Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 25

A taste of Minnesota

I like to compare a big year to the game of golf.  It is an individual game but you keep score to compare yourself to others.  It is a polite and gentleman's (or woman's) game.  You don;t really have any control of your opponent's score.  Some holes or courses you know well, or they fit your game.  In my game a big Dog leg right was my cup of tee as I could bend it around the corner like a pro.  However, sometimes on dog leg lefts, I still bent it to the right.

No thanks to United airlines, I landed in Minnesota 5 hours late after some union trouble in Chicago, and they apparently would not certify a plane in O'hare to fly so they found one in..... San Francisco!  When in doubt, never fly United is my saying and I may just shorten it to NEVER fly United.  The airline is a fiasco and I have three free segments on them still and I will need for south Texas but after that...sorry you unfriendly sky people....
but I made it I was in Minnesota, albeit briefly, and this is my home course, so to say.  It was time for my special short cuts, play the secret breaks, as soon I would be in unfamiliar and maybe unhospitalble terrain and I needed all the home cookin' I could get.....

Big Year Total:  617
Coded Birds:  47

Miles driven.  25390Flight Miles 72,400flight segments: 77   Different Airports: 34Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 166
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 24
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs, iguana, woodchuck, red fox, muskrat

I awoke on Day 121 of this big year in a parking lot of the Gray Cloud Dunes SNA.  Despite violating a permit for another group having a Big Watch, supervised by the Queen of Minnesota Birding, Ranger Sharon from the National Park Service, I saw NO signs against overnight camping and at 0230, where was I to go?  The back of my Volvo XC60 is about 6 inches too short for this 6'3" guy unless I can park the back end up in the air and sleep backwards, as there is a subtle but noticeable downhill to the bed with the seats down....the fact that I even know this is really somewhat sad.

I met Don Harrington from Northfield MN at the Dunes and we went out to the right from the parking lot avoiding the Big Watch Crowd.  I had warned Ranger Sharon from Minnesota Birds and Beer Club about me sneaking in during their event.  She was gracious and a bit confused as to why I notified her.  I have learned that crashing birding events or any even so called "public" event is not something one should do lightly.  Another person asked me if I was going to participate in the event, I kind of smiled and said, "no you wouldn't want a person like me here. I'd just be in the way."

I feel I am sort of the WC Fields of life, in that I believe I should not participate or be a member in any organization or event that would want me in it.  Maybe it is just me but it is hard to know where to go at such events, who not to offend, what to say.    I do go to Minnesota Birds and Beers but they allow me in--an outsider, for comic relief.  It is hard to screw up drinking beer, I guess.

We had a corner of the dune to ourselves and got some real looks at the Henslow, photoed a field sparrow for the first time this year and we got out of their within an hour.

After finding a pond in Cottage Grove with 4 Solitary sandpipers, a "Contradiction" of Sandpipers as they say and with solitary sandpipers even more so, or at least the name implies, we got visited by the police.  Despite no one wanting me to be part of their group, the police are always ready to talk to me.  I'm not sure if I can count this as a 'stop' though.  When she knocked on my window as i was writing field notes in the car, I announced we were birding.  Apparently stopping on the side of a road fully on the shoulder is worthy of attention.  She looked at us like we had a disease and drove on.

 Lock and Dam #2 near Hastings was very birdy.  I got a suspicious waive from their lady cop as I cruised around lost in town looking for a way to make a left turn, but didn't pull me over.  After hearing a rose-breasted grosbeak, out attention was focused on a great horned owl taking a muskrat in a mucky pond under an eagle's nest in broad daylight. You don't see an owl, breast high in pond weed very often.  I got a photo after it had hauled out on a log.  The rat was too much for it to carry off in the woods.  I am curious why the eagle tolerate such an intrusion, like it was REALLY under their nest.  I didn't want to get closer to photograph and I am just me, just a threat like an owl.

We scoured the earth for a sedge wren but dipped out and I left Don to go home and then I went to a campground to take a shower.  It was heavenly and I retrieved some of my belongings from Texas, and I drove up to Grantsburg to search out my wife, daughter, and grandmother...as well as search for a LeConte's sparrow and try to tap up yellow rail.

The sparrow was silent but one popped out and looked at me near the pump house on Crex.  I was in shock, so shocked, my camera was in the car 20 feet away.  I tried to get it and et back but the sparrow, dipped down in the grass.  After trying to flush it all I got was ticks.  I couldn't even get that sparrow out of the grass, such is the life with Le Conte's.  Henslow's are bad, but I think Le Conte's are worse.  To think i got great looks at both and photoed one, that was a miracle, to be honest.

I hung out until dark but it was windy and I was tired.  I gave up at 930, the rail will have to wait for another time.  I had another...yet another early day tomorrow, but I had 4 near year birds.
    
April 30th
Gray Cloud Dunes, Cottage Grove MN

#614 Henslow's Sparrow

Housing development on 70th Ave, Cottage Grove MN

#615  Solitary Sandpiper

Lock and Dam #2, Hastings MN

#616 Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Crex Meadows, Wildlife area, Grantsburg WI

#617  Le Conte's Sparrow


some pictures of birds I haven't photogrpahed in 2016 (or even seen):
Henslow's Sparrow


Field Sparrow
Prothonotory Warbler

Solitary Sandpiper



Great Horned owl (taking a muskrat in the pond) 


I'm working out the kinks with my new camera but I think it is doing well.  I like it paired with my lens.  We'll see how it does with my "at sea" lens, my Tamron this next trip as it has been returned to me from the company.
Okay.....April is over.  I'm at 617 for the year.  I think that is a big number, I'm ahead of my projections, so that is all good, I'll admit it.  My crazy goal is 700 by the end of May or to get it on my Adak trip.  I know it is just an obscene thought.  It looks, though, my theoretical maximum by that point is only about 690, I could break 700 in Nome, though with a couple of breaks.  I'll leave the champagne off the Puk-uk.  Neil Hayward is on that boat and I should keep a low profile, although the crew knows me and I'm a bit let me say, anything but low profile.  
Many of you have sort of wondered about my attitude of why I say i feel behind.  So, back to golf. My best round of golf came in 1988, when I turned the front 9 on the Michigan Tech golf course at 34, having missed five short puts, and lipping out a 175 yard dead on iron shot for a hole in one.  I could have had even a better score.  I was smoking through the killer back 9 and was still one under par on 17. I was playing with a student form the US Coast Guard Academy and sitting 245 yards out on 17 after a perfect drive, throwing no caution in the wind, I pulled out the 3 wood and hit a monster of a second shot, maybe the longest and best I ever hit with that club, to go try for the green in two.  I curled the shot around a big tree it landed short of the corner of the lake and then it took a big bounce and hopped on the edge of the green.  I was home in two.  I even high-fived the fellow player.  It was the round of my life...what could go wrong?  18 was a hole I may have designed in my dreams, I could par that hole with my 8 iron off the tee...then IT happened.    When I think of all the time I may have wasted on the golf course which from age 15-20 and then again at periods of my life, was basically all the time, it all comes back to this....not the feeling of great ball strikes, holing huge puts, and the friendship, although I don't have anyone to ask me to golf.  I don't laugh at the crazy and miraculous airport runway shot at Voyager Village that won me a trophy, or any of the rest........I remember Houghton, Michigan and the 17th hole. I replay it again and again.  If I was Homer Simpson, I'd be striking my head.  It has left scars so deep, I really don't golf much anymore.  I didn't golf for 4 years after it happened...
I was walking to the green happy, confident, self-assured and then while waiting for the kid from USCG to play from his layup shot, I felt something on my legs, then I looked down...a swarm of black flies had found me, hundreds of them...I had blood running down my legs, on my socks, it was bad, like really bad.  The guy from USGC gave me his extra towel to stop the blood.  Mine was a muddy mess....I was so unnerved by time I got to the green, I 4 putted for a bogey.  I was still par, a 4 on 18 would give me a 72, my best score ever on a real golf course but then after I approached the tee a few more flies, possibly smelling the blood found me again, the marshall on the course came up, said as I was openly bleeding. and since I couldn't stop it all, it was from maybe 40 bites.  There was a rule of the NCAA and Michigan PGA or whatever, organization he cited against competing while openly bleeding and it was being violated.  I was forced to withdraw, right there on 18, and there was nothing I could do about it ...the final tee shot never hit.  There was no  bandages out there, no way to clot up in time, and the guys were coming up behind me on the 17th green.  I had to go.  My best round of golf EVER and the official score, DNF, did not finish....
So is the same with this big year.  As Yogi says, it isn't over to it is over.  All this I've done in 4 months is preliminary, I reached some milestones, but again, a milestone is only used in process to a destination.  I haven't got anywhere yet.  There are some great scores in the clubhouse, Greg Miller, Jay Lehman, Sandy Komito, and Neil Hayward....and there are some players out on the course, still gunning .   I'd rather berate myself for missed opportunity and birds than do any self-patting on the back because...the black flies are out there waiting for me...and even if I break 700 by the second week of June.......big deal, I will have done nothing.  700 isn't even going to win me this year, not even close.   maybe 730 will do that, but maybe not even that.  
With that in mind it is off to San Diego I go....as a friend of mine says........MORE BIRDS!  I need every bird.....Thankfully I'm not flying on United.  The course I'm playing is on a cruise ship, a place I don't even know where to go, or how to play it, I don't even know if I can eat on it.  Everyone asks me if I chose a meal plan, I don't remember doing it, so am I to assume, I have to bring on food?  Just checking in was a fiasco on line, you had to have an account and had to call customer served twice.  I don't understand how older people get through it all, I'm pretty IT savvy. 
 I look forward to this with dread.  If you were telling me I'm leading a church service tomorrow, even a funeral for someone I don't know, complete with a sermon, on say something obscure, The Book Of Amos, or have to teach a two hour course on Organic Gardening, something I do not know,, I'd be stoked....not this.  Not this at all.  I think I'd be feeling better if I had to sing, and I don't sing.  I don't understand cruises, it is the big unknown, in a very daunting and scary place and by myself, it is going to be a bad time.  To think of single people on a cruise, wow what a horrible vacation....yuck!  This is not about the birding, or the seas, I'll figure out the petrels, I've been on really rough boats... just 3 days on a cruise boat, 2500 people on this ship and me, knowing no one even to ask any questions like where or when to eat and if I can go and do anything.  The hotel in Newfoundland had a rather steep learning curve on how to check in, eat, and I never figured out breakfast, I just bailed.  There is no way I'd feel brave enough to ever try entertainment. Going out by yourself is worse than eating alone, I can bring a computer with to eat alone, so except a long blog as there will be nothing else to do.  For shows, I'm sure I'd go where I wasn't supposed to go, when I wasn't supposed to, or not know how to pay.  Will I have the wrong room to use the hot tub?  That would be fun to use, I guess maybe some other place.  These are all questions I ask.  I think the cruise ship people think everybody knows how it all works, not this guy.  I feel more qualified to do open heart surgery.  At east I know what goes where.
I fear, it is going to be a long and lonely time, but I'll tough through it, certainly my first and last cruise.  Like I said, big scary unknown marketed and built for people other than me.
Bon voyage, I guess.
Olaf

Groundhog's Day

Chapter 38
Falmouth, Maine

Bill Murray stated in the Groundhog's Day after being asked about seeing him tomorrow, "What if there isn't a tomorrow?  There wasn't one today."   The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.  Here Olaf, me, is chasing bird after bird, lately with minimal success.....this time to Maine and again I'm expecting different results from Sacramento and Key West.  I, therefore, am the definition of stupid.  I seemed trapped in an endless loop of failure...I needed an escape out.

