Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 28

Iowa

Sheldon, Iowa

Big Year Day 27

Big Year Total:  388
Coded birds:  20
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn
Miles driven.  9150
Flight Miles 14600
segments: 17
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 45.5
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:12

East Lawn Cemetery, Sheldon IA
January 27. 2016

It has been written, mostly by me, that Iowa is the best kept secret known only to a chosen few and of course politicians.  Having spent two significant blocks of time in Iowa in my life, (doing research on leaf-cutting ants at Iowa City and doing a residency in Waterloo and living in Evansdale) I have some opinions on Iowa, and generally, I like Iowa and Iowans.  The difference between South Dakotans and Iowans is that we know we don't matter.
    I have five birds that I worry about seeing.  I had seen two of them before now and the third is the white-winged crossbill.  I am planning on heading to northern Minnesota this weekend but very few sightings have been reported of that bird.  The closest reports, oddly happen to be in two cemeteries in NW Iowa.  I looked at the map and the checklists.  The one in Sheldon, Iowa was a few miles closer to me than Sioux City Iowa and it had brown creeper, so I decided, I'd go there.   I had breakfast with my daughter and she went off to school, I...I went off to Iowa.
    As you know, I am on a roll..I am in the birding zone as they say.  Things were taking shape and then while I was driving through a ground blizzard, I got a message from Joe Jungers, a Facebook friend.  He wanted to know where I was going in Iowa.  I answered Sheldon.  It turns out Joe found the crossbills in Sheldon, and volunteered to help me find them. Small world.
   I didn't know what to expect, but when I finally drove the 200 miles to the cemetery, it looked more like the Pacific NW than NW Iowa.  The Dutch Reformed people of NW Iowa must have liked conifers 100 years ago and they planted them en-mass in this cemetery and they were huge, bushy, and loaded with cones and seeds, something unlike most everywhere else in the northern forests.  The trees in Minnesota were almost devoid of cones, here, this cemetery could feed a thousand birds, but as Joe filled me in, only three crossbills and two pine grosbeak had found this oasis in the farm land settled by Dutch immigrants.
    We went searching as Joe said, it could take a while.  In Olaf Zone time, that was ten minutes.  I could see Joe found them and soon I was looking at the male red crossbill transfixed by the bird.  A sharpie came by and they took off, unfortunately, I didn't get a photo I was too busy looking at the bird.  I have only seen the red crossbill in Colorado and Arizona previously.  We refound them and they stood out for photos.  Then we easily found the grosbeaks.

#385  Red Crossbill




#386  White-winged crossbill



#387  Pine Grosbeak



I also saw #388  Brown Creeper, but heard it better...got to love those creepers.
Who would have guessed that one spot in Iowa would yield such treasures.  The WWCR was off the board and I also tallied some birds I would eventually see, but heck, they were now seen.  Thanks Joe for all of your help.  It was worth the 400 mile drive, which was actually just to go get groceries........sour dough bread, sandwich meat, toilet paper, milk, and oh, don't forget the pine grosbeak, the white-winged crossbill, the red crossbill and if you don't mind pick out a side of creeper, the brown is the best.  Ummm...creeper.
Is this heaven?
No!  It is just Iowa
Olaf

The Pink Menace

South Florida

Big Year Day 24-26

Big Year Total:  384
Coded birds:  20
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn
Miles driven.  8750
Flight Miles 14600
segments: 17
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 45
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:11

"The Legend of the Pink Curse"
Back in the olden days, in what is now called Sweden lived a very stubborn man.  He was called Daniel the thick headed, or worse, the think skull.  In general, he toiled the land in peace and didn't bother anyone, but Daniel did what he wanted when he wanted just like his father and his father's father.  Back in those days, the men and women of this region, now called Darlana, worshiped the old gods, this was long before they had been "reforrmed or saved" by St Anscarius.  The people in this particular region honored the Goddess of Love and battle the great Frejya.
    They built a wonderful temple to the naked goddess and, in general, the land around this area was bountiful, the women stunningly beautiful, and the men virile and happy.
     It was after one of the fertility festivals that the great goddess herself came to the temple to see her adoring admirers...as she was prone to do.  All marveled in her glory.  Freyja was something to behold when she was happy, something to be feared when she was mad.  It didn't always take much for someone to die in her presence, ill tempered was she.
    Freyja was about to bless the people when she noticed something, someone was missing.  "Who is not here?" She demanded.
     "Daniel the thick skull."  They replied.
     "Order him to appear at the next worship!"  She said angrily and did not bless the people and left.
     "At the festival of the Midsommer when all came again, all came but one man, Daniel the Thick headed was once again absent and Freyja ruined the mead and decided she would punish the man herself.  It was not a happy festival as Freyja was not happy.
      "Why do you not come and worship at me temple."  Freyja demanded of Daniel when she found him in a field, lighting shooting from her chariot pulled by a team of lynx.
      "I chose not to."  Daniel replied.
      "Well then, to punish you, I will make your pastures full of rocks and make you work twice as hard to produce the same harvest.  The trees on this land called Grangarde shall be such that they only grow half tall.  That is the punishment you shall receive for not worshiping me."  Time pasted.

      Freyja was having a happy day months later at the festival of the harvest.  She appeared but again, Daniel was not there.  Again she drove her chariot to him.  Her fury rose as she came nearer to the place by a small lake.
    "Have I not afflicted you?"  She confronted him.
    "You have poisoned my field and weakened my cow, that is true."  Daniel admitted, "You are all powerful and I am nothing.  You do as you will but I worked four times as hard so that it produced twice as much as before.  To spite your torment of me, I dumped half of my harvest out and destroyed half of my cheese.  Now I am even."
    Freyja wanted to strike the man dead, something prevented her.  "Then I shall punish you even greater."  She said controlling herself.
     "Goddess, even you cannot curse the accursed, nor do anything to change me.  I just will not ever do as you demand of me.  You see I am not of this land and I have been cursed by Thor and Odin, yet, here I am, who are you to make my lot any worse.  Those around here are born with wooden spoons and not silver spoons in their mouths.  My lot?   We eat with our fingers.  We are so impoverished even the poor pity us.  If you are going to kill me get it over with, otherwise be gone from my sight."
     Freyja stood there thinking and apparently was consulting with her fellow gods about Daniel.  "What you say is true.  You shall continue to toil in your woe.  I shall though put a curse upon your descendants."
     She raised her arms and then summoned two of her sacred cranes, the birds of which are shown kissing at the very alter of her temple.  She first took the man-crane and grabbed its neck and then in a flash it began to curve, and then she pressed its beak and it bent downward in the middle like no bird ever seen in those parts.  Then she spat on it and it turned the brightest pink, Daniel had ever seen.  Then she did the same to the she-crane so that both were alike.
    "Hence forth, Daniel the thick skull, you shall loath the color pink and these birds shall haunt you in your dreams and on this field.  They will be fruitful and multiply and whenever one of yours and your lot shall come in contact with one, cursed they shall be.  The water they walk in shall not be fit to drink and their flesh shall not be edible.  Many generations hence there shall be one of your heirs that shall be specially afflicted.  This bird will haunt his dreams and he shall seek the bird but it will not be found.  It will be as if it is mocking him.  He will curse it, a ghost bird he shall say. It will be there but it isn't.  He will tell of it, but no one will beleive.  he will seek but he will NOT find.  Pink shall be his bane, his heart ache, and it will almost be the death of him. He will curse the bird and he will curse you.  Bad luck will follow this man whenever he tries and fails to find this bird but if by some chance, he can get the bird's reflection, as if on a mirror, the curse shall be lifted.  Free will be everyone.
     This man, shall be called Olaf the Large and this bird shall be ever called the flamingo in your language.

Ft. Myers Florida, present day, January 24th
    It was with a deep sigh and much trepidation that I booked a flight to Ft. Myers to chase the accursed nemesis bird called by me the Pink Menace.  Nothing good had ever happened chasing this dang bird.  Even in St Martin, my refuge, I had spent years trying to photograph one to document its existence as it has been marked as exterpated in 1934, yet, I had seen one twice and another man 4 times yet every blasted time, something inexplicable happened.  I had been on two planes when told by the person on the other end not to come, bird no longer present, but it was too late, the plane had already left.  Dang birds!
    Now I was at it again.  The cursed bird had been reported and was still reported yesterday.  I left home at 1 AM to catch a morning flight after dropping off my wife at the smaller terminal in Minneapolis.  She was visiting her sister in St. Thomas, I had promised to remain one timezone from our daughter.
    I was upgraded and I was worried something was up.  It never went well chasing this dang bird.  dang Falmingoes.  I got internet on the way.and saw no reports of the bird when there should have been some.  I shook my head, the curse was on again.  Dang flamingoes!  Unlike most flights, I had booked this for three days as the bird was coming during low tide to Bunche Beach, low tide was just after dawn so I didn't really expect to see it today, but if it didn't show, that was really bad news.  I swore in First Class.  People looked at me funny.  The stewardess came to calm me.  "Dang flaminoes."  I said to her.  I ordered a gin at 0900.  I needed a drink.
    I landed in Ft Myers dejected and then a birder I knew named Chris Feeney texted me, he was also going to see the bird today.  "Bird just arrived!"  It was eleven, my heart pounded, so I rushed out of the plane and was first off, sitting in seat 6B in a 757, almost ran to the Hertz location.
     Note the best things to have for a big year are medallion status and Hertz gold, you save a couple of days in line.  I never check luggage on a bird chase in the lower 48.  With the Hertz Gold, I walked right to the car and took off.  My Siri told me Bunche beach was 32 minutes away, I made it in 21, only 26 minutes after the door to the plane opened I was parking the car.  No time to pay the parking fee, ticket?  Who cares.  I grabbed my scope and ran to the beach.  I phoned Chris.  "Turn right we have our scopes on it.  I has moved closer."  Two hundred yards of anxiety was exuded during the walk on that sand.  I knew something would happen, it always did.  I reached Chris and two friends with him, the Tommy and Theresa Schwinghammer from Indiana.  I looked up and there it was, the pink menace.
    "Damn flamingo!"  I shouted.  I breathed fresh sea air for the first time without the pink curse.  I then took its picture and something like lightning hit me.  I can't explain it.

