Gripping Bogeys

The birds will have to wait

2010-09-16T15:59:00.001-04:00

My "Big Life" will have to be temporarily suspended. I am going to be an adult and start teaching middle school Earth & Space and Integrated Sciences at a local middle school. And right in the midst of fall migration too.

Birding Continues

2010-09-10T09:43:00.002-04:00

Despite my thought that I would slow down or stop after my year was over, the birds of South Florida have had other plans for me. On Tuesday, Eva and I headed down to the Everglades and picked up the super-rarity CUBAN PEWEE that had been spotted two days prior, but I''ll let her tell that day's story.

Yesterday, after a report of a female CERULEAN WARBLER at A.D. Barnes Park, I headed over and had luck finding this inconspicuous warbler. Migration is in full effect.

Guess what?

2010-09-03T13:13:00.001-04:00

Rosana and I are going on a trip to see Eva and her parents... and I am intentionally NOT bringing my binoculars.

Crunching the year's numbers

2010-09-02T09:45:00.003-04:00

80 different places slept at.

12 of which were campsites in my tent, for a total of 16 camping nights.

28 places I stayed at were with the wonderful people who I'd never met until I showed up at their houses. A thank you to each of them is not nearly enough.

I received a meager income from 5 random jobs throughout the year, including: independent carpentry with Devin, URI's Ryan Center, Opinion Outpost, the Sunrise School of Miami, and the Miami Science Museum.

I traveled through 31 states and 1 Canadian Province (B.C.).

467 ABA countable birds. However, there are 12 non-countables that I saw throughout the year:

HILL MYNA
YELLOW-CHEVRONED PARAKEET
MITRED PARAKEET
BLUE AND YELLOW MACAW
CHESTNUT-FRONTED MACAW
MUSCOVY
EGYPTIAN GOOSE
GREYLAG GOOSE
PURPLE SWAMPHEN
BLACK-HOODED PARAKEET
PEAFOWL
RED-MASKED PARAKEET

So the number of wild, breeding birds in the U.S. and Canada that I observed this year was 479.

I added 167 lifers to my list, giving me a life list of 497 right now.

Big Year Complete!

2010-09-01T09:46:00.002-04:00

The last few days, I've been scrambling around Miami-Dade and beyond looking for those final birds. My last day of the year, yesterday, proved successful.

I got to Lucky Hammock and the Annex first, seeing a WHITE-TAILED KITE at about 6:30 am, land in the hammock, and immediately fly back west, where it had come from. Ironically, this is what Eva and I were really hoping for 1 year ago today when setting out on our first of my year big day. Yesterday, I also saw several WHITE-EYED VIREO, empids, tons of EASTERN KINGBIRD and PURPLE MARTEN in the Immokalee Rd. area. I also was able to find a SOLITARY SANDPIPER east of the C-111 canal that I was looking for for my year, so well worth the early trip.

I then went to Dagney Johnson in Key Largo looking for a BLACK-WHISKERED VIREO, but didn't get to see it after a couple hours of looking (9am-11am). This bird escape me this year, but definitely not for lack of trying.

In the early afternoon, I went to Matheson Hammock to look for the KENTUCKY WARBLER, reported the evening before, but had no luck. I did see a couple WORM-EATING WARBLER, a LOUISIANA WATERTHRUSH, AMERICAN REDSTART, BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER, and NORTHERN PARULA. Warbler migration is in full swing.

In the afternoon I went up to Miami Shores with Rosana to look for a WHITE-WINGED PARAKEET. We drove around there and El Portal with no luck. We went to Starbucks there at about 4pm and got great looks at a flock of them, and then immediately noticed two RED-MASKED PARAKEET bothered by a Cooper's Hawk. Both of these were lifers for me, but only the WHITE-WINGED is ABA acceptable.

We celebrated last night up in Hollywood with some beers. I'm trying to wrap my head around the conclusion of this adventure still. I intend to put reflections, statistics, and future plans in the coming days in weeks.

Life's Ruff

2010-08-19T11:05:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I headed down to south Dade to try to find the briefly seen female RUFF at the Cutler Wetland the evening before. Nobody had seen it since, and my one-hour search was no different. After, I headed to Lucky Hammock and the Annex to the Everglades, which proved that neotropical migrant movement had not fully begun, having only seen a BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER and WHITE-EYED VIREO. On my way back up, I drove through some of the agricultural fields in Florida City, and came across a pack of 3 UPLAND SANDPIPER, which was a lifer!

Vacation and Florida Oddballs

2010-08-17T13:40:00.003-04:00

Rosana and I took a trip up to St. Augustine, the Georgia coast, Savannah, and back down to her parents house. It was a good trip that included watching ghost crabs, ropeswinging, good beering, biking, history learning, etc.

We also got a chance to look for birds, including the gregarious FLORIDA SCRUB-JAY, which we more than just saw! Additionally, we went to look for the few eastern migratory WHOOPING CRANES that have been reintroduced to Central Florida. There was one at the Double C Bar Ranch, hanging out with a bunch of SANDHILL CRANES. Quite a sight. On our way home, we stopped in Palm Beach County to look in the sod agricultural fields, looking for the recently reported UPLAND SANDPIPERS, but were unsuccessful. Now Rosana's back to school, and I am back to being an unemployed birder.

PBC big day

2010-08-09T14:13:00.004-04:00

Eva, Kim, and I went for a day of birding Palm Beach County agricultural fields and stormwater treatment areas on Sunday. We had a great day of 69 species, including my year BLACK TERN. What's more than that, we broke the Palm Beach County Big Day record (of 65). Looking over the records for a number of county big days, we realized we could probably break the record for a few with relative ease (Broward - 64, St. Lucie - 57, Nassau - 34). Still 3 weeks until the end of my year, and I've got a new birding goal in mind.

one at a time

2010-08-03T21:15:00.005-04:00

As July turned to August, I have come to realize that I need to beef up this list before the end of my year. Hopefully this will happen, as it seems to be in the process.

I drove up to Eva's house on Saturday night, and we got an early start in the morning. We headed up to St. Lucie County to try to get some looks at two birds that have eluded me: BACHMAN'S SPARROW and FLORIDA SCRUB-JAY. After several attempts at the Savannas Preserve and surrounding areas, we had no luck, and headed to the coast in Ft. Pierce. The jetty south of the Ft. Peirce Inlet State Park was very productive for us. We got great looks at 5 species of TERN (LEAST, SANDWICH, ROYAL, GULL-BILLED, and a year-bird COMMON). Also, this juvenile BROWN BOOBY was hanging out on the jetty for us to get incredibly close to.

This morning, I got up at 5:30- two hours before my alarm to go to work. I thought about what I needed to get accomplished, and I remembered a certain roost waiting for me in Cutler Bay. Last week, Eva and I had tried to see the only sizable roost of West Indian race CAVE SWALLOW without knowing exactly where it was. Eva got the Pranty field guide, and clued me in to exactly where it was. This morning I caught at least 10 of them under the SW 216th street bridge, as they, and I, were beginning our days.

summer rarities and early migrants

2010-07-25T09:57:00.005-04:00

Last weekend, between work related overnights in Martin County and Kennedy Space Center with teenagers through my summer position at the Miami Science Museum, Rosana and I stole away to Marathon in the Keys for some birding and relaxing. We got down there Saturday afternoon, stopping first at the Marathon municipal buildings. This is the one reliable nesting location in the U.S. for ROSEATE TERN, and they were there for us. The roof was mostly bustling with FORSTER'S TERN, which we at first thought were COMMONs. The ROSEATEs took some work to figure out.

That night, we stopped at the Marathon Airport, to see if we could spot ANTILLEAN NIGHTHAWKS. We heard them before we saw them, but they did end up coming close enough to get a definitive look. Later, we had dinner and some drinks at a tiki bar, and stayed, of course, at the Sandpiper Motel. The next morning we got up early and headed to Long Key State Park to look for BLACK-WHISKERED VIREO. We did not come up with it after about one and half hours of hiking, but we celebrated the two from the night before with a dip in the ocean off U.S. 1. That morning we packed up, and got home at about noon.

This morning, after dropping Rosana off at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, I stopped by Matheson Hammock to see if the early migrants reported were around. My first of the season BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER, AMERICAN REDSTART, RED-EYED VIREO, and a lifer LOUISIANA WATERTHRUSH were all in the park. Not bad for summer down here.

Panhandler

2010-06-18T12:29:00.002-04:00

Rosana and I headed up to Tallahassee for several days. We headed to Leon Sinks Geological Area south of town on Sunday, and were treated to heat. Lots of it. Fortunately, we did get a look at a ACADIAN FLYCATCHER. We then went to Wakulla Springs State Park to cool down, which was quite nice. On our way back to the city, I got my second year-bird of the day, a MISSISSIPPI KITE soaring over the road.

Cowbirded

2010-05-17T08:20:00.002-04:00

Rosana and I went camping at Flamingo in the Everglades this weekend. I had a few birds to try to pick up there, now that summer seems to have set in.

First up was another try at the Cape Sable SEASIDE SPARROW, which turned up nothing. Next was locating a SHINY COWBIRD in a flock of about 40 BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS in the parking lot area of the Flamingo visitor's center. Luckily, there were two males SHINYS in the pack, which were very easy to spot. Next up was checking out Eco Pond. We were there at dusk on Saturday with a lot of great birds including AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN, WOOD STORK, AMERICAN AVOCET, SPOTTED SANDPIPER, BLACK-NECKED STILT, and so on. My goal was to try to find a LESSER NIGHTHAWK. With no luck that evening, I woke up at 6am to try again on Sunday, and did not see one then either.

Cuckoo

2010-05-06T10:39:00.003-04:00

At Matheson Hammock in Miami this morning, I saw my first of the year MANGROVE CUCKOO.

