Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 27

Happy Leap Day

Ah Fresno...the huge trees of Fresno...Airport

Big Year Days 60-61
Big Year Total:  468Coded birds:  31Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters, Island gray fox, 
Miles driven.  13,500Flight Miles 38,200flight segments: 42   Airports: 23Hours at sea: 25Miles walked 64Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded:15

...California Continued.  In an attempt to continue to share useless but hopefully mildly entertaining information describing my avian adventures

Day #3

Again, to catch up, I'm traveling with one of my twins, Allwin, who is a traveler and eagle eyed but has never birded before.  Allwin is a junior at Ripon College majoring in German and Chemistry, speaks fluent Swedish and German, (also has 4 years of Spanish) and is currently studying abroad in Bonn and is home for a month on break.  Any job ideas out there?

We woke at 4am to hit the Angeles Crest Highway after spending the night in Glendale.  Even the huge metroplex of LA hadn't woken up yet this Leap Year Day, my bonus day for this big year, as I get an extra day than many who have done big years have had.  We climbed and climbed in the darkness and I expected a long journey with many incoming vehicles on Hwy 2 but where the road goes to Palmdale, the traffic just ended.  Hwy 2 past the ski resorts was still closed due to winter unlike when I came this exact way 3 years to the day but going the other way, and it was open.

Tom Ford-Hutchinson one of three California birders I have emails for or Facebook friend (met him on Dana Pt Pelagic) had given me an owl and quail tip for Red Box, and all of a sudden as I drove up the mountain, we were there.  We stopped and got out and listened.  A man in a cable repair truck was sleeping in the parking area....cable guys....white vans...NSA, kidnappers, spies...?...maybe here it was just a tired guy taking a nap.  After hearing absolutely nothing, It was so quiet without traffic noise, city noise, or unfortunately birding noise, we drove up to Mt Wilson and stopped where we could, but we still heard nothing.  I had heard reports of spotted owls at the observatory area but all we heard was the wind and the hum from many towers buzzing the early morning cable and news to many homes in the valley before us.  Maybe even sending "Ex's and Oh's" on the radio to everyone below.

Back at Red Box, and now with the sun coming up, we walked the trail down the mountain for about a third of a mile and started to hear a cacophony of something unknown.  What was this bird noise?  It was certainly not from a quail?  They kept going and going, and it was getting harsher in character.  it was so noisy that when the Mountain quail finally did call out I could hardly hear it.  Then we spotted the culprits of the noise....squirrels, dangest noisiest squirrels anywhere.  I need to improve my squirrel identification.  Then thankfully more Mountain quail called out and so we looked for them and intermittently tried to determine the guilty tappers of the trees, but we could only see acorn woodpeckers.  We never spotted a quail.  We came back to Red Box and then heard some more mountain quails call and then something else called from about two trees away, the steady toot toot of a northern pygmy owl.  Cool!  We looked in every tree and then it seemed to change to the opposite side of the valley by the parking lot and so we came over there.  I called the owl and the one on this side stopped and then continued on the other side. I'm not sure we had two owls but we definitely had one. but try as I might, we couldn't actually find the bird.   Then behind the museum (there is a Native American museum of some sort at Red Box) a dog spotted me, and began to bark.  It never stopped.  The little owl did, though and I with the dog yapping so, I couldn't hear anything...it was time we should go.

Chilao Visitor Center was out next stop.  It is only open this time of year on weekends from 10-3, closed on this non-holiday, Leap Day of course, it being Monday, but it is a good spot for birds.  They have many feeders and squawky jays.  I saw bird number 465...an old nemesis, the white headed woodpecker.  However, it still isn't a perfect shot.  I have more blurry and out of frame shots of this bird....



plus many band-tailed pigeons.



Steller's Jays,



even ones that seemed to want us to feed them.  Allwin wanted to go get peanuts for the friendly bird, which upon getting one, basically told us to leave in "Jayese".

I saw a warbler that was probably a hermit warbler but it wasn't a 100% proposition, up in a pine tree and well, I couldn't call it...we called for Clark's nutcrackers which I assumed were here but no signs of any, and despite looking, we didn't see anything.  Allwin started to climb on the rocks so I decided we needed to keep on moving, before he fell or I died of freight..


I love the San Gabriel Mountains.  There were exactly 6 other people up there anywhere and it was so peaceful and quiet despite just being above the huge city.  I liked it when 26 years ago I went with my then fiance Silja and we took a ski lift to the top and saw the rare desert bighorn and I like it now.  Then driving out not far from Red Box, two mountain quail flushed from the side of the road and flew over the hood of the car...."quail!" I yelled and was out of the car looking down the canyon for them.  No quail to take a picture, but we did hear a flurry of talk from the two of them before they quieted up and we got tired of looking.

You know, it is Leap Day and I have seen all of the quail....all of them this year.  That is a happy thought.

  Tom had also said this oasis in Kern County may be very good for goldfinches and as such we decided to go...it wasn't that far directly north and well it was such a nice day.  Let me say one thing here and now....Advice #1 for anyone doing a big year.  "TEXT YOU DESTINATION TO SOMEONE!"  We didn't and as we drove deeper into the hills on the side of the Mohave Desert, we lost cell phone service, and then lost a decent road, and if we had lost an oil pan or tire we could have lost our lives.  Advice #2  "DON'T RENT A FAMILY SEDAN TO BIRD OFF ROAD!"  The Ford Fusion wasn't meant for the San Marcos Road (which I learned was replaced in 1962 due to too many people complaining of car sickness) and it certainly wasn't meant for the Jawbone Canyon, then Kelso Valley Road and it CERTAINLY wasn't meant for the Butterbredt Canyon Road, and the drive to the Nature preserve at Butterbredt Springs on the bottom.  The internet warned it was rough, but didn't say HOW rough.  Sigh....it was lucky we didn't loose a tire OR a whole wheel...note to any of you buying used Hertz cars?  I kept checking underneath for leaks every time we scraped something.  So avoid a deep blue Ford Fusion, it was hard miles on it...  even worse, we found no goldfinches either, not much of anything was out here, ruby crowned kinglets and spotted towhee.

Oh my, we would have never been found out here.  Birders die of exposure to the desert....

We drove back to Fresno, stopping to see the absolutely orange hillsides of the hills above Bakersfield, it was one of those times to stop and enjoy the moment.



We stayed in Fresno, and ate our first evening meal at Denny's...otherwise we were too tired for supper, except for one time we ate at In-and -Out Burger in Ventura....wow marketing geniuses they are.  Gordon Ramsey would be proud of the simple menu they have.  The lines in the drive-thru truly amazing.  Menu--Hamburger, cheeseburger, or a double burger, and with or without onions.  Here is lunch in Palmdale....



Morning arrived and I still had unfinished work to do before our 4pm flight east.  We returned to the scene of the Ruff alert, Merced NWR.  The rangers were on high alert as when we walked out to an overlook one followed us and then she saw someone through here binoculars apparently too far from his/her vehicle in the distance, off she ran to her pickup and then sped across a dike to the scene of the crime.

Another "criminal" at Merced was that dogone Ruff, standing us up for a second day....rats!  I did see a bushtit out of Allwin's window for something....ruff or bushtit...?  Some get the gold, I get the tit...not sure that sounds correct...

Debbie Shearwater sent me a pleasant message when she learned I had driven near her house.  She asked me what I needed and it turned out I had driven right past a Lawrence's goldfinch hotspot, she had just seen them at the Antelope Fire hall up Panoche Road....this time I avoided the blocked section although she said she had gotten through it, but I bet she didn't have the family car I had.  Although the fire hall yielded no finches, I would like to thank Debbie for encouraging me to get this bird....I almost let it pass as we had struggled with it so, nearer to LA. Who is kidding who?  We struggled with it today

We drove up on the Panoche Hills Access road a place many have been seen as recently as Sunday...no finches.  We stopped at Mercey Hot Springs and well, usually never a shy one, I am shy about having too much camera equipment or bins near naked people and when a woman walked up to her car wearing a loose bathrobe, very loosely...and gave me a look, we stayed out of the campground and looked a little outside for the finch, but struck out.  I'd love to come back here and stay a while with my female escort...Silja some time or I should have birded here during my last clothing optional big year.  Alas, that was then and this was now.  I spotted a finch just outside on the road as we crossed the first bridge-- a house finch and then 4 cliff swallows flew out of under the bridge...a returning migrant, bird #467.  These nest on the side of my cabin and get into my cabin much to the annoyance of Lena, my daughter, so I never thought of the camera but I bet ebird is going to give me grief for these but they weren't tree swallows, 8 of those were also overhead.  My first migrants!

Off we drove watching the clock...we stopped at every ranch up to the fire hall and every ranch down.  At the Panoche Inn, we pulled off the road as I heard finches and got out.  Three guys were drinking Coors outside the bar, one apparently the owner petting a black and white cat.  He was curious if we wanted a beer or drink and then curious what we were up to.  I didn't feel comfortable really giving his property a once over and we stayed in the parking area as he and my son talked about Germany.  I periodically scanned the trees.

then Allwin said, "there is one in a tree, I see yellow"... I looked without enthusiasm.

"Just a flycatcher."  I said dejected.  It was an ash-throated flycatcher, not a bad bird...that I had seen already.  I then gave up.  I tried to extricate ourselves from the situation as the guy was so friendly and I guess as long as we were't despised solar developers, we were interesting.  We chatted about a French couple who stopped looking about a roadrunner and the pretty green hills and then Allwin said.  "there it reallyIS this time to the right of the flycatcher."  It almost wasn't worth the effort to turn my head.

Damn, he was right!  It was the bird!  WOW!  Gray finch, yellow head and yellow on the bum, its back was to me and into the sun and then it flew with a 2nd one briefly landing on a barbed wire fence showing its front profile.   Then poof, they flew off as the bar owner standing by us never waivered in his story.  Lawrence's Goldfinches!!  My final missing endemic California bird.  My disposition improving, we headed to Fresno, mission accomplished...but then as luck would have it just at Mercey Hot Springs the car flushed a flock of 50-100 Lawrence's as I drove past a large patch of the yellow fiddle-neck flowers on the side of the road.  Why now, the 3rd time through here?   Really?  It was just the way it was and then I spotted two dudes with a camera at the first bridge north of Mercey, I slowed and asked them what they had...they were flower chasers, not birders...I don't know what rarity they were photographing.  I know less about flowers than squirrels.

Allwin then asked me if I had everything.  I said everything but would have liked another look at a Bell's sparrow, everyone has been reporting them in here and then on a sage, I spotted one of the little skulky bastards...sitting up in perfect light.  I slammed on the brakes, grabbed for the camera and as word came to it apparently from the birding gods that Olaf was near...it vanished.....I hate those sparrows. ..anything that used to be a sage sparrow, I never get a good camera shot at either of them.   At least I got a good look at this one but to all of you with great photos of this bird on fences and on sage, and sitting up all pretty...phooey on you....or congrats...I'm not sure which.
   
bird summary

Feb 29
San Gabriel Mountains CA

463.  Mountain Quail
464.  Northern pygmy owl
465.  white-headed woodpecker

March 1
Merced NWR, Merced CA

466.  Bushtit

Mercey Hot Springs

467.  Cliff Swallow

Panoche Rd.

468.  Lawrence's Goldfinch

It ended up being a bit ugly birding, late looks, quick looks, wrong side of car looks, heard only and no looks, and especially no ruff looks, but you know, I got everything I needed but unfortunately not what I really wanted.  All totaled, we drove 1150 miles in California in 4 days, plus 200 miles to get to Minneapolis, 13 species of year birds and well happy memories with my son.  That alone was priceless....

It was a Leap Day, I'd always remember.  I don't think I will get to bird with my son the rest of the year and hardly will see him....Allwin spent the trip reading a book on obsolete English words and then telling me about them....I made the trip between sights quicker but ...well....I was never a word smith, but words like owling (don't confuse with looking for owls in the dark) and gefunkle and maybe even oko-pogo seemed mildly amusing and useful.

a couple of extra memories for me




Olaf

PS trips upcoming

Sage grouse chase to North Dakota tomorrow
then leaving for Newfoundland
I may go to Texas to get hook-billed kites/ red-billed pigeon/ and tropical parula after that if nothing better appears before going to Arizona the following weekend with daughter and wife to go owling in Madera/ Sierra Vista...any added intel would be appreciated, we are staying two nights at the Beatty Ranch.  I have a few birds missing at both locations...let me know  

Get Rhythm

Big Year Days 57-59
Big Year Total:  462Coded birds:  31Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters, Island gray fox, 
Miles driven.  13,300Flight Miles 38,200flight segments: 42   Airports: 23Hours at sea: 25Miles walked 63Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded:15

After a near crash of Southwest Flight 578 in Midway, I took a couple of days off before trying this again.  I was shook up but like everything...it passed.
As I headed to the airport on February 26, the birding song came on the radio, it was play of Ex's and Oh's number 78....it was a good sign.  We were heading west, California, and we were Getting the Rhythm and this trip, my son, Allwin, the one that damaged my car had to come with as penance for the insult to my car.  Allwin is a traveler but no birder.  I had been looking forward to this trip for months since he has been abroad studying since May and we needed time to bond.

My Favorite Johnny Cash song is Get Rhythm, which was released in 1959 by the artist.
here it is,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roug4...

Also in 1959, Johnny Cash decided to go fishing.  Unfortunately while driving up a mountain pass in the Las Casitias NF his truck overheated or so he said, and started on fire and Cash just took out his fishing stuff and still went fishing, ignoring the inferno.  In the forest fire that ensued, 49 of the regions 53 California Condors disappeared or 50% of all of them and were never seen again, no one knows if Cash actually killed 1/2 of the condor population in order to get a few trout...but he was fined a million dollars although no one knows exactly how much he paid.  Cash oddly started a second forest fire in 1965, one in which he almost died....Cash and the ring of fire....odd, well as as far as I can tell, the condor is countable now so this was designed to be my Condor trip.