With that in mind, I needed help from a mythical creature...was my hope the Groundhog, that almost mythical creation?

Big Year Total:  613
Coded Birds:  47

Miles driven.  24990Flight Miles 72,400flight segments: 77   Different Airports: 34Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 164
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 24
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs, iguana, woodchuck, red fox

I flew to Portland, Maine, the first time I have been to Maine since 1979, when I stumbled out of a plane in Bangor as a 13 year old at 2am, did a circle on the tarmac and reboarded.  It wasn't much of a stop, but I counted it, I did have my foot on the ground.

I was also reminded of my last Blog...Clean up on Aisle 1, I was still on Highway 1, about 300 yards off of it, AND the place was loaded with groundhogs, in fact they were all over.  Maybe that was a good sign...?


But when Bill Murray tried to kill Phil, it didn't help his plight...I showed up at a nice place, Gilsland Farm Audubon Center, on a nice day and looked around, and found...2 snowy egrets...kids playing duck duck goose, in that game I was always the goose, and a few birders....no luck on the little egret seen here the past few days.  Then I saw a report of it seen on a nearby island.  Not to be deterred, I got over there, the home of a School for the Blind, but all I saw were lots of Common eiders.



I hadn't photographed any in the big year yet.  I looked all evening until I just about passed out from exhaustion, so ended the day of April 28, 2016.

I awoke and repeated my search...nothing, then on the island for the 3rd time walking the 3rd loop, I noticed a sign


According to the sign, the area has Fairies, tomte we call similar creatures in Sweden..........oh, now I get it, the groundhogs are just coincidental, this is tomte country.  I didn't realize they had moved into Maine.  I know how to take care of troublesome tomte, every Swede does.  I saw some houses and did what I had to do.  I wasn't too proud.

With confidence, I drove back over to Gilsland Farm, followed my instincts and then there, tucked into the bay to the south was my bird..........

#612.  Little Egret



Yellow free bill, two plumes on the head, the real deal.  I then went to Two Lights State Park and spotted some birds including a new one too.

#613.  Thick billed murre, a flyby but something I needed, i'll get more to photo in Alaska, problem was, I lost my second lens cap on my spotting scope on that point.  By the way, there are no Lighthouses, at Two Lights SP.

I also saw a Merlin at the coast



Breeding plumage Willet, they are so odd looking on the east coast



The best lighthouse around is Portland Head Lighthouse which I saw later after i gave up birding


I had time to sightsee, thanks to my truce with the tomte.  He was a stubborn one that one, but I convinced him to let me see the bird, if I left.  It is lucky I'm a Swede and knew what to do or I still would be looking for that bird.  You know, I've always wanted to be the Mythical person inspector in Iceland, maybe there is a future for me doing that in America?

I went back to Minneapolis. I left 28 hours after arriving, where I plan on doing some migrant searching before I head west to San Diego, to finish my both coasts twice in the same week plan....I did say I was stupid right?

Thankfully, on this chase, it wasn't groundhog's day, it was just Maine. I like Maine, I shall return...

Be smart

Olaf

Clean up in Aisle 1

Big Year Day 117

I was in the old SuperValu in Grantsburg, WI where my pike fishing partner used to work.  Suddenly I heard a phrase overhead, "Clean up in aisle one, clean up in aisle one!"  I ignored it, and then this old woman appeared, all bug eyed and she wore one of those hair nets you only see on high school cafeteria cooks and servers from like decades ago.  She pointed to me.  "I said boy, Clean up on Aisle 1!"
      "I don't work here." I said.  I never worked at that grocery store.
      "Don't make me get my broom, you'll be sorry"  She said.
       Okay, I'll clean up aisle one.  I looked but there wasn't an aisle 1, the place started with 2.  She was following me and then I heard an alarm, it was my alarm.  This was a dream.  I needed to wake up.
       I sensed a bright light shining on me.  I opened an eye.  It was a street light and it was dark.  I could hear  a breeze but where was I?  I came to and looked out the window.  I tried to focus on a boat trailer, a guy was carrying something towards a truck.  He put it in back and drove off.  I scratched my head.  "Where was I?"  I got outside and stumbled to the front of my Dodge SUV I was driving.  I looked at the plate.  Texas!...?  How did I get back to Texas?

Big Year Total:  611
Coded Birds:  46

Miles driven.  24990Flight Miles 69,400flight segments: 73   Different Airports: 32Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 150
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ring-tailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs, iguana


No I wasn't part of my fictional novel of the bad big year, and I wasn't really in Texas.  I looked at the sign on the boat ramp.  Monroe County...."Crap I'm in Marathon, Florida."  I shouted as it all came back to me and jumped into the car. It was 0605.      I had landed in Miami at midnight and then I stopped at every lighted area I could to hear nighthawks, finally at 0300 in the morning or thereabouts, in a restricted parking lot for the support area of Marathon;s airport, I heard the stuccado of the Antillean nighthawk.  All I got in Key Largo and thereabouts were common nighthawks.      What I don't get in nighthawks is how the Lesser sounds like nothing else in the whole family, Commons and Antilleans sound sort of the same, one a continuous buzz while the Antillean cousin, is stuccado for lack of a better description.  Despite 6 years of piano lessons, I have no musical skill at all.  Don't ask me for descriptions, little birding song remembering tools make no sense to me, they never did.  I'm a photographic memory guy and have an ear for nothing--hands like salami, and ears like potato sausage would describe me.   But I had this bird and then after getting thrown out of what turned out to be a taxi cab only parking or sleeping area, I found this boat ramp and crashed.  Nothing like sleeping in a car to make for a good birding trip.        I got some coffee and went back to the airport using the usual parking area and heard two more ANNIs the abbreviation for my quarry before it got light enough for me to move on.  Finally I saw one way out and it was up there but wasn't sure if it was singing or there was another one singing I couldn't see. I had the bird so I guess it didn't matter.       I found out about the roseate tern hang out at the Monroe County Government Center by accident, I hit the wrong button on ebird and got them to come up instead of the nighthawks in Marathon.  30 terns at 0715, yesterday interested me.  It was three miles away.  Siri took me in loops before I realized the map on my iphone was for the government center and Siri was directing me to Government Plaza on Monroe Ave in Miami or something like that.  I figured this out after three u-turns on Hwy 1.    Three miles finally logged and then I pulled in and parked.  I looked up.  Roseates in the air.  I counted 26 of them.  It was bad and low light but I could even see the pinkish hue. I didn't know if they nested here or what, but they were here.  It wasn't breakfast yet and I had cleaned up my two missing Florida Key birds I missed last week.  I guess I was cleaning up on Aisle 1, or Highway 1.  Fort Zachary Taylor opened in an hour and I was 48 miles away.  I needed to go.  #610  Antillean nighthawk

#611 Roseate tern



Sorry, my pictures are so bad, but they do look pink to me.
      I don't know what was going on in Key West.  It was a bad driving special.  People stopped short, pedestrians were standing in the road, cars turned late, and everyone was swerving for female joggers in tight things loping on the sidewalk, especially me.  I need to go home.
      Well, the success ended at the Fort.  The Cuban vireo, gone, poof.  There were some good birders there including Chris Feeney, who blew in from California a day ahead of me, having nabbed the Marsh sandpiper, unlike me.  I'm sorry to report, the most interesting bird was this common ground dove chick.


There was a raptor fly-over, which the ID of which perplexed me, as I was tired.  I was trying to find a new warbler which didn't happen.  I didn't want to think about this hawk.


Okay, now I'm interested, what is that hawk?  Here is second picture.  

It has to be a red-tail, no bands on tail for anything else, and it was pretty light on top, I live in this world of Kreider red-tails and find they look weirder and weirder....although some short-tailed hawks have pretty faint bands on their tails here is a picture from internet...hum....now I'm rethinking my opinion.


Boy....even what would seem easy doesn't seem easy any more.  I need a  break.  I know what it is not.  So I don't what it is, I guess. UFO.   Maybe I'd say short-tailed if put a gun to my head.  My lifer short-tailed came from sitting in a pool in downtown Key West one Feb as one flew over us.  We call this fun....!.....?  I'm sure you will think I'm an idiot but I'm just being honest.

I could ID this sighting of the Great white Heron, a variant of the Great blue


Despite great birders, no vireo, oh well......

It sure seemed that there was a disproportional ratio of more women then men at the beach, and as I caught myself staring, I decided at a little after twelve to pack it in and head for the airport.  I bid "Good luck! to those who stayed behind.  They'll going to need it.  The bikinis are in a full distraction mode and seeing the vireo is tough enough.

It was a bit satisfying though, my best year was 2013 when in the ABA along with what i was doing by my au naturel big year, I saw 610 species of birds, I have now bested that by one, and it didn't take 4 months.  The sky is NOT the limit but despite my somber tone lately I'm on track.  I don;t like missing short puts, good pike hits, or free throws either.

Olaf

My stint in California

Northern California
Big Year Days 115-116

Let me just say....I just am a ping pong ball, getting slapped around at both ends of the table.  But that may not be just me...I don't know.  There is no I in Olaf, but there is a whole lot of o, as in Oh no, oh my, and the big one, Oh my God.....