#369  American Flamingo


There are very few truly wild flamingoes seen in the US Gulf Coast.  I sizable flock used to come to the Everglades each year but no longer.  These that come are just vagrants from Cuba or the Bahamas where the population is increasing and it is a code 3 bird....for me....my nemesis.
Theresa Schwinghammer asked me what else I needed in Florida.  I couldn't think straight, I was still tingling.  Piping plover I said.  "Like this one?"  She motioned to her scope and there on a far sandbar was a small plover with no black on it next to a couple of semi-palms.  Another year bird.      "Yes, like that one."  I gave her scope back.  I didn't even take a picture. It was too far and I didn't care, I had the pink menace, life was...GOOD!"  I will say that I don't think those on the plane had even got there luggage before I was here and had the tick, note to you chasing birds...pack light!
#370  Piping Plover

The Scrub Jay Spot
NW Lee County

My friends went on their way.  I went to McDonald's to plan and use the free wifi.  Well, maybe I thought I should get the scrub jay now.  It was just noon and I had 5 hours of daylight.  I looked it up and saw a spot that wasn't a hot spot but had 12 ticks for the jay recently.  It looked like a neighborhood.  I thought that was odd.  The scrub jay isn't a neighborhood kind of bird.  I wrote the directions on an envelop.  I got lost, then ended up at a preserve somewhere and hiked a bit and then kicked myself.  I needed to "stay on target."  I plugged in my Siri for the address and it took me there.  I slowed for a scissor-tailed flycatcher on wire and got honked at by a guy behind me hauling a tree on a trailer.  He had a huge confederate flag tied to the tree waving as he drove.  I was also in a left turn lane, oh well. You guys wouldn't stop either.  Red neck meets birder...bad news.  I have many photos of them.
  There wasn't really a neighborhood at this spot, it was a subdivision with three houses and abandoned streets and fields.  Three local riff raff punks drove motorbikes at high rates of speed around and made lots of noise. They gave me the eye and I had that, I shouldn't spend too much time here, feeling.  It could get physical. I drove to a spot that looked like it was the spot.  All I had was an x on an envelop.  So it was a spot I had marked, not the actual spot. I saw a loggerhead shrike on a powerline.


It was eating something.  I would have gotten better photos but I was standing outside of my car with the door open shooting the photo having just put on my hat when out of the corner of my eye, I saw something coming at me.  This is when the 24th of January became surreal, maybe even the whole trip became surreal, but I turned as the jay landed right on my head.  It didn't know what to do but then it hopped onto the roof of the car and then after some photos went in the bush was joined by a friend and both scolded me for something.  Maybe it was telling me that Freyja had released her curse.  IDK.  It was odd but then I heard the motorcycles again and I decided that it was time to go while the getting was good.

#371  Scissor-tailed flycatcher
#372  Florida Scrub-jay




Harns Marsh

Okay, 1 pm and the primary target is down, and the secondary target is also eliminated.  I was a little freaked out but I was also on a roll.  Don't mess with a streak, is the old adage.  What to do next?  I figure, Snail Kite.  I had missed it on New Years Day so I sat back in the parking lot of McDonalds mooching their internet and bingo!  30 miles away, someone saw two the day before.  I plugged in the hot spot on Siri and away I sped.
      It was like I was doing the Monoco Grand Prix.  Siri was working overtime spouting out the turns.  Go a quarter mile then left on Straton, then 500 feet right on Olive.  I had names like Sara, 67, 59, 51, and one with a new name, then somewhere near 40 turns I turned in on Terry.  "You have reached your destination"  Siri said as I tuned the corner.
     I had a smile on my face but then the car turned and I noticed something was amiss..


WTF?  I was at a dead end.  I opened the car door to inspect it and there was no trail, nothing.  This is a hotspot?   Fuuudruckers.  I came back and grabbed the map.  Siri was demoted.  I was doing this the old way and I put it on the hood and slammed the car door.  I heard a rustle overhead.  I looked up as two snail kites flew from above me right down the road.  I grabbed my camera and ran.  Sometimes you just realize that certain birds you dang well better get a photo of so no one gives you sh&t.  This was one of those times.  I have never photoed this bird either.  I was like a crazed bull running down this abandoned street.
       I ran for everything I was worth and I dove right into the bushes at the end of the road.  Two large Olaf strides and the undergrowth caught my feet.  I dove, but holding a camera, I instinctively rolled to protect it.  I expected to be hung up or to hit the ground hard but I was suddenly free of the bushes, choosing the hole to the left, somehow, I had broken through and onto the open edge of a canal, I rolled on my shoulder, right up to my knees as the birds were just clearing the canal.  Camera in the ready, I came up firing.



This #373  Snail Kite

"Yes!"  I screamed and did a fist pump.  I made a motion with for a high five....but I had no one to high five with.  I then checked for injuries.  I had branches on me but I was not injured.  I didn't see blood.  Two guys and there dog eventually walked on the other side curious about me and where I came from and told me there was a trail but it was 30 miles to get around from where I was. They did give me a air high five from across the river.


   The curse is definitely lifted.  Yes!  Damn flamingoes!  I am free at last!

I didn't know what to do next.  I was at the end of my list.  To be honest, I hadn't made a list.  I checked NARBA, there was a report of a Green-breasted Mango, but it was sketchy and it was on the other side of Florida.  I sighed.  "Should I?"  I looked at my map when I got back to the car, this time being careful not to make sudden noises.
     I thought about it.  I shook my head.  Crap.  I decided to drive the Tamiami trail (Tampa to Miami)  Hwy 41. Maybe I'd see something fly over?
     I saw nothing and then as the light faded, so did I,  so by dark, I was on the other side and nearing the Native American Casino, I could go no further.  I was dead..
     I sat in the parking lot and checked for a room on-line as it was a long way to the front desk, the parking lot was full.  They had a room and I booked it.  I walked in to check-in, I didn't even bring my suitcase. I thought I didn't like casinos, now I HATE casinos.  At the door, I met a Native with an AK 47, I looked suspiciously at the sign.  They were having a gun show.  There was just something so wrong with that.  I went to check in and began a saga that would take an hour to get into my room.
    Now, mind you.  I've stayed in odd and bad hotels before.  I thought I could roll with anything.  I've had bed bugs at 4 star hotels, and at 1/4 star ones.  I've had hotels where you stuffed a blanket in the crack in the mattress to even it out and ones you had to pay for the water in the shower.  That same hotel had a key passing party the weekend before we got there for something to do.  I've been in lodging that came with your own llama, cat, or room with working guns on the wall.  I've been in ones that turned the power off at midnight, I've stayed in hotels with odd dress-codes and some that were mandatory nude,  I even had a hotel in Iowa that in the morning, a older man wearing nothing but a pair of tidy-whities bright me a glazed bun. Breakfast with a smile had too many meanings. That almost was worth the greenish black and white TV I watched the state girls 6 on 6 state basketball title game on.  I will say it here that this casino hotel had the WORST service ever.
     It took me an hour to get in my room.  The people at the front desk had long since given up on helping me and for the most part feigned being on the phone while 20 of us squirmed in line.  They seemed to only want cash, and maybe paying by credit card was not the best thing.  Maintenance finally came and let me in. I wasn't going to leave my room to go to the casino or look at rifles because I would then be forced to sleep in the hall.
   I ordered room service.  I never order room service.  "What kind of beer you have?"  I asked.
   "I don't know sir."  Came the answer. I tried to order food and the only things they had were alligator tips but I could get a Ceasar Salad.  "It will be up in between one and two hours, sir."  She replied.  The tips were not edible.  They brought me a bottle of Heineken when I ordered 'any' beer.  No opener.  I called for an opener.  They had none.  I was going to write a letter to complain, but when I noticed no internet.  I called the desk and she told me I didn't pay for that and hung up never asking if I wanted to pay extra.  I had already gave too much for this bull sock.
   I woke up mad at 0530 and left.  Checkout was even odder and I think the same bored looking people were still playing the slots.  I wanted to go over to one and say "WHY ARE YOU HERE?" There are no rules for payouts at Tribal casinos you dolts!   But this is tribal land and they may just take me out and shoot me....why?  Remember the guns.....  

I drove to Everglades National Park as I thought since it was 48 degrees, it would take a while to warm up the hummers and I had messaged a local guy named Rangel Diaz and he was very suspicious of this report of this bird.  He gave me a tip on a king rail location but it didn't pan out and I went to the end of the road at Flamingo...that name again, and looked around.

I found black skimmers,


and on the sandbar out in front of the visitor center at low tide in a throng of stuff I saw
20   #374 sandwich terns    terns with yellow tipped otherwise black bills.  The lighting was horrible and I should have digiscoped but I didn't. I need to practice more after my loon experience.
       I drove back up the park road heading for Castellow Hammock, the area with the supposed green-breasted mango and came across a large flock of pigeons.  A surprise bonus but later I learned they winter down here.

#375  White crowned pigeon


Castellow Hammock Preserve
Homestead FL

    I have never been here before and it is a little hard to find for Siri, it takes you to the wrong side. of the hammock. The important side for hummers is the west side, I may add which apparently used to be a butterfly garden and now the area is kept up as a park.  The flowering shrubs have overgrown much to the delight of the hummers.
    It is clear to me that something other than fate brought me here.  I would have never chased this bird due to the info Rangel Diaz told me.  Although someone on Facebook called me "suspect,"  I have never reported coded bird to NARBA etc in which no one has previously documented with a vague description like this, conflicting reports, and no pictures.  One person even admitted hearing its sound, however the sound put on the local Audubon site was for the wrong species of mango. What did they hear.  Was it mass hysteria?   So they obviously didn't hear that sound.
    When I arrived, local birding legend and phenom Larry Manfredi was keeping a watchful eye out for the hummer.  He had seen the 2 Buff-bellied hummingbirds, the third record ever for Miami-Dade county...



A batch of ruby-throated hummers, including a sort of dark and oddly colored one...but it wasn't that oddly colored.  Here is a plain female type bird.


bit alas we saw nothing that looked like a big immature male mango.  I cannot fathom mistaking a funny colored ruby-throat for a mango.  Who knows?  Maybe they saw it, we sure didn't.

I did go a check the tress for other stuff and picked up some warblers.  Here are some bad pictures of...

#376  Black throated green warbler




#377 prairie warbler (nice shot of his rump)

which I kept opening my mouth and the word "pine" came out.  It was some type of warbler stroke or something...IDK.  I couldn't say prairie....I felt stupid.

#378  Northern parula

The crappiest photos of them all, this bugger was down deep in the underbrush, but I still think ID able from the photo for confirmation to quell any of the doubters out there.  My suspect?  I invited all of you to come along but you have to keep up.


Rangel Diaz, his brother and a cousin (I think) came over and we chatted,  Bs'd is a better word-- looked at the hummers and eventually when Larry and Rangel were ready to leave, I got invited over to Larry's house to see his shiny cowbirds.  Larry had a coded bird coming to his feeders and more than one and they had been doing this for a while.  How that happened is one of those mysteries.
   Chris Feeney and Tommy and Theresa Schwinghammer stopped by to see if I was having any luck later and they got invited, too.  The mango was a bust but what happened next was priceless... as they say.

Larry Manfredi's House
Homestead FL

We chatted about Larry's upcoming tours, the one to Cuba sounded cool as did the Bahamas one and we waited for the three cowbirds.  Things kept showing up, just not what we wanted, the shiny cowbird.

#379 bronzed cowbird


Not every picture is a gem...I also tallied the most gorgeous of all ABA breeding birds,

#380 Painted Bunting

Just no shiny cowbird.  Larry invited us back for a second go at it in the morning.  After my bad night at the casino, I desired a real dinner and real hospitality, so on a whim, I took off at 5 and drove 145 miles to Tequesta and the home of friends Jan and Stuart.  Jan mothered me for the evening, and I slept a few hours and drove back down to Homestead, with a dawn stop at Kendall Baptist Hospital for a recon mission.  I added nothing and cruised into Larry's at 0830, 315 miles under my belt since I had left.

#381  a purple martin flew overhead.

The birds were scared off my a Cooper's hawk and then the other three arrived.  They looked secretive and had been somewhere...humm...I would have to ask Chris.  He had a look of an Army guy that had just said.  You are on a need to know basis and you don't need to know.  I met Chris for the first time, well we played 13 holes of golf together in 1984, he was ROTC faculty at Ripon College then.  It is a small world.