First:

Let me do a little provisional discussion here

Provisional 1A.  I have counted the hoary redpoll and if as expected, the AOU lumps the two redpolls together, as per the rules, I subtract one.

Provisional 1B.  My counted western scrub-jay is a "Coastal" or California subspecies seen in Irving, CA, on Martin Luther King Day in January.  On February 19, in Davis Mtns Texas, I spotted a "Woodhouse's" subspecies so if it is split by the AOU, and this is also up to a vote, I will add one and have this replace the redpoll or do one and not the other, we will wait for their summer ads and subtracts.  No other splits/ lumps, look to affect the checklist this year for me.

Day 1 A Ruff time
Central California

MERCED NWR

Allwin and I drove out to Merced NWR after some concern over bedbugs at the hotel in Merced, I am not sure if it was real or a mass hallucination.  A day later I had no bites.  We got there at first light and found the pond the Ruff, a sandpiper, had been seen even the day before we got there...today...notta...dip city...nothing...no ruff.

we gave it three hours and even endured NWR Rangers yelling at us for being more than 25 feet from out car, we were about 50 at the time.  I was trying to get a better angle on a shore of the pond but I just had to move the car and block traffic and THEN get out to look through my scope....why?

We saw the hoard of Ross's Geese and decided to punt.


we'd have to return another day.

PANOCHE RD, California

I studied the map and this road looked good, it went from I-5 to Hwy 25 and had all the requisite ticks of birds I needed, so after cruising through the farms of the San Joaquin Valley we found the road and quickly it changed to dirt.  All along the road, people had set up makeshift shooting ranges, it was sort of odd in a way, even to a gun owner like me.  The road got worse but stayed okay and so we kept going.  Finally, I came to a year bird on a fence.

#456  Mountain Bluebird


always a pretty bird and then we continued on, got across ruts and then we came to a water hole.  Allwin took his shoes off and waded across, it was way too deep for a Ford Fusion.  This is the second time water has impeded my progress, damn.  Maybe a SUV next trip?  Two hours later....we were back on this road.  What a detour...I did drive past a hot springs that looked interesting.

The second stop was near a ranch, and I found my first key bird for the trip

#457  Yellow-billed Magpie

Nothing to say about this but tick!  Then we got behind a camper pulling a Jeep.  It was 10 mph for a while, but it all worked out when I saw blackbirds near the end in some trees.
The right blackbird...

#458  Tricolored blackbird


These birds have a red patch on their wings which they frequently hide, and all of these birds in these trees hid theirs.  Things were starting to roll, I had the two birds I needed and so off we went in search of Cash's cursed Condors

PINNACLES NATIONAL PARK, CA

In 2014, the ABA clarified their rules on counting Reintroduced endemics and if the bird is found in its former range (like ever or in the last 200 years?), and the population (not defined) has reproduced (how many?) it can be counted.  This rule only really covers 4 species, so the ABA could have just discussed each one separately, but they didn't.  Also, Condors live so long that ones taken into captive breeding have since been released and for a birder like me, I don't know where these birds are and so that is the third part, if unable to know which can be counted and which can't they can be counted. I feel I need a PhD in this bird to understand how to count it.   So I think Pinnacles Condors can be counted.  I have made my best effort to decipher it all and if I need correction....say it!

#459  California Condor


My son and I had a fly-by so close you could hear their wings.  It was cool.  We saw 6, even one way out of the park feeding on a dead something in a field, and as such...it was Allwin's rarest bird.  We had a really nice hike up here.  I really like this park and the valley near here.  It is a cool place that makes you think of Montana, not California.

oh Johnny why?
#460. California Quail
We heard 2, and to show my son, that was their call, I played it and instantly one answered me down below me in a little draw.  

Allwin looking sharp..
As it got dark, we drove out of the park and had to make tracks for Ventura, 200 miles away.  Driving between the valley and Hwy 101, I flushed a common poorwill at 10% light, it flew in front of my car and I didn't hit it!  I could count it even if I did but who would want to?  bird #461.
We drove like maniacs as my son directed and then he told me he had a short cut.  It would save time and miles as 101 makes this loop before turning on the coast to Santa Barbara.  It was just as we were coming down the mountain to 101 again when the traffic just stopped--apparently a terrible accident.  We waited.  It was after a few cars turned around and went back up, when Allwin told me he had another shortcut so we turned and found San Marcos Road, it looked on paper to go directly to Santa Barbara...problem was it was a 10-12% grade down....narrow, tightest turns ever, most marked at 5 mph and with the grade, and total darkness, my headlights were too high and as many cars from town were coming up to avoid the bypass, it was beyond treacherous.  Allwin stated that the Saint must give out medals personally to whomever safely makes it to the bottom of this road.  That was one road, I never ever want to go on again, even in daylight.
I am not Catholic and I kind of wanted to say a little prayer to old St. Mark  
Day 2.  The Big Blue Tick.

Santa Cruz Island

This isn't my name for the ritual to come and see this bird only found here, but three years ago, I said, I would never need to come back here again and three years to the day, here I was, taking a Island Packer boat in rough seas to Santa Cruz Island, but it was a Big Year and I had to go.  It was really rough this time....

Everyone writes how easy it is to find this bird...IT IS NOT THAT EASY!

In 2013, I spent three days at Scorpion (well I had clothing issues to worry about too) and I only saw 5 of them, and this time we had to hike and well...we saw three, and only one was photogenic.  We were the only birders there is we had no one to complain to BUT I found the bird...

#462  Island scrub-jay



I don't know if it is just me but this bird never is anywhere near the landing spots.  We came to Prisoner's Harbor because it seemed that this area had more of them but alas no.  It was a good hike though, to Pelican Bay.

I showed Allwin Bewick's wren

After the fist bump when we lEft the jay, Allwin said, jay down fox to go.  I then saw a fox come down the trail to us.  "We need to find a fox."  He said again.

"Like that one?"

well, we had the big blue tick and the big gray tick, but as we weren't counting mammals, we had nowhere to mark this tick.

The ride home on the boat was better and flatter and there was a veritable pelagic of seabirds, lots of Scripp's murrelets and a pink-footed shearwater plus all of the other expecteds...unfortunately having done a pelagic near here a month ago, there was nothing new for me to tick.

We got back, drove to In-and -Out Burger, and drove to Glendale.  The blue tick in my book and now my count up to 462...then Elle King sang her little song and I sang my own words...

Well, I had me an owl, turned up a common crane
I just scoped all the birds that no one could believe
Whoa, and then I had to goNow, there's one in California that's been easily tame
'Cause I found me a better bird out in the A-K
Hey, hey, until I made my getawayOne, two, three, they gonna fly up to me
'Cause I'm the best birder that you'll ever gonna see
One, two, three, they gonna fly up to me
They always wanna come, but they never wanna leaveEx's and the oh, oh, oh's they haunt me
Like ghosts they want me to see 'em all
They won't just go
Ex's and oh's
I had a summer tan'ger down in New OrleansKept him warm in the winter, let him migrate in the spring
My, my, how the seasons go byI look high, and I love to look low
So the chases keep commin', and the ticks just roll
You know that's how the story goesOne, two, three, they gonna fly up to me
'Cause I'm the best birder that you'll ever gonna see
One, two, three, they gonna fly up to me
They always wanna come, but they never wanna leaveEx's and the oh, oh, oh's they haunt me
Like ghosts they want me to see 'em all
They won't just go
Ex's and oh'sOne, two, three, they gonna fly up to me
Climbing over mountains and a-sailing over seas
One, two, three, they gonna fly up to me
They always wanna come, but they never wanna leaveMy ex's and the oh, oh, oh's they haunt me
Like ghosts they want me to make 'em all
They won't let goEx's and the oh, oh, oh's they haunt me
Like ghosts they want me to count 'em all
They won't let go
Ex's and oh's
Now I don't have any rhythm but If I could get someone to sing the parody, I'll make it into a music video.......anyone?

X's are successful ticks and the O's not seen birds that haunt you...AND ME!

Okay, Johnny Cash, this song is for you, the man who hates birds...

Olaf

9-1-1 to Florida

Some days, I feel like an owl in the headlights.  I am siting in the dark, comfortable and all of a sudden I have light shined on me and I don't know where to go.....this barred owl in the Everglades and me have things in common but I am getting ahead of myself.

Big Year Day 53-54
Big Year Total:  455Coded birds:  31Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters,
Miles driven.  12,300Flight Miles 34600flight segments: 38   Airports: 22Hours at sea: 22Miles walked 55Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded:15


I heard of the code five zenaida dove while seeing the common crane in Texas.  I was urged by friends to go get this bird and invited by fellow big year birder, Christian Hagenlocher to join him as he was chasing this bird and was driving south to Florida.  I arrived Midland at 4pm and in the airport rearranged my flights, cancelled Phoenix and traded a potential code 5 dove for a ruddy ground dove. I looked at the United Airlines flight to Miami, the only way I could get there that night and closed my eyes and hit the "purchase" button, burning 12,500 miles and possibly finding myself have to do some fast talking to airport agents as United always bites me in the bum....always....

      I wrote my blog on Texas about what bothering me and on my mind and well I guess I offended or at least turned off some, but oh well, I write what I feel and think what I do, because that is what I have always done.....sometimes I say things I feel I must say....by the time I'm done with this year, I'm certain everyone will hate me, at least those that don't know me and that is fine...I suspect I won't need 750 birds, I may need 760, so any thought of a record is just ludicrous, and this isn't about that, .at least I didn't get a conceal and carry permit for birding...yet.  Ha..ha...eee....yeah.  Maybe I will reserve my thoughts on that.

      Christian picked me up in Miami at midnight after delayed flights, and both because they had no gate agents....and we drove south into the keys.  In Key Largo, we picked up a friend, Officer Friendly, who stopped Christian, his first traffic stop ever for not moving over properly on a DWI stop the officers were making to a dude in a neon green Dodge.
      We had a little issue when he asked for paperwork Christian had in a locked glove box, and....opening it was not an easy proposition.  He walked back to his car for advice from headquarters.  It could have been bad....Montana plated car, South Dakota passenger, a car full of camping gear and who knows what....it was too late for Officer Friendly and so he let us go, we could have went to jail.  Then pushing our luck, we found a parking lot on the edge of a bridge and pulled over to sleep in the car.  It was noisy but I fell asleep exhausted.  At first light Officers Protect and Serve came through the parking lot to kick us out.  We left for breakfast under the watchful eye of the Monroe County Police.
     We arrived in Long Key State Park and walked the trail and found Rangel Diaz from Miami and other birders and started the search for the dove.  It did take an hour and a half to find it, but when we did, it was a ham....


a wonderful code 5 bird...zenaida dove.
a bird I see in St. Martin all the time, but in ABAdom a great bird.....
why was it here...IDK, but it was the most photographed bird by me this year, I have maybe 200 shots of it, 100 are 9-10 on the photographic scale of goodness...

I also spotted a black-throated blue warbler in the undergrowth for another year bird.  Then we teamed up and searched for the grassquit and the Key West Quail dove but had no luck.  Christian and I then went off on our own.

I photographed a Reddish egret to document a bird I didn't photogrpah before


and a scissor-tailed flycatcher I counted a couple weeks back without getting a picture.


I continue to try to document and have witnesses for every bird I can, I know I can't photograph them all but I have to continue to try as there will always be ones that say I didn't see what I saw.

Over a bridge near where we slept, I spotted a frigatebird over the bridge.  It had a really odd white pattern but I just shrugged it off as bird #553 for the year...magnificent frigatebird.  Then someone reported a Lesser Frigatebird some keys south of there on the 23rd.  Was that the same bird?  It made us wonder and wished we had snapped a photo but we were on a bridge.  That was the only frigate we saw the whole time down there, too.  It may have been a missed MEGA bird but oh well, without a picture, it was just chatter and even with one, that is a hard bird to ID...and from me, I doubt I could have enough photos.  We were dreaming....when you here hoof beats, think horses not zebras...unless you are driving past the people who have the zebra on the way to the Glades and we were going there next.

We drove down to Flamingo and walked out on the very buggy and muddy Coastal Marsh Trail to call black rail and we found the spot, and saw many tracks of something, then we called them and got two great answers.  Our friends got them to storm the speaker but we were happy in the fog of mosquitoes to just get the bird.

It was my first shower in a while and a short night on the Ramada Inn in Florida City.  We had an odd dining experience at the Mutineer next door but well, it WAS food.  The morning brought traffic and more traffic and then at Loxahatchee NWR, Christian showed me the pair of smooth-billed anis, bird #5 for the trip and my 31st coded bird.


The anis were skittish and I didn't get the best picture, but well I have a wonderful life bird picture of this species so I didn't really care.

After Christian interviewed me for his birder project (he is doing research on birders) I got dropped off at Fort Lauderdale Airport for a trip home for a day to do laundry before I resume my trek out west to finish up on California birds.  I hope the added traffic to see the zenaida finds Key West Quail doves so I can come back to Florida.

As for me, I have surprisingly few bug bites that still itch.  Birding-wise, I sit at 455 birds and I feel a little behind the pace, there are good birds I need to see, and well to really have a chance at this thing for being anything, I need to break 500 as soon as I can in early March and push the coded birds up as close to 40 ASAP if there are enough birds around to do that.  Right now, I know of 4, and they have to be gotten fast.  It looks like I might have already screwed up on a MEGA frigatebird

one more look at the zenaida



#451  Zenaida dove
#452  Black-throated Blue warbler
#453  Magnificent frigatebird
#454  Black Rail
#455  Smooth-billed ani

sigh....a lot of work to do...maybe an insurmountable task but I keep going ..

