to pick up his son in Colorado, school is out for the summer


my last meal.......?



Westerdam Cruise

Nervously, I shook Bill's hand and thanked him and made my way to board the ship.  I was nervous that mostly I wouldn't be able to get in my room and would have no food for 3 days.  I don't get nervous without reason, typically.  I walked in, stood in three lines and finally got my room key card, 5030.  The woman who gave it to me told me I would have a wonderful time, a first cruiser....she didn't know what I knew.  It would be a long lonely three days.  I could feel it.  I boarded the ship...and dropped my spotting scope on the securities officer's foot.  It didn't looked broken so I breathed a sigh of relief.  I walked up to the room and it didn't open.  I sighed.  I knew it.  I went back down to the office of the ship.  The woman gave me a new key card, 10 minutes later and now really hot and sweaty, I returned for another, dragging my stuff with as it still wasn't opened.  I looked at the European woman, "and this fun because?"  She brushed me off and said she had no record of my booking.  I told her "you did 10 minutes ago and so did the woman outside."  I echoed the wonderful time statement from outside.  She sneered at me and eventually without a word came back with a 3rd key card.  This one worked.

I met my cabin boy this time up there who was just usually in my way.  About as useful as a 1 legged dog in my opinion. I had lugged my stuff around the whole ship three times.  I asked him when he said "did I need anything?"  for a wash basin for my feet....that... he didn't have.  In fact, he wasn't much help at all....giving me wrong directions to things and some wrong info, like I said...one legged dog.  One with a mandatory tip.

 As the ship readied to set sail, there was an informal meeting of the birders on the boat, and for a WINGS tour a more formal meeting.  I stood aft and looked around pondering why?  Why did people go on these things?  What do they do for two days at sea in the cold northern Pacific?  I was not impressed nor would I be.  Let me summarize that on the 3rd day, I figured out that people liked the faux elegance, the watered down booze, the phony art auctions, the casino, the decor, and as I think it made them feel important.  I just got pissed at the sneering woman in the office, the shifty cabin boy sneeking into my room.  This was NOT wonderful, all I saw was rude or indifferent staff, and people trying to part me with my money.  I met no non-birder guests.  But this was a birding cruise....and it was ALL business.

Every morning at 5am, I walked up to the Lido deck for coffee......I passed the topless carvings of Neptune and Venus

I said a little prayer to the birding gods and we birded for fifteen hours until I passed by these same statues and either cursed the gods or thanked them and the day was done.....

this was the typical position spent by all except for runs to the bathroom, and I emphasize the word--run.  Or you ran up stairs to grab a handful of sandwiches or cookies for the birding crew for lunch.  We stood out there on our scopes in wind, waves, everything....because at any moment...something might fly by and you didn't want to miss it.


breakfast was eating fruit loops out of the box on deck, if your sandwich fell on the floor from the wind on the deck, you ate it.  Drink...water from water bottles.  Like I said...all business.  A friend told me, if Paul Lehman was out on the deck, so would you be.  If he went to the bathroom, you went to the bathroom, otherwise, you looked for seabirds.  

We birded hard that first night and by 8 pm I was hungry, and you couldn't bird after dark.  I could convince no one birding on the ship to eat at the restaurant with me, so I ended up dining alone 5 minutes before closing at the buffet.  "Wonderful..?"  I got the end of the meat, the real end, fat and rind.  I had the end of the fruit, and a sneer from the woman serving ice cream.  Food on cruises?  Are you kidding me?   It was about as elegant as a highs school cafeteria.  I would have liked a beer with dinner, the alcohol would have taken the edge of, but I could not figure out how to get one, it took me 2 days to figure out how to even get a diet coke, before that I basically took two from my mini-bar.  They never restocked it.  Holland America...yea, how do you drink or eat here?  I refused to drink the beer in my mini-bar, how sad is that to drink beer from a mini-bar?

      On the 2nd night, L learned there was a sit down restaurant in this boat, really there is and it was included in the price of a cruise.  How do people learn this?  I convinced a Victoria birder named Mark to eat with me, as damn it, I paid for this food, I was going to restaurant.  The buffet at 750 pm sucked....as far as I know, we were the only 2 of 30 birders to set foot in the restaurant.  Birders are singularily focused but I like a little dinner after 14 hours on a scope.  My sore knees needed a beer.  I also learned that they had servers here that tried to be nice.