Western migrant in Florida

2010-05-02T13:11:00.003-04:00

On Friday morning, I saw that the birdboard was ablaze with birders having seen a male BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK at Kendall Indian Hammocks park, not too far from the house. I got myself together quickly, and got there at about 11am. I was the only one at the spot, looking for it in my post-op shoe from Wednesday's ingrown toenail surgery. I spent about a half-hour looking, to no avail. Carl Edwards, a local birder, then came. He played the call, and within 20 minutes, we were treated to great looks at it. Here's a picture that a local birder Toe got of this common western U.S. migrant, but Florida super-rarity.

This was a life bird for me, having just missed its presence on the west coast this past fall.

Dade-land

2010-04-23T13:15:00.004-04:00

After substitute teaching at Rosana's Waldorf school on Wednesday, we went to A.D. Barnes to have a look at the fall-out that seemed to occur that day. It was pretty good. We caught up with local birder Rock Jetty, and got great looks at male BLACKPOLL WARBLER, YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO, tons of WORM-EATING WARBLERS, and a lifer BLUE-WINGED WARBLER.

3 females

2010-04-09T10:54:00.003-04:00

Rosana and I went to the Everglades this week, camping at Long Pine Key. I was hoping to see the real BAR-TAILED GODWIT at Flamingo, but it seems that it has moved on. While in the parking lot of the Flamingo visitor's center, we located a flock of INDIGO BUNTING. Among the group was one female BLUE GROSBEAK, new for my year. (female #1)

Yesterday morning, I went out to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park to find the female WESTERN SPINDALIS that had been reported two days prior, and within 15 minutes, the 6 other birders that were there and I had gotten on it. (female #2)
Rosana and I left in the early afternoon to head to Lake Wales and visit her parents. On the way we stopped at a Palm Beach County reliable location for roosting BARN OWL. It was reliable indeed.

I have hit 450 birds for the year. My goal.

Rosana and I are getting married. (female #3)

Unbirded

2010-04-01T09:48:00.001-04:00

After consideration on the Miami Birdboard of the bird that I saw at Flamingo, it appears that it was not a BAR-TAILED GODWIT at all, but a MARBLED GODWIT being an impostor.

BAR-TAILED GODWIT

2010-03-31T13:43:00.000-04:00

Success chasing a rarity with Sherry in Flamingo, FL.
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Thespian, Couchsurfing Host, and still a Birder

2010-03-24T13:31:00.005-04:00

My last week+ has been marked by these three things, which I will explain in three paragraphs (not including this one).

Rosana has coerced me to be in her middle school play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. I'm playing the part of Lysander, and we will be doing our performance this Friday. It's crunch time.

We had a couchsurfer, Evan, who wasn't a complete stranger. I stayed with him at his home in Vancouver in November. he now finds himself completing a brewery tour of the U.S., and about to begin his hike up the Appalachian Trail throughout the summer. A good luck to him. Eva and Rupp also came by for a stay, which made for a busy night.

I have gotten some birding in. The spring migration fall-out has begun. With Evan, I checked out Matheson Hammock on Monday, and among tons of BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER and NORTHERN PARULA, I got to see one SWAINSON'S WARBLER, which is mildly uncommon in Florida during migration. It was new for my year. I've also helped Eva try to get the LA SAGRA'S FLYCATCHER at Bill Baggs State Park twice, and unfortunately, she has a new ABA nemesis bird.

Home

2010-03-10T10:10:00.000-05:00

Saturday night, I went out to Decent Pizza in Tallahassee with ye ol' gang. After some slices, we checked out Waterworks and the Leon Pub, a few of my favorite old stomping grounds, before calling it a night.

The next morning I wasn't feeling all that well because of my cold, so I headed out of Tallahassee at about 9am, for the 8-hour trip south. The only notable experience of the drive was noting my first of the year SWALLOW-TAILED KITE over the Florida Turnpike. I got to my new home (aka Rosana's house) at about 5pm, where we had delicious pasta dinner and wine.

The last couple of days have been absorbed with job searching, but I have been able to get in some very worthwhile birding. On Monday morning, in the worst of my illness, I went to Bill Baggs State Park here in Miami in search of the LA SAGRA'S FLYCATCHER that has been seen pretty much all winter. With some locational help from Eva, I found the spot, and relocated the bird within a couple minutes. This morning, I looked for the other locally rare flycatcher at Matheson Hammocks County Park. After searching for about 25 minutes, a young local birder Alex called me over, as he had found the BROWN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER in the oak picnic area, and we were able to watch it for about 10 minutes. Two great birds in two mornings of searching!

Gulf Coast

2010-03-06T18:51:00.000-05:00

I went for a bike ride about 1/4 mile from Matt's house to the beach in Bay St. Louis on Wednesday. I got a good look at a variety of species on the way and at the beach, that included RED-HEADED WOODPECKER, LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE, CASPIAN TERN, and BONAPARTE'S GULL. The ocean was really nice.

When Matt got home from work, we went to a bar with his friends Amber and Mack. We hit up both Clyde's and Benigno's. We didn't get to bed until almost 4am.

Then next morning (afternoon), Matt and I got out to Big Branch National Wildlife Refuge, which was really nice. This was my first time in this style of longleaf pine forest since this summer, which helped me towards my year birds. I picked up one new year species pretty much right away, the BROWN-HEADED NUTHATCH.

We spent several miles of hiking and looking for a RED-COCKADED WOODPECKER, which is a species of special concern, without luck. We finally noticed one when we got back the parking lot that we started from, and two individuals gave us a great show. In fact, Matt caught this great picture of one getting aggressive with a RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER.

Thursday evening, Matt and I went to a little coffee shop in old town called Mockingbird, which sold the local Lazy Magnolia draft and had music at night. It was pretty fun, and it was pretty weird how many people Matt knew here for being a fairly newby to town. After a pancake breakfast, I left Bay St. Louis Friday morning. I drove about 5 hours to get to Tallahassee, arriving just in time for happy hour at Steel City with some of my old colleagues. It was a good night of conversations with a bunch of my favorite people, who I haven't seen in almost one and a half years.

This morning I went out to Tall Timbers north of town to look for a BACHMAN'S SPARROW in a spot that the biologist there had showed Kim, Eva, Matt and I a couple years back. I had similar results of not seeing the bird.

After some tea and lunch with friends, I am relaxing, while fostering the beginnings of a cold, preparing for tonight's festivities.

Austism

2010-03-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

Monday evening I met up with Maggie and Steph, and we went to the Congress Street bridge to see if we could gander the Mexican Free-tailed bat nightly show of them leaving their roost. We're pretty sure that only happens in the summer, because all we got was cold. But then we went to Magnolia for dinner, which was excellent.

Tuesday I got some work done, both to my car, and to my future life for when I get down to South Florida. It was pretty memorably uneventful, except for the Pad Thai that we made for dinner. On Wednesday, Maggie took the day off so we could have fun. We went to the Zelker Botanical Park to look for the recently seen CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD, but had no luck. Then she showed me Barton Springs and we headed to McKinney Falls State Park to see what Rosana had in store for our upcoming camping trip there. Out last nature adventure of the day was at Mount Bonnell which is a good vista of the city and river system. We ended early to allow time to drink some beers at Posse East with Steph.

Thursday, besides waiting for Rosana to fly in, included some other things. I got a bunch of job applying done, looked for the CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD with no luck, and made sushi with Steph and Maggie. Rosana flew in on time, and we stayed near the airport. The next morning we ate at Boulden Creek, which was incredible, then checked out the Congress St. part of town. We got some records at Antone's, and then went to Posse East where Maggie met us. We had a few beers, which made us less inclined for the super-dinner we were going to get, so we had Kerbey Lane instead, which was fantastic.

Rosana and I stayed at Mag and Steph's that night, and in the morning made soem breakfast. In the afternoon, we all went out to Mother's, which was the excellent place that grows their own herbs in the back. After lunch and stocking up at Central Market, Rosana and I headed to McKinney Falls State Park where we camped. The weather was awesome, and allowed us some good times at the falls, as well as playing frisbee, hackysack, and having a fire.

The next day, Rosana and I walked around Congress St. again, and then checked into the nearby Austin Motel, which was a cool little place close to downtown. We got cleaned up here, and then went to 6th St. downtown to a couple of bars. Monday morning we went record shopping again and had breafast at Boulden Creek again, and a drink from Daily Juice. I dropped her off at the airport in the afternoon, and then met up with Mag and Steph in the evening. We got Baby Acapulco's for my final Austin meal, and in the morning yesterday, I left town.

I made two stops (besides gas and peeing) on my 9-hour drive to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi yesterday. The first was at the Atwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge looking for its namesake. Apparently they are not often found on the publicly accessible parts of the refuge, and I had no exceptional visit. I did however get to see my second ever CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONSPUR along the road.

My second stop was by a Texas State Police officer, apparently for driving in Texas with MA plates, which I think is a felony. He gave me two warnings, one for speeding (going 70 in a 65 zone) and following too closely behind the car in front of me (about 20 feet behind). He had a few questions about my binoculars on the passenger seat, to which I told him the incredulous story of me birdwatching. Eventually, I got to Matt's house at about 6pm, and we made some dinner, listened to music, and headed to bed pretty early as he had to work today.

Snowfall in Austin, TX

2010-02-23T10:46:00.000-05:00

1-3 inches expected today.

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Lower Rio Grande pt. 2

2010-02-22T15:22:00.000-05:00

Friday after my BK lunch, and after the rain stopped, I went to the Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center, and got directions to their infamous pair of day roosting COMMON PARAQUE. They were reliable, and very photogenic, even if they didn't know it.

While I was there, I ran into a Florida couple that I had talked to at Quinta Mazatlan the day before. They were going back there again to try their luck at the CRIMSON-COLLARED GROSBEAK again, and it got me interested. So I went back and had no luck finding it over the course of the 45 minutes before they closed. I left there and went to a reliable parakeet roosting area in McAllen, but there were no keets.