Olaf
  

The Crane Whisperer

…and the saga continues.
I didn’t get any sleep on the night of big year day #49.
I got a distressing blog post from a fan, warning me that another man, one loathed he says in New Jersey was doing a big year, too.  IDK.  His totals reported for 2014, 678, ---2015, between 714 and 735 depending on ebird or the ABA, 776 on Facebook.  Two years of over 670, two of the top 20 efforts of all time and on the 710 plus year he left the ABA area for a while.... and now he is apparently doing a real big year?  What was 710 plus?  Seems a little generous, ambitious, or ....…then I read on….
To digress, there are five main ways to cheat or maybe being nice, make an error on a big year, since this is an honorary deal and I might add, it gives you nothing as a reward or prize except exhaustion and debt, just ask Greg Miller in 1998, his well documented experience which Jack Black had in the movie.
1.       Calling a bird you didn’t really identify, like a brown bird flying by, yup, key west quail dove…yesseree, saw it, tick!2.      Taking someone else’s effort (checklist) and copying it or frankly just making it up.3.      Counting dead birds or birds in a zoo, or domesticated birds4.      Counting birds out of the ABA area, say Bahamas, maybe even taking a picture and saying it was seen in Florida.5.      Releasing caged birds either illegally imported from Cuba, Mexico etc. or pets and then counting them even taking photographs.
This guy I don't know posted to me, accused this guy of partially doing all of this…ALL.  Really? 
I checked some of his 2015 ebird postings, he hasn’t posted a thing for 2016, well he wasn't in the top 100.  Was he trying to be stealthy?  So maybe he is sandbagging, IDK.  Maybe he is inexperienced as I've also heard, but why would you post this to the ABA list and if one wasn't sure?  All you would do is make yourself look bad....
I didn’t know what to do so I sent this to the biggest birders I knew or had ever emailed.  ABA Board members, the big year record holders or near record holders as in the end it is their effort this guy is hurting or marginalizing…is the coveted home run record coveted after Barry Bonds used steroids…?  No!
I got replies and some thinking this was a nice guy, but others emailed friends and largely got confirms of the worst of these accusations.  Who knows.  I got emails.  I did not answer any of them.  This was just an FYI post and by the time I did, I was in Texas and without internet.  I had no information, just the single post.  This wasn't my problem to fix.....
Here is my answer to all of you.  In the Big Year, Owen Wilson answers the cheating question:
“Everyone in the clubhouse knows who cheats on their scorecards.  Who would want to be that guy?”
Yes, who would want to be that guy and if someone has such a deep hole in their soul that they need to import birds and release them or make up counts.  If that is what they want to do, fine.  It isn't my problem.  I’m carrying on like I have.  This is about my effort and I'm doing this for me.   Whatever others do…it will sort out……….enough said.  I got rare birds to worry about.
But that is not why I didn’t sleep…
I went on Thursday and applied for a handgun permit.  I owned my first pistol at aged 15, a Ruger Security six, nickel plated .357 magnum.  I won it at Duck’s Unlimited. I traded it away at aged 17 for a trolling motor.  Bad trade, in retrospect but I caught a lot of fish with the old “Esox Magnum”…”big pike!)   The reason me and three office people went to get gun permits…?



       One of my former employees, a man that owned the IRS hundreds of thousands, filed suit on us for obeying an IRS seizure order to send them his final paycheck….tax protestors….they believe in the constitution and say the 16thamendment doesn’t allow income taxes….go figure….but that is is not what kept me up either.
What did was United delaying my 0500 flight so much it might as well cancelled it.  I got something half figured out so, I’d get to west Texas eventually but 2 hour delays become 6 hour delays and then cancelled when I can’t do anything about it…            I may be ugly, I may be a fat idiotic Swede.  I may not be be the best birder out there, but I’m one wily dude in an airport.  I’ve learned.  So I get up to the woman at United at 0400.  There is a huge line up behind me of similar fated people and I’ve done my homework.  I sart my line…I got a job interview in Midland at noon and I’m so disappointed.  I don’t even know, if it can be pushed back because it is…4 in the morning.  I continue the crocodile tears…I look over at American and sigh…If only I was on American…            Then she looks up their flight…something she isn’t supposed to do on an award mile flight like mine.  She says “oh they got lots of seats”…she rebooks my ticket on them.  That flight leaves in now 50 minutes….the line at American is going nowhere, so I causally walk into the Premier access line, some place I’ve never had access to “officially” on American and when it is my turn in a minute, the woman looks at me.  She knows I don’t belong.  “The woman at United told me to just use the 1st Class line, plane delay and family emergency.  You are so kind to except a change over ticket.”  The woman pats me on the shoulder, tells me everything will work out, and upgrades me on both segments through Dallas, no I skip the 1 hour security checkpoint, since they’ve just changed the system at Minneapolis and ten minutes later, I’m buying coffee at Starbucks.  Since my wife was flying to St. Martin, one gate over, I said hello and then I got on my plane and arrive to Midland, 20 minutes before I would have on United.             I was there…west Texas.  The oddest things happen and are seen in west Texas….I may give a list in another blog, like the time a Halliburton truck ran over my cell phone and made a pancake out of it and the ringer still worked, or the story of Eve’s Garden B&B in my BPT book and year, or my lactose intolerant pal who finds out there is lactose in quesadillas as we drive into Bordon County a place with few people, no bushes and especially no bathrooms.  Just look of Judge Roy Bean on the internet and nothing more needs to be said.  Roy Bean is west Texas and west Texas is Roy Bean.
            West Texas Memorial Cemetery.            My go to spot for scaled quail is two miles north of the airport in Midland, five minutes in Texas, I drive behind the property on the Nobels EOG oil lease, and there are 30 scaled quail running every which way, just like all the other times this noob oil man has been here.  Sometimes they are in the cemetery, sometimes behind.  Again, no way to get a photograph.   I did get a shot of a photogenic curve-billed thrasher.  One year bird, down and then off I headed south.  I once had to attend a burial here, to make it look good and luckily today, only the groundskeeper was there when I paid my respects to Mr. Thurmond.  Poor guy, I don’t know…I bird a lot in cemeteries.  I wonder what my cemetery count would be?
            Down the road I saw something.  It wasn’t initially a bird.  






Okay, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or just shake my head….I drove past a stuffed horse or at least what looked like one as I was getting towards Fort Davis and I had to stop.  It was made out of steel but the hat with ears out was real.  This was the Thundering Hooves Memorial Fence.  There were saddles, picture, and even pictures kids had drawn about a horse they owned now dead….many horses…even one mule and a burro named Pedro.  It was odd.  A dedication to a horse so loved the owner had promised the saddle would never be put upon another horse…it was on a log here.  I wanted to cry and then, I spotted a dead roadkill Killdeer, my roadkill list doesn’t have a killdeer so I took a picture..forgot about dead horses and drove on.
Davis Mountains, TexasQuail never come easy for me and the Montezuma quail especially, this bird is like finding a ghost, the only I’d ever seen in Arizona was dead in front of me seen while relieving myself on the side of a road, somehow, I got things tucked away and my camera on the bird to get a single blurry but ID-able shot.  As advised by Thor, I called ahead and yes, they have had the quail at the feeders, but when I checked in at 2pm at the state park, the volunteer and flushed four once near the feeders, no one had seen them in the feeders well, since he came and after I got checked in, I read the log, since at least July, when they had started a new log book…….phooey!  Then I found out someone had my camping site and so I had to go and reregister…crud.I finally looked where he had said they occasionally see them, and I got hot, hungry, so I ate a sandwich but my cheese had melted as it was hot.  I got tired, I got stared at by other campers, and I found a Townsend’s solitaire in a juniper tree…some consolation prize.  I walked trails, staked out feeders and well, I didn’t even hear anything quail like I could have made up to be a quail.  By dark, I was pooped, having not slept in a day and a half so I pitched my tent and prepared for the night.  It was then I noticed that my tent smelled significantly of cow, more precisely, cow manure.  I had switched tents at home as this Eureka one is lighter but I was so tired I didn’t care…..zzzz

It was a thirteen hour sleep interrupted by night sounds.  I had hoped to have had the chance to hear a western screech owl but alas….3 great horned owls or maybe the same one that moved three times and a plethora of noisy Eurasian collared doves.  I crawl out of the aromatic tent and it was about half light and went to the rest room.  I then started my quail hunt and unfortunately, it was more of the same….no quail.  I climbed trails, drove, walked, and even once tiptoed by camping areas 68-70 where the volunteer told me to…no quail.  I then went to the feeders.  At the first feeder I spotted a lone Brewer’s sparrow hanging with two green tailed towhees, another small consolation.   I looked at the map and saw a second set of feeders at the interpretive center and drove over there.  I hiked the trail and was just back to the car and heard some crazy person on the main road in honking.  WTF?  I could eventually see it coming not really all that slow and it honked and then I saw a blur of wings.  IDK, maybe I was a quarter mile away as the crow flies?  But birds flew off the road and they were definitely quail.  Now some birders, possibly that referred to in my opening would have just counted those quail, and been gone but they could have been gray partridge for all I know, and as such I couldn’t count those.  That isn’t birding to count birds like that…  I cursed at the black car as it turned into an RV Camper spot…and then kicked a rock and sighed.  Missed opportunities…quail…



I drove past the campsites, hiked another trail, went to the overlook, drove out of the park and looked by picnic areas and then frustrated went and took down my tent after a 16th time past campsites 68-70.  My tent was in need of a good airing out, I was frustrated and the only quail in the park almost got killed by some maniac with Louisiana plates.  It is times like this to just give up, so I did.  I threw it all in the car, and I didn’t even take the poles out of my tent.  “F’ this place” I said and was backing out, but vowed, one more, one last drive towards 68.  I had gone 50 yards and then window down I sensed something.  On the side of the road, there they were!Montezuma quail……




Nothing more to be said.  I took pictures, breathed deeply, and shook my head like I was dreaming and left.
I saw a phainoepepla on way out, hadn't got a good photo this year of one so..




Winkler County, TexasOf all the oil mavens of Texas, one man alone I would love to have spent a week with…Sid Richardson.  I don’t know if I’d learn the art of business, carousing, drinking, become saved, or learn how to control politicians, but in the end, it would be a hell of a week.  Sid largely, made his first big fortune on drilling wells in the lonesome dry wasteland that is Winkler county, located right where the border of Texas turns from south to west.  These towns…Wink, and Kermit that house this county, are barren, and look like they were run down 30 years ago.  Of the Billions taken out of this county so little has been put back, that some ghosts towns have more going for them.  Largely, in the 20s and 30s nobody had anything so the minerals could be bought for a song and dance and then oil!   The Bass family, heirs of Richardson, have more money than some Treasuries of other countries.This is also prime bird habitat but there are few roads and even in the oil bust lots of trucks….I thought I saw a sage thrasher but it was something else and then a bland sparrow came up and went down.  I thought…Cassin’s?  I played its song to remind myself in the car and this bird went nuts…….yup…definitely Cassin’s.  I never left the car.

Then I began seeing birds I could not recognize.  It got out of hand and by the time I got to the sand hills, this strip of sand about 2-20 x 100 miles that goes at an angle through Monahan State Park and up through here, I finally figured it out.  Winter lark buntings changing over to black plumage….I have never seen them in this in between phase. 




All totaled, I bet I ended up seeing 3-4000. 
The sand hills, barren land and if someone would give you $100 bucks in 1925 for a mineral rights…you would laugh at them.




I was making time and stopped at some of the towns.  Seagraves advertised a museum with art exhibit.  I had an urge to stop.  You can see cool things in some of these museums.  It was closed on weekends….alas everything I tried to stop at or shop to browse in…closed.  They did have gas though…   
Brownfield TX areaI rolled into the cotton fields north of Seminole Texas where the land grows slightly more fertile in the early afternoon.  I lurked in a park for a moment starring at trees and the grass and to everyone enjoying the park, I’m sure I looked like a stalker.  I got behind a row of cars with consecutively numbered license plates with no added birds and headed for the Mound Lake area, where Justin told me to stake out possible crane fields.  I looked on the public roads north, east, west, and then south of the lake, and then crossed 380, heading even more south.  I stopped, looked listened.  No cranes.I did find a covy of bobwhite quail after I followed a hawk, which I never adequately identified go into a grove of trees…quail came out the other side.  Here is the last one, or maybe the next to last one, the hawk never came out so maybe he had dinner.




The vigil for cranes continued, I saw what looked like a field sparrow but something about it was wrong.  It had too much of a line behind the eye.  I wondered if it had some hybridization in it and although 90% positive, I second guessed myself and finally in a fit decided it was nothing and I'd call the bird nothing.  I couldn't be positive, so that was that.  Maybe it was just that i was tired and I had just about enough of the nothingness of these cotton, milo, and wheat fields.  I found the road towards Lubbock and after Justin Bosler whom Petra Hockey has nicknamed the Crane Whisperer, graciously allowed me to crash at his place and I decided to invite him to dinner, I headed north.  I came upon a colony of burrowing owls in a prairie dog town and then eventually met Jason and his friend Adelaide from Alpine TX.  They both put up with my BS and we enjoyed great Tex-Mex food.

Morning came early especially when I hadn’t even drank my coffee and Justin called and was on Barn owls.  The problem was I was 20 miles behind him due to me getting lost in SW Lubbock and then deciding to grab something a few days old at a convenience store for food.  Nothing but the best for this birder---day old, day old breakfast sandwich , the best.I drove at what is now owl speed, something above the speed limit and below getting killed.  I saw Justin ahead and I slowed beside him in the middle of the road and soon barn owls flew overhead in a quarter light….owl number 9.We stashed my car in a rest area and then spotting a flock of sandhill cranes already moving south x southwest, we followed, then turned, and followed again.  Eventually, some maybe 15 miles from the start, we found the secret feeding location of the 50,000 cranes of Mound Lake.  That was the easy part…now, where was the rare crane?  If it was still even here.  One in 50,000...luck...?  It was like a lottery. We skipped some small groupings, looked at one and Justin looked disinterested, we then trespassed on a field to get a better look but that didn’t feel right so we got on a real road and headed north.  We looked at a flock of maybe 5000 and most of their heads were down and well, we wanted a better group, then we went around the corner and stop on a dust, erosion filling in road and parked, note, NO COROLLAS HERE!  We got out and scoped, I went from left to right and Justin right to left and then….”I got one!” He said excitedly.Common Crane…code four bird, I’m the second human to see one in North America this year….cool.