 Birding with Paul Lehman, the seabirding guru, is like playing a round of golf with Tiger Woods in his prime, I did not even belong on the course with him.  Some of these birds I have never seen before but I see well, just not fork-tailed storm petrels they match the ocean and due to a color deficiency I think I have, I can't pick them up well.  I did okay onboard and I just looked and tried to shut up and stay out of everyone's way although it is hard, I have a big mouth.  I don't like admitting I'm doing a big year, I feel stupid.  It is an idiot's folly doing this, everyone knows that.

 The second day was calm, almost totally and for seabirds that was a death knell, nothing was flying, so besides a great sighting of a south polar skua, in prime Cook's petrel areas, we saw only one and that one, late in the day.   I was on the other side of the boat, the call came and I ran.  I almost missed it and for a few hours I thought I did as I looked where everyone was looking and I saw a funny looking bird. It was very white, had white under wings highlighted with black, looked like a small pink-footed, and someone said, i could hear "no, that is just a pink footed shearwater."  I figured it was the bird i was looking at.  I looked beyond it, and saw nothing.  That never sat well with me.  I finally looked at internet pictures and saw a bird at the same angle, it wasn't a shearwater I saw, it was the Cook's petrel.  It was only flying flat in the windless air and this was confirmed when I quizzed another person who had seen the bird and said, no it wasn't arching, it was flying flat. That, though was the only Cook's seen.  a few days before, Paul Lehman had seen 170 Cook's this run...this time, almost nothing.  On this day, besides the Cook's, the best thing seen was actually a Baird's beaked whale...


    Day 3 on the boat was another story.......heavy wind.  Birders succumbed to seasickness, and the deck was closed but we ignored that, we went under the tape.  No one came and booted us out.  It was so windy that the Murphy's petrels, another rare petrel, were doing such flying it boggles your mind.  We saw quite a few but no Hawaiian petrel, so I gave back a bird to others on earlier and later cruises...I would not see that bird now or ever.  By the end of the cruise I would see some new birds although most of them would be on my Adak cruise but I got ashy storm-petrel and the skua, two worrisome birds, so all was not lost.  The birding gods on the boat had a purpose for me still or so it seemed.

     You have to do this cruise if you are doing a big year, or you don't have a chance and I got 2 out of 3 of the goal birds, luckily just getting the second one so I still was in the game.

Vancouver -Victoria BC

I got off the Westerdam avoided the myriad of topless women statues, there should be a warning for all those sensitive people about nudity....?  Did WINGS do that?....and thankfully the people trying to sell me stuff had all gone away.  The old guests rushed off well they don't rush but want to be first in line.  I avoided them and I walked out of the cruise ship terminal, took a right and ended up in 5 minutes at the float plane base.  I was taking a DHC Otter to the Harbor in Victoria.


This is an adventure so why not take the adventuresome route?

The plane held 11 passengers and a pilot, and it was very tight seating especially for a big 6 foot 2 guy like me.  A woman sat next to me and then thought better of it, and took the only other open seat. Olaf, as usual, sat alone.  The lonesome dove, should be my nickname.   I watched from the second row the instruments on the dash of the airplane.  I have flown this model Otter about 20 times, sometimes ones needed service or gas.  This one had a full tank.  Although I have never flown one in BC, I wanted to so I was not scared.  It was cool splitting the bridge that goes from Stanley Park to North Vancouver, and it was a cool day to be in a small plane.  It was also fun, seeing the good looking young business woman flirt with the governmental official sitting in front of me.  She feigned interest and was playing with her hair for 30 minutes in the plane.  She would be a good catch, I bet those two end up on a date.

Matt Cameron, musician and birder from Victoria, a guy I befriended in January, picked me up and took me out to the field to bird.  You could say that it made little sense for me to come to Victoria at all, but I had bought tickets and I did need a bird, and there had been a coded sighting on the island, a red-throated pipit, a bird that I would have a 99.9% chance to get in Alaska in the fall, but I was here, and...it was a nice day.