Then the magical birds arrived.

#382  Shiny Cowbird.  Here are male and female at feeder together.


Cool!!

I was glad I got something out of that mango stakeout.  It was something good a code 3!

***disclaimer.  If any of you look at my two ebird locations, although I hate when people do this, I purposely moved the spots away from Larry's house as I am not sure he wants everyone to know where he lives.  I did spend over two hours on his back deck on two days, if you need some proof, ask him,  Olaf was there, the rest of us were also there.

We went to leave and Chris whispers in my ear.  "We got a mangrove cuckoo spot and they were calling like crazy, you want to go?"

     There are a few things that mean an instant yes.  When your wife or a hot blonde says, do you want have sex or more sex...you say yes. When someone wants to give you more than your asking price for something, you say yes.  When your grandmother makes your favorite cookies and asks you if you want to eat another, you say yes.  When a friend asks you if you want to go see a mangrove cuckoo, just like the carnal question, you roll your tongue back in your mouth to keep yourself from tripping on it and you nod and follow but try not to drool.
     It was as if I felt we were being followed to this secret mangrove cuckoo spot at Black Point Marina (or maybe it was some place near there?).  I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was following us.  We came we saw we conquered.
    It was cool.  We heard and saw two of them.  In the excitement, I forgot to photograph them.  I have a great photo of the mangrove cuckoo from 2002 (shot at a gas station while pumping gas).  Here is a photo Tommy took of us looking at the 2nd cuckoo.  I had my camera with....IDK.

  that was a good bird!

#383  Mangrove Cuckoo
#384  Great crested flycatcher

I was on a roll.  I had this feeling there was an ani in Florida, I sped to the Fort Myers Airport and looked for one on Snake Road but all I saw was a white-tailed kite pair flying, I love to watch kites anyhow.

Then after I got to Minneapolis, they did have one reported, I was at the wrong place.  One appeared at Loxahatchee.  When I get on a roll, I can call birds.  It has been done before, but I don't understand it.  When this happens, I need to keep at it.  I now could taste 400 for January.  It would be tough but it could be done  
You know, when I got home to South Dakota at 10pm, I had driven on January 26th, 602 miles and flown for 3.5 hours.  all that, and I was ready to head to Iowa in the morning from home, after I sent my daughter off to school, fed the dog and got the mail.  What is a 400 mile day compared to today?  It would just be a short drive for shopping.  I'd go grocery shopping in Sioux Falls and follow a lead for some crossbills!
Like I said.  I can do this all day, everyday.  This is a sleeper compared to a surgical residency--the best thing to prepare you for a big year.  I had exorcised the pink demon and I was at 384.  I met some great birders, had a great chase, and things were setting up nicely, best of all I could now wear pink...well maybe not.
It was an eventful 60 hours
Beware of the pink menace!dang flamingoes!
...and thank you everyone!  It is very appreciated.
Olaf 

Some call this hell, I call this home

Northeast South Dakota

Big Year Day 22-23

Big Year Total:  369
Coded birds:  18
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn
Miles driven.  7550
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 39
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:11

I woke up at 8am to the hug of my daughter and walked out the front door to see her off to school.  I looked at my feeder and tallied a year bird.

#362  American Tree Sparrow



Then my pheasant rooster crowed and ran away in the distance

#363  Ring-necked Pheasant


I hadn't even had coffee yet and I had tallied two birds.  It took me 363 birds to see a ring-necked pheasant the state bird of South Dakota, who would guess?
Besides that 5 minute flurry, I took the day off from birding.  I cashed a few checks, made a few phone calls, and paid a couple of bills.  I also got my glasses adjusted that I slept on in the California Mountains.

January 23, 2016

I awoke at 0410, 5 minutes before my alarm.  I have always had the uncanny ability to awake a minute before my alarm no matter what time I would set but if I had nothing to do, I could sleep until 10am without a problem.
    I headed west to meet a birder buddy I knew, Birding Barry, who knows his way around Aberdeen and had a lead on some key birds.  Barry had texted me that one of his friends had researched the history of big years and as far as he could tell, none of them had ever birded in South Dakota, well all I can say is that, if it is correct,it is no longer true.  I had tallied two South Dakota birds already and was shooting for more.
        Most people who look at a map of South Dakota and who don't confuse it with North Dakota (note: the two Dakotas are NOT the same!) don't appreciate the huge terminal moraine the extends from extreme SE North Dakota and runs at an angle through NE South Dakota and into Minnesota.  Generally, the weather on the east side of the Missouri River in the two Dakotas are similar with it being colder in Minot and a little warmer the more south you get.  The exception is the top of this 40 mile moraine.
      In general, it is windier, wetter, snowier, and colder than the land on either side of it.  My cabin sits right in the middle on Enemy Swim Lake.  The crest of the old Milwaukee Road line as it chugs up the grade is a small town called Summit and through a bit of location, winds, etc. as the air is compressed, it forms fog, and Summit is the harshest part of the land.
     This morning as I left the moonlit city of Milbank and climbed, I was first greeted with dense fog and then, a harsh wind, and then as I slowed and crossed the road closed gates crossing I-29, I was greeted with blowing and drifting snow.  I expected no less in my Bad Weather Big Year.
     I-29 is an odd interstate.  For decades, it ended at Summit and then people used to have to switch to US81 to continue to Fargo beofore continuing on I-29 to the Canadian border.  The road was then extended to Sisseton and finally to Fargo.  However, the planner of the freeway just drew a line to fargo and it doesn't follow any old highways and as such, except for a new casino at the border, it is a lonely and desolate road.  To make matters worse, the engineers forgot about where this road is and didn't elevate it correctly.  As such, any snowfall in the wind makes it accumulate on this road and this stretch is frequently closed and I have driven on that road by feel alone, as once you leave Fargo, there is really no where to go until you get to the casino.  I have also almost ran out of gas on that 60 mile stretch.  Just south of Sisseton when you climb the ridge, I have hit glare ice, four foot drifts, and fog so dense you couldn't see anything.
    The truckstop at Summit has hosted NCAA Division I basketball teams, famous bands, politicians, and assorted tourists and ner-do-wells during some of the worst the Coteau can offer. Today was just an irritant.
     I met Barry in Aberdeem and we headed out to find Screech owls.  We first went to Richmond Lake State Park and began our search before dawn.  We heard nothing.  We started walking the trails and then what looked like a small owl flew right in front of us.  Barry shined my light into the tree I thought it landed in.  It wasn't there.  It was nowhere.  It was definately a small owl, and saw-whets are very rare here, so it had to be right?  Then we hiked about in the quarter then 3/4 light and then flushed a sharp-shinned hawk near where we had seen the "owl."  I guess it could have been a sharpie, but doubt it,  Since I couldn't be sure what we had seen and it never called, it counted as a UFO....pooh!
    We drove around to Barry's lock Snowy Owl sights, unfortunately nobody brought the key, no owls were seen, except a great horned at Mina State park.
We saw some other birds at Mina.
Unfortunately, my daughter had turned off my Vibration Control on my lens, we flushed a Northern Goshawk, and then it perched in a tree.  I shot a photo, it was blurry...oh well, at least it wasn't a rare bird.  We also saw redpolls at the feeder.

#364  Northern Goshawk



#365  Common Redpoll



Then we headed back to Richmond lake SP looking for Pine Grosbeak.  We also looked for the huge flock of waxwings which had 3 Bohemians imbedded in it, they were on private property raiding a cedar tree.  The cedars had a bumper crop of berries this year and the waxwings were stripping them in bunches.  I scoured the 200 or so birds for anything without yellow at 70 yards.  I found two Bohemians.

#366  Bohemian waxwing

#367  American Goldfinch


The goldfinch were also eating the berries.  A common bird but a year bird none-the-less.  We never spotted the grosbeaks.  We looked for the owls some more

Enemy Swim Lake
    I drove to check on my cabin on Enemy Swim lake between Milbank and Aberdeen.  We built it in 2002 just before we moved from Wisconsin to South Dakota in 2003.  The cabin is extremely isolated out in the Coteau and we leave the heat on but if the snow and wind gets too bad the truck can't deliver propane, and if it runs out...the plumbing bills get expensive.  You would go insane living the winter here although technically you could.
     It is a wonderful lake in the summer.  Some winters I can't get in within 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile. This winter I could get to within 300 yards.  I parked the Volvo on top of a hill and walked in, spooking large white snowshoe hare who got so scared I could still see him or her at a sprint going up the hill a quarter mile north of the cabin. The cabin's furnace was on and no one, animal or human had moved in


Just outside of the cabin I wandered into flocks of snow bunting and lapland longspurs, thousands upon thousands of them lifted off the side of the road.

#368  Snow Bunting       #369  Lapland Longspur



I drove home and did the father thing, I filled up my daughter's car with gas.  I bought groceries, a couple bottles of wine, and some cheese for me.  Life in the Northern Prairies, where we don't panic about any blizzards like those in the east.
     Many call this hell, I just call this home.....

I got a report of a flamingo in Florida, the pink devil, a nemesis bird.  I fly out in the morning.  I'm leaving my paradise for the warmth of south Florida.  I hopefully will be seeing pink when I arrive
Now someone doing a major big year has birded in the real Sunshine State, the traditional and official name for South Dakota

Stay Warm

Olaf

Giggling for Flounder

Big Year Day 19, 20 , and 21

Big Year Total:  361
Coded birds:  18
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion, pronghorn
Miles driven.  7250
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 37
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:10

Flight miles:13500

What is that guy doing to that fish? We'll get to that.

I woke up on Day 19 early in Wickenberg, Arizona.  I missed by dog, my bed, and my sauna.  I put my things together and drove into Phoenix into the 6am I-10 traffic jam.  I pulled off the road before that and called owls but all I heard was traffic.  Sick of the traffic, I pulled into Enconto Park a first light and walked around.  I wasn’t very happy with my heard only rosy faced lovebird and since I was here, I looked again.  Someone had reported a ruddy ground dove last week here but it was only marked by an “x” on ebird and I doubted that report.  Beware if x'S o's but that is a song I herad 39 times so far in the last three weeks of this journey.
         I looked at a couple of Eurasian collareds when I could see them.  I found a lovebird on the side of a palm tree after it gave itself away with a squawk.  These lovebirds are much quieter than other parrot-like birds.  They were on my list but I was good to see this one, or so I thought.            Silja called.  Apparently when Lena walked to the basement to look for crutches for her, she saw running water in our utility room.  We store food in there and it is where we have our sauna.  It is also where the water-heater is.  We had a rust hole and it was spraying out of the side.  Silja limped downstairs and turned off the water. All the food was in tubs, the cat box was plastic, and the wine cabinet was out of harms way.  I think there is a drain somewhere in there under my sauna.  I put it in, so I should know but alas that was ten years ago.  The plumber was called.  Car and water-heater, what was next?             I got to the airport plenty early for my Southwest flight to Austin, fifth airline in 10 days, some sort of record, no doubt.  I haven’t flown south west since June 13th, 1995.  One may wonder why I know the date so well.  That is a chapter in my birding book from 2013, the chapter called Flashbacks when I was on my way to the birth of our twins.  Silja went into labor when I was in Iowa, she in Pennsylvania.  I’ll spare that story in this rendition but it may be the best father getting to the birth of his children story ever.            My Volvo was in Austin, but I wasn’t sure if our park and fly receipt was nor the claim check for my bikes at the Hilton.  It could be a problem.  I would hit Refugio and also my plover spot and clean up those birds before heading home and ending the opening gambit of my big year.              I got an interesting reply back from the Leica representative.  I was fishing about a sponsorship.  They were out of budget until April.  Greg Miller had their endorsement but apparently his Big Year wasn’t as serious as I first had suspected.  Just a big birder going to see birds.  That could be just a ruse like the ones used by the Owen Wilson character in The Big Year.  I wouldn’t fall for it and I had the gas on and I was keeping the gas on.            I was also curious about another a-list birder, Paul Mayer, who seemed very eager to go to Alaska after a pochard but after stopping in Yuma for the streak-backed oriole.  Yuma doesn’t seem to be on the way to go to Alaska.  I was sensing competition for the throne.