That evening, I met up with my couchsurfing host Shawn and his son Keyshawn at their house in Brownsville. The three of us went to a grand opening of an artspace downtown, that had a nice spread of food and wine.

The next morning, Shawn and I headed to South Padre Island with a couple of beachcruisers, which are bikes that were pretty easy to operate in the sand. We played some frisbee, and stopped at Sandy Feet's (a couchsurfer and professional sandcastle lesson giver) house, but she wasn't home. We rode up to the island's World Birding Center and walked around. There were some good coastal birds I hadn't seen since I was last in Florida, including REDDISH EGRET, BLACK SKIMMER, and CASPIAN TERN. On the ride back to the car, we stopped at the South Padre Brewing Co. for a beer and nachos. On the way off the island, we pulled over in a part of the expansive marsh to check out some terns, which proved to be the somewhat elusive GULL-BILLED TERN.

Later that night, Shawn's girlfriend Farelly met up with us and we went to a member's only gala for supporters of the Sombrero Festival. Shawn's a member of this particular section of next week's Charro Days in Brownsville, so they had this evening of dancing, lassoing, and food, which was pretty fun. When it got unfun and talky, we checked out a madrigal group performing at UT at Brownsville.The next morning, I went to the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in search of the BLUE BUNTING that had been seen there over the past week. When I got there around 9am, 10-15 birders had been looking for it with no luck. I joined the search party, and gave up at about 11 with no success. I drove around the fields outside of the refuge a bit, looking at hawks, and eeked out one of the south Texas specialties I was looking for, a WHITE-TAILED HAWK. I also checked out the Hugh Ramsey Park and a supposed Harlingen parakeet roost, with no new sightings.

I drove a couple hours north to Corpus Christi, and in the early evening met up with my Danish couchsurfing hosts Anette-Kjestine and Soren. We had some really good conversation and falafel dinner. This morning I got going at about 7am to check out two rarities on the way up to Austin.
The first was a NORTHERN WHEATEAR that had been reported about a month and a half ago at an Amish farm in Beesville, TX. Soon, after I parked, I noticed the non-breeding plumed bird sitting on a piece of farm equipment, which darted away within two seconds of me looking, and did not return again while I was there. This was a really cool site, as it's only the second reported incident of this bird in Texas. I talked to the Amish man who found the bird, John Borntrager, who was a friendly guy.

The second site I went to was Choke Canyon State Park, where a NORTHERN JACANA had been reported and seen consistently for almost four months. The jacana didn't disappoint. I was able to locate him fairly quickly, and watch without disturbing his feeding behavior. While I was moving to get better shots at him, I scared this guy:

I think it's a broad-banded water snake, but I could definitely be mistaken. After success on my two bird goals of the day, I ascended back up to Austin where I am now, only a few miles (but also a few days) from where Rosana will be flying in to.

The Mayor of Brownsville

2010-02-19T20:36:00.000-05:00

Speaking live at the grand opening of the arts and culture center of Brownsville.
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Lower Rio Grande pt. 1

2010-02-19T14:20:00.000-05:00

Monday afternoon, I went to Steph's place of work in Austin- Posse East, which is a pretty sweet bar right near the UT football stadium. Maggie met us there, and when Steph got out of work, we went to this awesome Mexicany place that had $5 Mexican martinis. They were incredible.

Tuesday morning, I checked out Triangle Pond in town, which late in the fall hosted a family of very northern LEAST GREBE. When I took a look, there was only one present, but quite a neat find.

In the afternoon I worked on some business at the Spider House coffee shop, and spent way too long food shopping at Central Market. I made Maggie and Steph a pasta dinner at their house, and then we tried to watch The Invention of Lying, but were bored, so went to bed.

I woke up pretty early on Wednesday to get on the road down to South Texas. I was caught in some pretty bad rush hour traffic going into San Antonio, but was soon out of the insanity. I stopped near Pearsall to check out a couple of farm areas to hopefully get a look at some MOUNTAIN PLOVER that had been seen recently, but it was not to be.

At about 11am, I got into Laredo, and checked out Las Palmas Park along the Rio Grande. Pretty quickly, I was picking up new birds for my trip, such as GREEN JAY, GREAT KISKADEE, GOLDEN-FRONTED WOODPECKER, and RINGED KINGFISHER. The real prizes seen here recently, were the AMAZON KINGFISHER and WHITE-COLLARED SEEDEATER that I was not able to locate. Coming back along a trail, I ran into a border patrol agent, who told me that while the whole area I was in was fine to be walking around in, but where I just came from was "no man's land." When asked what that meant, he said that many people get shot from across the river in that spot, and he would never go there. I think border patrol agents are paranoid and are happy with certain half-truths. Considering they're not allowed to GO to Mexico, how experienced and educated can they be about the issues in that country as it pertains to the trafficking and smuggling at our border. Do they really shoot birders across the river? Are bullets that cheap?

Heading down from Laredo, I stopped at Zapata to try another reliable place for WHITE-COLLARED SEEDEATER, and had similar results. Pretty close by, I got to my destination of the evening- Falcon State Park, which is a reservoir on the Rio Grande that is a popular fishing spot.

Seeing a VERMILLION FLYCATCHER in the tree above site 57, my camping spot for the night was settled. I set up, then birded the area, looking for the recently seen ROADSIDE HAWK. In the process, I came across a HARRIS' HAWK and COUCH'S KINGBIRD, as well as many AMERICAN PIPIT.

I drove to the Falcon Dam before sundown, where I technically left the country, but did not enter Mexico. I birded from the dam, looking for MUSCOVY, as this is one of the few reliable places to see them. Unfortunately, there was little activity besides NEOTROPIC CORMORANT and GREAT BLUE HERON.

I woke up pretty early the next morning to look for the ROADSIDE HAWK and MUSCOVY again, and had no luck. I did find a feeder area in the park, where among many other birds I had seen, a CASSIN'S SPARROW was hopping around. I stopped at Chipeno river park on the way south, and saw no new birds. I was again hoping for some birds I had had luck seeing when I came here for a birding festival in 2008, where I saw MUSCOVY and RED-BILLED PIGEON. Neither were present. At this point, every target bird I've had has come up flat in South Texas.

The next stop was Salineno park, where my luck turned a bit. I didn't see the GRAY HAWK that is pretty reliable on the water here, but at the bird refuge (aka, a bird woman's over-feederified trailer) I saw some great birds. AUDUBON'S ORIOLE, HOODED ORIOLE, ALTAMIRA ORIOLE, OLIVE SPARROW, CLAY-COLORED THRUSH, WHITE-TIPPED DOVE, and LONG-BILLED THRASHER. A pretty productive stop.

I got to McAllen at about 1pm, and stopped at Quinta Mazatlan World Birding Center, and looked around for a couple rarities reported there. Unfortunately it was pooring at this point. I did manage to see their TROPICAL PARULA, but after a few hours of looking , no CRIMSON-COLLARED GROSBEAK.

I headed to Kurt and Frank, my couchsurfing hosts' house at about 4pm, and got showered and clean clothed.

The three of us had a veggie-pita dinner that was really good, and had some wine. I went to bed at about 9:30 to get a good start on today. When I woke up at about 6:30 am, I quickly got ready and headed out to the Bentsen State Park World Birding Center. I got completely soaked looking for the super-rare AZTEC THRUSH with no luck, and in the process, missed the short morning show of a ROSE-THROATED BECARD feeding at the main entrance. I waited about 45 minutes, but it did not come back. I was pretty angry, and left at about 11am.

If I wasn't soaked enough, I went to Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge to look for some more birds. I thought it was possible to get GROOVE-BILLED ANI, GREEN KINGFISHER, HOOK-BILLED KITE, COMMON PARAQUE, or others. No. Nothing but mud and water.

I'm not happy right now. That may be because I had Burger King for lunch though.

Partners in Crime

2010-02-15T13:05:00.000-05:00

I picked up Eva at 11:15pm from ABQ on Tuesday night. A short drive away, we got to Rupp's high school bud Megan's house. Her and her husband Uly were very welcoming, and pretty soon after getting there near midnight, we went to bed.

The next morning, Eva and I trekked up the 45 minutes to the over 10,000 foot high Sandia Crest in the Cibola National Forest outside of Albuquerque. The snow was deep up there, but the results of our visit could not have been better. Immediately upon entering the visitor's center up there, all three species of rosy-finches were present at the feeders. Within just a couple of minutes, we discerned BLACK ROSY-FINCH, BROWN-CAPPED ROSY-FINCH, as well as the many STELLAR'S JAY, MOUNTAIN CHICKADEE, and one RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH. It took us a few minutes to figure out the GRAY-CROWNED ROSY-FINCH, as neither of the obvious gray-cheeked subspecies were present.

On our ride down the mountain, we stopped a few times observing no outstanding birds, and stopped at a supermarket for lunch. We then headed to the Rio Grande Nature Center and hiked around, and in the afternoon to foothills of the mountains. Eva got some good looks at several new species, so we headed home and got cleaned up and rested.

We went out with Megan and Uly to Frontier, which is a pretty famous New Mexican style restaurant, which was very good. Then we watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona at there house, and went to bed fairly early.

Thursday morning Eva and I drove to one of the many waterfowl management areas along the Rio Grande, south of Albuquerque. We were treated to thousands of SANDHILL CRANES, which flushed when we walked by, as well as looks at GREATER ROADRUNNER, HORNED LARK, and MOUNTAIN BLUEBIRD, as the windy cold was making us uncomfortable. We got down to our destination of Socorro pretty early in the day, so we stopped at the Bosque Del Apache NWR, which we had planned to visit the following day. Despite the wind, we had a diverse number of species present, but we were tired of the cold by about 3. So we headed to the local Owl Bar and Grille and had a drink. Warmed up a bit, we went back to the refuge and scanned the SNOW GOOSE for the smaller ROSS'S GOOSE, and ended up finding quite a few. With success declared on the day, we settled into our couchsurfing hosts Rebecca and Christina's house in Socorro, then got a beer and dinner at the Socorro Springs Brewpub, and went to bed by 10:30.