Then…I got one, wait…2 cranes?  Then while I was trying to digiscope one it went behind a water tank and Justin called out the locations…there were three locations…?  We had most likely found three birds.  It was a very excited morning out in the cold wind of the Texas Panhandle, we both had the shakes maybe because we were cold or maybe just a great score….”man, Justin, you are my vote for birder of the year in Texas.”  I said and then as he reported it, I learned Justin had given much for these birds…he had reported them, which I am forever grateful otherwise I wouldn’t have known they were around and told everyone to keep out and look for them in the fields and the TX Dept of Wildlife/ game and parks got mad and pulled his Graduate school funding….assholes.  Apparently they don’t like birders……..Oddly as I was in the car to warm up, good old Jay Lehman, big year birder extraordinaire (4thall time) himself emailed me asking about…common cranes….”Jay, I am just warming up after looking at least two..strange you ask...”  Or something like that, I wrote and Jay got the NARBA alert we sent out in the time between his writing and my reply….Jay, it appears, is also in the ‘zone.’We drove around finding one again later after they all rotated fields and then as they began the cycle of returning to the water, where I couldn't go.  We found a waterhole of our own and tallied, one gadwall, crows by the thousands, some horned larks and my last year bird for the trip, a pair of McCown’s longspurs coming to the water.  A final year bird for Texas.Also when we were cruising around we got another rare bird alert…zenaida dove in Florida…as I drove south to Midland Airport, suddenly Wellton, AZ, my next scheduled stop didn’t look very good, and then people started emailing me, one offered to pick me up.  I turned in my car and opened up this computer….only 12,500 miles to Miami on United….when in doubt don’t fly United, but well…what the heck, I hit purchase, and then off I ran for the gate, it left in 40 minutes…"run Olaf, run" a friend wrote me, and run I did.....
Thank you JustinOlaf 
Big Year Day 50-52
Big Year Total:  450Coded birds:  29Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters,
Miles driven.  11,900Flight Miles 31600flight segments: 34   Airports: 21Hours at sea: 22Miles walked 53Miles biked 2states/ prov. birded:15
Western Midland County#441  Scaled quail
Davis Mountains#442  Townsend’s Solitaire#443  Brewer’s Sparrow#444  Montezuma Quail
Winkler County#445  Cassin’s Sparrow#446  Lark Bunting
Brownfield TX area#447  Northern bobwhite#448  Barn Owl#449  Common Crane
#450  McCown’s Longspur

A Swede in a Strange Land

Philadelphia PA

Big Year Day 47

Big Year Total:  440
Coded birds:  28
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters,

Miles driven.  11,100
Flight Miles 28200
flight segments: 30   Airports: 20
Hours at sea: 22
Miles walked 49
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:15

The National Swedish History Museum has sat completed in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in Philadelphia since 1938, even before the park had his name.  It was designed to be opened at the 300 anniversary of Swedish settlement in North America. The building's design is based on Ericsberg Castle, a 17th-century manor house in Södermanland, Sweden, which I have seen and been to. 
        The architect, John Nydén, a Swedish-American from Chicago, combined Swedish and American elements by modeling the exterior arcades on those of Mount Vernon. The copper cupola is a copy of the one atop Stockholm City Hall. The Museum has 12 permanent galleries displaying a broad and interesting collection combining history and culture. Three of the Museum’s 12 galleries are devoted to the history of the New Sweden Colony established in the Delaware Valley in 1638. The museum provides a wealth of information about this often unfamiliar period in history. Other galleries, ranging in style from Art Deco (my favorite) to International, concentrate on more recent Swedish contributions.
      Currently, they are having a United Stockholm exhibit where some guy went around and photographed all the Stockholms in the world, even the one near to where I live in South Dakota, population, 105.  Okay, a guy going around and trying to photograph all the birds OR a guy going around trying to photograph all the places named Stockholm....who is more weird?   Then again, he is featured in the museum as a significant contributor to Swedish-American history and me...well.... then there is Olaf.  I'm never going to be in here.
     Truth be told, I'm not sure what I am besides an American, my grandfather Allwin could have been a Swedish citizen, but I'm too far removed and now with Mennonite, German, and Irish blood, I'm the lovable mutt, like most everyone else here.
     So did I come here just for a history lesson?
     No....a bird.  I flew from Norfolk, VA to Detroit, ran to a connection, flew to Minneapolis, hugged my wife and daughter, grabbed my stuff in baggage, repacked, switched car keys, and flew to Philly last night.  A journey of 2500 miles to go 270.  Hertz was so screwed up first they gave me two cars, then the wrong car, so it took me an hour to get that straightened out and then off I went to the Airport Waterfront Hotel.  It was cheap....cheap is good right?
      My room only had three mouse holes in the wall.  I am thinking the fourth was from a cable line, since removed.  They did have heat.  The thermostat was stuck at 84.  All the bugs I could see were dead...more good things?  It isn't an "airport" hotel.  The name comes from the landing of planes which actually vibrated the floor enough that the dead bugs moved.  Maybe an airplane hotel?  It was sort of entertaining...in a really WTF sort of way.  By 6, I had enough and snuck out before I got mugged or the mice woke up.
      From the parking lot for the museum, I walked to an overlook and presto.....





       It wasn't 7am and here in the shadow of the museum and Citizen's Bank Park (home of the Phillies), I had bird number 439, a code 4, the barnacle goose. I now had one of the winter east-coast geese off the board (the other the pink-footed), although I was going to wait until fall to get them, but this goose was just too tempting.
       It was then a couple of players came by.  They saw me and slammed on the brakes and then cautiously walked up the steps of the pavilion I was standing on scoping the geese.  They always kept a post or a wall between them and me so I never got a good look at them.  This was a hunting motion, even my tomcat Tiger does this.  I wasn't sure of this place or neighborhood.  You hear stuff about Philly (and nothing much good I may add) especially when we lived a couple hours NW of here.  This is Trading Places and Rocky but....I packed up my camera.  I got prepared for a defensive position and tactically retreated.  Being a big guy now with a beard....two thugs may have thought about it twice.  When I neared my car, the two got in their Bentley, zoomed past me and honked the horn, pointing at me out the window making a gesture like a gun, our maybe they were just being friendly and were software engineers....IDK.  When they had circled the lake and came by a second time, honking more and gesturing ...I took the hint and I left.  A state trooper was parked out in front of the entrance to the park, much like a military sentry, right in the middle of the street.  Hum....definitely players.        By 0720, I was back at Hertz and plotting my retreat from Philadelphia.   
     Note to you guys thinking of chasing these geese.  They are easy, just 5 miles from the airport.  Take Broad north (exit 17) and access is from the north of the park, but be careful, not sure about the safety here.    A bird isn't worth a mugging, or worse...
    All I can say is these two barnacle geese and I were Swedes in a very strange land (Philadelphia).
Lifer beer for breakfast?  #731

stay safe, Barnacles away

Olaf

PS an update.  As I periodically like to do, I spent the ride back from Philly auditing my year list.  I keep a list in triplicate.  I use Ebird and try to post checklists real time if there is cell-phone service, occasionally, I use shared checklists from pelagics and others, and I also keep a manual checklist using the January 1 ABA checklist.  My third plan of attack is to list the birds in my diary sequentially.

When I was doing my first species audit, I noticed that on my checklist, the wrentit was absent which I photographed in San Diego, when I compared my checklist to Ebird, I noticed that in the Lower Florida Canyon somehow, and I don't think Laurens Halsey misses to add a bird to a checklist very often, he omitted a painted redstart to the list, which I failed to notice when I imported that checklist--a bird I also photographed although poorly.  We were talking to Christian Haganlocher at the time and were distracted, sorry Christian.  So that is plus one bird on both counts, I had also on my sequential list elsewhere and the ABA kept the Flame-colored tanager as a provisional and I don't think there is any doubt that that is an immature non-hybird, so due to that, I am revising my list up to 440 total birds, so that all of my lists are the same here on February 16.  My January total is then 406 birds which I still think is a record.

Frostbite Birding--Tar Heel style

The North Carolina Coast, February 11-14

Big Year Day 42-46

Big Year Total:  438
Coded birds:  27
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters,

Miles driven.  11,100
Flight Miles 25800
flight segments: 28   Airports: 19
Hours at sea: 22
Miles walked 49
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:14


            Lena and I left her school at 1230 when I picked her up with what we now call the “Maverick's Falcon,” as my car was not quite done yet so again Maverick the Seal led the way to Minneapolis.  



I’ll get to this new name of Lena’s Volvo in a moment.  Her principle, Mr. Snaza took one look at me, and laughed.  I have become something of a bit of a celebrity in my town.  “Where to this time, Olaf.” He smirked.            “Hatteras, North Carolina.”  I shrugged.  Apparently in winter in Milbank, South Dakota, I’m the news...the only news.            Lena read my recent blog and said, I had the force, the birding force and amazing good luck in a tight spot so that would make me just like Hans Solo (of course Harrison Ford was a Ripon College attendee like me, although I graduated).  “That would make me Chewbacca,” Lena said and then she admitted she liked being referred to as a Wookie.  Hans and Chewie, Olaf and Lena, and the whole way there, Maverick just did his little dance.  Then I remembered, Hans gets killed in episode 7…
                 When I got to Minneapolis I got the Hatteras weather report, what else…horrible weather.  By Detroit, Brian Patteson had already cancelled Saturday’s outing for the great skua and everything else, pushing the two days of trips back a day and to be honest Sunday didn’t look much better to me.  This was a carbon copy of last year here when we endured the nastiest two days I could imagine in a coastal and southern destination.  What else to expect on a bad weather big year?  I guess we’d get what we could and start with the woodpecker.  I was like the blue demon from earlier in the week had overcame me and filled me with depression.  I was busy making plans of how to best tackle all the birds I needed to chase and now this?  I didn’t know what to do so I guess, I just would have to wait until Sunday and see what happened then.  I don’t wait well for anything.  
                The Hertz woman wasn't making any sense to me at the rental counter and all I wanted to do wanted go.  She gave me keys, Then I noticed the car, a Dodge Charger. I looked at the reciept, I had been upgraded.  I don't want this car....my experience with one in Arizona was the worst.  If there is a worse birding car I just don't know about it.  I was too tired to walk back in and say.  "I just want my Carrolla?  Can't I have a Corolla?"  I would live to regret this laziness.
                We got in late about two in the morning to Nag's Head and then I found out they had 2 Comfort Inn's and of course I went to the wrong one, 0515 in the morning came awfully early.  I drove to the Palmetto Peartree Preserve by memory, it was maybe 35 miles from the motel.  We had it timed just correctly.  at 3/4 light the birds-red-cockaded woodpeckers come out of the tree, the hang for a few minutes chirping and climb the tree and then away they go for the day.  If I missed it, I was screwed.

2/12/2016

                Crap, we turned on the road off the blacktop and around the first turn the road was flooded, crap and I'm in the worst car.  I put on my boots (luckily they were packed), and walked in the water, it seemed firm underneath so  I drove up to an island of gravel about 200 yards further, I could feel the real wheel drive car not going well.  I walked again, this part seemed deeper.  Crap.  Even now turning the car around was going to be an issue, where even was the road exactly?
                 Turn or go on?  Right there, a wise man would have turned around and came back again, although all this would crust over in ice I thought but what if there wasn't a next time for this bird?  Crap! again. Then the radio played the song.......Elle King started singing "EXes and Oh's"  crud.  "Lena get your boots on" I shouted, it is a message from the force, "Yoda is speaking to us."  Well, I didn't say the last part.  I double parked the car maybe leaving room to pass it, but I didn't test where the ditch was, and we took off on foot.


Here is the location of the car when we returned.   It was the fastest mile and a half in birding.  All in snake boots and Lena, bless her heart, trudged with and kept up even getting blisters.  We got to the trees in I don't know how fast but were we too late?  There was absolutely no sound, just one song from a Carolina wren.  Lena sat on the ground.  I looked impatient.  I hoped....One minute, two minutes, and then four, they came out!!!!!!!!  We'd made it.  Whew!
Then I realized that Lena's camera only had power for a couple of photos, I didn't bring mine to allow for greater speed, as less to carry.
#422  Red-cockaded woodpecker


The rarest non-extirpated woodpecker in America.  It was great and then as we casually walked to the abandoned car, we took time to start recognizing our first common east coast birds. The little low hanging fruit I had left for the year.  Lena also needed a Carolina chickadee and we bagged that one too. 
#423  Tufted Titmouse#424  Eastern Towhee#425  Brown Headed Nuthatch
I got back to the car and realized, I didn't have battery power either....but we had the woodpecker!  Then I managed to turn the car around using a 34 point turn and the beast mobile didn't got stuck, and I gunned the big hemi-engine through the middle of the puddle and we got out of the cursed road.  Note to self----NEVER EVER EVER NEVER RENT A DODGE CHARGER!
We drove to the Alligator River NWR, and added to the local total
#426  Tundra swan  *here is a later photo as I still had no battery power

I got #426 at both locations, the pond at Bodie Island and at the Inlet
#427  Rusty Blackbird 
The Dunkin' Donuts had a power outlet to charge batteries while we ate and drank coffee and decided out next move.  A kid with a cup of coffee saw my camera and started talking and gave me a lead for a bird Lena needed at a feeder in Manteo, it was just a few blocks away.  After I found the painted bunting (female) for Lena, we went to Oregon Inlet--Bodie Island one of my favorite places to bird.  I always see odd things here.   It was there that the weather went from okay, to "are you kidding me?"
#428  Black Duck


I walked out on the breakwater looking for a purple sandpiper, but largely the rocks had been sanded in, so I didn't locate one.  It was very very cold out there, heavy wind and I dressed in my full bad weather gear (first picture), and my poor daughter was getting cold, she had lost her hat.   But gannets were everywhere, there were razorbills easily seen out in the ocean, and luckily as I scanned the cormorants, one clearly didn't belong to the other twelve, a great cormorant, it seems there is always one here, and then first that one and then the double cresteds all flew out to sea. The pictures attached are from 2/14 at sea, but in order of year birds, they go here.
#429  Northern Gannet

#430  Razorbill


#431  Great cormorant
Then it started to snow and snow hard.  It was entertaining at first, and I took this picture of a black scoter with snow on it


but it was soon icing the roads..It had been a long cold and now snowy day and I drove on to Hatteras, we bought supplies and we just crashed at the Breakwater Inn.
2/13/2016
With today's pelagic cancelled I had to make use of my time.
I just knew there had to be a purple sandpiper at the Oregon inlet, there just had to be one, so we drove 50 miles back there at first light.  It was cold, but sort of cool with all the snow on the beaches..in a cold sort of way.
Even the Bodie Island Lighthouse looked cool in the snow and the bright morning sun.