Palacios Texas, January 19th, 2016 Doing a big year was like a game of golf.  I was just playing myself but I had to keep track of the field.  If Mayer was going to Alaska, so should I, it was like if the guy next to you lays up so should you, or if he goes for the green and makes it so should you.  To be honest, I didnt even know if Mayer was doing a big year and to be honest, like golf, this was my own game there was nothing I could do about it now.  I was in Texas and so I found my car, convinced the guy in parking to give me a discount since I was such a nice guy.  He couldn’t believe my car had been there for as long as it had and as such just charged me twelve dollars.  I also convinced the valet to give me my bicycles back without the claim check.  That cost me a five dollar tip.  I sort of figures I was $100 up but in all likelihood I had paid for it all in the room tab Jim paid.
I drove hard and fast for the coast. I was eyeing seeing plovers because it was late in the day and I didn’t think heading for the warbler would be a good plan.  I went to Palacios, a town I knew well, but unfortunately I hit the beach at high tide.  I saw a few shorebirds but no plovers.  I then wondered back to a Prairie Wetlands Preserve on the north side of town.  It was either abandoned or under construction.  I had never noticed it before probably because I always came into town from the west and this time I was driving in from the north.They had overlooks and boardwalks without trails.  I looked for sparrows and then on the last boardwalk I flushed a rail, a bigger rail with a long bill and then it called and so did another….clappers!  I wasn’t even thinking of this bird but I got it, bird number 355.  The whole afternoon wasn’t a loss.  I slid west, flowing along a feeder pipeline I own 5% of and shook my head at the fiasco that was building it.  The story of the Sartwelle lease and pipeline is a book in itself. I found a Motel 6 in Port Lavaca and crashed for the night.Just outside of Palacios I saw a sign, "Giggling?  Call Ray!  XXX-1234"  "Wtf?" I thought.  Yea, I want to giggle." I said laughed and drove on.
Refugio, Texas, January 20th, 2016 After a night in a rather expensive Motel 6 in Port Lavaca, where I gave back the $100 I saved the day before at the Hilton, I left to call owls on a very busy road.  Everyone in Texas, it seems drives noisy pickups, works at the "plant" and arrives at 0600 or 0630.  No owls found, heard, or tripped over in the dark.  I drove past another sign.  "Gigglers...we like them flat!  For a guide, call Ray...."  Now I was really confused.Shelly Lions park was just being serviced by the maintenance men when I arrived and again in the parking lot another birder recognized me although he confesses, he hadn't bought my book....yet.  I'd heard that before.  The favorite at book fairs is they would say they'd buy it at the book store as they had a gift card.  One...it wasn't at the book store, and two,  it wouldn't be signed.  It is always so surprising how many people come to book fairs who don't read books, but I am getting off track. I let the others focus on the flame-colored tanager and I worked the most promising area for the golden-crowned warbler, I wanted that bird.  I had played the song in my head so many times it was burnt into my brain that morning driving over in the car.  It was sort of a raspy call, not like much of anything.  It was a bit of a titmouse or chickadee meets a warbler.Then at 0850, I heard the sound but was thinking it was just it playing in my head.  Music does that to me and I shock my head.  No...it was really there.  I studied the bush ten feet in front of me and the ground covered in a vine I didnt know the name of.  Then for some reason that I am not clear about I got distracted.  I had tried to photograph Audubon's orioles earlier and my camera had a switch turned off and I had fixed that.  The Audubon's was the goal bird of the first time in 2014 I had came here and for the first time, had seen them.  Had I forgotten which bird I was truly after?I came to my senses and noticed a commotion of birds by marker #9, the sound was at #10.  I walked over instinctively and saw cardinals, an orange crowned warbler, two kinglets and then something caught my eye behind this bush at the top of the river bank, a small dark bird, not unlike an orange crowned, but darker, yellower on the bottom.  I was transfixed and then it moved its head and showed me its crown...THE GOLDEN CROWNED WARBLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I was stunned, then I shook myself and brought up the camera.  It was so close I had to adjust my focus.  I tried to find it, then I put the camera down, poof it was gone.  I should of just then dived into the thick crap and down the river bank but I hoped it would forage back my way.....My hope was in vain.  I called the other birders and they arrived with a larger crew, and we looked and no warbler....but I had it, no picture but I had seen the bird and I had sen it's clear fieldmarks clearly although briefly.later the crew came over to see if the tanager they had photographed was THE tanager.  It didn't look right.  Then I saw they were looking in a tree.  I saw a tanager and I shot a photo.



That was NOT the flame-colored tanager.  It was a very ratty looking summer tanager, no wingbars, blah color and it shouldn't be here either.  Some said they seen another tanager.  I'm not sure anyone believed me about this birds ID, IDK, this was the only bird I saw and to be honest, I was happy, I needed a summer tanager, bird #357.  Maybe there was a second bird....but I could only comment on what I saw and the photo I saw didn't look like this bird but it didn't look like the flamer either but it was an odd angle I didn't have a comparison shot of, maybe there are 3 tanagers?

I chatted with a couple of friendly Houston birders, apologizing for the tanager issues, but it wasn't really any fault of mine, like I said, I was happy with the ratty tanager.  I planned on packing it in and was heading to coast for a plover run, it seemed to not make sense to not give it another try, I was only an hour from the beach.
Goose Island State Park, Texas, January 20th, 2016 On my way south....I saw yet another sign...this on the side of a truck, I copied down his web address and this is his logo but it is the same as the sign, I'd research later.
I drove into the Goose Island State park turn off and realized why I can never remember the name of this place correctly.  My prothonotory warbler spot in La Crosse WI is called Goose Island and so I want to call this place Gray Island, but it is not named that ...and as I was reminded, the whooper spot is not in the park.  To be honest, I had never found the park.  Jim and I looked but couldn't find, this time I followed the signs.  It was so easy.Hey there is a great boardwalk in this park and it has a view of a sandbar!It was hot, 84 degrees hot, the boardwalk had high school kids fishing on it on a field trip from somewhere and I set up shop under the watchful eye of the ranger who kept asking me what I was seeing.  I think she was there to make sure I had a fishing license but alas...I was only birding.It was a good spot.  There was still a lone snowy plover, no pipings however.  But there next to a bunch of willet and to the left of an American oystercatcher was a red knot, a bigger wandering shorebird that is a bit chunky and this time of year not red at all.  It was smaller than the willets and more importantly, bird number #359.  These birds were far out on 65 power on my spotting scope so I wasn't even trying to digiscope them although the heat distortion wasn't present.  Maybe the water made it better?Finally, I pulled away from the gulf and reluctantly headed north.  I had 1500 miles to go in 2 days to end this crazy opening gambit, and still had birds to find.  I did finally ask a guy what the heck giggling was.  "Boss, you make me laugh."  The guy at the gas station said.  They always called me 'boss' in Texas.  I must of looked like a boss.  I could not open a door for a hispanic man in this state, he just wouldn't walk ahead of me.  In-grained racism?  In San Antonio, the one guy I refused to lead into a store was like my buddy by the time I had bought milk and he, a pizza.  I thought he was going to come over and wash my windshield....Giggling.....from Wikipedia.  is the practice of hunting fish or small game with a gig or similar multi-pronged spear. Commonly harvested wildlife include freshwater suckers, saltwater flounder, and small game, such as frogs. A gig can refer to any long pole which has been tipped with a multi-pronged spear. The gig pole ranges in length from 8 to 14 feet for fish gigs and 5 to 8 feet for frog gigs. A gig typically has three or four barbed tines similar to a trident; however gigs can be made with any number of tines. In the past people would attach illuminated pine knots to the end of gigs at night to give them light.Question answered.
Stillwater, Oklahoma, Crosscountry track.  January 21, 2016I kind of wanted to name this blog, T Bird Pickens, because I was heading to the campus of OSU, which their infamous donor is the oil man, who had his name on everything except, this cross-country track which is an a-list spot for Smith's longspurs.It was foggy, cold, the fog was condensing out on my camera, me, and everything.  Finally at just before 9 the flock of longspurs, 22 in all showed up.  The landed in a field of short grass, but....it wasn't short enough to see them.  I snuck up, they flushed and circled me, the field and then landed 1/8 of a mile on another clearing.  I walked over to that field and the process repeated.  They flew back to original spot.  Each time I moved I passed this sign.

It was like it was 1K each time I would have to reposition, and did the sign tell me it would take 6 times to get a photo?On the fourth pass I walked again by a flock of eastern bluebirds in a bush.  I tried to photograph them as I knew in their bluebird ways...they were laughing at me.
You can see how foggy it was, you can't even see the building behind them.  My camera was dripping in condensation and I was tired.  I flushed the bluebirds in frustration and then went after the longspurs.  Up they went...again and I tried to shoot them in the air, and I got dizzy and soon I was in the wet grass looking up into a gray mist of fog.  Now my lens was covered in water.  I was just like down in Texas at Frontera.  Birds!  I walked to the car and gave up looking for a Harris's sparrow.Many of you may think you can photogrph every bird.  You just can't, you can't do it.  The golden-crowned warbler was too quick and actually too close and these longspurs were too flighty and the day just sucked......It was then in my frustration, maybe birding greed, I decided to drive to SW Kansas to hopefully road bird a lesser prairie chicken.  It ended up being my only mistake of the trip.  I thought it would waste only 3 hours.  I wasted 5.  I saw nothing that even looked grouselike and to be honest I got lost.I stopped to photograph antelope I stood out of the car in a cold wind, on a ranch road in the middle of nowehere, and tried to make sense of where I was and what I was doing.  I looked at the map on the hood of the car.  The nearest town was called Sun City.  It was then that a cold chill went up my neck and it wasn't from the weather.  "Holy F$$^K!!" I swore.I had just published a fictional novel about a guy finding a rather not-so-friendly to visitors commune in Kansas in my novel The Enumerator.  One of the cities was named Sun City!