Eva and I woke up at about 5:30am on Friday to head back to Bosque Del Apache NWR to see their famed morning flight. This is traditionally when thousands of SANDHILL CRANE, SNOW, and ROSS'S GEESE leave for the morning, observable from a platform in the wetlands. Unfortunately, this year the bids moved to a less extravagantly observable location, and the numbers were really low. It was a decent show regardless.

An even better show was getting to see an APLOMADO FALCON take off from its perch accross the road, given the two of us impecable looks. After this, we went for a hike thrugh one of the canyons, which offered excellent views of the park, and of SAGE SPARROW and SAY'S PHOEBE. We ate lunch by the railroad tracks there, and then left the park for the south.

We stopped at Cabello Lake State Park, and got a few looks at some interesting birds, but just south of there, at Percha Dam was the real show. Our list of species seen on the week greatly increased here, as we saw VERMILLION FLYCATCHER, SPOTTED SANDPIPER, BLACK PHOEBE, RED-NAPED SAPSUCKER, and PHAINOPEPLA, to name a few.

After this success, Eva and I had a beer at a genuine wild west bar called El Patio, in the town of La Mesilla, which is where Billy the Kid was tried in court. That night we stayed in Las Cruces with my couchsurfing host from the week before, Richard.

The next morning, Eva and I drove through the beautiful Organ Mountains, and went to the White Sands National Monument. Although unbirdy, this place was really odd and interesting. We had a good time playing in the gypsum sand.

After White Sands, we went to the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, and took a look at some of the thousands of old drawings on the rocks. Needless to say, we were both pretty enamored by the bird pictures.

In the evening of Saturday, Eva and I stayed at the Classic Inn at Alamogordo, NM. We had some good Mexican food and some Bud Lights watching live Bill Maher stand-up in the room, on HBO, not in person.

Sunday morning we drove down to Texas, being stopped at the entrance of the Hueco Tanks State Historic Park outside of El Paso. We were not allowed in as they had reached their 70 person capacity, mostly of rock climbers. After hiking around outside for awhile, eventually we were able to get in, and it was very beautiful. There were rock paintings, a coyote chasing a man on a bike, and huecos which are small bodies of fresh water held by the rocks attracting some good birds.

After a couple hours of hiking, Eva and I headed to the airport for her afternoon departure. All told, she had quite a few new species, and hopefully a good time exploring New Mexico with me... but I'll let her tell that story.

From the El Paso airport, I drove nearly 650 miles yesterday to reach my destination of Maggie and Stephanie's house in Austin. We had a couple of local beers (Independence and Real Ale) and chatted last night until about 1. This morning I've just been getting my act together with laundry, and planning my Lower Rio Grande portion of the trip here at the Epoch coffee shop.

Mexico Nuevo

2010-02-09T22:50:00.000-05:00

Monday morning I woke up at Luke and Michelle's house in Sierra Vista AZ with the intention of getting a number of things done to my car. As it turned out, I didn't need new brakes, and with the oil change I got my tires rotated, so I'm going to wait a bit to get new ones. Oh, and I found this little ditty that I created when blasting my car through the border refuge:

So I headed towards New Mexico, but decided to stop in Wilcox AZ, to do a little birding. There is a wildlife management area there that was teeming with SANDHILL CRANE. I wasn't able to see them, only hear them in the distance, but I did get a look at a lifer CRISSAL THRASHER, finally.

In the late afternoon, I arrived in Las Cruces NM, at my couchsurfing host Rich's house. We went out for some Mediterranean food, then a beer at the High Desert Brewery. We then hung out and chatted until pretty late (3amish).

This morning after his early class at New Mexico State, Rich and I headed out to one of his favorite local natural areas- Dripping Springs, owned by the BLM. We took a trail that was about 2 miles up the hill, then opened up to a little historic village used for housing people infected with Tuberculosis. Also, the spring was pretty active from some of the snow that had melted from the tops of the mountains.

After lunch bac at Rich's house, I made my way the 4 hours up to Albuquerque. As of now, I am working in a coffee shop in the University of New Mexico part of town, waiting for America's favorite Green Cay Naturalist to arrive at the airport. I have 2 more hours...

When things get bad... they get much better!

2010-02-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

Friday evening, I stopped at Woodland Dr., north of Tucson, for my last stop in daylight. A few people had posted success on the birdboard of having seen both ARIZONA WOODPECKER and LEWIS' WOODPECKER in the ranches along this road. I had no luck, and headed to my couchsurfing host Jason's house in southeast Tucson. He had a guest that was in town for the gem and mineral festival who was from San Francisco, and a couple her were in town from Austin for a music festival. It was a full house, but pretty fun, and I got a couch to surf!

Saturday morning I headed the 2+ hour drive to the Buenos Aires NWR near the Mexican border. On the way I stopped and looked at a GILDED FLICKER. This refuge, however, was not as advertised. This was grassland-type habitat that boasted four types of quail, more than anywhere else in the U.S. I was intrigued, enough so to take the Pronghorn Drive, which was in rough shape. I almost got stuck in the mud several times, and scraped the bottom of my car a number of times. I kept pushing on, sure that I was almost done with the loop... then I got to a puddle that seemed much too deep for my car, and I had to stop to collect myself (ie, swear incessantly). Luckily, I had cell phone reception, and Rosana is awesome. I ended up getting out fine.

I stopped for coffee in Arivaca, and continued to Santa Gertrudis Lane in Tumacacori. I was looking for the PAINTED REDSTART that had been seen here, but only came across an ORANGE-CROWNED, YELLOW-RUMPED, and BLACK-THROATED GRAY WARBLERS. I then tried to get to Patagonia, but my GPS ended up getting me very lost. Again, Rosana was around and at a computer, and was able to get me towards where I wanted to be,the infamous Patagonia Rest Area, that was incredibly unbirdy.

After, I drove to Sierra Vista, arriving at about 5pm, having driven about 6 hours this day, and having done only about an hour of birding. Then things started to get better. At Luke and Michelle's house, we had an awesome grilled dinner. We chatted for awhile, and I went to bed at about 10pm.

This morning I got up at about 7am. I took the 1 hour drive to the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve managed by the Nature Conservancy. There's about 2.5 miles of trails here, and this place had some great rarities in the fall- RUFOUS-CAPPED WARBLER and SINALOA WREN. Neither of these were here today, but I did get looks at a DUSKY FLYCATCHER that really had found me.

I stopped next door at a house called "The Paton's", who were a couple that had a crazy feeder situation, and since their deaths, has been upkept by a caretaker, and still open to the public. Not much was happening here, but it was a neat spot.

About 10 miles down the road was the Patagonia Lake State Park. I took the main trail here, down the by the creek, and the weather started turning. The wind had been going all day, but this was the first of the rain. After about a half hour, it was really going. I had only been wearing my sweatshirt, and was getting soaked. I then noticed a GREAT-HORNED OWL above me in an oak, and I think he was the omen of my luck changing. I hiked a little ways away from the predator, and ended up coming noticing the sounds of a mixed flock. I picked out WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH, BRIDLED TITMOUSE, and RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET. Within a minute, in one field of view, I saw both HEPATIC TANAGER (male) and a PAINTED REDSTART! These are both incredible birds. The flock started to leave me after a few minutes.

I then ran into another birder, Ron, who hadn't seen the PAINTED REDSTART yet, so I agreed to go with him to try to relocate the flock. About 5 minutes later we had. he still didn't see the redstart yet, so I was trying to describe where it was, as I did, an adult ELEGANT TROGON came into the picture! I was beyond thrilled. It was about 40 feet away, but over the next 15 minutes, Ron and I were able to get about 8 ft. away from it without it caring. We continued to get looks at all three of these birds over the next half-hour.

It was pretty cold, and I was wet, so I went back to the car to warm up, eat lunch, and change into dry clothes. From the car, I noticed a HERMIT THRUSH, and a couple minutes later, a flycatcher. I got out and inspected, and he was an ASH-THROATED FLYCATCHER- another great bird!

I made one last hike down the trail, this time with the intention of seeing a BLACK-CAPPED GNATCATCHER in the mesquites they are semi-reliable in. Eventually, the rains turned to monsoons, and I had to get out of there.

Needless to say, I drove back to Luke and Michelle's house this early evening soaked, but totally satisfied. This was probably the greatest day of birding I have ever had, and it was when I need it most.

A to Z

2010-02-05T17:20:00.000-05:00

I left the Mesa library, at about 3:30pm on Tuesday, and checked out a city park that had a pretty active pond. I spent about two hours there, noting some good birds, such as CANVASBACK, ABERT'S TOWHEE, CURVE-BILLED THRASHER, and YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD, to name a few. I noticed that I list was getting pretty high for the day, so I stuck around to rally it up higher. It was then that I noticed a COOPER'S HAWK unsuccessfully attack a jackrabbit that was at least twice the size of him. I also noticed a PEREGRINE FALCON, that was the final bird of my day ending the list at 50.

That night I went to my couchsurfing host Chris' house in Tempe. He made a delicious beet based soup for us, which was incredible. We went out to a bar in walking distance and met up with a couple of his friends for a beer. He was a really cool, dude, and we had some great conversations. In the morning he made an amazing breakfast ,we stopped for a coffee, and I was on my way.

I first checked out a the dammed Salt River near his house, which gave me some looks at birds that made me feel like I was in Florida, like OSPREY, GREEN HERON, and SNOWY EGRET. I then headed west of town to the eastern most range of LECONTE'S THRASHER to try to find one in a reliable spot for them, but did not. I stopped at one more park on my way back east of Phoenix, but picked up nothing new. It made me kind of discouraged, as there seems to be some many birds out here that should be new, an I was finding none. It shouldn't have, because, after all, I got to see another GREATER ROADRUNNER and a very amiable CACTUS WREN.