Then with two hats, extra gloves, long underwear and maybe even wearing what looked like space suits, since we were Hans and Chewie, and I guess the force was with us, birding force, we looked the part and we kept at it. It was still cold, so don't kid yourself.....we tried the south side of the bridge for purple sandpipers again.  I checked every rock, every crevice and then on the last possible rock........there he was.
#432  Purple Sandpiper



#433  Black-legged kittiwakes
Lena noticed two odd looking and smaller sized gulls over the bridge as I was putting my camera away, cool immature kittiwakes, classic M pattern on wings.  I've seen thousands of Kittiwakes, I was cold and tired and I wasn't going to dig my camera back out for one of these, oh well
We went back to Bodie Island and the pond, and out on that board walk it was what they like to call "Butt Cold."  Now I'm a hardy soul, I've seen and experienced below -52 three times, and twice, once even on a high school date, once even on a high school date when the car froze up when I was out in -100 and beyond wind chill, but single digits with a harsh 25 mph wind in your face, it was still really cold.  Lena looked like a sand person from Star Wars, too.   
I figure, the ice is forming in the marsh grass and there being king rails here, they might be conducive to being found.  We started calling and then shortly not all that far away we got a clear answer. He was in a little higher ground in the long grass and I'm sure we could have flushed it, but I was cold and I didn't want to bother the poor thing and call it out, it was tough enough for the thing.  Lena and I smiled and that was that, king rail found #434.
#434 King Rail
we went to lunch in Nag's Head.  It turns out that a good reason to NOT eat at a restaurant is when there are fire trucks out front.

Did someone die from the food, or did the kitchen just burn up?  Whatever, we drove on.
back in the field, we tried to flush sparrows we needed but all we seemed to be able to flush was songs and savannas, nothing new

Lena liked the view from the dunes at one spot, but we got worn out and so we eventually gave up and came back and found my old pal Thor, a fellow Norske, although Thor is proudly Canadian.  We ate dinner with a nice couple from New York, and tried to psyche ourselves up for tomorrow.  It was going to be cold and long, fun would never be admitted on this pelagic by anyone. It was like we were all having colonscopies in the morning.
The Pelagic
It wasn't the coldest day in birding history, but sometimes when you think about it, a non-birder would have thought all of us needed to be examined psychologically for going out.  Brian and Kate do a wonderful job on the Stormy Petrel II, and not wanting us to get too beat up, Brian delayed departure to 0730 and then we weren't in a hurry.  When we finally got thru the pass into the open ocean it wasn't long before we realized that it was still going to be tough out there, tough birding and tough on your body.  Lena got to experience quite a few new things
1) her first sharks (a large hammerhead)2) first 8-10 foot rollers3) first frozen sea spray on the deck4) first sea smoke5) first bout of seasickness6) first heave over the back rail
Sigh, it was a long and very cold voyage for her.  
The sea smoke was both eerie and cool at the same time, we even saw sea smoke vortexes.

The sea smoke is basically steam where 70 degree gulf stream water is going through 20 degree air.  The coastal water was about 50 degrees or colder and where these two hit yielded birds and huge monster waves.  
here is a Bonepart's gull at the junction. look at the bird but dig those waves behind it, we had driven through them to cross a shoal at one point.  I think 10 foot was conservative for a few of them.

 One of the over a thousand Boneparte's Gulls had distinctive black markings on top of the wings and it was noticeably smaller, and immature 1st year Little gull, #435  Little Gull is a coded bird too!
It became hard to take pictures out on deck as the sea spray coated everything and so I eventually just stowed the camera.  Nothing out here was worth the damage salt water could cause and with frozen ice on deck, I needed both hands to not have a real close interview with the sharks..
We eventually saw a bunch of red phalaropes at the temperature break and then finally two dovkie dove in the front port side of the boat before reemerging aft and flying away letting everyone back there get a bit of a look.  Birds #436-37.
What a difference a year makes.  In 2015 dovkie were everywhere, now, just these and no shearwaters.  I wasn't sure now, where I'd get my manx as none showed on this trip.  I hadn't planned on that.  I need to look into that bird. 
The day rocked on, like we really rocked.  Lena couldn't mover her toes, in fact I couldn't move them either but I toughed it out.  It was hard to really get much of a look at anything in the water, it was so rough.
We started to head home and I needed to warm up.  A fan wanted his picture with me... and then Brian shouted, "There he is, flying in at 8 o'clock."  Almost everyone was in warming up and dejected and I was thinking of a cool name for Thor's nemesis bird.  Something like the Brown Bastard or something and then the call.  Thor and I were first to the door, we almost broke it down and then we went aft as Kate was pointing and with the naked eye, both of us saw it, big brown "angry flying" bird and then it swung about, keeping low to the water and flew off and Brian put the breaks on the boat.  I didn't know if I should put up bins, or camera, and ended up just looking.  There the bastard was.  Somehow Lena had fought through the throng and I asked her what she saw?  "A brown bird bigger than a immature herring gull, flying away, did it have white on its wings?"  That it did.  It was the great skua Lena dear, sigh, a quick view but one guy got confirmation photos.  Some didn't even get that.  It just wasn't me, photos were tough on this bird, but another lifer, and another coded bird.  The force was still with us, Hans and Chewie won again.  Thor had him too.
#438  Great Skua  
It took Lena a long bath to warm up her toes, she screamed when she first put them into warm water and then also agreed to wear a patch out of Adak on probably an even rougher pelagic.  This one in Hatteras was not for the casual birder but all in all, we got almost everything, except no Manx and no puffins, oh well.
Monday's makeup cruise...cancelled, another storm moving in, more snow inland.  There wasn't a makeup of the makeup day...we were done.
Thor and I drank beer in our room celebrating and then Lena came over finally warmed and then we locked ourselves out of the room.  We had to call the owner to come and let us in.  Then at 0550, the fire siren in town went off.  I guess it was time to leave, all I can say is it HAS to be warmer in May, it just has to.  Does every adventure have to be fighting the elements?
Next up, Philadelphia, but first Hans had to go to a forgotten planet in the hinterland, some call it South Dakota, and drop off Chewie,for specialized training using the force with a Jedi master others call Mr. Snaza.  There were lots of peril enroute to this secret place--snow in Virginia, cancelled planes, and a mad dash through Detroit airport where the forces of the dark side tried to ruin the master plan with the weather, but alas, Princess Leia came and took Chewie the rest of the way from Minneapolis so Hans could go and face the next mission ...Alone....Would the dark weather Sith ruin him or would the birding force continue....?
stay tuned on this channel for the next installment.......
Olaf  
PS.  Maybe I really am sort of something.... I got a notification that Greg Miller had accepted me as a Facebook friend, who have ever guessed?  The force is really working....I have to think about who Greg Miller is in the Star Wars analogy.  Hum.....will have to ponder that

The Hunt for the Blue Devil

Lower Rio Grande Valley Texas

Big Year Day 38, 39-41

Big Year Total:  421
Coded birds:  25
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters, racoon
Miles driven.  10,750
Flight Miles 24,000
flight segments: 24   Airports: 17
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 49
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:13

After I conquered my Pink Menace the American flamingo, my friend Chris Feeney, who had a nemesis bird of his own to exorcise, the blue bunting--his exploits in chasing and not finding that bird in some sense put my 'pink' problems to shame, I gave the bird a little jazz, I nicknamed his nemesis bird the "Blue Devil."  I didn't do this in the sense that it was a mean devil but used the contemporary music definition of the blue devil:
Blue devils, demons causing depression, according to some the etymology of the blues music genre Missing this bird so many times has led Chris to depression, and well, buntings have a nice singing voice and of course...they are deeply and gorgeous little blue birds.  So it came as a shock a couple of weeks later when what should show up in Texas, but yet another blue devil.  Poor Chris with scheduled medical tests couldn't go but when a second code four appeared--the white-throated thrush and Olaf was back from Alaska, I couldn't get to Texas soon enough!

First, I had just got home from Alaska on Day 38, Feb 7, but with a blizzard raging west of Minneapolis, all i could do was go to my grandmother's house to watch the Super Bowl.  One not wanting to waste a day, i went looking for a stale report of a saw-whet owl in St Croix Falls and in the middle of a massive text with a man named Tony Lau who had seen it three weeks earlier I finally found the roost but unfortunately no owl.  I continued north to Grandma Lucille's.

I needed something so I tromped in the woods in search of the elusive ruffed grouse I had jumped repeatedly in a corner of the family property.  I started making spirals until finally I cut a grouse track.


I didn't see any wing marks at any point so I circles around as it couldn't have gone far.  This circle took an hour.  I scratched my hands on the prickly ash, tripped on the barbed wire and then about the last place I would have looked for a grouse and not 30 yards from where i lost track of the trail, it flushed bird #414

#414  Ruffed Grouse

I went back and took a nap in my old room, sigh, memories, then bad memories, Super Bowl L was a real sleeper...yawn

I looked for the owl again at Interstate Park but again an empty branch.  Snow and ice was coming down so I made for the airport.  Luckily, with my elite status of researching for this big year, I got through the security line in 5 minutes and then I got upgraded.  Then my return got upgraded.  The perks of heavy travel.

I landed in Harlingen and hit the ground running, or speeding, and by 320 I was at Estero and 325, I had a coded life bird, the white-throated thrush.  It could not be any easier.

#415  White-throated thrush



I went to go check a hole for an owl, this would be the 7th time and so I paid my tab $5, and headed to the other part of Estero.  I spotted an ash-throated flycatcher in a tree and then it called briefly before flying away.  I had hoped to eventually see one of these down here in the winter.

#416  Ash-throated flycatcher

Then in my hurry to get to the owl spot on Alligator Lake, I tripped on the bridge, and just wiped out terribly.  I groaned in pain and cursed at the damn boardwalk and my stupidity.  I slowly checked for broken bones, none appeared broken.  My shade on my lens had flown into the ditch and I had scratched my filter but camera looked okay and then I saw things sticking out of my elbow.  I flicked out rocks and luckily the blood cleaned the wound.  My knee was just really bruised.

Then two irritated birders standing by the lake came up to me and I kid you not, one said.  "J%$# Christ stop F%%^& swearing you're scaring the fulvous whistling ducks."

Wait, I need that bird! I thought and forgot about the injury.

#417  Fulvous whistling duck



Okay, maybe my foul mouth got me a bird, but I was hurt, too.  The pain returned to my arm and knee when the owl wasn't there.

Then I went to Frontera Audubon Center for a continuation of a stakeout that seemed that I had stated over a month earlier and in some ways it felt like I had never left.  This time I was searching for another skulker, the blue bunting, the devil in blue.  It was drier this time and the sun was much improved.  That first night, I searched for about an hour as the park was open but alas, I saw nothing.

I knew Feb 9th was going to be a long day of standing, searching, sneaking and that would e good except, my body ached from my fall.  At 0700 I arrived feeling like it was just going to be a long and tiring day.  I had this feeling about a circle of benches I found, that this was going to be the spot, unfortunately by 0830, it wasn't.

I then began to run into people who knew me...a helpful Vet from Houston I had met at Refugio, then I ran into Liz Southworth from Massachusetts.  I have run into Liz at...Nebraska, Arizona, and British Columbia, we have been a day apart a couple of times in Florida, California, and if my memory serves me, once before in Texas too.  She is friend of my 'coach' Chris Feeney but interestingly despite my knowing her, we have never formally met.  Birding is a small circle, sometimes way WAY too small.  It is usually better to be anonymous, and get in get bird and get out but this was going to be a long day, I could feel it and I was not very energetic.  Liz looked left and then I looked right and then I got a call, bird seen!

Well it was but by the time I got there, no bunting even Liz a few feet away didn't see it.  By lunch, Liz was frustrated and went to see the thrush, I camped out at my circle and then at 1200 I vowed to go see the tropical parula.  I can't explain the supernatural sense I get when I'm in the birding 'groove.'  I can sense when the target bird is around and some times when I really in the zone, i can sense what i'm going to see.  Many of you will laugh at this but those of you who have seen it at work, will understand.  I do not understand it.  It isn't a dream.

The night before this, I was dreaming of being on a committee to undertaand why the Kiskadee was looking to die out in a couple of years....I never think about the great kiskadee...so why this dream?  Obviously it wasn't a premonition about anything.  While I was listening to a couple of men gab at feeding station C&H at Frontera, I got the feeling.  I do have great low frequency hearing and can detect the slightest of movement, even a mouse step.  I froze instantly.  I saw something out of place deep deep in the woods and sensed a twitch I think, IDK.  If I knew, I could use my "birdy sense."  Initially I figured it was the tropical parula as I was mere feet from when I saw one on December 31.  Then whatever it was twitched.  I zeroed in on the movement.  Then I saw the blue.  It was the blue devil!