Big Year Total:  609
Coded Birds:  46

Miles driven.  24850Flight Miles 66,900flight segments: 71   Different Airports: 32Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 149
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be any more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ringtailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs

FIRST A few comments from my last blog, one, thanks for the ID support on that Philly vireo, yea, I scrapped that right after I put the blog out there, it was a bad ID day, I also am pretty sure I missed a solitary sandpiper that day too thinking about it, I saw a sandpiper with an orange bill and got distracted, yea what has an orange bill?  Really?  I showed a couple of birders and then got the digiscope stuff out of my pocket and it went into the weeds, a USO, unindentified sandpiper object, but I just forgot about that sandpiper next to it and too late now, and the un-vireo ...I marked it as a orange crowned warbler, so no worries, life isn't so easy all the time.  I didn't count it,

SECOND Some of you have confronted me on the Bed Bugs

1) YES, they were bed bugs, not chiggers, why?
I have bites below the sock line and in lines like above the knee, a little higher up the leg, higher still, and a forth in what Mike Myers calls the mommy daddy region, I have a bite on my 4th knuckle right hand, and on my foot, all non-chigger locations, beside a bit on my bum, back, etc.  Also, I hiked all day with Jim T, he was wearing shorts, I had on snake boots with pants tucked in in chigger precaution, he got NO chiggers, and no bites, as we had separate rooms, his was apparently not infested.  If chiggers, he should have had some too. In my humble medical opinion and well, I do own an MD degree, BTW.  University on Minnesota Medical School Class of 1992 etc......bed bugs.  I AM an idiot 99.9% of the time, escpecially camera issues and maybe birding issues, too...but no, these were bed bugs.

2) I stayed at Texas Inn in Weslaco, TX (I thought I was clear).  I noticed the bites that morning and then badly the next day heading north.  I cannot blame the Motel 6 then in Kingsville.  I think Texas Inn it was north of I-2 on Hwy 88, BUT I may have location wrong, there are a few of them.  I was tired and wasn't paying attention, I have eaten at the restaurant across the street  before and that was coming down from Hargill Playa so I assume it was on Tx-88.  DON'T STAY THERE!

THIRD  Largely this blog is meant to entertain.  It is somewhat to document the year but unless I get 750 who really cares and even if I do, I can't document enough.  I doubt I'll write a book on the year.  So some of this is to help me remember. I'm sorry, I am whom I am. I don't have an agenda, other than a now 50 year old guy who is retired...yes, I'll say it.  What I'm getting out of this year is the kindness of strangers....some cool birds and well something to do.

FOURTH.  Apparently I have earned a disclaimer on the ABA site about my blog.  Oh well. Maybe that is a badge of honor?  If you read "Boobies Peckers, ..." I won't say it, and most of you haven't, my last adventure would have gotten a big red X.  I did move the blog around around today but it wasn't because of that.  I guess if you can't handle a rather tame Anders Zorn Painting on the cover from....1916  "Vatn" (He is THE master artist of Sweden) which is privately owned (sold for 1.2 million about 10 years ago), you have larger issues.  It is a museum piece....

Okay...caught up

Let me just summarize what happened yesterday.  I broke a record.  I may even send it to the record people.  I not only had one Jet bridge failure, not two but three.....my plane out of San Antonio was two hours late as....they couldn't get the bridge to work when they had to come back in for some one to sign off on the plane's safety, and that was after they swapped planes with the Minneapolis plane.  When we got to Salt Lake, they ran over the power cable to the bridge or the bridge did, you could see it, they had to push it off, tighten up the cable and then reattach, but late already, it didn't matter.  At Sacramento, it just didn't work, and they had to find stairs, remember those?   Well they did eventually, the captain was saying we might have to use the emergency chutes, but he was kidding, I was in the front and it was just something to do while we waited for an hour.  Older people panicked at using the stairs, it was a circus.  Many took pictures, like somehow using the stairs to board a plane is something camera worthy....fly Alaska to Adak folks....it is OUTSIDE!  I vowed not to post a picture here.

Okay, I was supposed to be in Sacramento by 0930, I got here by 130, but no matter, the Marsh sandpiper didn't get here at all yesterday.  It had already departed for points unknown........

Already giving up at 230 PM I drove hard for the back-up bird, at the eastern terminus of the San Francisco Bay near Santa Clara, 100 miles away.  There problems arose, like it was windy, not just a little, but somewhere between a tempest and a zephyr.  40 mph...more? It was blowing peeps all over the place and worse, I met a helpful local guy who said, nobody had seen the stint after the tide had come in.  I worked my way down the the dike as sea form flew into me.  A guy said there was a phalarope out there and I put down my scope, a gust hit my front lens cap as I was taking it off and it sailed out into the water, more lost and damaged equipment.  It was a red-necked phalarope and I needed it.

I worked down to the hardiest of the birders as the rest were packing it in as the wind came up more and more...they were hunkered down and as I walked in I heard one say, "got it!"  I didn't have anything but Westerns.  I looked their way,  I still didn't have it, then they struggled over and showed us, nice people these Californians and oddly, one knew me through Darlene Moore, the woman who took me in during the busted goose stakeout in Connecticut.  Thanks again Darlene. You are the gift that keeps on giving.  Everyone is so nice.    

So then I high-tailed it (one of my favorite Wisconsin slang terms) back to Davis, where it turns out all the hotels were full.  Except, the woman at Quality Inn snickered, Motel 6.  She wouldn;t expand on that.  I went to Motel 6, they had a room, and well I was blunt.  "Do you have bed bugs?"  I asked..."no!" She said.  "Then why do you have the only rooms available in town?"  She shrugged.  I smiled "no murders, drug labs, dead bodies..."  I couldn't think of anything more..."no" she said.  I checked in.  Do you want to know why it was empty?  I'll get to that.

Summary of the day...
April 24, 2015
Alviso Marina Park, Santa Clara Cty California

#607  Red-necked phalarope (I took this photo though on 4/25 at Yolo Bypass)


#608 Little Stint


A western sandpiper is on the left in the bottom one.  It was a good secondary target and a lifer bird, I celebrated it, lifer beer and all, my quite modest lifer total of 741 now, at a place called Cindy's they served Thai food on Sundays and oddly had a different name for that day only, that is when I heard of the pitfalls of my hotel choice next door.



It made me drink the beer....why me?  Is it the beard?  Is it my opinionated persona?  Is it the nudity on my book cover jackets?  Maybe it is.

Okay, the Motel 6, was evacuated as was the entire block just before and the Motel 6 woman did NOT lie to me......a guy in a room that was next to mine, had pipe bombs, not look alike pipe bombs but real, ready to blow up pipe bombs and nobody knew why at the restaurant.  I don't know if they arrested the guy.  I am afraid to read the article.  Here is the link if you think I'm BSing you.

http://www.kcra.com/news/local-news/n...

I can't make this stuff up.  I think he was in room 208, I was in 206.  I thought about razzing the woman at check in but I was too tired and where else was I to go?  There were NO rooms.  You wonder why I get bedbugs...I need to think about camping now that it is warm, but I've had fire ants camping.....thanks again to Darlene Moore for sparing one night of potential crap at a hotel for me.  This woman is an angel.

April 25

The winds pounded Yolo Bypass all morning and I did get a year bird, maybe the fastest Vaux's swift fly-by ever, down wind and he or she was booking east.  Whoosh!  I almost didn't register the sighting in my brain.

#609 Vaux's swift

I couldn't have kept a camera on it if I tried.  I had seen one the night before over I-605, but I had no idea where I was and I wasn't going to text or log the bird in 80 mph "all hands traffic," so I'll count this one,

I did photograph some birds I hadn't yet in 2016,

western kingbird, counted in Texas.

Cinnamon teal, counted like in January.


That is about it, except for a passing thought.  When I drive around California, I think of how wonderful this place was in the 60s and 70s, at least for a non-ethnic person like me.  There were riots in Watts, I guess. I feel bad I missed the rest of the boom in California (not the riots).  I had written my opinions below about what I have seen this year, the politics, the questions we the Americans aren't asking our leaders, or maybe they are too hard so we just try to change something, but I just deleted it, ........there....all you guys want is birds...I guess.  I'm sorry.  I monologued in my 2013 adventure BPT occasionally but this is better.  

I'm tired.   I need to get home.

FWIW, I got three birds, I guess, but as I boarded my plane back to Key West today, the Cuban vireo is absent and I have come to the realization that the big year is finished in terms of any records in all likelihood, 750 is a tall order and one can't make any errors.  It is lonely birding alone for stretches and by going to Texas and meeting a friend flying in, (how could I ask him to eat a plane ticket?), I had cost myself 3 birds, at least two anyhow.  The stint I will probably see again in St Paul in August, so not much of a reward.  I appreciated a friend from Duluth, JG encouraging me today.  Many people are happy I did what I did, that is okay, I am happy every time I see the White Sox or the Pats lose.  I'll keep plugging, I have to go to the Keys anyhow for the nighthawk and the roseate tern, maybe I'll get lucky with a good fallout in the morning.  You know, only a couple of handfuls of people have seen 700 birds in a year.  I will, too, unless I like, get injured.

  Critical Birds I still need (five most worrisome non-Alaskan).

1) Gray Vireo
2) Yellow Rail
3) Saltmarsh sparrow
4) Dusky Grouse
5) Manx Shearwater

Any intel or help in getting any of these is much appreciated, some other birds are tougher but I have leads on them.

Thanks

Olaf

The life and times of Judge Roy Bean

Chapter 37

McAllen to Big Bend TX

Okay, let me start out with a question:  What famous actor below has NOT played the somewhat legendary Judge Roy Bean in a movie?

a) Paul Newman
b) Andy Griffith
c) Lee Marvin
d) Yule Brenner

More on that later......