In the evening I went over to Rosana's brother's wife's brother's house in Tempe and met up with his wife. That reads way more confusing than it is. Priscilla made us spaghetti and veggie meatballs, which we ate and talked over until Brent came home at about 8pm. These two were pretty awesome people, and although the relation is far, I have hopes that we'll meet again.

Yesterday morning I drove to the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, and got there at about 9am. A guided bird walk had just left, so I decided to tag onto that to get a better idea of where the RUFOUS-BACKED ROBIN I was twiching was staked out. It was a good walk, with looks at a good diversity of what I've seen over the last week. When we got to the spot, the robin was very cooperative, which made my day. After the group split, I continued to scan the hummingbird feeders for a BROAD-BILLED HUMMINGBIRD, but instead came across a lifer HUTTON'S VIREO above the feeders.

I left the arboretum at about noon and got my camp set up at Catalina State Park. This place is supposedly crazy in the summer, with BUFF-COLLARED NIGHTJAR and ELF OWL regularly seen. I hiked around for quite awhile, and flushed a mixed flock of NORTHERN CARDINAL and PYRRHULOXIA, which are quite beautiful. Several of the trails here cross a wash, that at this time of year is a full on river. My sneakers and socks got soaked, so on the walk back to the car I took them off. This of course lead to me accidentally kicking a stick that had some thorns, and sliced up a part of my foot. Not bad though.

I went for one more hike before nightfall, and didn't come across to much. When I got back to my car in the parking lot, I noticed an AMERICAN ROBIN and decided to give him a quick look. Then I noticed right under him a twitching little gray bird. After about 20 minutes of him cooperating with me, I was officially able to call him a GRAY FLYCATCHER. I left the park to get a $4 pizza (which to this point has continually fueled me for over 20 hours), and went to bed. The temperature was not nearly as cold as in Utah, but still decently frigid.
This morning I woke up at about 7am to frost on my tent and car, and hiked around the camping area. Before the sun rose over the Catalina Mountains to the east at about 8:15, I was able to see quite a few birds, including a RUFOUS-WINGED SPARROW amongst some WHITE-CROWNED SPARROWS. After packing up I drove south of Tucson and birded Madera Canyon. This place is a serious birder mecca. The Santa Rita Lodge has a huge feeder area and benches set up, that seemed to always be full of birders. Within a few minutes here, I picked out ACORN WOODPECKER, WILD TURKEY, LESSER GOLDFINCH, YELLOW-EYED JUNCO, and many aggressive MEXICAN JAY.

After a bit, I took a few mile hike up the mountain to look for the sometimes seen ELEGANT TROGON. It's more likely here in the summer, but I figured I couldn't come here without trying my hand at it. I had no luck, but it was neat to see snow on the ground, being probably 30 miles from Mexico.

After checking the feeder area one more time, I headed up north and stopped at the Mission San Xavier Del Bac. One of my birding book said that the birding here was "great." There was almost nothing to speak of, besides vocal GREATER ROADRUNNER and CURVE-BILLED THRASHER. Perhaps the book was trying to help their tourism.

SWxSWer

2010-02-02T16:27:00.000-05:00

Both Bilsky and I slept much better having stayed at the Econolodge on Saturday night. We even slept a bit late- until about 8am on Sunday. I had myself a sorry excuse for a continental breakfast, and then we were on our way.

Our first stop was a trailer park that is one of the few reliable places in Utah for INCA DOVE, which we saw five of near the end of our tour of the grounds. We then stopped at Grandpa's Fishing Pond where we were treated to CANYON and ROCK WREN, GREATER SCAUP, and messy MUSCOVY. A quick stop at Sand Hollow State Park ave us looks at an immature BALD EAGLE on an outcropping, but we didn't see the WHITE-WINGED SCOTER that had been reported there. The next 1-2 hours was spent toiling over loons and waterfowl to find the elusive and inlandly rare YELLOW-BILLED LOON at Quail Creek. We eventually settled on a lighter loon being our dude, but it was much too far to really appreciate.

We then went to Snow Canyon to look for a handful of birds that had been reported. Within a few minutes, we were hearing and seeing several ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRD. We found RED-NAPED SAPSUCKER, but not the similar but uncommon in the west YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER that had been reported. Just when we were about to leave, one of the state park workers there notified me about a friendly GREATER ROADRUNNER that he had seen minutes before on the group campground. Bilsky and I hightailed it over, and immediately found him plucking away at worms, and generally interested in us.

We made one last birding stop, where the CRISSAL THRASHER had been seen both the morning before, and earlier that day. We once again had no luck on this. After an awesome weekend in southern Utah, Bilsy and I bid ado around 4pm, and I headed to Las Vegas.

The Eric Lantz's friend Kerry was able to get me a free room at the Imperial Palace, which is owned by the same hotel she works for- Harrah's. I checked in around 6pm, got cleaned up, and met up with Kerry at Harrah's next door. She gave me a Diamond Lounge pass, which got me into a number of free appetizer and drink lounges on the strip. I hit Harrah's, Caesar's Palace, and Flamingo for the freebies. By the time Kerry got out of work at 10 so we could hang out, I was pretty lit. Regardless, her friend Shelly picked us up, and we got a beer at a bar called Griffin's, which was near North Las Vegas.

Monday morning, while I wasn't feeling my best, I did feel ready and excited to bird. I went north to Calico Basin near Red Rocks, and took a look around. I saw a number of birds I had seen all weekend, including PHAINOPEPLA, SAY'S PHOEBE, and ROCK WREN, but the real treat came when I noticed two COMMON RAVEN chasing after my lifer GOLDEN EAGLE. It was an incredible sight.

In the late morning, I headed to the Henderson Bird Viewing Sanctuary, which is an amazing, 9-pooled water treatment plant. The amount of diversity of waterfowl was incredible, as I noted 9 species of anatidae (ducks and geese). Other neat species here included CASSIN'S KINGBIRD, GAMBEL'S QUAIL, ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER, and ABERT'S TOWHEE. I saw two new species to me- BLACK-TAILED GNATCATCHER, and a COSTA'S HUMMINGBIRD which the man at the front desk helped me to distinguish from the ANNA'S that were around. He also told me about the extreme weather I was likely to encounter should I chose to continue on to Flagstaff that day. I took his advice, and made the 5 hour drive down to Phoenix yesterday.

Because of this change in plans, I gave old friend Leo Gleason a call. He and his wife live in Scottsdale, AZ, and were very willing to house me last night, and they fed me baked ziti! It was pretty awesome catching up with him, as it's been about 5 years since last we met.

This morning we all left at the same time, at about 8am. I headed northeast to the Tonto National Forest near Carefree, AZ. I checked out the Lower Camp Creek which was a riparian area that had much bird activity. On one of the steep hills, I noticed two CANYON TOWHEE darting in and out of bushes. Shortly thereafter, I saw a female GILA WOODPECKER, which is quite a plain bird. Once I noticed two BRIDLED TITMOUSE, it took me about a half hour to stop watching them- they are incredibly beautiful.

I then came down to Mesa, and went to the Granite Reef Recreation Area. I was on a trail that was mostly for biking, but found myself chasing birds far from the trail most of the time. I got great looks at a small flock of BLACK-THROATED SPARROW, and then chased a thrasher for awhile. He finally gave me some good looks from not too far away, proving that he was a CURVE-BILLED THRASHER and not the remarkably similar BENDIRE'S THRASHER. I also got to see a much more wild GREATER ROADRUNNER, skulking through the desert, which in some ways was nicer than my original encounter.

I'm now at a library in Mesa, trying to plan out my next several days in Southern Arizona. I'm really excited about the birding down here.

Deseret

2010-01-30T22:01:00.000-05:00

Thursday night, Bill, Marin and I met up with Bilsky at City Creek Canyon in Salt Lake City to do some owling. We hiked about a mile each way, playing tapes, and puled out a WESTERN SCREECH OWL as well as a NORTHERN SAW-WHET OWL. After, we went to see Laser U2 at the planetarium near their house- my lifer laser show. I had a deep epiphany that U2 is consistently semi-interesting.

Friday morning I went to the Salt Lake City Cemetery to see what kind of birds were present there. It was pretty birdy, including some of my western favorites like BLACK-BILLED MAGPIE, MOUNTAIN CHICKADEE, and a new great for me, TOWNSEND'S SOLITAIRE.

I later checked out the Salt Lake City Library, which was insanely incredible. At 4:30, Bilsky was out of work and ready to head down to the St. George Birding Festival in the southwest corner of the state. We stopped at the Provo airport, which had a dike going around a marsh. This was where he had seen a LONG-EARED OWL the week before, and when we got there, it was settled in the same spot. We got down to our camp site at Quail Creek State Park at a little after 10, and set up. It was freezing, and little sleep was had, but we got through the night, hearing GREAT-HORNED OWLS the whole time.

This morning we met up with Bilsky's friend Jim, and his nephew Pat, and headed to Lytle Ranch. This was a riparian, working ranch, tucked inside of a joshua tree forest. Within a few miles of driving in, we had located SAGE SPARROW, LOGGERHEAD SHRIKE, and numerous CACTUS WREN.

In the ranch, we got looks at a few southwestern specialties that I had never seen, including PHAINOPEPLA, GAMBEL'S QUAIL, and VERDIN. Although we tried, we dipped on CRISSAL THRASHER and BLACK-TAILED GNATCATCHER at this site.

By the time we left the ranch, it was afternoon, and we used the remaining daylight to locate some birds of interest. At Tonaquint park, we were treated to ABERT'S TOWHEE as well as a couple low flying FERRUGINOUS HAWK. We then stopped at a site that a male VERMILLION FLYCATCHER had been seen at, and found him very quickly. Two more stops , one for CRISSAL THRASHER and the other, at a wash, for SWAMP SPARROW were for naught. However, GREAT-TAILED GRACKLE, SORA, and LADDER-BACKED WOODPECKER were some good birds seen in the process.