Time slowed down as the devil and I did a dance for it to remain hidden and I to try to get a photograph.  I told someone I had it for 15 minutes but it may have been 5 IDK.  I had one great shot at a photo but it moved when I was re positioning around a tree.  Then my autofocus miss fired and I switched to manual.

It made a slow half circle around the feeding station including a little time in the edge of the cemetery next door, but I had it, the blue devil was off the board!

#418 Blue Bunting




I got all the important parts, just not on the same photograph

Unfortunately, Liz was absent and the guys gabbing made me mad, so by the time I found another guy staking out a water hole it had disappeared into the thick brush.  I'm sure it was perched and I spooked it a bit when I sensed it.  Lucky me....again!  That is all I could say.

I then looked a bit for the parula, got sick of Frontera and went to find birds I needed.  I went to Santa Ana..

Santa Ana NWR

#419  Tropical Kingbird


Everyone likes this shot but to be honest after I spied my first tropical kingbird, I found them everywhere.

Here is one when I came back to Frontera,

I saw them at Bentsen, Estero, Anzulduas, and even one on the side of the road in Mission...go figure....

Then back at Frontera, i came face to face with a legend, a hero, a God of men in the birding world, at least I thought so.  Back in Ripon College I learned field birding from Professor William S. Brooks, and my college president, William S. Stott.  Both of these men had cameo appearances in my "Boobies, Peckers, and Tits" project but the man who was THE real man of birding was Benton Basham, the first man to reach 700 on a Big Year, 1983 and held the record during my formative years of college, 1983-87 (I graduated in 1988), he was also the first man to surpass 800 on his life list.  While I was cruising around Frontera, who do I run into but the LEGEND Ben himself.

Although it looks like Neil Hayward and I will be on a boat together in May in Adak (I guess a plane too), I doubt very much that I will run into any of the former Big Year record holders during this big year, in fact even if I did, they wouldn't seek me out and I guess Hayward and I will have some conversations as it is a very small boat for three days but again....birding is a team sport but then again...it isn't.

Here staking out the Blue Bunting water hole was the legend himself, Mr. Basham.  Oddly, Liz came by and gave up my big year plan and then he actually cared about it.  He was such a humble fellow.  Giving advice and to be honest I felt like I was just tussling with the devil in the desert of February in a big year and I run into Moses, and Moses cares enough to want to lead me to the promised land.  Mr. Basham even reminded me of a guru, beard and all.  He was enthusiastic and he actually wanted my card!  He was very happy when I gave it too him too, and just didn't seem to be polite.  Wow!  In the middle of the woods, I find both the devil and salvation, in the form of the legend.

I got fired up with Mr. Basham's positive energy and even my knee and elbow didn't hurt so bad.  Liz and I were going to meet for dinner but first, enthused, I was going to give that old hole one more look, it was only 10 minutes away.

Estero Llano Grande

Einstein wrote that the definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over and over again but expect different results.  Seven times I ventured to a certain hole in a box in Estero Llano Grande and 7 times all I found was a hole, an empty hole, including yesterday, not once but twice.  So after parting ways with Mr. Basham, I drove back to Estero and walked to the hole being careful not to trip and looking for any of my missing blood on the boardwalk, I went to the hole and surprise surprise, this time I GOT DIFFERENT RESULTS!  Sorry Mr Einstein.

#420  Eastern Screech Owl


COOL!  Owl number 8 and I was told to have a goal to have them all by the end of June.  11 more owls to go.

On day 41, i overslept, my cell phone battery ran out but it was only 0645, so I dressed and skipped a shower and made for Bentsen State Park and a hook-billed kite flyover...the only thing that didn't work out was the kite...no kites.....then I walked the grounds of the nearby National Butterfly Center, and saw nothing of note except another owl, now all the holes seemed occupied, unlike before and just like the tropical kingbird.


This one has a little roof over its head.
Anzulduas Park
Then I went to Anzulduas Park, hoping to see a kite flyover or anything.  There was actually less police and border agents this time, only 14 patrols, last time 21 cars.


What these guys are doing defies my imagination, apparently they are protecting us from this guy

The only person I could see at the park across the border was this guy. Is he that scary?  Is he Poncho Villa's great grand child? I have no time for these border guys, state or federal.  I won't ever talk to them.  I actually drove .5 MPH in the park in front of one in a hurry, just to piss off one of them.  Here is why I have no time for these guys. The border issue is a joke.  Our enemies are not the Mexicans or Latinos, they have more in common with us than some other nationalities that don't want to be us, just want to use us.  These people are just trying to better themselves and it is sad, truly sad that the Mexican and other latino elites have no time or place for their own people.  Give credit to the Cubans, they at least try to better the whole lot.  Now I have Cuban employees, one is the son of Batista's former secretary and they lost everything, and are mad but you know, in 55 years, you have to get over it.  You move on. These people were taken advantage by the Spanish, then the elites of there own countries and then the US Multinationals, then the CIA....

Secondly, it is these people who are cooking for, cleaning up after, doing all the dirty work here and other places for the older retirees that in many cases, are the ones supporting the politicians who loath these people.  The CNAs at the nursing home who have to clean up your ...well you know...are these people.  The politicoes they support have came up with such an assinine policy of having 500 Texas state troopers and basically with the Border patrol and end to end sea of cars from here to Laredo on the border.  Mostly these guys constantly driving and roaring their engines, helicopters buzzing me, and general load warnings to the immigrants to stay HOME...it screws up my birding!  Seven of these guys drove past me in 15 minutes on the levee at Bentsen!  Was there a second guy on horse back?

Hate my politico opinions....but you see it down here and the stupid checkpoints all over the roads remind of 1938 Nazi Germany..."papers please!"

You know, in all my time at the border, I've seen same amount of illegals sneaking through as supposed extirpated birds...NONE!  What a waste of resources.....

Okay, I AM opinionated.

After my game of chicken in reverse with the cop I stopped and located a black-throated gray warbler in a tree by the bathroom, it WAS a bathroom stop and camera was in the car....bird #421 none-the-less, and every warbler is a good bird in my book, especially western ones.  So that finished up my birding for the trip....421.  I also added a raccoon at Santa Ana, first coon for the year.

I also saw some truly odd things, use your imagination here.

I saw a man reading a novel at a bird stakeout, camera in one hand, novel in the other...not sure if that is good or a bad thing.  I wouldn't be skua-ing him on a bird stakeout.

I then offered an idea to him and the other three there that maybe I should order out pizza for lunch...has anyone ever had pizza delivered to a bird stakeout?
so much to do...so little time...

I saw a woman on a trail in Estero walking 5 dogs on five separate leashes, a big collie down to a tiny chihuahua.  What happens if that coons cousin pops out on the trail here?

I saw a birder with the biggest camera lens I have ever seen, bigger than mine, she was maybe 4 foot ten, was also packing a large swivel mount tripod.  I wanted to take a picture of here, but well, she was too much for my more modest lens.  The odd thing was she was maybe a mile from here car.  She could be the strongest woman birder...

sigh............I was lost in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, and now I have been shown the road home....I was actually going home!!!!

Sadly only for a day...
I leave for Hatteras NC tomorrow

Eat, Pray, Love....

Eat take out pizza at a bird stakeout
pray that the Legend comes and saves you from the blue devil
and love that you are not a dragonfly in the sights of a tropical kingbird



Sorry Chris, but it isn't my nemesis bird

Olaf

Positively Nome

Nome, Alaska

Big Year Day 36-7

Big Year Total:  413
Coded birds:  23
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters
Miles driven.  10,450
Flight Miles 21,000
flight segments: 24   Airports: 16
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 46
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:13

What do actor Willhem Defoe, naturalist Charles McKay, and Olaf Danielson have in Common?  Probably not much but we were all born in Wisconsin, actor Defoe and McKay were both born in Appleton and I, strangely, have only ever been in Appleton once in my life despite going to college 45 miles from there, but I had the worst case of food poisoning ever and was dumped out of a Northwest Airlines flight there in March of 1988 (my 22nd birthday), before being picked up by 3 drunk college friends in a 1969 Corvair (maybe the most dangerous car ever).  All I remember about the trip back to school was somebody deciding to take a shortcut through a picked corn field, maybe it was a hallucination.  So I guess all three of us survived or time in Appleton to strive at other things.  The learning point of that experience was to never eat Thai food in Scottsdale.  Gosh I could write a book on that trip....

Charles McKay...one of the mystery people who has a bird named after him.  After finally getting his Bachelor of science after attending no less than four colleges.  I think he graduated from Butler, although he had stays for sure at was to become Lawrence University and Cornell.  He volunteered for Army Signal Corp duty, was stationed in the Bering Sea and observed a very strange, almost all white bunting, in 1881 or 1882 which now has his name attached to it...the McKay's Bunting.  Oddly at age 28, in 1883, McKay went on a kayak trip around the corner to see if he could see something.  He was never seen again.  There lies the mystery?  Did McKay move in with the native peoples?  Did he drown?  Did he get eaten by polar bears?  Maybe he even got pecked to death by Eskimo Curlews, which cause them to get an error in the DNA eventually leading to their demise?  Nobody knows, his story then just abruptly ends....

Here in Nome, Olaf's story continues.

Since I was in Kodiak, I flew up here to get this little "monkey" off my back.  Nome is near Kodiak correct?  That is like saying Oklahoma City is near Minneapolis, but it was closer than coming up here solo for the bird and it is only getable in the Fall/winter as otherwise largely the bird is confined to St. Matthews island, a place no one can get to except for the rare tour.

I have been accused of being too negative about Alaska, even though my wife texted me and said my comments were dead on, she watches house hunters-Alaska and thinks everything is built ad hoc.

So let me say in defense of Kodiak, which I still reserve judgement on, the weather could be worse a major Pacific storm is hitting it today/ tomorrow with 55 mph winds and real rain, not the irritating rain I saw, and I would be stuck there. Like they were getting so much that the weatherman didn't want to predict the final total.  Nome is looking better and better, and to be honest, it is only 20 degrees ABOVE here, much warmer than I planned and expected.  It was a very nice day here yesterday, even very little wind.


I sat next to an elderly native on the cab ride to the hotel and making conversation said it was "balmy" outside.  She didn't understand the term, I explained it.  Then she went off on a tirade against people in bikinis, and scantily dress.  Se said they might as well be naked, then asked me if I agreed, well I did, but she didn't realize what she was asking me.  Then I said I was here to see a bird.  Then still on the anti nudity or at least anti-bikini thing, she then surmised that it would be like me going naked around Alaska seeing birds.....I wanted to say, yes, I have, but well I just smiled as did the cabby.  She got out and said that I should fear the Lord, and well it was so nice out, I couldn't help but smile.  It is always good to get advice from our elders.

But don't let the blue sky fool you, this was no beach vacation in bikinis or less as the pack-ice has formed and looking out towards Siberia, all one sees is ice


 But as it was a nice day, I decided to go as directed and scope out a feeder in a place known as Icy View, which isn't marked as such but eventually through trial and error, I found the place.  The feeder was empty but they had thrown seed on the parking lot.


I always feel like a criminal when I'm staking out a feeder in a strange place.  There was abosolutely no life around for birds except a lone raven.  It sat there in the cab of the rental jeep and waited and waited and then out of nowhere, a bird appeared.


White back, lighter color, it was it.   #413  McKay's Bunting.  One of 6000 of this species and I was looking at one and then it went to feed and a couple more appeared along with a single snow bunting.  Then they spooked.  It is hard to imagine how flighty these birds are and it took 20 minutes for them to cautiously come back.



Then the local dog came, as he had had just about enough of me, the birds flew off and he sat defiantly at the tire of my rental,  Birding apparently over.  I did come back later when Fido was gone but then the family to the house returned and they gave me an unwelcome look so I left.  I drove around and staked out the cemetery, another feeder in town, and saw absolutely...nothing.  
I did see them in the morning though and have to put in this picture, McKay's Buntings on a powerline?

there looks like two flocks up here, one mixed and mostly McKay's and the other all Snow buntings so if you come, remember that and the feeder in town is active at first light, when the traffic starts to move, they get skittish and don't come back.
I then went off to a bridge someone had seen a boreal owl commonly and waited to as late as I could before a dared drive home, and again, nothing, well 37 rock pigeons and three more ravens.  The roads around here are like driving on a frozen lake which I spent the better part of my youth negotiating.  One doesn't make sharp turns or stops and things work out, but lakes don't have hills and I'm a little leery of driving up glare ice on a hill in an unknown car.
Let me say another positive thing.  Unlike my car in Kodiak with a critical warning light on, the lights on this rental Jeep when I got it were only for a low front left tire (which clearly had some air in it so I ignored it like the owner) and for it to change oil.  I vast improvement.
The hotel I satyed at Dredge 7 Inn had both hot water and towels, so no complaints there.  It was a bit quiet, and there is no receptionist, kind of a help yourself kind of place but that was okay.  
I did have some social interaction, running into the new mayor, Richard Benneville in Anchorage, the man who makes the colorful city of Nome even more colorful.  We met last June when he was just colorful and not in the political hierarchy of the city.  He says he likes his new job.
Dining in Nome is always an adventure.  It was nice to have choices at the "Husky" which features Japanese fod, as well as Chinese and American.  I made a joke about the hamburger not being of a husly and the woman didn't understand English only Japanese.  As such I ordered tempura halibut.  Sushi here.....no wasn't that brave.  I have something cooked.  So eating some of the plainest cooked Japanese food I have ever had while listening to a very racist Mac Davis (co-star from BJ and the Bear, he wasn't the chimp either) song from the 1970s, (something about the Japanese taking over America) I found it good the poor woman only spoke bad English, she wasn't offended by the music she had undoubtedly put on.  I would have had a lifer beer with it, but she explianed to me they had lost their liquor license?  
To do so in Nome was undoubtedly a story worth hearing but alas. I couldn't speak her native tongue.  I wonder how she got here and why?
It was good that I didn't get food poisoning, and I awoke to darkness at 0800 the next day and at 0930 it was snowing and still dark.  The woman came by to clean rooms and advised me that if the plane got cancelled tonight, my room was still open.  I asked about that and found out it was quite common.  I had wondered why I had built in some needless extra days but today, I wasn't sure I'd even see the road let alone see a a bird and maybe they would never let me leave?  IDK.  
Texas was calling, but as the first local woman said, "Fear the Lord" and I knew then that living here is controlled by a higher power and only the Lord would determine if I was allowed to go to Texas from here or not.  I think I'm trying the Polar Cub for breakfast, I should spread my luck..I mean money around.
Stay warm and if you don't hear from me (not unlike McKay), send up a search party, I'm in Nome.Maybe I can tap my heels together and say "there is no place like Nome"  and I will magically be transported to Minnesota?
Olaf 

A Kodiak Moment

Kodiak Island, Alaska

Big Year Day 33-35

Big Year Total:  412
Coded birds:  23
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine, sea otters
Miles driven.  10,400
Flight Miles 21,000
flight segments: 24   Airports: 16
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 46
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:13

Kodiak....?   I don't know what to write.  I've never been here before.  Is this an outdoor mecca and wildlife wonder land or just a wet and gloomy place that smells strongly of fish?  Is this the perfect place to get away from it all or a place to be eaten by bears?  I don't like bears, and I was relieved when I read that even here, the not so cold part of Alaska, the bears hibernate....whew!  I still found myself looking suspiciously at tracks, had the feeling I was being watched, you know wolverines and wolves...


here was a fresh one I found...but they don't have wolverines and wolves......It is just a dog track.