Last year I wrote a novel.  It took about a month to do the manuscript and I have done nothing with the manuscript since, I may add.  It doesn't really have a title but let me call it The Big Bad Year.  In it, the main character is doing a big year, he comes back from Alaska in June and cruises into the Texas Hill Country on record pace (nearing 700) in June and is looking for a black capped vireo.  He is just driving north of a place called Utopia, and the character like me, has never birded in the Texas Hill country before.  He hears one, then more and goes down a trail and photos one, but not well, but igt is identifiable and he fist bumps a tree as he is by himself.  Then he thinks he hears the second endemic bird in the Hill Country, the golden cheeked warbler.  So he works down some ranch road and he follows the sound.  Bingo bird #700.
      Before he can celebrate, the main character trips and senses pain, all is dark.  He awakens in a strange bed and an alluring woman is nursing him.  It turns out he has stumbled into a utopian commune (not to be confused with the burg, this place is off the map) but it is in the Texas Hill country.  He falls in love and is slowly nursed back to health.  He finally goes for a walk and even photos a Crescent chested warbler...wow! what a find, he thinks.  The record is within reach.  His head is not right and so he spends the summer as any thoughts of a Big Year are put aside and fades away plans on a day to join the self-sufficient community.  He is going to ask the next day to join, you see he is fallen in love.  His woman already has implied she'll marry him and a lonely birder needs such hints.
       There is a big party, much merriment and well, a wonderful night with his beauty.  The next thing, this birder awakens outside the petroglyphs in Bad Axe, Michigan.  He is confused, dazed, where is he?  Where is his woman.  It is early the next spring, and he stumbles back to a rental car in his name. A map for a brambling sighting is pointing to this spot.  His cell phone rings, it is an Audubon club asking if he can give a speech on his Big Year record.  Was it all some sort of dream?
 He looks up the place he was on his cell phone, it doesn't exist.  He sees all sorts of emails, some he has even answered     Then he goes home to Minnesota, all is strange, it appears he did set the Big Year record and he checks his camera and yes, every bird from the warbler is there, sea voyages, and so he checks his ebird logs, a couple were with a birder named Olaf Danielson. He calls me up and I act like he was right there with me.  He then gets an overdue utility bill for a property in Iowa.  The only thing is he doesn't own a property in Iowa.  He doesn't know what to do but decides to drive south to check it out.  He goes into the house, which he has a key for on his key chain.  The house has one chair in the middle a single light, and every wall is covered with racy pictures of the woman he fell in love with in Texas....there is what looks like blood smeared on the floor and strange rambling writings on the wall...is he going insane.....then there is a knock on the door....he sees a deputy sheriff's car through the window.......

Okay, I'll probably never finish this but I'll leave you in suspense anyhow....

When I wrote this, I had never been in the hill country, I had seen the warbler north of San Antonio and the vireo in Big Bend.....so oddly and maybe coincidentally, after I had finally nabbed the hook-billed kite on hawk watch 4 at Santa Ana, bird #599 but failed to find a groove-billed ani anywhere, my friend Jim Terrill and I bugged out north.  I was literally scratching all the way on the road as I got a really bad case of bedbugs from Texas Inn Weslaco.....crud....crap....scratch. S&*&^!!!! My second birding bedbug attack.

April 22, 2015, Texas Hill Country, Bandera County

I picked the road I had written about accidentally and the whole way I had deja vu.  About the same spot I had prophesied about, there was a scenic view.  I pulled over.  Jim stayed in the car.  The place is gorgeous...what a view.


There was what looked like a trail, beckoning me to go down it.  Is truth also fiction?  There were  black-capped vireos everywhere, finally I got one to photograph, but it wasn't perfect.  It was identifiable.  Deja vu!  Man were these guys skulky birds...noisy but they wouldn't come out for anything.


Bird#600..........it was a monumental bird, my 6th century bird.  I was fist bumping a tree.  Deja vu. I could hear a warbler but I was NOT going down that trail, no WAY!!!!  Too much deja vu.   We drove down the road and I spotted a Nature Conservancy Preserve, Love Creek.  There was a gate, I didn't know if the place was public, or permanently closed but a guy had birded there as a hotspot the day before.  The trail went up not down so NO deja vu.  I climbed the gate and walked up the hill, Jim demurred and went back to the road.  I was about halfway up the hill when I played the golden cheeked warbler song to remind myself again.  Immediately a bird flew at me, the yellow on the head was obvious as it flew by me, bird #601, golden cheeked warbler.  The bird hid and remained quiet.  I didn't know what to do.  Was I trespassing? The Nature Conservancy is funny about things.  Could I use tapes, and Jim was down below, standing on the road.  There was a criminal look to it all.  I decided to turnaround and go back down.  We left quietly.

We then ended up at Lost Maples Scenic area and it wasn't yet 930.  We walked the trail as I wanted a golden cheeked photo.  I heard one, then a second, then I saw a yellow-throated warbler, what was that doing here?  Then I got my camera unlocked so I could use it again, it got jarred in the car.  I shot #602  Philadelphia Vireo.

This was an odd bird.  It looked odd I looked at the range map on my field guide, it wasn't supposed to be here, either.  I checked the checklist on ebird.  It was on it.  I looked at the bird.  I couldn't find any white wing bars. Black eye line, it wasn't a warbling vireo.  I was trying to make it into a Bell's, but all it had was these olive wing bars.  It had to be a Phily.  It never wagged its tail or even made any noise.  The Bell's I would and have seen in west Texas this time of year are like the noisiest birds.  This bird was silent.  I didn't initially even mark the bird on the checklist, as it couldn't be one.  I then put it in thinking it would come back as "rare."  It didn't.  I don't know.  I spent the entire day second guessing, myself and all the birds.  I was still worried about the Nature Conservancy..me the king of Guerrilla birding.   I even sent a rather odd hawk picture around for some opinions.  A bird, I didn't even need, and I don;t know...it ended up being a juve Swainson's.

***I think I'm going to provisional this bird and pending concensus, as one of my friends whom I trust says doesn't look like a Philly he's ever seen, well me either, I thought the bill too thick for a orange crowned. Having the sun beating right on that tree doesn't help in the contrast.



During all this checking and rechecking, I skipped a photo I took mostly in frustration while I was trying to photograph the black capped vireo.  I finally looked at it when I was writing this blog.  Wait a minute......there is no eye ring on that flycatcher.



Bird # 602.  Eastern wood pewee.  I don't know what planet I was on when I took it, I didn't even log the bird.  I needed that bird.  I needed to wake up and get my head on, I almost lost a bird.  I guess, though the Hill Country just gave and even kept on giving.

To conclude on the Hill Country, I like it, although I found myself thinking I was somehow living my fiction much like I found myself feeling back in January in Kansas.  Despite this, I WILL come back at some point in my life.  After finding my first beverage barn, a drive thru beer store which you don't even leave the car.  Many poor sods were drinking beer in the parking lot, as you can't consume in the "barn."  I picked up a quick six of Lone Star Beer, what else do you drink in Texas.  I don;t think they make Pearl Beer anymore...I guess I could drink Shiner.  We hit Hwy 90 and turned west into the desert of west Texas.

Judge Roy Bean Historical Site, Langtry TX


I have many people I admire in life and one of those is Judge Roy Bean.  In general, this man was a scoundrel BUT he lived a life of being a true American.  He made himself out of nothing, and no matter what the obstacles, he was a doer and went around all obstructions.  I like that.  When the Texas government refused to sanction a prize fight he was sponsoring, he just held it on a sand bar in the Rio Grande on the Mexican side of the border.  He has the Can-do spirit that is America or at least was, now we like things given to us like we are all entitled.

He named his town after the famous sex-symbol personality of the day, Lily Langtry whom he wrote to repeatedly and she actually came to visit the small community after his death, although it was to actually visit him.  The bar was named the Jersey Lily, too.  It all seemed so perfect, a man admiring a woman so much he named his town and saloon after her.. but much of Bean's life is more fiction than fact.  The town was named a few years before he even arrived after an Engineer George Langtry.  There is nothing sexy about George Langtry.   As odd as it may sound, any association with Lily Langtry was coincidental or contrived.  What a better way to market a town than to create a distant love affair with a truly hot actress in England that he would never meet?  Bean's claim of "the only law west of the Pecos," also made quite a moniker.  He even stayed a judge when he lost an election.  Who was going to say otherwise?  He died in 1903.

I like this place even though since the last time I was here, April 1994, they had built a huge visitor center and added quite a bit of concrete around the garden area.  I don't like big fancy visitor centers, I like the actual history.  I remember a much more authentic looking western locale, not a museum, oh well, I enjoyed the pilgrimage to the shrine of this crazy man....oh and by the way, Lee Marvin never played him in a movie although he would have done a great job.  Answer C.  Marvin even looked like him, beard and all.

I photographed the elusive (sic) yellow-headed blackbird for the first time this year even though I got to count it two days earlier.  They were in the tree to the east of the Visitor center over my rental car.  This was much to my daughter's chagrin.



While Jim T was looking and reading the exhibits.  I found myself thinking more clearly at Roy Bean's, then I began to scheme like Bean.  I looked at tons of bronzed cowbirds.......I thought for a moment...these birds are only nest parasites or whatever the correct term is of orioles...Orioles...?  I still needed an oriole.  There must be some around.  I went looking in the very few trees they have in the "garden" area and then I heard chattering.  I saw orange in a tree, well that was the right color and then I saw the large male Oriole with a clear line of black through its eye, a Bullock's.  Yes!  Bird #603.  Bullock's Oriole

I pulled up my camera checking my bad dial.  then out of the corner of my eye, a female came into view and in a flash, she garnered his attention and off they flew.   I couldn't relocate.

April 22-23, Big Bend National Park, Texas




I really like Big Bend in a stark sort of way.  It is in the middle of nowhere.  Jim T along the way, found out the name sake of Terrill County a Major Terrill is probably his great great grandfather.  I'm not sure having the county that has the poor town of Sanderson TX as it's county seat being a family heirloom is such a good thing, but it is some thing.  The 900 residents there (the whole county) are a hardy lot or just don't know enough to leave.  Jim T is expecting to do more research.  The man even helped Maximillian the Austrian Emperor of Mexico in the 1870s organize his army.

I complain about the hike up Pinnacle trail from the Chisos Basin as the most brutal morning in birding.  I over dramatize, it isn't.  The hike I did from Carr Canyon to get the Tufted last year was worse, but it wasn't hot today and I do this trail almost unlike anybody else, I leave about an hour or earlier before first light.  You have to be down the mountain by noon or you risk melting, literally from the potential heat.  Going early also gives you the best chance at singing birds, you can pack less water, need less calories to carry the water and you have a chance to hear owls if you need them.  You also don't start on the trail, you hike up through the cabins and start the trail there, it saves a bit.

We arrived late afternoon and after the visit to Dugout Wells to see the skulkiest chattiest flock of Bell's Vireos, but nothing more...we went to our hotel in Study Butte, the Chisos Mtn. Lodge was full two months ago.  Nearing dark, I took off to the Castolon Area to search for nighthawks.  I had a nice chat with a ranger and saw more bats than nighthawks as the wind picked up, and it threatened to rain.  At 80% darkness 3 common nighthawks flew low over me and then finally, a lesser, bird #604.  They were all silent and weren't making ID easy.  Then I drove back to the west entrance stopping at every turnout to call elf owls.  I heard nothing.  At 11pm, I gave up and then just at the west entrance, I flushed an elf owl from the side of the road, bird #605.  I got out and tried to use my spot light.  I stood in the middle of the road and never relocated the owl but heard lesser nighthawks in every direction.  As birding went, I had driven 65 miles for nothing, to the river.  It was time for a few hours of sleep and an early start.