It took us 15 minutes to get from the harbor to me having a confirmation sighting of a rufous hummingbird, something that I saw in San Diego I repeat again, after counting tail features and seeing a notch, BUT, knowing all the hummer experts, I probably still messed something up and caused doubt with that ID, so here is a real rufous hummingbird, I won't wait to below, I know you don't believe me.


 
Okay, past clean-ups done, we went a little farther and got the goal bird

MacGilvray's Warbler

the bird was out briefly, I got a camera on it for one shot and that was it.  We didn't want to use calls as the bird was on territory but I got some looks enough to claim the bird.

I also got a first of year photo on a violet green swallow, albeit a bit sketchy.

  Violet Green Swallow
Next we drove over to Panama Flats, in Victoria to find the pipit.  It is an odd thing, here a day ago, a coded bird was found and today, no one was looking for it.  The two birders on the flats were interested in a pectoral sandpiper of all things and had not even looked for the pipit, although it had been seen earlier that day.


While Matt was getting no info from a birder, a lone dark pipit crossed from left to right.  It was clear in the air and it was making a perfect red-throated pipit flight call.  I don't know much, but with all the pipits in St. Paul Island when I was there, I had pipit flight calls burned into my brain by birding legends, Cory Gregory and Doug Gotchfeld, not to mention Scott Schuette.  That was not an American pipit that flew by, however, we couldn't locate it.  A day later, i may have seen it bug out as I like saying.  It wasn't seen again,  At least it waited for me to get it.  We found the flock of American pipits and they were not with their rare buddy, and after an hour, I had to leave, without a second sighting or photo op.  But I had the coded bird, so it was good.  Matt had photographed the pipit yesterday.  4 from the cruise ship were arriving, but we had to leave without saying hello.  They took the ferry...the float plane had an advantage, a one bird advantage.

I quickly bit my cheek and made the reservation, I knew I had to go and it was an overnight to New Jersey.  They had seen the fork-tailed flycatcher for the fifth day and well, I knew I would not see it, but I guess I had to die trying.  It was an overnight flight from Vancouver to Toronto, then onward to Newark at 8am.  I needed some luck, maybe the birding gods would give me this bird...this time?

I stopped by the airport for a 5 minute photo op of the skylarks and they did not disappoint as I did not get a photo in January.  Here..............

Skylark(s)

South Windsor to Atlantic City New Jersey

I once said from standing on Brigantine, a unit of the E Forsythe NWR, that you could see Atlantic City rising like a cancer from a perfectly good beach, Jim added, that it was like a tumor that had outgrown its blood supply, now necrotic at the center....yea, why anyone would ever go there on vacation is a bigger mystery than going on a cruise.

...the fork tailed?  I don't want to talk about it....it was my saddest moment....NO I got the bird.


I got the unchasable, the impossible, and a photo.....BUT, well...it is a long story, and a great embarrassment.

My friend Jim "Arvid" picked me up at the airport.  Jim had gotten married since our last birding episode together, my last crazy trip to Victoria where he hadn't even met the woman Sonja he married yet and before the whirlwind romance....well today we drive to this lake in the rain and the cold.  Assunpink Lake was wet, muddy, and abandoned and we got out of the car not sure of where to start and the eagle eyed Jim says standing next to the car, his door not even closed, "there it is"..........

I can't even see the tree he sees, about 300 yards off.  But eventually, I do as we walk toward the bird. We get amazing looks at this bird, out in the open, it's long tail dropping down.  It is a cool bird.  fork-tailed flycatcher.  I take 30 or 40 of the perfect shots, perfect lighting, everything and it is raining to boot.  I am able to shield my camera and so finished we walk back to the car, our legs and shoes soaked due to the long wet grass.....I am so proud of the photos.........then, I click to show Jim my best shot, the last one, it was 20 yards off and the golden crown of the bird was sitting perfect.  Then I notice the error message on payback..........I HAVE NO CHIP IN THE CAMERA!  I say swear words that sailors don't say.  I let out a cry of frustration.  I had flown all night for this.