Here accidentally, had I really found this place?  I needed to go and I needed to go away from here quickly, my life may depend on it.  It was like my guardian angel was telling me, yelling at me.  "Get the heck out of here!!!"  I jumped in my daughter's Volvo and headed north as fast as I could, I didn't want to speed as the cops in my novel were the problem.  I was going home, home for safety.In another county, I sped under bird #361, a rough-legged hawk near McPherson KS and I turned north on I-135, then hwy 81, and I didn't stop.  I only stopped for gas once in Central Nebraska, I slowed driving on iced roads, snow covered roads (what else would I expect in a bad weather big year), I did stop for roads blocked by trains, ...until finally at 1AM I arrived 1000 miles of driving on 1/21.  I was at my home, my home sweat home........the end of the OPENING GAMBIT.  That crazy first three weeks of the big year, was over. I smelled, my feet hurt, I was still a bit antsy from thinking the Sun City Kansans were going to get me (it is never good to believe your own fiction), I was tired, but I had seen 361 species of birds, but tonight it was all a blur.  Had I really seen the western spindalis three weeks ago, it seemed like years ago?
It was 8 degrees, 76 degrees colder than when I left for home 34 hours earlier.  Burrr!
Brighid, the springer spaniel welcomed me and was happy to see me and so was my wife...It was good to be home....
There is no place like home, tap heals, there IS no place like home.  Olaf...you're not in Kansas anymore and it is safe now, you can go to bed!


Olaf  

Big Olaf of Catalina

1/16-18/ 2016

Dana Point, California and offshore to Laughlin NV

Big Year Day 16-18

Big Year Total:  354
Coded birds:  17
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal, gray whale, California sea lion
Miles driven.  5680
Hours at sea: 14
Miles walked 34
Miles biked 2
states/ prov. birded:8
Flight miles:12500

26 years ago, while visiting my godparents with my new fiance, I caught the biggest bonito I ever caught right where I'm standing.  A few minutes later, I got on an even bigger one, it pull and tugged and pulled again.  Then it just took off, and all I got was slack.  I looked out to see a huge bonito in the mouth of a California sea lion.   It was almost like he was thanking me for tethering his prey, Bonita on a rope they say.
         A lot has happened in 26 years....I went ahead an married Silja, and now we have three wonderful children, one of them, Lena, accompanied me on this voyage into my past.


It was her first pelagic and I had made some promises a dad probably shouldnt have made like....we'd see whales and sealions.  Luckily, the sea lions are still there, the gray whales where still here.


And for doing a big year, the birds were still there.

I went out with the Sea and Sage Audubon Group from Orange county and we went looking for seabirds.  We found them.  I also found some famous people in the annals of birding.  Dorian Anderson the Self-powered Big Year man was there.  He said since his 18000 mile biking days are behind him, he is not as fit since he moved to California.  John Dunn called out the birds, a sage of birding.   Thomas Ford-Hutchinson took amazing pictures and even scoped me out despite my usual low profile.  I even ran in to Dez the 2015 ABA Jr. Birder of the Year, he had the key spot all day in the bow of the boat. Biil from a local traveling ground called the Trogonistas actually told me of the group.  We had met him in Key West back in 2014.  Thanks Bill!

Nearby my bonito spot, we found a code 3 bird sitting on Edith the northern-most oil derrick of the three.

There were twelve of them up there and right next to a natural gas flare.  Ecology meets well, lack of ecology.  
Old Edith's eternal light.  On the Oil and Gas Industry in California.  Gas prices here, $1.20 higher than Texas.  One does wonder how that affects the local economy with almost double the cost of transportation.  Maybe Californians just don't care?  It isn't the poor people that is getting the difference, it is the oil companies.
Besides the boobies, other seabirds were also still out there.

 We saw a few rhinoceros auklet.

Common Murre in both plumage's


Another view of a Brown Booby, it was a good bird

Black oystercatcher on the jetty leaving

Heerman's gulls flew over their harbor.  I find these gulls fascinating and enjoy seeing them every time I do.  They have bright red bills and have very white heads in their breeding plumage

There were two types of sheerwaters
Black vented shearwaters were all over



We saw one Pink-footed shearwater


The first northern fulmar of the season

Pomerine jaegers flew by, landed chased murres, chased shearwaters chased gulls, dove at Cassin's murrelets, and generally tried to bully and eat everyone, except us on the boat.

It was a fun pelagic and not too rough and a good first seabird excursion for my daughter.  I met some nice people and had a few tips
Jim had a little issue when he woke up before us and walked across the street to McDonald's for the birders breakfast and then ate it on the step of the hotel.  As we were getting ready to go, he couldn't find his bag including his wonderful new hat.  We suspected a homeless person had a new backpack complete with a new hat from Mt Laguna's roads, but later that night Jim came over and admitted it had never left the room, he had some sort of false memory of even having it with...too many McDonald's and too many birding trips no doubt.
Day 2  Catalina Island
We headed to Catalina Island on the express and it booked across.  Jim and I spent the passage on the side lower front deck, watching.  As if it wanted to be counted an all black seabird flew up along side the boat matching the speed and the closer it came the more I realized it was a shearwater and had no white on it at all, a sooty!  yea.  It passed eventually over the bow and then flew like shearwaters do.  It was sort of odd, the only sooty we saw in a sea of black-venteds.  Now for other birdlfe, it was sparse but both Jim and I spotted a scripps murrelet as they tried to get out of the way of the fast boat.  Little thing with a white underside, and smaller than a murre.
I arrived to Catalina and it was just like I had already been part of it all.  

Big Olaf of Catalina's Ice cream, and...I still have my cherry...
One of my son's (Tyko) college roommate is Mason Sanchez of the island and works at the bike shop.  He is a good guy and set us up with bikes and told me where to find doves and hummers.  For the hummers...they are everywhere.
It took us a bit of a bike ride and out of breath I spotted my Life bird #722, a spotted dove, and bird 350 of the year.


These doves are exotics established 100 years ago that are retreated and I assume eventually only here on Catalina will they continue on, where to my eye they appear to be the predominant dove.  It counts and I saw them.
The second island bird worth seeing is the Allen's Hummingbird which we found first and was bird #349 and the one here doesn't migrate and are a little larger than those on the northern coastline.  They were also easy to find.

After birding was pretty much over, we road around the roads with our rented bikes with or tired bodies.  Many of you know, I'm a big fan of the Art Deco movement of the 1920s and 30s and our house has art to prove that.  One of the best buildings of that period is the Catalina Casino


It is a theatre and has never been a sight of gambling.  Casino means meeting place in Italian.  It is adorned by very gorgeous period tilework on the outside, the fully naked mermaid is a theme on many of the signs in the shopping area as well.


William Wrigley's Memorial sits at the top of the gardens to him and it is where he was buried from 1933-1942 (ish?) when his remains were moved from the top of the huge structure to Forest lawn cemetery due to security concerns?  Why you might ask?


It is not a bad little place, the problem was, I put too much hot sauce on a very good burrito which just about killed me.
There is also tourist stuff on the island, like even a yellow submarine, which apparently you can go for rides on.

We bid the island adieu and then watched Pittsburgh screw up their football game on the way home.
Day 3  Irving Regional Park
My daughter needed some local birds and I needed an oak titmouse and we found them and it, Bird #351

My photo of the Lewis's woodpecker #552 was bad and  #553 Wood duck, would require no photo as they are backyard birds but here is a nice photo of a nuttall's woodpecker 


and off course parrots were everywhere

While the search for the titmouse and unsuccessful search for owls was ongoing, the non-birder wife of mine was screwing around on the playground equipment which had that soft mat stuff on the ground and she stepped wrong and sprained her ankle and then when going home later had to be pushed around in a wheel chair.  Sick the first trip and hurt the second, it wasnt looking good for me.
Well, I took everyone to the airport, thanked Jim, and sent the family home, and in Silja's case limping severely but before that it was a good trip and nice to see them.  Jim's help was invaluable..
I drove hard for Davis dam and follow up on a lead for a yellow-billed loon, it had been a NARBA report and a AZ list-serve but I got an email of a closer spot, the dam.  This is a bird I just never see, seen it once on a seawatch fly-by, on St. Paul but it wasn't optimal.  I found it quite easily there swimming with 4 common loons.  It was a nice obviously yellow-billed loon, and with commons around, a nice contrast.  Why he was in Laughlin NV?  It wasn't for the gambling as no loons are allowed.  Everyone knows that.
The picture?  Yea...I need help learning how to digiscope

the scenery is nice.  

In a novel I'm working on, alien invaders destroy this dam as they blow up Glen canyon and Hoover up stream and the torrent just washes this earthen dam and the casinos of Laughlin away  The first casino is peeking behind that hill.  They purposely have the stop lights in town times so you can't really leave town.  Why would anyone come here?  We'll leave that for another day.


All I can say is that the Yellow-billed loon was now the second best bird I've seen by a dam site.
Heading back east after a night in Wickenberg and will find my car in Texas and work my way home for winter birding but fist another go round for the warbler in Refugio
Big Olaf wants you to enjoy my Ice Cream
Olaf
Summary
Pelagic Dana Pt 1/16
338.  Herman's gull339. Pomerine Jaeger340.  Rhinocerus Auklet341.  Cassin's murrelet342. Black-vented shearwater343.  Pink-footed shearwater344.  Northern fulmar345.  Brown Booby346.  Red-throated loon
Catalina Is  1/17sea 347.  Sooty shearwater348.  Scripp's Murreletland349.  Allen's Hummingbird350.  Spotted dove
Irving reg park 1/18351.  Oak Titmouse352.  lewis's Woodpecker353. Wood duck
Davis Dam, Laughlin NV 1/18354.  yellow-billed loon

The Snowball From Hell

1/14-15/ 2016

Imperial Valley/ San Diego CA

Big Year Day 14-15

Big Year Total:  337
Coded birds:  16
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal
Miles driven.  5680
Hours at sea: 4
Miles walked 32
states/ prov. birded:8
Flight miles:12300

July 15, 2016  Headline, San Diego County Times

Milbank South Dakota big year birder arrested in Mt Laguna Snowball incident that he states was only a misunderstanding.  After a report from a fellow birder, James Brown, that Mr. Olaf Danielson had thrown a snowball at him.  After learning that such activity is against the law, he reported him to the local authorities as he felt was his responsibility.

Mr. Danielson of rural Milbank, SD, was forced to present himself before a local magistrate and then after the following picture was used as evidence against him during testimony Mr. Brown gave to the court...



Mr. Danielson pleaded no-contest to the charges.  
Since this was his first offence and that he will be leaving the jurisdiction shortly.  He promised to post a copy of the sign showing that throwing snowballs is illegal.  If done so within 48 hours of his sentence on his famous blog, the $500 fine and jail time was waived.

Mr. Judge.  Here is my penance.....

Merle Haggard sang...The best of the free life behind us now. And are the good times really over for good? Are we rolling down hill. Like a snowball headed for Hell?

Okay, I'm a little ahead of myself...

After flying into Phoenix, we decided to bird the Southern Pacific route from I-8 through Southern California.  We spent the night of the 13th in Gila Bend AZ and got up early to drive to Willton, AZ in the hope of finding a ruddy ground dove but the Green Acres RV park didn't look very birder friendly and the manager was not in so with some hesitation we drove on. No bird is worthy of being arrested for. 