Nemesis birds are tricky things, I guess now the Colima warbler may qualify as one for photography.  Back in 1994, up here with Silja, we had tried to backpack, but alas there was no water at elevation and they had recently closed the spring.  Staying for 3 nights we drank our water the next morning and said heck with it.  Depresed and dejected resting near a cliff as I had not yet seen the warbler, Silja asked me what the bird looked like.  I told her.  "Like that one?"  She pointed 8 feet to my right.  I snapped a quick picture on my K1000 only to find out that when the roll got developed later that summer, I had double exposed the roll and a picture of me holding a fish was superimposed over the warbler.

I came up here in 2013 for my Boobies, Peckers, and Tits the day after "Arvid" Jim and I had invented a church, the Church of St. Ocotillo.  I appreciated more of how I did it then this day and how many people I ran into but you can read the chapter on The Church of the Sacred Ocotillo in my book.  We had hiked up 3.7 miles of the 3.8 miles mostly in the dark, and I was tired when we reached the madrone trees and I put my pack down.  Then Jim said it.  "There it is."  A Colima came out to a tree and looked at us, i walked down a bit to see it clearer.  My camera was up the trail 20 feet in my backpack, I hadn't even unpacked it yet.  I ran, dug it out, and focused on the bird.  Jim was pointing.  I put the camera on it just as it flew. I have a picture of a blurry gray tail.

Then there was this year.  Would I get the photograph?  Would I even see the bird if no one was going to point it out to me.  You see Jim T got about 3/4 the way up the initial climb which is harsh, if not brutal, before it levels off for 2 miles until the final mile plus of switchbacks and punted the attempt.  I was then walking up alone.  But I got up there without issue. I was actually filled with some resolve about making this a tradition.  I made a vow to do this every five years, I would have this trail be my thing and if I could not do it, I deserved to be in assisted living somewhere.  2021, who is coming with?

There is a great relief in seeing that last switchback at the top of this trail


it is even a greater relief standing up on top.  I had a couple of back packers take my photo


Actually clothed this time, and as it was a bit chilly, even clothed in a jacket, I heard 5 Colimas, saw glimpses of two and was almost exactly in the same spot as in 2013 when one popped out being the gimme bird, maybe even it was in the same tree.  I had unpacked at the madrones this year.  I brought up my camera.  Hit the shutter and the damn camera tried to autofocus, damn!  I had it still on auto from the backpackers 200 yards back on the top.  I almost pushed that shutter through the camera but that damn camera wouldn't take a picture, it was still trying to focus.  I fumbled for the switch to turn it to manual, and poof, the bird flew up into a crack in the cliff wall.  I looked and there was a tree way up there.  The bird decided to sing out of view.  taunting?  I heard another at a switchback down but it would not come out in 20 minutes and frustrated I just left.  Next time bird...next time, in five years.  But it was bird #606.  Colima warbler.

I saw a broad-tailed hummer feeding on a cactus, I hoped it was a blue-throated but it wasn't.



Mexican jays were everywhere

 I walked down the hill and passed 156 hikers, young college aged kids, a few old people and a group of birders.  Why is it every time I run across a bird touring group here the guide wants nothing to do with me?  They never ask here what i saw, heck, I could have nabbed a coded bird just up the trail but this time again, I tried to chat but they just left.  Then I got chatty.  Me, Olaf the dumb the socially inept flirted with all the college girls in yoga clothes hiking I got 37 comments about the size of my lens.  My answer.  "Well some say by the size, I am over compensating for something else, but my wife never says that.  She knows the truth."  Which is true, btw. She knows the 400mm lens wasn't big enough in my opinion.  I got laughs, a friendly pat on the shoulder, it was kind of fun actually, it made the two hours down go by fast.   I saw crazy things on that trail, two guys talking to themselves, having some self help app I think.  Old people booking, young people sweating, some carrying 2 gallons of water one in each hand.  That must get sore after 4 miles up, and a wild-eyed birder who I think had just been let out of an insane asylum.  He was like Quasi-motto meets Barney Fife.

I finished up what was an 11 miles hike just after noon and it took a while but I found Jim, he was cheerfully sitting in the car.  I ate a big lunch and being too tired to continue to look for the missing hummer, we drove out of there.  Like Macarthur said, I will return.

 What I liked about Texas...

1) the Hill Country
2) The Pinnacles Trail (it hurt so good....?)
3) Beverage Barns....could they work in South Dakota?
4) State Troopers with in God we trust on the back bumper.
5)  The Motto  "Don't mess with Texas on their garbage cans"
6) fallout
Texas is so bigger than life......

What I didn't like about Texas
1)  bed bugs
2)  bed bug bites
3)  Texas Inns with bed bugs
4)  The scratching of bed bugs
5)  That my crap will have to go out into the garage in quarantine when I get home

Well I need to get home next week to pick up my new camera and refurbished lens.  This has been a hard year on equipment.  I got a new 850 Nikon for my trouble, we'll see how bad I am with that.
I now only need a groove-billed ani in Texas.  I will save it for a coded chase to the LRGV or July, whichever comes first.

Rare birds all around and back to letting Delat decide...the answer is....Sacramento, 1800 miles through Texas in 5 days, but the count is getting there... 606.........as I holding on the ID of that Hill Country bird (note will correct numbers between 601-607

dang bedbugs.....drat!

Big Year Total:  606
Coded Birds:  45

Miles driven.  24550Flight Miles 65,100flight segments: 69   Different Airports: 31Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 148
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ringtailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal, bedbugs

Going dark

I have been birding blind for the last few days.  I slammed my computer power chord in a car door and I lost use of my computer.  I could not find a replacement for it.  I bought one at an airport and alas, the Lenova adaptor they had was wrong.  I finally got to a Best Buy and they had a spare that worked and so....I am connected again.  I have been rolling up year birds as I'm starting to get a little angry and as such this is going to be a long blog as I am merging just 96 hours of birding but a gob of stuff.  I will start with a newspaper submission that will be in this weekend's Watertown Public Opinion.  This will save me some writing

This big year of mine is bringing me to a lot of hidden corners of American history. One of these corners is old Ft. Jefferson located 2.5 hours west of Key West by boat out on the Dry Tortugas.  Much like Santa Cruz Is. In California all birders eventually strive to visit this Civil War era fort and this place maintained by the National Park Service and reached only by a daily ferry.  You may ask why is that?

Dry Tortugas is the only location in the Continental US or Canada that have breeding colonies of not one, but three birds:  Brown noddy, sooty tern, and the masked booby.  It is not only a three-fer spot but also during spring migration, depending on the wind and weather, it can be a prime fall-out spot and on April 18th, 2016, we had significant fallout.  It is the first speck of land that many of these birds see doing an over gulf migration.  You never know what might be out there.  All I can say is WOW!!  Not only was the inside of the fort teaming with warblers and other assorted migrants but on the way across on the Yankee Freedom III we met hundreds of little warbler still struggling to make it to land, any land, as they finished up their one night hop across the Gulf of Mexico.  Looking at these poor birds struggling right above the ocean trying to go forward into a stiff wind is always a little hard to fathom.  Life is tough, life is rally tough for these little guys.

.It was so windy on the Fort, that searching for other rarities was almost impossible.  I did see a smaller blackish noddy with a different head patch of white and a longer bill sitting on a cactus, but getting a photograph was impossible.  In fact, my whole set up blew over into the sand and I just terminated any thoughts of that.  Then I lost it.  The black noddy was a life bird but one that didn’t leave me feeling satisfied.  I kind of kept quiet about it too.  The birds didn’t loaf where you could see them well out on the old coal dock and just trying to look through a scope was a challenge. Only two brown noddies even visited the pier. The wind buffeting you makes it hard to sort birds at a great distance.  It made it hard to even stand, you get sand in your face, and your equipment takes a beating.  Terns are also constantly moving in and out and so focusing on one bird is just something you can’t do.

The boat captain took us so far from Hospital key, I wanted to write a complaint but who cares about birders?  Besides the three expected birds, and the rarity, I tallied an Audubon’s shearwater enroute, another on the way home,  Plus my missing swallow—a bank swallow, and one species of warbler I still needed—the blackpoll warbler.  All that along with three common migrants seen in Key West at the sister fort:  Ft. Zachary Taylor brought my total up to 578.  I got 31 species on this trip and three lifers for Florida, but why was I feeling so disappointed as my plane flew over the Gulf?  Was it because there were no brown boobies out there?  Another birder spotted one near Key West.  I saw no such bird.  No, I was relieved I got that bird in California.

Birders have something called the 24 hour rule.  It is a rule that loosely means, that the most likely time a rarity is going to show up is within 24 hours of you leaving.  This rule struck me in less than 24 minutes.  I guess, ever the impatient one, I should have expected it quicker.  Exactly 24 minutes after I had been dropped off at the Key West Airport to make a flight to San Antonio, it happened. I was meeting a friend and we were going to tour the King Ranch, something that I could not afford to miss as two birds awaited that I was at risk to miss and these ranch tours are filled up already for the spring.  Using a metaphor, lightning then struck.  The first EVER appearance of something called the Cuban vireo showed up at the Ft Zachary Taylor, maybe 30 minutes after we had left this morning.  It was heart-breaking boarding a plane leaving when I knew people were driving hard to get to Key West and see that bird.  I stood on the steps outside the Delta 737 and didn’t want to go in.  I rolled my eyes at the stewardess when she welcomed me aboard.  I was not happy.  I’m not sure what I was but I was definitely NOT happy.

It sort of hit me then—the futility of it all.  There were also ultra-rare birds seen yesterday in California which a friend of mine was flying overnight to get.  There was fallout of European golden plovers in Newfoundland, although they were having a blizzard now.  The tufted flycatcher I had dipped on in Arizona a few weeks ago was now even back in Arizona.  Every direction had rare birds except the direction I was now going, Texas.  I sat down in seat 10A and put my head into my hands.  Today is a good day, why did this have to happen?  I cried.

In a nutshell, I was being humbled by the shear randomness of what I was trying to accomplish.  I did have some luck down here in the Keys, a second extremely rare vireo, the thick-billed vireo appeared in Ft. Lauderdale two days ago and we went up and were some of the few to see that bird.  After a slow start, I bagged almost all of the warblers I needed.  The ying goes with the yang and just as unlucky was a report of a fork-tailed flycatcher in Key Largo which I missed by either 200 feet or 5 minutes.  The fork-tailed flycatcher is almost an impossible bird to chase as it is the one-day wonder of all birds, here today, gone tomorrow.   I was thinking being 28 miles from where it was reported would be close enough but alas, this bird had other ideas and disappeared never to be seen again. 