But just when I determined it was safe to be outdoors, it began to rain, a big old fat rain, and then a little light to heavy stinging rain, and then for a while it seemed to even rain straight up, to steal the words from Forest Gump..  It was a heavy rain for two days and it also blew the whole time.  It was a tough go...

It is a funny thing with bird chasing, when you get to a place, you start to think you should have went to another place.  While here, and enroute, rarities showed in Texas, Massachusetts and California, but I was committed to Alaska, and Alaska in winter, and I'm sure the armchair quarterbacks out there think this was stupid place to go.

It was really a haul to get here, 4 hours beating a blizzard to Minneapolis for a 0630 flight to Seattle, 3.5 hours more to Anchorage and a connection after a 3 hour layover to here and enroute I was unsure if the birds would even be here, probably froze out as it had gotten cold.  Then the woman at Avis grilled me that I would be charge lots of money if animal hair, blood, fish guts, fish, animal parts, etc etc would be found in the car. I had to sign a waiver and then another waiver I didn't smoke, and then still another waiver I didn't read, but maybe it was that I didn't smoke fish....Finally I got the car.

I was dog tired, and it was low light and I couldn't figure where to even look for this bird, you see the name of the lake is confusing, one thing locally another on Google and still another on the sign.  It sucked and I was tired so I packed it in and just tried to find my bed and breakfast, then lost I plugged it into Siri, still lost, I called the woman at the B&B, still lost, I finally stumbled to it.  The street it was on looked like an alley.  I hadn't noticed the sign.  I was out of it, but the Crank Crow as this woman calls her basement, is fine.  It was all you needed, well all I needed.  It is hard to judge B&Bs, some have formal breakfasts and this one had a kitchen with food in the fridge.


again, I don't know what to say.

I would like to say some things about Alaska in general.  Alaska is a place that seems to be put together in a hurry.  Everything here, Nome, and even Anchorage, is done just good enough to get by.  There seems to be no planning for the future.  Things are built cheaply, and haphazzardly.  Every place, even those that don't need to, have that boom-town feel to it.  Alaska doesn't like signs or at least big enough ones for us who don't live here to be of much help.  The only drawback of this Bed and Breakfast is that the down spout of the eve system unloads right on the door to your room and since it always rains, this is a problem.


And not finishing the siding under it and since the prevailing wind hits this wall, it will be more than your head that will eventually be a problem, but this isn't the owners fault really, the whole town is designed just good enough.  They have their container port, right below an unstable mountain face, that when the big earthquake comes, and it will as it has before, there is I bet a 25% chance the slide will take out the whole terminal.  Then as they don't have room for the containers here, they have to truck them off site in two directions, so they have to load and unload them twice.  There is a hundred percent chance in an earthquake the road will be taken out, so whose bright idea was this?

There is NO city planning--parks near industrial sites, schools all over, and streets well wherever they got put.  The constuction of houses, etc, looks like a building inspector's nightmare.  I know that Kodiak was a backwater until 1941 when the military hastily fortified the area to protect from the Japanese invasion but heck, the was 75 years ago.....this isn't a boom town.

Okay, enough ranting.  I came here to bird.

I went to Gibson Cove just past the container terminal and found two year birds and a lifer, the gorgeous Steller's eider.  The place really smelled like fish, almost overpowering.  It was a good start though.

#406  Black Scoter


with Harlequin ducks

#407  Steller's Eider




Then I worked again at this lake problem, which one of the four was THE lake....one lake had nasty Coast Guard keep out signs, then a nasty Coast Guard Police cruiser, so I went where it had to be. Geniveive Lake on Google, Boy Scout Lake by local lore, and the sign says Margaret Lake...



IDK what it was called but between the rain, patience, luck, an eagle eye, and sneaking to as close as possible, I found the goal bird, the Common Pochard.  They spent the two days I was here, they being her, 14 ring-necked ducks and two female greater scaup tucked into the far right corner of the lake.  But I had her and got a picture too.  Which wasn't that easy.

#408  Common Pochard


I tried to walk closer in the woods side and got spooked by the track but did get a pacific wren.
Too wet for pictures

#409  Pacific Wren

Only the common goldeneyes came close enough for out of the window photos


You can see the rain, and this was tolerable light stinging rain.

I then went past the coast guard base to Woman's bay and found a couple of year birds
My favorite goose.

#410  Emperor Goose



they are so handsome...

#411 Rock Sandpiper
there were about a 100 feeding at low tide on a point.

There were also sea otters, you got to love sea otters, this one was checking me out.


So then I spent the second day trying to call in American Three-toed woodpeckers, but all I called in was more rain, apparently.  I saw very few small passerines, maybe 7 wrens, and that was it.  Then Rich MacIntosh, the local guru, who was comfortably in Hawaii, the man who found the pochard had also seen a tufted duck on the 17th and presumably it hadn't left, but it was a female.
I have great photos of my life bird so I just wanted to see it but where?

I tried to get on Buskin lake and agsin found the police and then I waited out the weather and then looked at every nook and cranny of the other lakes but no scaup with a tuft.  Finally, a little angry and now really wet, I went all the way to the back of Buskin Lake by road to near the golf course, yes they have one, don't know if anyone uses it.


as you can see the cloud move up so I could see a little, they have mountains here!  Since this is a bigger lake, I needed better visibility as it was certain if I could ever get to the lake i wouldnt be near the duck.  Then I sloshed across the driving range, through the mud, found a trail, and somehow surprisingly got to the lake.  I looked and then found the flock of scaup maybe 200 yards out, then spotted a smaller scaup with a tuft on its head, tufted duck...bingo.  Too wet for a camera and too far and low light for digiscope, heck, lucky I even saw it clearly, but I did...and it is a code three.  I looked for my two friends in the Coast Guard Police Ford Explorer and quickly retreated to the car. I was happy third coded bird of this trip

#412  Tufted Duck

Why do I feel like I wasted a trip?

Besides the birds, I remained entertained watching the goings on at the US Coast Guard base.  I almost wanted to use my military clearance to get on the base and bird but there was nothing I could think of that was there so I sat on the road and since the cops were on to me, I thought better of it.  They had a ready plane with its engines running frequently I think ready to go and rescue someone.  It did make for loud background noises while I was sorting scaup for a tufted duck to no avail before I found it elsewhere.


They also were practicing using the helicopter to blow a boat in a certain direction as shown here.


Again, not sure what to write. I can surmise...cool birds, bad weather, ships, and planes, what else could a Bad Weather Big Year birder want?

Then there was the Tsunami warning.....almost forgot about that.

I was about four miles from a hill at the time in a tidal marsh.  The words oh F%^K! came out of my mouth.  I was maybe 100 yards from the car during the only time it didn't rain. The only thing worse than bears...tsunami......oh wait, maybe it was just a siren test.  I don't know.  Scared me.  I bird on pins and needles in tsunami prone areas.  I texted my son if there had been any large Pacific basin earthquakes and before he got back to me I decided to head up to bird away from the low bays.  The 2.0 earthquake that had happened in Anchorage wouldn't cause a splash in a bathtub, so it was just something else.

I would like to thank all of you followers out there in keeping up with my travels.  As of writing this, I've had over 680 views of my blog titled "Iowa."  I don't get paid anything from this and as you see, besides my own novels, I am advertiser free, but again I'd like to thank you for your support.

Remember what a friend told me, if a tsunami is really coming, "Run, Forest, Run!"  ...wait, I think he was describing my bird chasing....I guess it works for both.  Am I Forest Gump?  I hope not.

Olaf

Birding the Willie the Walleye Route

Big Year Day 28-31

Big Year Total:  405
Coded birds:  20
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn, porcupine
Miles driven.  10,350
Flight Miles 14600
segments: 17
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 45.5
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:12

Some people get their kicks driving route 66, others Scoop the Loop, or Cruise Rodeo Drive.  Occasionally people even drive Park Avenue or the Magnificent Mile, but Olaf likes nothing better than to bird the Willie the Walleye Route in the depth of winter.

 Now many of you will think to yourself, "where the heck is that?"  Willie the walleye?  Really?

It goes from NW Minnesota to Superior WI and loops through all the prime winter bird habitat.
The route starts with coffee in Thief River Falls, MN at first light.  Occasionally it makes sense to stay at the C'mon Inn in TRF, but today my birding daughter Lena, I and the intrepid bird dog Brighid took off at 4am from South Dakota.  The route goes from there to Roseau then across on Hwy 11 through Baudette to Little Fork, then down hwy 53 to the Bog, Sax-Zim, then to Duluth by way of the Superior National Forest via Two Harbors to the Canal Park, then onto Superior to Peavey Elevator, and Bong Airport.  It used to finish at the Superior Dump, but they have redone the dump and it isn't so good, there are a couple of optional extensions including Mary Lou's feeders and a couple of other locations, but they are generally the same deal.  I have done the route in 2 days, getting almost all of the possible birds but this year, but owls can be elusive so I'm doing it in three, I really need to get the owls. This path will yield an amazing completion of Minnesota's winter birds, with a little luck, you can get everything, but this is winter, something always can happen, and if the weather changes, what may be an easy drive can be just a brutal experience.  Snowpack and winds need to be watched closely.

On the 28th Day, Olaf rested but I had to go get #389  Wild Turkey up on top of the ridge at Summit, SD


I sent a note to Lena's school that she needed to be excused for Friday as we had to go to the Canadian border to see a man about an owl.  Probably the first time they had seen that excuse.  At 4 in the morning, we took off.  The first song on XM Radio was the birder's theme song "X's and Oh's" a good sign and I was thinking about the difficulty in getting owls while Lena snuggled in to sleep and six miles from home, a probable great horned owl spooked from the ditch and I missed it by maybe an inch.  I say probable as it went right over the windshield by my face, and I had a arm over my face to protect from the impact.  My small scream woke up Lena, "dad, if it isn't a snowy, don't bother me.  I'm tired.  You have a great horned already, so do I."

I had just removed my wife's Thule carrier to lower the wind profile as it was a very windy morning and if I hadn't I would have killed that owl.  I wondered why?  Owls are spiritual animals and things happen with them.

Then for 150 miles I wondered about the significance, was that owl incident before going owling, a good or bad omen?  Then in the next 100 miles I was trying to determine if it was actually brown, maybe it was white?  No, it was brown, I think.  Why would I even still be thinking about this?  We had coffee and gas at daybreak in Thief and it was time to begin the route.

DAY 1:

Fields of the abandoned and the downtrodden



The birding tour begins here, at this abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere (stock photo from my 2013 book Boobies Peckers and Tits) just west and South of Agassiz NWR, in some of the most productive locations for winter Sharp-tailed grouse, Greater prairie chicken, and occasionally even Gray partridge, but I don't look for them specifically.  It took me 1/2 of a mile this year to find the first flock of birds.  In 2013, 2 and 4 miles respectively, and this year two flocks were together.

#390  Sharp-tailed grouse


#391  Greater prairie chicken


Two lek stakeouts cancelled for April!!  Yea, it was a great opening double.  If anyone wants to go to a fun GPChix lek in NC Minnesota, let me know, I won't be there.  It is about a 1/2 mile walk.  I didn't bother to look for the Gray Partridge, the big score were the chickens so we drove back on the scary ice-covered road back to Marshall County 7 which is also a scary ice covered road.

Agassiz NWR

 Agassiz is a very desolate place in the winter.  The goals here at black-billed magpie, occasionally northern shrike on trees, and the feeders at the visitor center.  I saw #392 Black-billed magpie in the first 300 yards of the refuge.  I can never photograph that bird and never tried.  I made the obligatory stop at the feeders at the visitor center.  Lena saw her year common redpoll and used the bathroom.  Note, the refuge visitor center is not open on weekends and if the wind is out of the south, like today, the birds get blown out of the feeders.  The poor lonely woman wanted to talk to Lena but she got scared and zipped out. I've seen a hoard of bohemian waxwings over the years in the trees east of here, and a ruffed grouse and some other finches but this year it was just a dog stop and a bathroom break.