Jim made an immediate u-turn on the dirt road.  We drove back for a second find, and this time the bird was not very cooperative, and the rain was worse.  I did find the bird and we did get a second look and a real picture but it wasn't the same quality or anything. Now, I was beyond wet.  Both of us were drying socks in the back of Jim's 20 year old car.  I sulked all the way to Brigantine, and so seeing the dinge of Atlantic City again for the first time since 1994 and even spying a fallout of chimney swifts and identifying saltmarsh sparrow, did not elevate my mood....I was still frustrated and I was dog-tired.

I tried to find a better saltmarsh sparrow or warblers but despite working our way up the coast, all we got new for the year was a scarlet tanager and a striking pose of the bird too, but all we talked about was my chip problem.  In the end, I was a birder and the most striking pose of that flycatcher was in my head.  I wished I could share it but alas....no....I should be happy I saw it, but.....

I spent the night in Newark after booking my Delta flight out of Jersey.  If I booked the one-way home, to Minneapolis, it was $622.  If I booked a one-way to Omaha, the cost would be $422, if I booked to Phoenix, $164, and it went through Minneapolis.  As I never check on luggage, I will get lost changing gates in MSP and end up at my car.....why these prices issues?  I don't know but knowing them saves me money.

The list
5/1  San Diego CA

618.  Elegant Tern
619.  Warbling vireo
620.  Rufous hummingbird  
        four more seen 5/5 Victoria BC

5/2  Kitchen Creek Area

621.  Lazuli Bunting
622.  Western wood-pewee
623.  Olive sided flycatcher
624.  Gray vireo

Westerdam Cruise  
Southern California

625.  Black-storm petrel
626.  Sabine's gull

5/3  Northern California

627.  Black-footed albatross
628.  South Polar skua
629.  Parasitic jaeger
630.  Layson albatross
631. Tufted puffin
632.  Cook's petrel
633.  Ashy storm-petrel

5/4 Oregon Coast

634.  Leach's storm-petrel
635.  parakeet auklet
636.  Murphy's petrel
637.  Fork-tailed storm petrel
638.  Arctic tern

5/5  Victoria British Columbia

639.  MacGilvray's warbler
640.  Red-throated pipit

5/6 Assunpink WMA, New Jersey

641.  Fork-tailed flycatcher

Brigantine Unit E. Forsythe NWR

642.  Saltmarsh sparrow
643.  Chimney Swift

Barnegat Lighthouse, New Jersey

644.  Scarlet Tanager 
Other birds of the Trip
Scarlet Tanager
Gray Vireo
Chimney Swift

Pomerine Jaeger
Black-footed Albatross
Brown Booby over a pair of dolphins
Arctic Tern

Sabine's Gull flock
Rufous Hummingbird (CA)
Rufous Hummingbird (BC)
Lazuli Bunting
Lawrence's Goldfinch
Warbling Vireo
Black chinned sparrow
Western wood pewee
Conclusions........I added 27 species on this trip, 4 coded birds, but I missed a key bird. There was nothing I could do but to bravely soldier on.  I am still on goal for breaking 700 by Alaska.  I should still be up on the year birders this year except for the Aussie Champion now listing in the dark. I haven't run into him but now heard of him twice, secretly sneaking around.  I didn't think he could have me but he did get the Hawaiian.  Was in Newfy twice....I have already added to my budget due to him and what seems like his unlimited resources.  I planned on zooming through my home territory birds, saying hi to the family, and heading back out before I got stuck on planned trips.  I could now not let up even for an instant.  I may not break a record but I vow not to be out-listed by an Australian for the year.  I at least want to have the 2016 really big year, so sorry. ....I think him listing dark is a mistake as maybe rightly, I assume he is got everything and as such, I need to keep not only plugging but charging, he will be up on me in mind until he admits his list so I cannot let up for an instant.......yea, I need to shave two days off midwest migrants so I can chase one more bird..it is going to be a brief home visit... I have little time before I start the next circum-continental tour.  Michigan --North Carolina --Arizona---to Alaska then back to Maine.  I leave in 10 days.  Before that, I need every single bird---perfect weather, and luck.  My birding gods in the Westerdam have sailed to Alaska without me so now I am on my own.
Olaf