I also missed a pretty common Antillean nighthawk and a second species of tern both of which seem to have not migrated yet this year.  I have seen them both as early as April 19th, and there has been a couple of reports of them around Key West,  but I think anyone reported them any earlier in the year is just not identifying the bird properly.  These two birds look like other birds and can be tough calls, especially if you don’t hear them. I didn't.
Unfortunately then, I will have to come back to Key West.  In fact, if the Cuban vireo holds, I will be back in a few days, such is my life this year.  I write in my blog that “wherever I am or wherever I am going, I find I need to be somewhere else.” This motto is holding true on this day in the middle of April.  I am giving this big year all the effort I can, but the birds are not giving me any slack or any room for error.   If I fail in my quest, that failure will be taken back to April 19, 2016, mark your calendars, which is also the 16th birthday of my daughter.  April 19th is a day that is always special to me as 16 years ago, while we were chasing snowy owls near Duluth, Minnesota, my wife went into labor and a few hours later, my sweet daughter Lena was born in Spooner, Wisconsin.  It is a marvelous memory.  I won’t blame the date, I can’t blame the date as today is definitely a GREAT day whether or not I ever see that silly Cuban bird!  Sigh, I just have to keep birding.

Big Year Days 107-109  FLORIDA

Big Year Total:  578
Coded Birds:  42

Miles driven.  22250Flight Miles 65,100flight segments: 67   Different Airports: 31Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 133
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ringtailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal,

John I Lloyd State Park Ft Lauderdale FL
563.  Cape May Warbler

564.  Thick-billed vireo

Fort Zachary Taylor
565.  Northern Waterthrush

566.  Blue Grosbeak
567.  Indigo Bunting (photo from Dry Tortugas) 568.  Prothonatory warbler
Dry Tortugas trip569.  Audubon's shearwater570.  Masked booby
571.  Sooty Tern
572.  Brown Noddy
573.  Bank swallow574.  Blackpoll warbler
575.  Black noddy
Ft Zachary Taylor, Key West
576.  Chestnut sided warbler577.  Wood Thrush578.  Baltimore Oriole  (photo from Sotuh Padre island 4/20)
Okay, I flew into San Antonio and was ready to bird.  I picked up Jim Terrill a non-border friend of mine from Minneapolis and we went right to work.  I went to a sod farm on the 19th SW of San Antonio an netted four species, good ones
579.  Upland Sandpiper580.  Buff breasted sandpiper (3)581.  Western kingbird582.  American Golden plover
I had a problem there.  Those people didn't like us.  I had people come and park right next to me and blare their music so load, my scope shook.  I was never more that 5 feet off a black topped road.  Some lady walked down with here dog to ask me if I needed help.  Another local dude followed us in a black car until I turned west a mile away.  I got the finger, people stood on their lawns and stared.......it is a GD sod farm people!!  Holy cow....advise to you all...don;t go their.  They had buff-breasted but i was so wound tight, if I would have got accosted, my walking/monopod is a weapon and I could have done terrible things until the guns came out and I don't pack one.  I just don't get it.  This is a hotspot.  It should carry a warning label.  It is a SOD FARM...
We woke up at 0430 after spending the night in Kingsville, Kings and Birds, I always say.  I wnet right to work on my list.  Coded bird.
583.  Ferruginous Pygmy Owl 584.  Brown Crested flycatcher
was on a powerline opposite the owl

You know, I'm not a real fan of tours.  We saw birds out the window but you really couldn't get photos, and there were 8 of us on this tour.  I have seen all of these birds before and except for the parula, have really good photos of all of them, and our guide did a good job
585.  Dickcissal
586.  Botteri's Sparrow
587.  Yellow headed blackbird 
588.  Tropical Parula

589.  Northern Beardless Tyranulet
590.  Grasshopper sparrow 
Then we bid adieu to the others and sped to South Padre Island for migrants. I ran into Ben Basham again, he was calling out warblers and looking to be having a ball.   I, though, had a bit of a problem.  My camera got jarred in King Ranch and I went to speed control and all the photos went black.  Ben would not have been pleased with me.  Sigh, I was NOT pleased with me.
We saw.
591.  Orchard Oriole (2)592.  Least Flycatcher593.  Red-eyed vireo (2)594.  Grey-cheeked thrush595.  Swainson's Thrush596.  Western Tanager (make and female)597. Yellow-breasted chat
maybe 20 indigos, and lots of Tennesee warblers, I did salvage a picture of that too.

all that I can apparently salvage from 85 photos sadly is this photo of black-bellied whistling ducks and the above photo of Baltimore oriole.  It was a downer

at least I got a picture of the three toughest birds of the day earlier.  I would have been crushed if I had screwed that up.
Shrimp Bridge, Cameron County Texas

598.  Semipalmated sandpiper

Big Year Days 110-111, South Texas IV

Big Year Total:  598
Coded Birds:  44

Miles driven.  22750Flight Miles 65,100flight segments: 69   Different Airports: 31Hours at sea: 30Miles walked 135
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ringtailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal,

I got a new powercord, but I still feel behind the gun here. I need 2 birds for the next milestone, 600 and they will be had tomorrow, although I only have two endemic LRGV birds left to get.  I kind of feel sorry for Jim as I ended up behind the 8 ball.  600 on April 21,

On non-Alaska migrants or seabirds, I'm down to

2 rails
5 sandpipers
0 gulls, 4 terns
2 cuckoos
3 goatsuckers
3 swifts
3 hummers
10 flycatchers
4 vireos
1 wren
2 thrushes
1 longspur
1 pipit
12 wood warblers
6 sparrows
4 cardinals/ tanagers
2 blackbird/oriole

that is only 61 species
plus 4 owls, 4 grouse/ quail and a single woodpecker, IDK, maybe I'm not so behind?

Thanks again everyone

Olaf

Living Largo

Chapter 36

Ft Myers-Key Largo Florida

My favorite James Bond movie is Thunderball  (#4 1965, shot in the Bahamas).  My favorite villain of the series is Largo from the same movie because....Largo didn't monologue he just tried to kill Bond, wasn't successful but he tried well.  I also liked Domino the Bond Girl. The movie poster is designed by a favorite artist George McGinnis, although he does feet weird on his women and is soo 1960s-70s.

Largo...master super criminal, Number 2 in SPECTRE and then there is Key Largo....well I don't know what to say, I'm not sure the American English vocabulary has just the right swearword for such a day in such a place...maybe the British have some.....the cause.........

Fork-tailed flycatcher, the bane of all bird chasers...one-day wonder...anywhere anytime, a generally unchasable bird....it is said, you can;t be more than a few hours away to even try to chase.  Duke Biologist Stuart Pimm sees one yesterday in his back yard, Olaf is/was 28 miles away, and the chase is/was on!  I ran to the car and was thinking, am I close enough, will I make it?  i was there 1 hour 10 minutes after first sighting.  I had asked two birders to say a prayer...it didn't help as the short answer...NO!  NO Fork-tailed!

First, I got the tip 30 minutes late as I had my phone off.  I was photographing the Zenaida dove at Long Key SP (again)...

Why the dove again? IDK. I have a problem. Do I need an intervention?  Do I need Zenaida anonymous?   Whatever,  but that bloody blighter flycatcher!  The bridge was up 10 miles south, 15 minute delay.  I drove people off the road.  It didn't matter.  Then at one point, it appears I was either 200 feet or 5 minutes from the bird, but it wasn't just that.  A very gracious Stuart Pimm had let me into his housing complex and I had scoured the place for the bird and then an equally gracious Larry Manfredi had informed me of new intel of a sighting across the road but alas despite walking and rewalking US1 a total of 10 miles doing the loop of the south bound and north bound, looking at the wires and median...no flycatcher, then minky bloody birder I am!
It was bad and it wore me out.
Bullocks!

Generally, birding, though, on this trip was a good period, I got what I needed, maybe not all I wanted, although not in numbers, 2 black-whiskered vireo and only at their back-up spot, only three gray kingbirds, few warblers, but the two I had to have, I got.  Worm-eating is not on my travels again.  I did get a couple of bonus birds....a red-headed woodpecker in a spot I just followed the brown sign for a bird hotspot, and a lucky flyover of a rare out of place Mississippi kite.  I got lifetime photos of some other birds, like the Swainson's warbler, too.

The project bird, as I like doing things the hard ways was by getting the endangered Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow a subspecies of the Seaside Sparrow.  It took 2 trips, a drive through a forest fire, and 70 deer fly bites but two, 2 out of the 2800 of the subspecies showed up.  They were a long ways away, but sang and we got them...I even got a sort of photo (below).

I am birding with Don Harrington, an engineer.  He has engineer's disease.  He has a new cannon camera and during the seaside moment when I was snapping photo after photo, Don was working on a Picasso and was adding contrast, a little zoom, auto-center....a little darker, more zoom...."ah Don...It flew off."
He forgot to take a picture as the bird flew away.........sigh.....engineers.

 It is hot here, and loathfully, I am deciding to drive up to Ft Lauderdale tomorrow to chase a thick-billed vireo, I will when this is over, i fear most likely having been beaten up by two chases....fork-tails......and a vireo. yarballs!
Crud...see there is no swear word for this in America.

What is Largo?  Maybe Largo is the new swear word?


Is this living Largo?
This place is so 1970...no, it is just a goofy birder hugging a goofy statue.

They have an odd wedding bus here, you get married on the bus and then They had the reception next door to the Sunset Beach Cove Resort I stayed at.


So we crashed a wedding, so I gave a toast, so the bridesmaid's dresses were horrible (pink and looked like they were wrapped on the ladies), so what?  I didn't dance with them like Owen Wilson, I am trying to be Bostick, not his Wedding Crasher's character.  We were drinking beer and listening to the nighthawks above us, and nobody asked why the guests brought binoculars...
too much info....

Is that living Largo?
No, that is just something to do.

I come back to the Movie Thunderball.

The theme song is like this chase,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia6-5...

Tom Jones with naked female silhouettes holding spear guns, sort of like my time here in Key Largo, somewhat good,  moments of glory, too much to imgine, but in general, like the character as well, despite a good plan painful and leaving a foul taste in your mouth, or in the case of Largo the character, dying when his boat crash into a rock.  that I guess is Living Largo.  Seems like a good thing but it ends up frustrating

I don't know, shouting LARGO! has no meaning to anyone else.  largo!  see?  No effect.

dang flycatcher.........largo!

I need a word!