We found a photogenic Prairie Falcon, bird #315, a quarter mile east



We spent sometime around Yuma and we found the oriole in a clump of bushes by the river but it never showed for Jim and then we drove to the Salton Sea.  No new birds for me though, I was just here.
We began our assault on the California bird list with the precision of a 15th century surgeon using a butter knife and a box full of leeches.    
We arrived exactly 5 days after Greg Miller and his band of Big Year Birders cruised through.
Largely it was an unsavory affair, not for the birding although we could have had better looks of birds.   We got what was needed.  I immediately felt itchy from a previous exploit in the area courtesy of bed-bugs from staying in El Centro in 2013.  We drove around without any help from the local guy at the refuge who didn't know what a yellow-footed gull even was, but luckily I had been here before.
#316 Yellow-footed gulls, we had one up close that was sleeping and later 2 that were way out in scope view#317.  Mountain plover feeding in a burnt over field at the far corner and not photogenic at all#318  Ross Goose were back in a field

 #319  marbled godwit
#320  California Gull
#321 Ferruginous  Hawk flew before I could photograph it.

It could have been better but we got what we needed to see.  There were thousands of long-billed curlew around and we saw dozens of burrowing owls.





It was during one of these stops that my camera got smacked and for the rest of the day, all my pictures were yellow and fuzzy, luckily I fixed it that night.
Salton Sea....we use natural gas to make power to desalinate the water, which we use to flood desert to grow hay, to feed cows to produce milk to exploit a loophole in the nations milk pricing.  It is an ecological disaster, but...they have birds no one else does.
We drove up to Jacumba, found a flea bag hotel and ate and passed out to the calling of owls.
We awoke, found coffee for Jim and drove up into Mt Laguna and found fog, rain, snow, and loud trucks.  It wasn't a good time to be up there and than I got frustrated and made snowballs...well you heard about that story
After that, we found a few birds.
#322  Mountain Chickadee#323  Pygmy Nuthatch#324 Nuttall's Woodpecker#325 Purple Finch#326  Western scrub jay
Nothing worth photographing and it was so foggy and wet, nothing was going to turn out and I didn't figure out my camera issues until then.  I was thinking I still had issues from the rain in south Texas on January 2-3.
We then went to my secret birding spot in San Diego, which isn't really a secret but a great spot for everything. Telcolote canyon... In just 40 yards we tallied:
#327Scaly-breasted Munia


#328  California gnatcatcher, which wouldn't come out nice but I have great photographs of them right here, well ten feet away.
#329  California Thrasher

#330  Wrentit, which I still haven't photographed well, a bird easily heard but not seen.

#331.  Western Bluebird#332  Cassin's Kingbird, not many kingbirds around and these two were very shy#333 California Towhee#334 Bell's sparrow, which I played ring around the sage brush until it flew by Jim, he wasn't looking and then he drove the bush and it flew out of view.  We went to Otay Lakes and drove some more brush and I stirred up another but again it got away unphotgraphed
We went to Tijuana Sloughs NWR and did the Imperial Death march on the beach to see the shorebirds and terns, it was low tide do the Ridgeway's Rails weren't out.  There were a lot of birds there, Clark's grebes in the river in front of us and Eared grebes, the last of my 2 grebe needs, birds 335-336Then on walking back at half light, I thought of a whimbrel and one appeared right in front of me seemingly from nowhere, bird #337.
Another of the other showy birds we saw....
Spotted towhee

Jim, was cold up in the snow of the mountains and he thought he needed a hat.  We drove around the corner and there in the middle of the road was a perfectly useful and somewhat stylish (if your female!) hat, but Jim is famous for his off the wall hats and was so proud of his new one, I couldn't hold the snowball instance against him. Look at Jim in his new hat

It was a fine find and the highlight of his day, that and the Ridgeway's Rail, I was happy to stay our of jail and continue the big year.  My best bird was those pretty little munia, show photogenic this year, I was impressed.  
My big year was becoming like a snowball and all I hoped was, that it wasn't a snowball rolling down and heading for hell.  Month 1 half over, birds...337
Whatever you do, don't throw it!
Olaf

The f4 Gullnado

1/13/ 2016

East of St Louis Illinois

Big Year Day 13

Big Year Total:  314
Coded birds:  16
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal
Miles driven.  5180
Hours at sea: 4
Miles walked 29
states/ prov. birded:7
Flight miles:11300

The reports were going out that a tremendous gullnado was forming in SW Illinois.  Many people were running to take cover, some had locked themselves up in storm shelters, and many were looking out there windows and scratching their balding heads.  At The Carlisle Dam, the US Army Corp of Engineers were making ready the spillway that would be the center of the storm, the eye of the gullnado so to speak.  An intrepid few, like Arvid and I, we were gullnado chasers, like the men and women from the University of Oklahoma and we had flown into St. Louis just to follow the reports and to see it ourselves.            We touched down at a little after seven and headed west towards the tempest, but in Missouri, my bad weather big year aside, it was totally clear and sunny, a tad under 40 but mind you I real honest to God, f4 gullnado was brewing just west of us, we knew it.  We stopped at McDonald’s in Trenton, IL to eat and with Arvid at the wheel, it was always a bit of an unpredictable situation itself.  Arvid swerves for birds, u-turns for hawks and stops short for every owl, well not always but enough for me to have to keep an eye on him.  I have always said, it is always best to arrive at a gullnado with a full stomach and lots of caffeine.  These things can have a life of their own and one shouldn’t starve as they can be frustratingly long.  Arvid drove through the payment window at McDonald’s, something I do now and again and did in Texas just yesterday, but this totally flustered the people and they didn’t know what to do with Arvid’s money.  Finally, after the line was backing up behind us, she just gave us free breakfast.  She made up an excuse.  It didn’t buy it, but I was thinking now, we will drive through all the payment windows and see what this gets us, sort of a research experiment.  I will report the results on later blogs.            It was some time after nine when we arrived at the spot, gullnado ground zero and we were not disappointed.  The vortex was already high and forming secondary circulations and occasionally as high as you could even see.  What exactly is a gullnade, you ask?  A gullnado is a swarm of gulls feeding or flying around from a fixed spot, like here in Lake Carlisle, the spillway, occasionally one would form out in the lake as they prepared to come in to feed or when an eagle flew by.  The spillway was open due to the floods and minnows and other feed were plenty in the waters.  The gulls were to steal a term from somewhere, in a feeding orgy of sorts.            How many gulls?  Maybe 20,000 ring-billed gulls, one lesser black-backed gull, a few Bonepart’s gulls, a smattering of herring gulls, and the code four, black-tailed gull—the goal of our chase to Illinois.  The Bonepart’s and the Lesser black backed were two year birds for the big year.  Everyone was happy, who we met as they had all just seen the rare Japanese gull feed and well they said, it flew over there.  It was maybe, a quarter mile away and you could see some of the markings but well, here is a photo and you can decide. 



Do any of the mantles of the gulls look dark to you?
            We waited and we froze.  It was cold up there on that dam, a damn cold place, I may add.  Year birds did trickle by.  Here is a flock of greater white fronted geese. 




I spotted my canvasback, well a large flotilla of them.  We also got snow and cackling geese.  Six lifers and not a really decent look at the rarity.  I hiked the damn, I skuaed the birders, everything but nothing happened.  Occasionally, you’d see an immature ring-billed that had a banded tail and you hoped but alas, it was just a ring-billed. 

You’d try to sort swimming gulls and then, frustrated, you’d start over again.            Finally, as if God intervened, out of nowhere, a shout from down on the spillway was heard and we turned around to look and then I spotted it.  People ran off the damn like it was going to burst, the f4 gullnado had happened!
It was feeding in the gullnado and I had an excellent look.  Arivd, though, couldn’t see anything.  He was unable to see the gull through the hoard of other gulls circulating.  I ran down to the right side for my camera, why didn’t I have my camera you ask?
Arvid followed.  Unfortunately, the gull was giving fly-by photo-ops for those on the other side.  Of the dam, I garbbed it, ran up the dam, crossed it and stumbled down the stairs on the other side.  Arvid followed and thank God he saw it.  I got some photos.  I was cold, Jim had put on long-johns during a paused in the vigil, but was also cold but we had the gull. 



Longer bill, longer wings, and a white space below black on tail.

It was a dam great gull…okay bad pun.  But for a code 4….


As in football, we were now in bonus time.            I had one St. Louis area bird I had to see.  The Eurasian tree sparrow, an exotic brought over by presumably German brewers to St. Louis in the later 1800s so that they had local birds too just like the English had their sparrow.  Initially the German sparrow it has spread slowly up the rivers around the central Midwest.  My lock spot for these is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa but if I didn’t have to go to Cedar Rapids, and could see one here, it would save me time.  I don’t expect a rare bird chase to eastern Iowa but in writing this, possibly, a gullnado is forming as a type.            Having lived in St. Louis for four years, I left Arvid in charge.  This was my second time to St. Louis and appropriately we were heading near Cahokia, the site of the largest man-made pyramid in North America, made by…?  Maybe Native Americans, who knows.  This huge city is one of those megalithic sites that you can’t describe and worse, no one has ever heard of.  That previous trip to research the pyramid involved me sneaking in my Springer spaniel into a hotel room and the family watching a new movie called Legally Blonde.  I remember it making Grandmother Lucille laugh as she went with on that adventure.Arivd took us to Horseshow lake State park in E. St Louis, and …we dipped out, but the referee hadn’t blown the whistle for extra time just yet and like that last second corner kick, we went around a corner and some flushed on the side of the road.  Jim swerved for the shoulder and we hopped out and go them,  year bird, #314. 



 Sorry the city of four seasons or in my mind, the city of four smells, Cedar Rapids, you’d have to be skipped.Things were going good, the Opening Gambit, that foolhardy plan had yielded 314, I was now only 26 under Komito’s January record of 340.  It was only the 13th and I’d pass him now on the 15th when I started to bird California for the first time and I could get 400 if I decided to chase to Alaska by the end of the month.  Besides that, I had 16 coded birds and I had seen a new one each day for 13 consecutive days, that had eclipsed my personal record of 7 in September 2014 on St Paul.  It was brutal but I wanted to put up a big number to spook people thinking about doing this out of the game and I was still not sure of what Greg Miller, one of the other 1998 Big Year birders was actually up to.  He was doing something with tag alongs or maybe that was just a way to make a few bucks to cover the costs of a big year, IDK.  Greg Miller was real and he wouldn't just be scared off, but was 750 his overall plan?