Hwy 81-Roseau-

The Minnesota elk herd is around Grygla, and there are good wires for rough-legged hawks but the hawks have moved on south this year.  Sometimes the roads off the main road can be scoured but many are closed right now, we drove on after causing concern we were casing a house.

Roseau
Roseau has the second best birding bog in the state, it is either totally ignored, sandbagged or both.  I can point to many sandbagging here and it so infuriates me I'm starting to use the Subway as my new bird location.  Either we are helping other birders or we are selfish pricks, who just take my data and give nothing back.  No one has posted a Northern hawk-owl in Minnesota since January 3, one quite far south of town, not the usual spot,  IDK, so I go where I always go and I ALWAYS see hawk owls and I slowed down and pointed out the suspicious lump to Lena, bingo.  Why was I worrying?  It is in the same tree as December 2014, and Feb 2014, AND Feb 2013....this is a hawk-owl tree.

#393  Northern hawk-owl


We drove down Sprague Creek road which was in worse shape snow wise than usual, that is a good location for spruce grouse, but the road is narrow, and I got buried and abandoned there in 2013 during my BPT project..here is a little trip down memory lane

This year we also got stuck but only slightly.  I tried to find a place to turn around and then did a 15 point turn and looked like Austin Powers in the International Man of Mystery, and at 90 degrees to the road, with only a foot on either side of my wife's car, the wheels spun, so Lena had to go push...
we got out of the tight spot and I didn't have to be ignored by the border patrol again this time.

We drove on the main road, and then I sped past 3 dark grouse on the side of the road.  I almost did a skidding u-turn and then they flew when I got heading north again, but only to a yard.  Then they spooked a second time before I could get a camera on them, and flew over the car...."spruce grouse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  I yelled.   Life is good, really good...bird #394.

I learned later people pay good money to see them.  The last time I saw them up here, there were seven, and a golden eagle and then there were six.........

It was good to see the three grouse in close proximity for Lena to compare and contrast....lucky bonus bird and my roll continues.

We found a northern shrike for Lena's year


and we went for lunch, all target birds accounted for so I skipped the park and the sewage treatment area north of town.  We needed to head east.
The route then takes you through Warroad which has good feeder birds.  Things got out of hand as I looked out my side window as a flock of birds flew along the car and they were Bohemian waxwings.  I slowed and then they flew over the car and then like a maniac, I chased them all over town, finding they never lit in a tree for more than an instant.  I ran stop signs, cut across school parking lots and caused a nuisance of myself but avoided the cops.  It would have been hard to explain, I was chasing a flock of birds.  Lena spotted birds in a tree, her year pine grosbeaks and then we calmly left town after being ditched by the waxwings. 
Every birder doing the route has to be photographed by Willie the Walleye in Baudette, it is mandatory....here is Lena in her lucky photo.

You need to go to bypass International Falls, there is nothing birdy up there, so you go south on hwy 71.  then cut across to Hwy 53 in Littlefork.  There are feeders on this road and some chance for grouse and other cool stuff.  Beware, many gas stations have closed in the past two years up this way, I do not understand what is up.  This brings you to another important landmark.
It is also mandatory to touch the chair of the Jackpine Savage, in Littlefork.  It brings luck, but if you touch the cant-hook (the thing on Jack's left, I grew up in a logging family), it is bad luck.

Day 2.  Sax-Zim Bog
Another early start as we had to scour the bog for a great gray owl.  We started on Nichols Lake road.  I came across a parked car with a birder in it, figuring she had something, I made a u-turn.  She got out, looked in the woods, and then like she had been "goosed"  hopped in and sped away.  We were left scratching out heads.  Whatever,...but no owl.  We drove around aimlessly till full light and ...sigh...no owl.  Each time we passed locales for the other birds I needed.
#395  Evening grosbeak
Mary Lou over in the NW corner of the bog has these gorgeous birds in spades.  I had a flock every winter top watch at grandmother Lucille's feeders but alas after 10 years they left never to return.


#396 Hoary redpoll

We also had an unexpected treat, but it remained unphotographed.  A nearly white redpoll showed up by itself at a feeder dead into the sun but the other birders at her feeders were walking about to try to take photos,  We remained in the car.  They kept scaring the birds.  I'm not sure they got it. IDK.  Sigh....light bird dead into morning sun and then flushed, we waited, it never came back.  We left the feeders to this foursome chasing birds more out of the yard than anything.  But...I had the hoary, now comes the problem eventually.  As of January 30th, 2016 this bird is safely on the ABA checklist, BUT, come summer it may be lumped with the common as one redpoll species so .....it counts today but then what and what about Hayward's hoary?  Do I still get it, do all of us loose it, or just me or none of us?  IDK, I'm sure another way for those in charge to punish Olaf somehow.

We drove around and around the bog passing "Lazurus the Porcupine" 7 times in a tree in the course of the day


We did score two more year birds

#397  Gray Jay



#398 Boreal chickadee

but then the birds dried up.  We looked for black-backs, called black-backs, lost the speaker calling black-backs, then found it again, each time seeing Lazurus curled up in the same tree.  Lena was getting antsy.  We made a bathroom run to the visitor center and they didn't seem too helpful or even friendly, I had never been here when it was even open.  Lena was happy with the outhouse.
I met Julie Winter Zempel through a quirk of fate.  I had one of my paintings stuck in customs as it was originally mistakenly sent to Baltimore from Dusseldorf.  Baltimore, Minneapolis, nearby...correct?  When I and a shipper I knew finally turned it around, the US Customs people were suspicious and my 9am appointment to get it got delayed for 4 hours.  With nothing to do near the airport in Minneapolis last January, I searched for a local bird to see.  I found the Townsend's solitaire in a cemetery and also met Julie.
I posted my hawk-owl and then today Julie looking for a hawk owl saw I was in the area and now Facebook friends, she messaged me.  We never hooked up in the bog due to the lost speaker but we agreed to stay on separate sides of the bog and text each other if anything was spotted.  We spotted nothing and then I got a text.  Julie had the owl, and it was half dark and the owl and her were 19 miles away from us.  The next 15 minutes were a blur.  If I didn't get the owl, I would have to spend three days or at least two, coming back to get it.  On Hwy 9, I drove over 90 mph, Lena texted a farewell to her friends.  Luckily the moose remained in the woods.  As I neared her on Zim road, she texted me it flew and she couldnt relocate it.  I got depressed.  I came up behind a Toyota Rav4.  For some reason, I didn't pass him and about 1/2 mile away, I saw her headlights.  Then the Rav hit the brakes, instinctively I pulled inside him as he was stopped just past a driveway.  There, 40 feet away on top of a tree in low light was the elusive owl!!!!!!!!!!  Lena screamed in delight.  I sighed like the weight of another trip was lifted.
#399  Great gray owl


Wow!!  It doesn't get any better than this.  Eventually I left a happy Rav4 who were still photographing as it dove on a rodent.  I came up to Julie and we did an out of the window high 5.  GREAT BIRD!  "Thank you Julie!"  I told her and then we went to Wilbur's in Cotton for dinner and her lifer pie, for the Boreal chickadee.

We were stoked!  "Did I say, Thank you Julie!"Who would have guessed that the idiot sending my painting to Baltimore, would have led me to the most elusive of all owls of the northern forest.  That and I had #399
Day 3
Superior National Forest, MN
I needed four hundred.  I had arranged to meet a man named JG Bennett at basically the corner of Forest and Woods in the middle of the Superior National Forest, near a place I had caught my largest walleye ice-fishing in Minnesota, hopefully not a relative of Willie the Walleye. There was no cell service, icy roads, ...no nothing, just trees.        I had met JG on-line as he desired to see a South Dakota Say's phoebe.  I have the eastern-most breeding colony of Say';s in North America at my cabin.  I have submitted an article on them to the SDOU publication but they didn't care about it, but JG did.  He agreed to swap info for it, and now here was my payback, a Say's phoebe for a black-backed woodpecker.  It could have been the best trade since the Babe Ruth trade a hundred years ago.
It took maybe 5 minutes in the early morning gloom to spot the woodpeckers, two females, Lena spotted them first.
#400  Black-backed woodpecker

They are sharp looking buggers, and it was a big moment in the history of this big year!  400 for a month!  JG hugged me.

JG was great help.  Then two vans from a VENT birding tour pulled up and we gave them our woodpecker spot as the horde pilled out after scouring the roads for Spruce grouse.  We saw a nice male on the side of the road too, but to pay top dollar to sit in the backseat of a van to road bird for grouse?  Really?  Why would you not just do the eastern part of the Willie Route on your own?  Were these people that lazy?  What a miserable deal, we were a hundred miles from Duluth and who knows where they started this day, the guide was actually from Tucson.....I will use guides where I need the lodging (Gambell) or local intel or feel unsafe, but here?  Those vans looked like vomit comets to me...
Thanks JG debt repaid plus interest.
Two Harbors is a good duck location and a place to find Bohemians but not needing any we by-passed it.  They were having a sled-dog race and so it was a bit of a zoo, so it was good to get safely out of town.
Canal Park, Duluth MN
Duluth has a surprising diversity of gull life in the winter.  Canal park is also a fun place.  I lived the dream just across the lift bridge for a period of my life and was a ship watcher, now a bird watcher...but the place is still cool.The gulls usually disperse by mid-day but not today, they were in a loafing sort of mood, or were waiting for Olaf to sort them.
#401  Greater Black Backed Gull, adult, way out on a piece of ice#402  Iceland Gull, a few around, one adult just right of the GBBG, and a juve nearby.  My daughter was hoping the Ivory really wasn't dead, and when the glaucous gull sat down, she said, there is a white one.  I corrected her, and it was truly sad, but oh well, nature.#403  Glaucous Gull
I thought I could ID the black ducks seen with the mallards in the canal but they were tight to the wall on my side and way out by the lighthouse on some ice, heads tucked in, and I could not be certain so I didn't count them, oh well, just black ducks.  We ate at an old favorite, Taste of Saigon in the DeWitt-Sietz building nearby, still open from when we were medical students up here and the egg rolls were still the best, my daughter even agreed.  We came back out and she tallied a Thayer's Gull, I had photographed it before it put its head out and flew away but that gave Lena four gulls for the stop.

There was a really good adult on the opposite wall which I was showing off to everyone in my scope.  Lena went and enjoyed the feeling of being under the liftbridge with cars going over you and then we left.  We still had a stop left.
Superior WI
The Willie the Walleye Route ends in Superior like the Gandy Dancer Line that went near my home ended in Superior, here at the depot


There is no kissing or touching or anything that needs to be done here, you are just finished.There are two key species I needed to look for in Superior.  I didn't go to the dump and the Superior entrance into the harbor which is a good spot for ducks and gulls.  To be concise I have all the ducks and all of the gulls already. 
I lived just east of here for seven years and grew up 80- miles south of Superior, so this is home turf.  The marquis species is the propensity of snowy owls to hang out around town, near the airport, Menards, the old Gateway Food Warehouse area, and a couple of schools.  So we went looking but as can be seen by the depot picture, it was high sky.  No owls, they were in a ditch somewhere hunkered down.  The second key bird is to go looking for gyrfalcons at the Peavey Elevator, undoubtedly the guilty party in the demise of the ivory gull, which had disappeared on Tuesday, death by falcon assumed.  Gyrs have been coming in recent years although I have always dipped out.  We ran back into the VENT tour people who were watching a hawk, no falcon. I'd get one in Nome so I did not want to waste effort on it.
JG went home and we drove around endlessly waiting for evening and a hope that an owl would show sooner.  Then I saw something on a powerpole, I got out my scope.  It was a female gyrfalcon, way east and where it had never been seen before as if, it flew over only to be seen by me.  
#404  Gyrfalcon


After I photographed it, it left and was never seen again, oddity upon oddity...?  It was like my blessed state was so obvious only I couldn't see it.  I take gift birds especially rare ones but where was the snowy? 
It was near 5 pm and after playing "Ex's and Oh's" or however it is spelled, sorry Ms. King, twice, the theme song of this Big Year and I went past a mound, turned into a tower access road and turned around and then on a post, there one was, a snowy owl, but where had it came from?  Did I miss it?  Lena was shooting photos out the window in her stocking feet, she had been napping since 330
#405  Snowy Owl


JG came over and saw it, gave me an out the window fist bump.  It was good getting the third owl off.
The trail was over, and we took off for the airport to pick up my wife in Minneapolis.  It was unreal, we had seen everything, we had seen it all.  Black duck aside which I had probably seen but not counted, I had cleaned up the owls, the grouse, the finches, everything, I had no need to return in winter to the north country.  Here I was, sundown on January 31st, and I had 405 birds. I had seen a new year bird on every day in the month. It was probably a record, but...
John Puschock, a birding guru from Washington who on day four of my Big Year, emailed me if I had broken the record yet.  I was crooning about being like at 160.  He was right then and he would be correct now.  I had done nothing.  Seeing 405 species in the month of January, was like proclaiming yourself as the toughest muppet....yea, okay but so what.  I had passed 400 five times and nobody was going to care about this if I didn't go out and put up a good year total.  Neil Hayward wasn't loosing sleep over this, Sandy Komito wouldn't call a man like me and congratulate me, Greg Miller wouldn't friend me on Facebook...it was really and truly nothing.  One of my "coaches" Chris Feeney put it succinctly, yea, "405.  February starts tomorrow and you are going to Alaska and you need more, more, more!"  At least that is how I read it.  I needed to put the hammer down, I left birds on the table in January.  For the year prize (there really isn't a prize), while the other dogs were napping, I had streaked out to a 97 bird lead to my closest competitor, Roger Clark unless there was a sandbagger out there, but the dogs had woken up and were in pursuit..
We had the powerful owl omen to start.  We used the picture of Willie for luck and added the luck of Jack the Pine Savage.  The owls definitely had it on this trek.  Would there be any luck left for Alaska?  Am I really going to Alaska in the winter?

Willie the walleye rules!

Olaf