The Data 
Big Year Days 103-107

Big Year Total:  562
Coded Birds:  39

Miles driven.  21950Flight Miles 63,900flight segments: 65   Different Airports: 30Hours at sea: 25Miles walked 128
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
other animals seen:  gray whale, dolphin, bobcat, ringtailed cat, elk, bighorn, jackalope, feral pig, California sea lion, harbor seal,

448.  Eastern kingbird
449.  Common nighthawk
550.  Bachman's sparrow

551.  Tennessee warbler
552.  Magnolia warbler

553.  Least tern

554.  Red-headed woodpecker

555. Gray Kingbird

556. Mississippi Kite
557.  Seaside sparrow (Cape Sable ssp.)

558.  Yellow-billed Cuckoo

559.  Black-whiskered vireo

560.  Worm-eating warbler

561  Blue-winged warbler
562.  Common tern

Birds I had seen earlier but here are photos

SWAINSON'S WARBLER


BROWN HEADED NUTHATCH
Magnificent frigatebird

good birds and see king rail, heard more black rail, and the weather generally good, hopefully Don doesn't kill me before i get to Key West tomorrow.  It is going to be a very long day.

largo!
still no effect.

Olaf

The appearance of the Jackalope

Chapter 35

Waubay, South Dakota
Big Year Days 100-101

Big Year Total:  547
Coded Birds:  39

Miles driven.  21500Flight Miles 62,400flight segments: 64   Different Airports: 30Hours at sea: 25Miles walked 111
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23
There are rare birds and then there are rare animals.  Although this big year is all about the birds, one needs to stop and smell the roses sort to speak and when you see a rare animal you stop and take notice.

Although once reported by Native Americans and early explorers in the 1850s from north Texas northwards in the great plains to the Canadian border and also was found in patches near the Sierra foothills.  However the population dwindled and in the last 60 years, the population became localized in only two areas, central South Dakota and a small area of critical habitat in eastern Wyoming. Unfortunately a huge taxidermy market opened up in the 1960s and 70s for stuffed jackalopes with upwards of 20 or 30 being put up for sale at a time at tourist stops like Wall Drug, The Corn Palace, or many of the places in the Black Hills.  This hunting took a toll on the species as it also became a sought after hunting trophy for rare game hunters like the picture of this woman, taking one with a bow



It had been a long time since I saw one.  After spotting a Harris's sparrow this morning out my window at my house, I eventually drove out in easterm Day County South Dakota looking for chestnut collared longspurs in a very heavy wind.  Finding anything was going to difficult and lucky.  Imagine my surprise when I jumped a female jackalope.  Although the bucks are notorious for being aggressive, the does are usually shy especially in the winter when the does loose their antlers.  However, there is one period of time when the plains are not safe...jackalope rut.  There are some animals I don't ever want to run into, wolverines, cougars, grizzly bears, a cornered badger, and..... a doe jackalope during rut for about a week in early April.

Just seeing a doe jackalope is akin to seeing a unicorn, some even think of them now in the mythical sense, and I am lucky that I even saw one.  I am also lucky I didn't get hurt.  During this period these odd creatures don't run and they don't hide, they frequently charge, and end up trying to mate with anything they can and if they aren't satisfied they bite, claw, and an unsuspecting unlucky few people out in the prairie get seriously injured and frequently they don't even know what attacked them.  Although the breeding habits of jackalopes are poorly described as there are few researchers, it is believed that the bucks have horns solely for the protection of fighting off overzealous does or they are used in some elaborate mating ritual.

I ran into this rutting doe and it seemed to be quietly running away and then it just turned and ran right at me, I just got back to the safety of my car as it cleared the fence.  I snapped a couple of photos before the critter turned realized I would either not be an object of its affection nor a threat, so it left as fast as it came in.


It is always odd seeing jackalopes run, they run just like a mule deer.  They hold their ear straight up to hide their antlers, although like I said, the does shed theirs over winter.

Well I did also go birding, this wasn't about spotting the elusive jackalope.  I drove around to Bitter Lake south of Waubay and spotted a Hudsonian godwit, actually only the second one reported in South Dakota this spring, one was reported yesterday about 160 miles south. A Hudsonian is a good year bird and they can blow through very quickly here and I could have missed one.  In 2013, the only ones I saw were at my cabin and last year they hung on for a month.  Each year is different.  I jumped a flock of gray partridge a few miles away.  I looked for these over a month ago and
 
I drove up to my cabin still looking for a yellow-headed blackbird and didn't find one but drove south and found three Franklin's gulls in a pasture across the road from thousands of lapland longspurs.  I needed the gull, a new

Now many of you may wonder why I ended up home and not in Arizona?  Well, I had a shoe problem, a really strange shoe problem.  I accidentally bought steel toed shoes and they were rubbing my toes oddly.  I needed to get my old shoes, I didn't want to hike up Ramsey Canyon and injure my feet for the spring push.  I also looked at the few birds I needed in Arizona that were there, I walked off the plane in Minneapolis and stopped to send in one of my camera lens to get fixed at the camera shop and prepare for my next big push.  Silja had also made bananabread.  All in all, home was my best use of three days.

#545 Harris's Sparrow
#546  Hudsonian Godwit


#547  Franklin's Gull

Three more birds ...a jackalope.....and bananabread....life is good

I've been noticing quite a few reports of the Montreal pink-footed goose no after I saw it, so that feels good that my sighting apparently got out the Quebec birders out and to the scene of a code 4 bird.

Olaf

Oui oui, ooh! la la!

It is always a good sign to start the blog off with Olaf drinking a lifer beer, so Minnesota Birds and Beer Club....I've seen a lifer and drank a beer...but I'm getting ahead of myself

Chapter 34

Montreal Quebec, Canada
Big Year Days 99

Big Year Total:  544
Coded Birds:  39

Miles driven.  21400Flight Miles 61,100flight segments: 63   Different Airports: 30Hours at sea: 25Miles walked 111
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 23


I sat there in Oakland City Indiana, (and mind you I like Indiana just maybe not my choice of restaurant though last night) and tried to figure what was the next best bird, or one I could get to.  It wasn't an easy choice, I'm scheduled for Florida in a week so I don't want to go there and Texas the week afterwards.  Where to go... where to go so I plugged in some ideas on Delta...I decided to let Delta Decide.  Home, Arizona, Alaska, wherever and any place with a dusky grouse were way too expensive, then on a lark I plugged in Montreal, it was 50,000 miles of $1200 one way from Minneapolis the day before but there was still that pink-footed goose report from Wednesday.  The phone thought about it...
12,500 miles ONLY for the flight I would want to take.  Wow, cheap....As it turns out the cheapest flight from Evansville to anywhere--Montreal Canada.  I hit the BOOK button, choice made.  At this rate I can almost fly everyday on miles.About as much French as I know, despite me spending countless days on the Island of Sint Martin, FWI, is oui, and ooh! La la!  I guess I know merci, and a few other words.  Since I'm always apologizing for myself I should learn how to do that.
I have not set foot in Quebec since the summer of 1976 save the brief trip through the Montreal Airport last month on that fool-hardy pink-footed goose chase.  Do you remember 50 ways to leave your lover?  I do.  It was playing on the entire family vacation driving out here, through the Soo Locks, Sudbury-North Bay, and then down to Cornwall Ont. and here.  I was ten and I went to the 1976 Olympics, seeing a soccer game between 2 African nations and water polo...yea, water polo. The car was mysteriously filled with roman candles at some point, not from me, I blew my entire life savings on O-pee-chee baseball cards....still have them.   The red banners with the symbol of the Montreal Olympics on the light pools, hanging from everything are burnt into my brain like looking too long into the sun.
I like Canada and every "non-bush" Canadian city I've ever been to, St John's to Victoria and even Thompson, Manitoba, which is by definition, "in the bush" I guess.   I think I would like Montreal too, but that is a trip for another time.  Friends heard I was coming and sent me strip club advice. Wandas?  What the?   I've never been to a strip club, ever, why would I want to see naked women...?  I don't have time for such nonsense and especially by myself.  This isn't a tourist trek, this was a trip about birds and one bird in particular, the pink-footed goose.  That bird seems to bring me through here, Montreal.  Last time, I got to go to gate 87 and enjoyed a flight on Air Canada which was just me, myself and I and go to Connecticut where I spent three days searching for the mythical goose, and got skunked.  Today, I walked above gate 87 just before the flight to Hartford boarded on my way to customs and again, one passenger, a fat white bald guy, who, I guess must have been American.  
I have decided that my best route to get through customs quickly is to tell the truth and just not a little bit but open up about everything, talk at length about crap they don't care to hear. A single guy coming to Canada for probably less than 24 hours equals body-cavity probes and extra questioning, so I over load them with the truth. Today's conversation: 
"Why are you here?"  "To take pictures of a bird, not just any bird, but a goose of the anser genus.  Commonly called the pink-footed goose.  I dipped out on the bird a month ago when I was last in Canada and here and now it has been reported on some road southwest of here that is named after a pope, Pius the XII I think,  I don;t recall when he was the Pope, but I'm not Catholic.  I can show you a map if you like, all kinds of intel people have sent me.""Are you a professional photographer then?  You say this is a leisure visit on your entry form.""Oh heavens no.""Then what do you do?""Well I am a physician by training, but I have served as an Executive, and a writer, and well also a consultant...maybe i'm retired at the moment."  Then trying to act be as nerdy as possible  "No, this is just a hobby, a fascination I guess, maybe an obsession as I just came here to see a goose, sort of a wild goose chase, one could say."  I feign laughter.  "I suppose I came to see one of the missing members of the genus anser...""You said that already...welcome to Canada, sir.  it is cold out there, stay warm."
We never got to the part that I didn't have a return ticket, no hotel reservations, no fixed address of my visit and I don't even know a soul in Montreal.    
I was thinking this goose was going to be like the Barnacle here as it looked to be in the city but alas how wrong a vision that was...

This could be a snowy spring day in Minnesota, South Dakota or....Quebec...really?  Snows in a corn field..go figure.
However, when I found the spot on the canal where someone reported this goose 50 hours ago, there was not a single goose at 1230, nothing.  It was cold, snowing (what else?), and blowing....a miserable day to be out scoping waterways for birds.  I said a little prayer to the bird gods, that I needed a break, I had been scouring every goose for this bird now 4 days and two countries.  I shrugged, couldn't hurt?  I don't think Jesus cares if I see a bird or not, he had more pressing matters. Maybe Justice would come?  I walked to the car to warm up twice and then decided to look at the map, there was this lake across the road I could sort of get a look at and well, I did fly here for this, I should look....I crossed the road.  Nothing.....then like Forrest Gump said, "then God showed up."  I'm the luckiest damn birder, damn.
2000 snow geese just appeared out of nowhere and landed on the lake.  I could see that they were nervous, edgy, and they didn't want to be there.  I looked fast.  God might of helped but I still had to do the work.  Luckily there were few blue morphs and so the few dark geese were easy to pick out.  I saw a couple of juve snows, dark morph, one was even molting into a whitish head.  Then I spotted it.  Pinking bill on tip, definitely not black, not a juve snow.  I fumbled for my digisoping, snapped a couple of pics, my phone got too cold and turned off,  dang.