We headed back to the campsite and looked for the recently seen YELLOW-BILLED LOON. We couldn't find it, and decided we didn't want to spend another night miserable. We went into Hurricane and rented a room at Travelodge, got some Mexican food to go, and are in for the night quite early. This was an awesome day of serious birding that included 54 species. I'm excited that I'll get a good night's sleep before doing it again tomorrow.

A long distance covered

2010-01-28T18:13:00.000-05:00

Sunday, Clara, Devin, and I dropped off Stasha with her mom, then we went to their friend Craig's house to watch some football and play music. I consumed enough libations to play guitar while lying on the floor (but had the wherewithal to take this picture).

Monday morning, I headed to Windfall Lumber in Olympia with Devin to work for the day. We spent about 10 hours building wall supports for a project he's taken on from them. It was a lot of work, but in some ways, the easiest $200 I've made.

Clara, Devin and I tried to have conversation that night, but we were all exhausted, and scooted to bed by 10pm. The next morning I got all of my stuff together and headed east. I encountered an area on I-90 that i was concerned I would not be able to drive through due to the snow in the Blue Mountains. There was several feet on the ground, but luckily the interstate was well-plowed.

I arrived in Othello, WA at about 1pm, and visited Heather at her Columbia National Wildlife Refuge office downtown. She was able to get out of work then, so we had a quick lunch at her house, and then explored a part the refuge that she lives at. It was pretty cool climbing all the buttes and coolies, but it was not too birdy. That night, we had some Mexican food, and then went to he Brunswick Bar that had quite a bit of game posters and otherwise.

Yesterday morning I got on the road at about 7:30am, and with only three quick stops, I got to Salt Lake City at about 6:30pm. It was pretty grueling. Shortly after getting to Bill and Marin's house, Bilsky texted me that there was a WESTERN SCREECH OWL in his backyard. The three of us quickly got going, and as soon as we got there, heard one. Within a couple of minutes, we got a great show of the two WESTERN SCREECH OWLS that are likely setting up shop in a tree cavity in his yard.

This morning I left the house at about 9am and drove up to the Bear River NWR in Brigham City. There had been reports lately of MCCOWN'S LONGSPUR and GRAY PARTRIDGE. I got the directions to each of them, and very quickly found a pack of about 16 GRAY PARTRIDGE. I found big groups of HORNED LARK that the longspur had been found in. I had no luck after almost an hour of scanning.

I then headed down to Antelope Island with the hopes of seeing a LONG-EARED OWL roost, and the CHUKAR I had dipped on the last time here. I search the Russian Olive trees off the road for a couple hours, seeing three porcupines (as I had seen last time) but no owls. I also had no luck with the CHUKAR. After a long day of searching, I headed back to Bill and Marin's where I am now watching an incredible film with Marin called "Saturday's Warrior."

4 Time Zones

2010-01-24T16:43:00.000-05:00

Friday night I had some beers with Joe and John at the Jackson Square Tavern, then met up with Jerry, Alison, and Doug at Sweet Lemons. This is the first time I ever remember having Thai food that didn't fill me up (temporarily). We then met with a gaggle of folks at the Brewhouse in Weymouth for my final night in town. It was fun... too much fun as the next morning would show.

Alison drove me to the Harbor Express ferry in Hingham at about 9am, so I could get one more look at the harbor before leaving town. There had been lots of talk of a super-rare ARCTIC LOON seen this week, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. It did hurt, because this was very early in a looong day. The boat went pretty fast (a 30 minute ride to Rowe's Wharf in Boston). I only got a look at about 4 duck species, and no loons or alcids.

I got to the airport at about 10:30, and then caught my flight to Chicago, stopped over in Denver, and then landed in Seattle at about 9pm local time, where Clara was with my car to drive me down to Olympia. So, all told, I had been traveling for 16 hours, stopping in all four continental U.S. time zones.

Yesterday I spent most of the day getting settled back in here. I cleaned out my car (which was easy, thanks to how Clara and Devin had taken care of it), and arranged things or my trip out of town early this week. I also went food shopping at the Grocery Outlet (GrossOut) and stopped by Capitol Lake to see how the duck scene was. In the afternoon, I played wiffleball with Clara and Devin's daughter Stasha. Last night, their friend Amy Jane came over with her daughter and we had an awesome vegan lasagna for dinner.

This morning, I got up at about 7 and headed to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge near Tacoma. It was pretty birdy there compared to how I remembered it from 2 months ago. An incredible showing of BALD EAGLEs were present, as well as the most cooperatively close AMERICAN BITTERN. The wetlands were dominated by CACKLING and CANADA GEESE, and the woods with BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEES and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS. I also got great looks at BEWICK'S and WINTER WREN. After an hour of walking in the calm, mild weather, the rain started. I didn't get a chance to get to the newly opened trail before I decided to turn back to the car.

Goodbye, New England

2010-01-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

Monday, I went to work with Eric, and we got to play a pretty good game of basketball. We left there in the early afternoon, and I checked out the Sachuest NWR for the last time. I was looking to see if I could get a glance at the RAZORBILL that had been reported as flybys here, but alas, I did not see one.

Tuesday was my last day of work at the Ryan Center. I did some random work that included possibly the silliest task I'd ever been asked to do at work: My co-worker Greg and I cleaned grates for about 2 hours. Eric stayed at work that night for the woman's basketball game, but I went home and watched the results of the Massachusetts political bloodbath.

Wednesday morning, Eric drove me to the Providence train station. On the way, we stopped at Watchemoket Cove in East Providence, where the day before a birder had reported two BLACK-HEADED GULL amongst the hundreds of RING-BILLED GULL. I located the Ring-billeds pretty quickly, but they were far away and hard to ID. Eric and I drove to a different part of the cove, looking for other areas that might offer a different part of the cove, and kind of failed. When we came back to the original spot, the gulls were much closer. This time, there was one BLACK-HEADED GULL that was quite obvious in comparison to the others, and was coming into
his spring plumage.
After riding into Boston, I met up with Erin and Meg at their house to drop my stuff off. I then headed down the Emerald Necklace in Jamaica Plain. My first stop was Jamaica Pond, which at times can attract tons of gulls, and sometimes a rarity within. There were only about 15 birds on the ice, which included LAUGHING GULL and RING-BILLED GULL. I continued a couple miles down through he Arnold Arboretum, but had no incredible sightings.

Last night I met up with Dan, Meg, Erin, Steve, and Meg at a Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown. It was delicious, especially the desserts. After, we went to Jake Wirth's with Doug, Jerry, and Alison. It was a good Boston send-off.

This morning after waking up in Jamaica Plain, I took the bus to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge to try my hand at the bird sighting from 1/15: four WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL that had been seen in a stand of conifers. After spending about 30 minutes at the "Eagle Ave." mentioned, I was not able to relocate the birds. I did, however get to see many of the temperate winter birds that I may not see for some time, that included BROWN CREEPER, RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH, WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH, BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE, DARK-EYED JUNCO, WHITE-THROATED SPARROW, and TUFTED TITMOUSE. After birding, I got some super-cheap pizza at Pinocchio's in HARVARD Square, and then headed back to JP where I am now.

Southern New England coast

2010-01-17T20:58:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, I had my longest workday at the Ryan Center, clocking in at 5 1/2 hours. The notable task of the day was cleaning the court with a mop and wood shining fluid in preparation for the URI men's basketball game against St. Joe's. I went home before the game, and uncommittedly watched some of it. The Eric Lantz reported that one of the St. Joe's players slipped on the floor- that's home court advantage! Eric brought home a bag of popcorn, which has been a lot of work.

Thursday I went into work with The Eric Lantz, but it turned out they didn't have any work for me. So I took Eric's jeep up to Bourne to look in two areas that have recently been reliable for KING EIDER. I spent about 1.5 hour drive each way, and about 3 hours of scanning the railroad bridge at the Cape Cod Canal, and Scusset Beach for the eider. I waded through what had to have been about 500 COMMON EIDER looking for the semi-rarity, but had no luck.

In the morning on Friday, Eric and I headed off for a full day of birding. We got to the Middleboro Cumberland Farm fields at about noon, and had a very productive bout there. Great looks at a dark-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, as well as a variety of sparrows including a VESPER'S, and at least 50 HORNED LARK. We then drove up to Nile's Pond in Rockport to check out a huge flock of gulls sitting on the ice. Other birders had reported GLAUCOUS and ICELAND GULLS on the ice. It was quite far, but I was able to deduce an ICELAND GULL in the pack. That night, I met up with John and Matt for some black beans and rice. Then we checked out the Needy Visions, who played at The Milky Way.

Saturday morning, Dan and I went along the south shore looking at the nature. We looked around the marsh on the backside of Wollaston Beach, and the Squaw Rock in Squantum. While it wasn't overly birdy, Saturday was the best weather of my entire visit in MA. We then met up with John and got some Weymouth House of Pizza. John and I met up with Doug and Sherry, and hit up the Soul-Le-Lu-Jah at Zuzu in Cambridge.

Sunday morning, Sherry, Eric and I got some breakfast at McKay's in Quincy Center, and then stopped by BK's house to say hi and hang out with his daughter Diana. Eric and I then went to the north shore to bird. We stopped in Marblehead at Devereaux Beach to look for a KING EIDER, but no luck. I have a new Bogey.

Then we went to the Parker River NWR on Plum Island. SNOWY OWLS have regularly been seen here, as well as a good diversity of alcids. We went to an area that a snowy had been seen earlier in the day, but no luck. We then went to the Hellcat Observation area, where some birders had conglomerated. When we got up to them, a woman asked if I had seen the SNOWY OWL that had just flew down, and I told her I didn't. She said to wait, because it frequently was landing on an osprey platform. We waited awhile, but never encountered it.

Our last stop in the refuge before sundown was the One Ocean. Some COMMON GOLDENEYE flew over, but despite looks out into the choppy ocean for soem time, no other birds were visible. We took the long ride back to Newport, me falling asleep, and had a relaxing night of comedy on t.v. This morning I came with Eric to work, despite being another day off for me.

Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations

2010-01-12T15:47:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning Eric and I got up around 5am, got ready, and headed to his (and now my) place of employment at the Ryan Center at the University of Rhode Island. This is the arena that hosts the school's basketball games and other events for students. Eric does the facilities/lighting/etc/maintainence/random/sound/miscellany for the center. I do even more miscellany. My work for the day was from 6-12:30, and included mopping the court, vacuuming, washing windows, and other general looking around to make sure things looked good for the men's basketball team's game again Temple that night. URI lost, in overtime.

After work, I headed back to the Sachuest Point NWR to see if any alcids were around. There were not, but a ton of ducks again. The lighting was very good, and allowed me my first authoritative look of the year at a GREATER SCAUP.

Eric and I had yesterday off, so he took me around to try to twitch some birds out. First on the list were a pair of TUNDRA SWAN in Coventry, RI that had been seen for over a week in a pond behind a restaurant. They were there, but a little far away for amazing inspection, however the field marks were clear. We then went to Apponaug Cove in Warwick, where over the past two weeks, both a GLAUCOUS and ICELAND GULL had been seen. We traveled around the cove, scanning a ton of gulls, but were not able to pull either of these species out.

This morning, Eric and I went to work at about 9am. Eric dropped me off, as he was not planning to start work until about noon. I engaged in miscellany again, including getting metaphorically lost, and left at about 12:30. I went to Trustom Pond NWR after work, and sat at the visitor's center feeder. Every day for the past 4 days, they have seen a RUSTY BLACKBIRD here. It took about a half-hour, but the male finally did made an appearance. I then went down the road to look for ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK in a reliable place for them near Moonstone Beach, but was unsuccessful.

At about 3pm, I drove to Ashaway, RI to try to look at a pair of swans that someone had claimed were a dead-ringer for TRUMPETER SWAN. I drove all around the location they posted seeing them from yesterday, but no swans were present. I then headed back to Eric's house in Newport, and am gearing for another small workday tomorrow.

Blackstone Valley

2010-01-09T18:44:00.000-05:00

Thursday morning, I left Dan Kearney's house and headed to South Station. I met up with John and Matt for lunch there, and then walked the HarborWalk north for a couple miles, checking out the birds. I was hoping for a rare gull, but there were very few gull groupings. I did get to see RED-BREASTED MERGANSER, COMMON LOON, and RED-THROATED LOON along the wharfs.

I then took the commuter rail out to Newton, where my mom picked me up. Friday morning, I attempted to locate the SNOW BUNTING that were among the HORNED LARK flocks at the Worcester Airport. The HORNED LARKS were out and about, but no buntings. I was getting concerned at this point that they were becoming a bit of a nemesis bird.

Last night I had my final night in Worcester for awhile, so I had a few drinks with Dick and my mom, and talked the night away. This morning I tried to locate the SNOW BUNTING again. At the airport, there were two birders, seemingly waiting patiently for their target to arrive. There was a flock of 20-30 HORNED LARK in the parking lot, but they weren't too concerned about them. It seemed to me that among the larks were a number of juveniles. It turned out that they were not young'ins, but in fact the lifer SNOW BUNTING I had been looking for.

In the afternoon, Mom and Dick drove me half way to meet up with Eric, and then we headed to Newport, RI. Pretty soon after getting here, I borrowed Eric's Jeep and went to the Sachuest Point NWR about4 miles away from his house. It was mighty cold, but worth it. A good number of ducks, including SURF, WHITE-WINGED, and BLACK SCOTER, as well as RED-BREASTED MERGANSER and HARLEQUIN DUCK. I also got a fly-by of 2 GREAT CORMORANT, and a couple YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER which I thought would be souh at this time. I'm now back at the house, getting ready for my first day of official, above the table work since this big year started.

3A

2010-01-06T09:43:00.000-05:00

I borrowed Dick's truck on Monday morning and headed to the Worcester reservoir and airport to look for recently seen SNOW BUNTING, but I had no luck. Dick drove me to the train station, which due to my misremembering the schedule, I almost missed. I went to Boston, then took the Greenbush line for the first time, to head to Weymouth. Kim picked me up there and we had some dinner at the Union Brewhouse. I then hit up trivia with Joe and John.

I stayed over Joe and Bonnie's, and dropped Joe of at Weymouth High for work on Tuesday morning. I borrowed his car for a day of birding the south shore. I stopped at Webb State Park, then the Hingham Shipyard, seeing some of the basic winter birds. At Nantasket Beach, I saw all three scoters, including my lifer BLACK SCOTER.

I then checked out Sandy Beach in Cohassett, and Scituate Harbor at the lighthouse. This was a very productive spot, getting me looks at LONG-TAILED DUCK and on the jetty, a juvenile PURPLE SANDPIPER. Then I trudged through the snow at the North River Audubon Sanctuary, and ran into a groundskeeper who told me about some good birds of the area. As we were talking, my first of the year WHITE-THROATED SPARROW showed up at the feeder. The groundskeeper told me about two SNOW BUNTING that had been seen at the nearby Daniel Webster Audubon Sanctuary feeders that morning. I went to check it out, but had no luck.

After a long day of birding, tallying a nice 39 species, I picked Joe up and we got a few beers. I then met up with Jerry and Alison for dinner, and spent the evening at The Shop chatting and moving some stuff around with Jerry as he was readying for a band coming in later this week.

This morning, after getting a pretty late start, Jerry needed to head to Harvard for work. I tagged along with him, and he dropped me off at Mt. Auburn Cemetery to bird. It was a pretty nice place for birders, but I could see it being more so during migration. One of the groundskeepers here saw me birding, and offered to show me a red morph EASTERN SCREECH-OWL that had been regularly out since Christmas. It was poking its head out when got there, which was nice to see. Jerry and I met up in the afternoon for some Asian fast food, and then we came to Dan Kearney's house for a game of soft basketball horse, which is where I am now.

New Year (but not of listing)

2010-01-03T18:44:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, Rosana and I headed to Jamaica Plain to see Dan, Meg, and Erin's new condo. It was quite nice, as was the veg chili. We had a chance to mess through Dan's record collection, as well as scare a guest away with non-soul music. In the morning, Rosana and I pondered Plum Island, but the temperature was insane. We got breafast at City Feed, and on the walk back to the car, Sam called us in to his WhiteHaus. It was a neat place to check out. We then went to some urban coastal look-outs instead of Plum at Newburyport. Castle Island in South Boston gave us looks at tens of BRANT, many COMMON EIDER, as well as some BUFFLEHEAD, AMERICAN GOLDENEYE, and RING-BILLED GULL. We then checked out Squaw Rock in Quincy and saw much the same. The temperature was devastating here, with wind-chills definitely going below zero.

Wednesday night, Rosana and I headed back to Worcester after some Indian food with Steve, Meg, Joe, and Bonnie. We slept late in preparation for a raucous New Year's Eve. In order to beat the snow, we left Worcester at about 2pm. We had a lot of fun at the Steve/Meg abode in Allston and/or Brighton, as well as at the Sillhouette.

The next morning, after crashing on the couch. Kearney, Steve, Meg, Ryan, Rosana, and I cleaned the house. We then attempted to get breakfast for several hours, with incredibly bad luck. We settled for D+D at almost 2pm. It hit spots, but not all of them. On the drive back to Worcester that afternoon, Rosana and I stopped at the Hanscom Air Field. There were good numbers of SONG SPARROW along the fenceline, as well as lifer AMERICAN TREE SPARROW. I was so preoccupied by these birds, that I failed to fully notice the British passerbys that suggested that our binocs, camera, and demeanor near a naval air base suggested that of terrorists. On the drive by them after birding, it was clear that they were phoning authorities about our presence. I have yet to hear from said authoritites.

On Saturday, Rosana and I were pretty lazy. We did get some packing done, and went for a walk at the Cider Mill up the street. It was still snowing steadily, and it was not very birdy. We did see a good number of AMERICAN CROW fly by, heard a NORTHERN CARDINAL, and at the end of the walk, saw a WINTER WREN. This was my first eastern WINTER WREN, so if the AOU changes its species designation this year, this will be a lifer

Saturday night we went out to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, and had some Thai food. Sunday morning we sadly got our things together to drive Rosana to the Providence airport in the afternoon.

Back to Taxachus

2009-12-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning, Rosana's parents took off for Lake Wales, after some more record listening, ladder toss, and good meals and conversation. We had the rest of the day to get our stuff packed up and attempt to eat the remainder of perishables left behind.

Thursday morning, Rosana's roommate Danny had a cancellation at his work, allowing him time to drive us up to the Ft. Lauderdale airport. Had he not, our day would have been much longer getting up there by train. Rosana and I had a direct flight to Boston, where The Eric Lantz picked us up to take us to Worcester for Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning was very nice. The Eric Lantz got me the exact MP3 player that had been stolen the previous week, so my the next few months of traveling look to be less quiet. After Rosana, Eric, Dick and Mom opened presents we had a good breakfast. Getting ready and cooking a few things took us until about noon, when some relatives started showing up. Dinner, Yankee Swap, and a walk at the mill park up the street rounded out a pretty good day. My relatives, and The Eric Lantz left in the evening, and we went to bed shortly after.

On Saturday, Rosana and I chatted with Dick and my mom for quite a while. We left the house after lunch and headed to my old workplace, the Blue Hills Trailside Museum. We checked out the SNOWY OWL, TURKEY VULTURE, RED-TAILED HAWK, and GREAT-HORNED OWL that they have on display outside, as well as these "wild" MALLARD.

After walking through the grounds and talking to a few of my former co-workers, we hiked to the the top of Great Blue Hill. While there was snow on the ground, which at times was decently deep, the temperature was mild and the trails were pretty well blazed.

In the evening, Rosana and I met up with Jerry, Alison, and Bill for sushi in Quincy Center, then played a game of bowling at O'Lindy's.