I had tried to friend him on Facebook for added intel, but alas, Olaf Danielson is not apparently friend material for a real birder like him.  That is okay, I understand, I was going to creep on his sight anyhow.  But not knowing wasn't a good thing for me, and so I deduced I needed to really put the hammer down and maybe I’d chase to Alaska before the end of the month.  I needed to go up there in winter anyways.  I’d have time to work on that as I wasn’t even sure how I was going to get back to my car.  I may have a couple of chases just to get there.  I had so many open ended plane flights, I have already been on two flights at the same time from adjoining gates.  Where even was my car?
We got back to the airport and jumped a plane heading west to Phoenix and then we’d drive to get a couple of fresh rare bird reports on our way to the west coast.  By flying to St Louis, and leaving my car in Austin, I had actually given myself a couple extra days of birding, although that is birder math and we only know how to count to 750, so when I mentioned this to my wife, she just didn’t want to talk about it.       “Silja, the car is in the airport Hilton in Austin and in my wallet is a claim check for two bicycles in there storage area.”  I dutifully reported.  I have some explaining to do when we met up in California by the end of the week.          “Beware of the gullnado!”  I warned her in jest.  She told me just to call her back later.  A gullnado was beyond what she could comprehend as was a bird chaser husband who had already been in six chases in 13 days and when I said I was going to Illinois she said,."To where?"  Sigh, it is going to be a long year..
Olaf

Digging the Texas Two-step in Refugio

Refugio-Aransas TX

Big Year Day 12

Big Year Total:  306
Coded birds:  15
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal
Miles driven.  4950
Hours at sea: 4
Miles walked 29
states/ prov. birded:6
Flight miles:10100
I am now embarking on a phase of my Opening Gambit, that to be totality honest, I was not looking forward to.  I still had a week to go in what is arguably the most grueling physically demanding three weeks in birding, possibly for me, the toughest period since I was an intern.  Initially I had scheduled myself to drive to Los Angeles and then home.  However, things on the feathered variety were taking location that would intensify even what was already intense.The flight back to San Antonio and the trip down to Refugio to dig out a bird that appeared to need some serious digging.  The golden-crowned warbler was notoriously skulky and all this in a park that, well, wasn’t Frontera Audubon thick, but thick none-the-less.  What would inspire during the six hours to follow wasn’t so much a stakeout, it was, but an attempt to dig out of the underbrush and little bird that preferred to not ever being seen, and it would try my and anyone who looked for it’s patience.            This wasn’t my first rodeo in this town I can’t pronounce correctly and in a lion’s park that, to me, seems like an oddly designed place.  It is sort of a locked mobile home park that really isn’t locked.  It is a city park that, well, appears to be a wildlife refuge.  It has a basketball court but elderly retirees who live at the park who don’t appear to like the sport or those that do.  Back in 2014, I got the bright idea I wanted to go see this locally famous flamingo, a wild Yucatan bird that befriended a zoo escapee from Kansas and they had been found in nearby Lavaca Bay.   Alas, I was woefully unprepared and the flamingo flew when I was literally being backed out of the gate on my flight to Austin, well that was when I was notified from a nice guy who sent me the text, oh well, away I had to go to Austin.  I saw a report of an Audubon’s oriole in this park and went to dig it out but alas…no luck.  It wasn’t the only bad luck I’d have on that trip.  I did a lot of driving for 3 lifers, all pedestrian birds by many standards. The best being an out of season grove-billed ani in Santa Ana NWR.  The past, as they say, is past and that was very ancient history, in fact, even a week ago when I left Texas, seems like ancient history.            I was also plagued by yet another rare gull report, this one in Illinois near St. Louis and a just as rare black-tailed gull, and just like the ivory or the kelp, I had no real way to get it and fit in the schedule but fit this one in I must.  I was reminded of that as the ivory gull had apparently flown the coup last night and was now nowhere in Duluth or Superior to be found.   Hopefully it wasn’t in the DNA of the gyrfalcons that had moved into Duluth for the winter to hunt.            Jim and I wouldn’t arrive to way late in San Antonio after a two stop-over flight from Victoria and all that after an 0530, owl calling adventure that yielded no owls, and for that matter much of anything, that is until the sun came up.  So what to do, and how to get there.  I had a Volvo in Texas.  I had a pelagic in Dana Point, California and I had two rare gulls flying around the Midwest and in between 10 key birds I needed to get and all before my wife and daughter arrived in Orange County airport on Friday evening.  It would be a long week and my easy day, Monday, I had made intolerably difficult by going owling and pushing ourselves to get every bird out of the Victorian countryside we could.               We couldn’t drive any farther and pulled off of the road onto a ranch road near Beeville, TX.  It was difficult to sleep due to the bin of great-horned owls in the tree above us, bird number 294.  It was also difficult to sleep when at first light we were being stared at by the rancher, none too pleased at our location to take a rest no doubt.  We drove on, arriving into Refugio after finding some coffee and the only Stripes apparently that didn’t sell burritos on the east side of Beeville.             I got a rather odd ebird notification that a flamer-colored tanager had been seen at the very same place we were going…coincidence or providence?  It was just getting sunny as I tried to put all the pieces of my birding equipment together in the parking lot after realizing that the bathroom I tried to get into in 2014, was still locked.  Jim and I trudged into the forest and I began to slowly wake up, trying to look in vain for a little ground loving warbler.  It was a lost cause, I could feel that.  I saw a little bird in the brush, it was bird #295, a winter wren, then another #296, a Carolina wren, so it wasn’t so bad.            I maximized the slog and stand, as I could describe this.  Bird #297 was a Carolina chickadee, and #298, a Couch’s Kingbird, a bird I should have seen near McAllen but didn’t.  


Jim then called me, had he found the warbler?            No, he had a greater peewee in a tree.  Calling a bird a greater peewee is like calling the Cookie Monster the toughest Muppet.  It was bird #299, though and it was not supposed to be anywhere near here.  Why Refugio?  I kept asking myself.


            I had always thought bird #300, and that is 300 in 12 days would be an important milestone like bird #300, the hoary redpoll was in my nude Big Year but alas now 300 wasn’t halfway to anything, and just as unexciting was bird #300, a drab American goldfinch, so drab and unexciting, I didn’t even photograph it.  I then successfully found both a Wilson’s warbler, which had been associated with the Golden-crowned but possibly it was a different Wilson’s, and a did a mini-chase of a hundred yards and got a Louisiana waterthrush bird #302.


            By 1:30, Jim was birding the picnic table and my legs were sore so we headed out to rethink it all.  I switched hats, we ate McDonald’s the birders culinary delight and I decided to make a run for the Whooper, the Whooping Crane, maybe 40 miles away.  Jim was too bored to say anything but okay.            I drove hard the 20 miles to Highway 35.  Last time I was here, I learned something, I learned is was quicker avoiding Aransas NWR and going to Gray Island State Park, IF and a big IF the whoopers were there.  I took a big breath and headed south at 80 mph.  If I failed, the day was shot and I’d have to go to Aransas anyway and possibly dip out.  It is amazing how doing the oddest thing like having a fish sandwich can make things sometimes change drastically.  I ate the sandwich and It make things unsteady inside so quicker, might, and I repeat might be better.  There is no gas station and more importantly not even cover on this route.  As such, I drove hard.  I saw a sign for a picnic area and then forgot, it didn’t have a bathroom when Jim calmly said, “Aplomado.”  He didn’t say stop, ro shout and we were 150 miles from prime Aplomado country.  I casually pulled into the picnic area hoping I had missed the outhouse.            “I think I saw an Aplomado.”  Jim said.            “Flying?”  I asked not believing him and them Jim pointed.            “No in that powerline.”


            Wow, were we lucky.  I great look at a rare bird as it was being buzzed by an angry kestrel.  I shot my card full of pictures.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and then as I was switching cards, it vanished like it wasn’t even there.             If I hadn’t invited Jim along, I would have never gotten this bird and if I had ordered what I order 95% of the time at Mickey D’s, two cheeseburgers, I would have not even been here.  The funny thing was that my sudden urge, with the arrival of the code 3 bird, had like the bird now, vanished.              I pushed us through the Gray Island area and we quickly saw the whooping cranes off in the usual spot.  There were six of the rarest breeding birds in the country. 



Somewhere near 400 walked the earth and here were about 1.5% of the population feeding but unlike many birders who would watch the majestic creatures, we took off because I had this bright idea we should go back to Refugio, why?  I got a feeling.            Bird #305 was an eastern meadowlark, drive-by and in the fastest 35 miles in birding.  I barely slowed down for the stoplight in town as it seemed I had to be there.  We were parking at Refugio, like we had never left.  It was just like we had never left because we hadn’t even got to the pavilion, and a birder we had met, Petra Hockey and a member of the Texas Rare bird Committee comes running at us.  It was a run that could only mean one thing a RARE BIRD!            I will forever be grateful for Petra, who came back for us, even though, in reality, we weren’t there, or shouldn’t have been.  Her and two Oregon birders had assumed we hadn’t left because, well at a crucial stakeout like this one, only a fool would have.  We followed her back to the overlook of the river and they had found the tanager, a probably 1st spring male.   I photographed and studied it.  Wow! 





            This bird is notorious for hybridizing especially with western tanagers but this one looked good, the bill, the back, the tail, the face.  It was bird #306, and I’m sure the records committee will review this bird so let us say #306 with an asterisk but it helps to have seen it with a voting member. We'll see what is decided, if they say no I'll pull it off the list.            This is how a food run and a choice to buy something with a little MSG in it added two coded birds, it was an odd Texas two-step, but at least, it wasn’t the runs, which a lot of MSG can do and here without cover, there is nowhere to run to.  Whew!  It was lucky, lucky me, the world’s luckiest birder at work again, and for Jim, his fifth lifer in a week and he didn’t even get the accentor.            We got to Austin and deciding to go for broke and maybe it would cause me to go broke, we took the Opening Gambit a step further and booked passage for the St. Louis and the gull.  If I owned a pirate ship, I would either name it the Black Tern or the Black tailed gull.  Why a Japanese gull was in central Illinois was beyond me, maybe it came to pillage and rape, but I would have to find it first.  Day 12 over, 306 birds in the bag.  Again, thanks Petra for finding us.
Meanwhile, Jim and I were still doing the Texas two-step.  Two happy male birders can dance together, can’t we?  Two days ago, I was hugging a tree.  I’m open minded, are you?

Olaf at large over Missouri

1/11/2016 The Circus is in Town

Victoria-Surrey BC Canada

Big Year Day 11


Big Year Total:  293
Coded birds:  13
Cool animals: Bobcat, Harbor seal
Miles driven.  4450
Hours at sea: 4
Miles walked 26
states/ prov. birded:6
Flight miles:8200

I brought this traveling sideshow called my Bad Weather Big Year to Victoria BC to see something called a Redwing, a European thrush more commonly seen around Viking ruins in Norway and Denmark, but for some strange reason, one likes holly trees on the west cost of North America in Victoria.  I think this is only the second west coast appearance of this thrush, and so it is a really good bird.

 I was going to call this blog..Oh Canada! and do some parody of their national anthem, and tell Canada stories and I have many.  My favorite golf course is north of Vancouver (Furry Creek), a great nude beach is in BC, my favorite restaurants are in BC, and the only 4 NHL games I've ever watched in person is watching the Orcas in GM Place in Vancouver.  My first grizzly bear chase--Vancouver, my first bed bug attack--BC, my first chase by thugs--BC...I have too many stories, way too many stories.  But this is about birds...I guess...?  I'll save the stories for next time.

I met up with Jim, "I feel Good" Brown, or as he is known in the birding circuit, "Arvid" and we landed late in BC.  We woke up the 9th and immediately went to the Redwing stakeout which since this bird has been about for a while was a bit muted.  We met a nice couple from Texas and we started the wait.  Unlike some stakeouts this was an active one, only 4 of us and so we had work at it.  It took 20 minutes before the thrush was located and 15 before it came out and all 4 of us noticed it.  I shot a wonderful picture to get lifer #720.



Shortly afterwards at bird #248, my Canada Goose free Big Year record was broken, I finally spotted one, well more than one.  You try to see 250 species of birds without seeing a Canada goose, it isn't easy, but it was a FOY bird, #249, Canada Goose.