Picture stinks but before I wouldn't have even tried.  The only picture on this goose I've seen was in the middle of a snow pile and although clearer looks like this one too.  It was just so harsh out there.  Heavy wind, snow, cold, and trying to get scope pictures was just crap and they were way out there, hardly any contrast too..........and then they spooked, everyone lifted and they flew off.......mine, as it lifted I saw it had that big white tail band, proving it wasn't remotely a snow goose, pure pink-footed goose, a PINK FOOTED GOOSE!  I never saw feet, though, but it didn't matter.  I've seen this bird in Europe, too and now ABAdom.  I had seen another goose that was suspicious but I never saw the head. I marked it as anser unspecified.  I texted Thor...."Bingo!  I got a Bingo!"  Thor needed further explanation.
Someone probably saw this same goose a week ago with 50,000 snows on the other side of Montreal and this one now with 2-3000 was a little easier to handle, probably the same bird, the sightings don't overlap.  This could have even been the same bird from Connecticut.  It was hanging out with when it probably flew over me with a small group of snow geese,  so maybe?    
3 days in Connecticut and a day up here and mow another pink monster accounted for....whew!
Okay, I know you have been waiting for it.  Olaf's opinion and adventure corner.  What did I screw up this time?
My rental car cost me ...$12.49 Canadian, and I got upgraded into a Durango.  So so far so good.
Some thoughts on Quebec, first do NOT make a right turn on red.....I'll say no more, just helping out a friend.  In other parts of Canada, the signs are nicely bi-lingual both English and French....NOT HERE!.  Road signs....no freaking clue, quest---west, sud--south, I know that, but why do the English provinces have to put up French on everything but not here?
Let me take Tim Hortons as an example, nothing is more Canadian except hockey than Tim Hortons

The writing on the outside...this one is five miles from my goose..looks like a little of everything.  I walk in, menu only in French.  I have no clue, now Thor is born here and says pretty much everyone can communicate with me in English, they may not want to.  I order number 7. I find myself speaking dumb, slow, and weird to the friendly guy helping me like that might help.  He speaks English, then I say I'll take the trio, he mumbles something in French that could mean anything from we have a soup or a donut, you have a lovely bunch of coconuts, or you can sleep with my sister, IDK.  
I make a face, he says "soup or donut," okay sister not on the menu, thankfully, probably I should have just said "yes"  but I ask what kind of soup.  Well maybe he doesn't know English that well, vegetable does not flow off his tongue so well, something with chicken or maybe it was tarantula, IDK, I'm clueless.  I point to the picture of soup and hope that is one of the choices.  I get some funky chicken in red broth, then comes the credit card.....this is a disaster.  I have had this cause trouble in both parts of Canada, afterhours at gas stations...OMG.....it is the dreaded chip and he can't look at it. Here, though, it is only in French, I close my eyes and push a button, wrong button, I ask for help but HE CAN'T LOOK AT SCREEN LIKE IT HAS STATE SECRETS OR SOMETHING.  I cue it up again and I accidentally abort it again.....now I got six people behind me.  I whip out the cash, ...and say...."You do take Canadian money right?  This still is Canada."  Immediately I'm thinking, damn why did I open my mouth?  I eat in the corner and try to cover my face, my sandwich comes cold, I deserve it.  
Not a single English word on a road sign the whole way to the airport.....IDK, note to self, maybe I need to learn French a little?  I stayed at the airport Marriott for ease and then not knowing where to go next, I played let Delta Decide Game again...still no good bird reports.
Cheapest flight.........TUCSON!!!!  We have a winner!  12,500 miles to Tucson through Minneapolis on am flight I want, the others...65,000.  Minneapolis only...37,000.  I could just get off at Minneapolis on a Tucson ticket for 12-5......how deft is this system?
Delta Decides worked here, bird #544  Pink-footed goose and a lifer, 738, so I don't know what I'm looking for in Tucson, I guess I'll hike up for the Tufted flycatcher, but I do know, I got to be home on Monday.  We'll see how Let Delta Decide works for that?  Delta knows best!   I need some sun though, haven't seen it since Loveland Pass...my skin on my face is finally healed.
O

Ruffin' up Indiana

Chapter 33

Oakland City, Indiana
Big Year Days 98

Big Year Total:  543
Coded Birds:  38

Miles driven.  21350Flight Miles 60,100flight segments: 61   Different Airports: 30Hours at sea: 25Miles walked 111
showshoes 4 (isn't going to be more)Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded: 22

I was on a birding hiatus after I slunk back from my last multiple spot outing, I was tired, and had basically ran out of birds.  I took four days to rest, finish a novel (writing it), do some paperwork, sell a company, well a guy called me out of the blue and well...that is what I guess I do. My wife, Silja was starting to wonder when I was leaving.  Now not in a bad way but I haven't been home for 48 hours in over three months.  There were just no real birds.  A pink footed goose in Montreal, but it was all French to me.  The tufted flycatcher really wasn't reported.  I was starting to check on yellow-headed blackbird reports after Silja saw one and I didn't..chasing a yellow-headed blackbird...really?  There was this moving ruff report in Indiana, maybe that was something to do?.  Then my friend Theresa Schwinghammer saw it.  Finally, I just had to go so...I went...of course I had to drive through a blizzard in western Minnesota just to get to the airport....

This isn't the first time, I've birded in Indiana, I have a state list of 7 birds before I arrived with the mute swan, my only one in 2014, being seen in La Porte City, as my best bird, but I don't think I more than just bought gas in this state in my lifetime.  I have never spent the night here.

I landed at 4:15 pm, got into my rental car, drove 30 miles, found the flooded field with the ruff reports, no one had reported today.  Scanned it, sorted out a plethora of pectoral sandpipers and yes, tallied a lone female ruff by body size.  It looked 100% to be a ruff through the scope, orange legs, color pattern and head and bill shape.  It was tough to digiscope and then my old phone ran out of power, I snapped the above photo with my camera and you know, I think it isn't too bad, for what is a dot on the original.  This is my second ruff...yea...lifer 700 for me was a ruff in Minnesota and a that generated a much worse photo and view.

Ruffs are crazy birds with basically four sexes, if two isn't confusing for me enough and this is a good clean up bird for me as it was one of the 4 coded birds I missed by a day, this one in California.  Gotcha!

540.  Pectoral Sandpiper
541.  Ruff
542.  Brown thrasher
543.  Field sparrow

I later heard a field sparrow, the 4th bird of the brief trip. Each year I hear this bird singing and I am like shocked.  "What in God's green earth is that bird?"  Then I give up, clueless.  Then each time I get into the car and say, "oh crap, that is a field sparrow."  This year I smacked my head, last year, I kinked a rock.   I play the song and eureka, it all comes back to me.  I have a nesting pair a mile from my house in South Dakota so you'd think I'd recall this very odd song, nothing sounds like one.  Each spring for the last many decades the whole scenario repeats itself, but alas in 2016...field sparrow off the board.

Okay, I wrote to someone that I think I fell off the turnip truck here in Oakland City.  The city with the motto that it is "small enough to be a family..yet big enough to be a city."  They have an "old" Oakland City lake and a brand "new" one  "new" Oakland City Lake.  I guess getting a new lake is really keen!

These people here were good old God fearing country folk.  I drove by the Pentecostal Church as they were changing the sign.  "Jesus is coming!"  and "Justice is coming."  Amen brothers, I agree.  I wanted to stop and ask when David Justice was coming, I kind of like him when he played for the Braves, except in the 91 World Series with the Twins and it may be fun to hear him speak.  Maybe I should have?

After an entire search of the town, I found the one and only motel, the Diplomat.  I was about to start grumbling in the car thinking how could a college town not have a hotel?  Then I saw it.  The woman was locking up when I drove in,  "The rooms out back are half price."  She said as Sandy Patti sang in the background.  Her TV was portraying the healing hour or something with Benny Hinn, okay it is Healing Ministries. I heard him say, "The Prophets all prospered as they had no debt."  Did they even have banks back then?

In all the distractions, I forgot to sign my credit card and the woman chased me down outside.  I don't know, maybe I should have paid cash here?  Benny Hinn would not be pleased with me.

 At first I kind of wondered what went on "out back" and then I got the to the room, flea bag special.

I sometimes wonder if these rooms could only talk.  Why was someone prying open the door?
I noticed the sign out front stated they were freshly remodeled.  Hum...I wonder what they looked like before.

I wanted to eat at a place called Fish House Pizza, just because.  They however closed at 8pm, and I got confused as to what exactly time zone I was in.  The line goes through town.  I ate at a restaurant called Grandy's (the only one left open) and it would have made Gordon Ramsey explode, and then he would have died...just died.  I have seen restaurants with the owners dog sleeping under the tables that were cleaner, in fact, this was by far the dirtiest eating establishment I have ever been to.  The floor had sand, chunks of burger, fries, a piece of a chicken, and the tables looked as though they had never been wiped this week.  I could see in the kitchen, OMG...that is all I can say.  I could see two healthcode violations and I don't even know the code.  I would have left but...

They were having a prayer group, I arrived when they were laying on of hands on a woman eating chicken.  Did I need that if I just had catfish?  Yea, I'll stick with the catfish as I looked at the chicken on the floor.

Oakland City College now University is here, which is a General Baptist school, now I attended a General Baptist church in a couple of location during my more evangelical period.  This is like a home base for them.  I used to say of the General Baptists is that we used to go to church on Wednesday and discuss and wonder what the Pentecostals were doing....generally instead of doing much ourselves.   But man could they pray.  Maybe they will come over when Mr Justice comes. he might entertain them too.  IDK.  When IS Justice coming?  I should have asked.  He would be good for them, too.  Then a biker gang pulled up, all in their colors, it was time to finish up.  The Road Riders Christian bike gang came in for their late night meeting or prayer, or something.

This college here is a bit like Lazarus though, hanging on by mere yarn a couple of times in its 130 year history.  Besides the pastor I had in Ripon, WI, a notable alumnus, well the only notable alumnus I can find to keep up the baseball tradition is Gil Hodges from the Dodger glory years back 60 years ago.

Well, enough fun, another coded bird, another state, another priceless memory of good ole' Oakland City....Indiana......because well, it is a city and it has city in its name!

Ruff ruff

Olaf