Worthy of a photo and hopefully not the last record I would break this year....
We watched as a series of cats as they eyed the hedgerow, also birdwatching I suspect if the redwing disappears we'l know the culprit...got that Fluffy!  We are on to you.  Orangie slunk away without photographs, but the same for him.   Every circus needs a big cat....?

We met up with a local birder named Matt Cameron, a cool musician ex-pat from Iowa and he took us around.  We saw it all, birds, views and I want to say it here...the weather was GREAT!!  Our guide was better!


Mt Baker in the background.  You can't make up a view like this.
Year birds from the tour... 


Black Turnstones

Golden-crowned kinglet

Harlequin Duck

Northwestern Crow

surfbirds
We saw lots of birds,, 32 year birds and had a good time, after the long day, we toasted it with a beer at the White Spot.  I'm a little windblown from a seawatch but heck, the beer is all good.


Nothing says a lifer like a great beer!!  I logged in my last birds for the day, with the aid of a frosty malt beverage.
The next day, it turned out really was a circus, we caught the ferry to the mainland and went to a stakeout, a siberian accentor stakeout.   The morning ride on the ferry was fun and calm and then we arrive to this...60 people lined up on the edge of a road looking at an abandoned house.

Where does one even go? There is an ebb and flow to a large stake out and managing one takes a fine work of art.  First, there is all this pentup energy.  Everyone is looking so hard and diligently..hoping praying, like a vigil in a hospital.  It is then that as the passive birder, the "Skua" as I call myself that, one has to be loose and start scoping out the quarry, as this is a game and game theory takes over the rules.  I typically patrol the location and size up everyone.  If the bird shows up this early and easy, everyone is going to get it, so no worry.  
After an hour as people come and go, the chaff begin to leave.  Kids and younger birders like immature gulls come and check it out and go.  It isn't easy standing and waiting.  It is then that the chatter starts and people get distracted and stop looking at birds.  It is also then that the good skua starts to size up who the real birders are...who is in the know and who is really looking, not just pretending to look.  You always have to be weary of other skuas.  It is then that I stand behind them and just pretend, I'm either not there or I'm part of the 'group.'  One should never ever even speak during this phase. The worst case is that they notice you.
Now, mind you, I've photographed Siberian Accentors well and all I wanted was a good identifiable look.  Especially as I deduced this is not a very good photo op location.  One needs to be patient and many will come and many will go but the real birders will stay and I do what they do, and I go where they go.  It is the art of being an active wallflower but when they look at you, you need to look like you are working hard...but you are watching them without watching them.  
Then usually one of these guys or gals, spots the bird and then they share it on their scope.  With their friends of course birding with them, friends like the skua.  Since you have been there behind them like you belong for an hour or two you get dibs on the scope and more importantly, the other's won't push you other of the way as they have associated you now with THEM.
This is what happened, to a T!  The sharpest most diligent looker/ searcher saw an odd bird.  He was the guy I had pegged and I was 2 feet to his rear.  He asked the BC guru, to my left, chatting with buds, as he had seen the bird twice.  "Richard, Richard, ...Richard!  come and look at this."  He came over and said, "that is our bird."  Already third in line, I got a look before the throng got in line behind me and well, after a birder after me, it flushed and was gone.  It didn't come out again for 2 hours, and well..we were two parks away tallying Eurasian Wigeon and heading to the ferry.  The skua strikes, and he wins again.  A code 4 bird, Siberian Accentor, successfully off the board.   
I have never been to such a stakeout....I have never seen.  1)  Birders arrive in Cabs.  2)  The owner of the property walk through the prime birding area in the middle of the watch after looking concerned we hadn't seen the bird, yet his purpose of the stroll...IDK and then have everyone thanking him for everything.  Canadians are so polite.  3) It was such a diverse group, that was cool!
Now, Arvid....Arvid needed this bird and in the moment of truth, Arvid (Jim) was nowhere to be seen, he was chatting up cute birders 2-300 meters away, and decided he didn't want to wait for a 2nd appearance when I finally found him.  The sad thing, he didn't get her number or her name.  Sigh, he just encouraged me to go, we did.  Arvid lacks the patience for being a good skua birder and he practices another tried and true technique, called the 'clean up birder.'
Jim is the guy who falls behind and gets things no one notices or in hunting gets the deer sneaking out behind the drive, but alas in this case, that didn't work.  The other pitfall of this technique is if someone on point spots something by the time the guy in clean up hears about it, he doesn't know where it is or in some cases even what it was.  Jim missed a far-eastern curlew in Attu when he looked left and the rest of us looked right at the bird.
We went looking for woodpeckers and I found this sign...


First, I thought that somehow the fungus was my fault like many of the "tree huggers" want to blame me as a human for everything...no, not that.  No this was one of those silly warnings.  be careful not to walk in the woods because a tree might fall on you and in the wind, it really may fall on you?  I think there was a bigger risk of being pithed and killed by someone at the stakeout being careless with the tri-pod.  DON'T WE HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT THAT BEING STRUCK DEAD FROM A FALLING TREE CAUSED BY LAMINATED ROOT ROT!!   HAS ANYONE EVER BEEN INJURED BY THIS?...Really??
The trees obviously need some condolences and I am at heart really a tree hugger.  They were sick.  I was feeling good so I got into the whole forest nature thing and I just had to hug the biggest tree i could find.

I love you man, I mean mam, I mean ....whatever.  Maybe it was that I just missed the wife...or ....I just really like trees, now I don't want any jokes or puns about "wood."  
It was time to head back to Victoria.

We had the bright idea on our last day to call for owls up on top of the Goldfield Ridge, we got there at 0530, two hours before first light and we heard notta, zippo...nothing.  Both of us fell asleep in the car.
We awoke at dawn and milled about.  I stumbled upon a red-breasted sapsucker.  It was still dark out and I felt we were very lucky.

We had heard this was the spot for sooty grouse and we walked up and down, through and over and then at the very top of the road, I heard one.  Some say a 5lb bird can't hide in the middle of a tree.  I not only say it can be done, I say it is being done right now in Goldfield Ridge.  The subtle sound of a grouse, regular low pitched grunts is as close as I can describe it.  We narrowed the bird down to 20 feet and I decided to go in there.  It swallowed me whole and I climbed back out and no bird to be seen, but alas, hearing counts and it was no doubt a sooty grouse.
We were on a role and we went to what is the best Dipper spot ever, there were so many, they were chasing each other...wow.  American Dipper, bird #292.

The whole creek smelled bad with dead salmon and there were gulls and eagles all over.
I stumbled upon many varied thrush 20 feet away, bird #293.

We looked for pacific wren but it was one of the few birds on the island that eluded us in our 60 hours here and across on the mainland.  We really cleaned up.  48 FOY birds!
We took a 2nd stab at Skylark, we had heard one clearly at the airport and so we listened and watched.  It was clearly heard and counted.  I think they are much easier to get in the spring, when they 'skylark' but alas there are very few left around.  Someone said under 30 at last census? Searching an airport with binoculars seems that it may warrant unwanted attention by the authorities but we weren't bothered.

Let me just say Oh Canada.  Three coded birds, over forty year birds and a total of 293Thank you Matt again for helping us out and now we head south again. I like Canada, and especially Victoria, the Travelodge was a bargain at $44 per night.  It was nice and the food was even good.  I loved Tim Horton's, enjoyed everything, even the sunny cold days we had, but alas, a skulky warbler awaits, and it awaits in Texas.  I was also notified that the ivory gull and left Duluth this morning, or at least moved locations and is on the lamb, good I swung up to get it.Whew!!!!!!!!  I am the luckiest birder!
I should break 300 tomorrow...Taking me serious yet?I'm not even sure I'm taking me serious yet but 293 in 11 days, I think I got the pace up to the standards I need.
watch your cats...and stay away from the circus

Olaf

1/8/2016 No Place Like Home

Big Year Day 8
Duluth MN

Big Year Total:  245
Coded birds:  10
Miles driven.  4150
Miles walked 22
states birded:5
Flight miles:5200

I was getting serious grief from my Twin Ports Birding friends that quite possibly I was the only person on earth  that hadn't seen the Canal Park Ivory Gull, so I altered my plans and flew all night for Minneapolis.  I picked up my rental car at 0600 and made tracks for Duluth, MN.  Again after 5 of the last seven days of heavy rain and iffy weather for another of the days, I had high hopes for this mad dash but alas it started to snow.  I have decided to not name my Big Year after outhouses, I will rename it, the Bad Weather Big Year.  Maybe if I call it out, the weather will improve.

60 miles north of Minneapolis the interstate was snow packed and heavy snow was occurring, almost blinding in the predawn gloom but heck, this is MY turf, big deal, I drove hard anyways for Duluth.  I had rented the correct car and only for $10?  I have always had a love-hate relationship with Duluth, hated it when we lived there twice and miss it dearly when we were gone.  In fact, I lived a block across the ship canal back in 1989-90, when I was in medical school, from where the ivory gull had been reported, so this bird really was on my home turf.  I listened to the radio, KDAL 610 and they were giving bird reports and it was the top news story of the morning for the tourism impact to the town.  Let it be known, I spent nothing in Duluth on this visit, in my mind, I already gave.  Would it be there?

I arrived to the Canal Park parking lot, a place I used to photograph ships and there it was, posing for 3 birders, the other gulls were a hundred yards away and this one, ten, my fastest chase yet.  Lifer, 719, and a code three bird!



Cool!!

Apparently some of the locals had been feeding it salmon, not the farm raised kind, that would be unhealthy for a scavenger bird like Snowy here, the pet gull of Duluth.  I could see a statue being made of it someday in a way only Duluth and Minnesotans would do it.

I added two other gulls, Herring, #237, Thayers, #238 and then after 5 minutes of pictures I sprinted to the open water on Barker's Island for ducks, and I was not disappointed, #239.  Common Goldeneye.

I turned around 40 minutes after arriving in the ports and headed south and then in Pine City, 20 miles from my parents and grandmother, I headed into Wisconsin.  I drove under a northern shrike #240 on a powerline and crossed into the Badger State.

Grandma Lucille, my birding grandmother, whom I'm dedicating this year too,  among other things had made soup as if she knew I was going to show up out of the wind.  I hadn't even told here I was nearby.  It was also great I could bird her feeder.  I added 5 species to the year list.



#241  Black-capped chickadee
#242  Downy Woodpecker
#243  American Crow
#244  Hairy Woodpecker
 #245  Red-breasted nuthatch

The usual, it isn't a very good bird year for her, not even cardinals but then she told me of a rarity an unknown bird.  I waited and then it showed up!


A white-throated sparrow.  It is an ebird rarity for January.  My grandmother hoped birders would come from miles around to her feeder but I told her it isn't that kind of rarity.  Sorry, Grandma, you can't charge the visitors for coffee or have visitors to invite in for coffee, but it was a 50 year feeder record for her, cool!
I ate and made tracks to the airport for my connection flight west, my buddy Jin a/k/a Arvid, and more rarities, 245 birds on the board and still NO Canada Goose!  Try seeing 245 species without seeing one, that may be a record no one will ever break..  We'll see how far it lasts.
It was nice stopping by home. and my old town and even on a travel day, I got a code 3 rarity and to my naysayers who know me...I am NOT the only person in America to have not seen this Ivory Gull!
Keep searching
Olaf