This brought us up to the time of the 12th annual Christmastime Spectacular of Gaiety held at the Shea household in Weymouth. After boozing and chatting for a while, the party moved to the ever-famous Panda Palace in South Weymouth, which Mark and Matt Shea tore the roof off with their karaoke version of an Elton John song.

Sunday morning after breakfast, Rosana and I met up with Bill and Marin. We headed to Cumberland Farms (the literal farms) in Middleboro to do some birding. This place has had quite a fall, with birders posting such rarities as LARK BUNTING, and the super-rare BROWN-CHESTED MARTIN. Most recently on a CBC, birders noted 5 LAPLAND LONGSPUR. We walked the muddy roads lined with post-harvest cranberry crud, but had no luck locating any. We were treated to an AMERICAN KESTREL, SONG SPARROW, WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW, and an immature RED-TAILED HAWK.

In the afternoon, the four of us ate some lunch with Jerry at Weymouth House of Pizza. Rosana and I then got some tea in Southie, then headed to the Needy Visions round-robin style show and photo shoot at their practice space in Dorchester.

After the show, Rosana and I stayed at Steve and Meg's place. In the morning we got some breakfast and made some IPA beer with the home brewing kit Meg had gotten Steve for Christmas. It was neat to learn how that works. Last night, Rosana and I headed back to Worcester, where we got some Thai food and retired fairly early. This morning we've been getting ourselves ready for another Eastern MA adventure to come.

Key(s)

2009-12-22T10:40:00.000-05:00

Thursday morning I did end up going to the Everglades to find my species of interest. I got to Hole in the Donut at about 6:30, and walked around as the sun was rising. KING RAIL could be heard all around, and a bunch of waders were finding there way to their feeding sites for the day. On the way out, an EASTERN SCREECH OWL was calling pretty close by. I checked out Long Pine Key, and saw a number of warblers, but no WESTERN SPINDALIS. Over at Lucky Hammock, I encountered some good activity, including the GRASSHOPPER SPARROW I was looking for previously. As it turned out, a birder had come across a LA SAGRA'S FLYCATCHER near Hole in the Donut about when I was there, but I didn't find out until later.

On Friday I cleaned like crazy, and picked Rosana up from her half-day. That night we hosted Eva and Emily for a major indoor ladder ball tournament.

Saturday morning, Eva and I headed to Virginia Key to participate in their annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC). It was a windy and cold, but excellent day of birding. Our count circle posted 70 species, with great birds of the day including NORTHERN GANNET, great looks at a close by BROWN BOOBY, and INDIGO BUNTING, to name a few. I also got to see a few good birding areas close to my soon to be home. After the count, Eva and I tried for the Kendall RED-WHISKERED BULBUL that she has yet to see, but her luck on this one continues for the worst. That night we all met up with Rosana's friend Emily at Titanic for dinner.

Sunday morning, Rosana, Eva, and I headed to the Everglades to try our luck at the missed LA SAGRA'S FLYCATCHER, but we didn't have any luck. However, just when we were about to call it, another birder gave a suttle point behind her. Rosana and I caught wat she was referencing- a huge Florida Panther about 30 feet away! Within a second, it darted out of the road, not to be seen again. There are less than 100 of these in the state, and thus the world. What an incredible experience! The three of us then headed to Lucky Hammock, and had a decent view of some warblers, as well as a SWAINSON'S HAWK and a CLIFF SWALLOW.

Rosana and I then headed to the Keys. We camped at Bahia Honda State Park near Marathon. It was still pretty windy and cool, but it as an incredible time. Quite different than when we went down there in May with The Eric Lantz, burning ourselves in the hot ocean water. On the way back from the Keys, we went record shopping to supplement the player I got Rosana for Christmas.

Last night Rosana's parents came into town and we played a lot of the records. Some of them they knew the words to when they were younger (The Eagles, Johnny Cash) without knowing the meaning of the words.

Relaxifying

2009-12-16T16:07:00.001-05:00

Saturday night, Rosana and I went to the Wynwood area of Miami for their monthly ArtWalk. We got a beer at the Titanic Brewery after, which is always nice.

Sunday afternoon, Rosana and I borrowed a couple bikes from her friends, and we got out to Shark Valley in the Everglades. This was a pretty awesome 15-mile loop that gave us some good looks at wading birds, tons of alligators, and a pretty high overlook into a wading bird colony, that in addition to the regulars, included lots of BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON. The sun started setting on our way back, but we made it to the car before it got scary.

Monday I had a pretty boring day, cleaning the house, going food shopping, and getting Rosana's car an oil change. Tuesday I planned on getting a new belt installed, but since Rosana was sick from work, I took care of her a bit and then we went to the car place together.

Today I got up at 5am to head to the Everglades. When I went down to the car, I realized it had been broken into, as the passenger door was unlocked and the glove box and center box were left open. The only casualty of this experience was my MP3 player, and my egg and cheese sandwich that Charlie stole from the chair I left it on while were dealing with this. Since we called the police and waited for them, I aborted my attempt to go to the 'glades, as my target birds were early morning skulkers- KING RAIL and SEDGE WREN. Perhaps tomorrow.

STA-5

2009-12-12T18:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning, after dropping Rosana off from work, I went to Matheson Hammock. The county parks had been quiet, so I wasn't expecting much, but I did find a nice flock that included BLUE-GREY GNATCATCHER, BLUE-HEADED VIREO, PALM, BLACK-AND-WHITE, and BLACK -THROATED GREEN WARBLERS. A huge flock of HILL MYNA also found me. After Rosana got out of work, we went to the raw food place in town that was the historic restaurant (but not same site) of our first date.

This morning I got up at 6 and headed up to the Stormwater Treatment Area (STA) 5 in Hendry County to meet up with Kimarsh and Eva. They only open this awesome birding area once a month. This place was out in the booooooonies, taking me through the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation, and a half-hour longer for me to get there than even mapquest suggested.

When I did arrive, Kimarsh and Eva had already scoped out both YELLOWLEGS and a SOLITARY SANDPIPER, but we were at this point interested in finding one of our target birds: the CASSIN'S KINGBIRD. After driving a bit, we got looks at LIMPKIN, ROSEATE SPOONBILL, BLUE-WINGED TEAL, AMERICAN WIGEON, SNAIL KITE, NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW, PEREGRINE FALCON, BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING DUCK and noticed a CRESTED CARACA change its bill color! Without much effort, we found our CASSIN'S right where the leader had suggested it would be, watched our lifer for a while, and moved on to our next target.

After doing a small loop, which included seeing a FULVOUS WHISTLING DUCK, HOODED MERGANSER, RING-NECKED DUCK, and RUDDY DUCK, we decided we had seen most of the birds of interest here. Having great luck on the day, and it still being early, we headed out to the Francsisco St. boat ramp in Clewiston, and pretty quickly found a pack of BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD mixed with BRONZED COWBIRD, as well as my first ever view of Lake O. After lunch at Hungry Howie's, and a bid farewell, I had a long, but very satisfied, drive home.

South Dadery

2009-12-10T16:18:00.000-05:00

In the afternoon on Wednesday, I packed some sandwiches, picked up Rosana from school, and we headed down to the Annex near the Everglades entrance to do a little birding. We were trying to get a look at a BROWN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER, and when the sun was setting, SHORT-EARED OWLS that had been seen in a field. We did not see either, but did get mosquitoed when the sun was done. It was a fun trip however, despite the fallen powerline blocking the road that made us divert our path through farms to get there and home.

Wednesday morning I went to the Cutler Wetland, and was greeted by tons of WOOD STORKS, mostly juveniles, a GREAT WHITE HERON, which is an all white subspecies of the GREAT BLUE HERON, and a big pack of SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER. After this, I went to the nearby Dump Marsh, and saw hundreds of EUROPEAN STARLINGS and lesser numbers of BROWN-HEADED COWBIRDS on the powerlines. I scanned them for awhile looking for a SHINY or BRONZED COWBIRD, but it was not to be. I parked the car right under the lines, and was flabberghasted to see it covered in guano when I got back.

This morning I got up pretty early to head to the Everglades National Park. I birded the area around the campground at Long Pine Key, looking for any evidence of the first ever reported U.S. breeding WESTERN SPINDALIS that took place here this summer. No luck, but there was a great deal of EASTERN BLUEBIRD, PINE, YELLOW-RUMPED, and PALM WARBLER. I ran into Rafael, who I had met last week at the Dump Marsh. He helped me look for it, as he hadn't seen it either since he was out of the country this summer - still no luck.

Rafael came with me to Donut in the Hole, which is an area of the Everglades that has some interesting things. We scanned a swampy area for BROWN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER, as this was a spot that they had showed up many winters in a row (but not yet this year). Then we headed on to the mound with his scope to see what kind of birds were visible in the marsh. A few LEAST BITTERN called out while we were up there, and immediately we got great looks at a male SNAIL KITE. Also present were RING-NECKED DUCK and HOODED MERGANSER.

I bid farewell to Rafael and headed to the Annex again to try for a BROWN-CRESTED FLYCATCHER. Within a little time, a LEAST FLYCATCHER showed up. Then, right next to him was a flycatcher that is either a GREAT-CRESTED or BROWN-CRESTED, but he was missing his tail. This bird is best distinguished by call, but hopefully one of the skilled Miami birders can help me figure it out.

Tri-County birding

2009-12-08T11:03:00.000-05:00

Friday night, a few of Rosana's teacher-friends, as well as Danny, Rosana, and I played some games and had some delicious polenta over here. Catch Phrase and beers. Saturday morning I woke up quite early and went to Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne. It didn't open until 8am, so I attempted to kill an hour at one of the Crandon Park beaches. This proved really fruitful, as on the beach, there was a large flock of birds that included ROYAL TERN, CASPIAN TERN, BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER, SEMIPALMATED PLOVER, PIPING PLOVER, SANDERLING, and LESSER BLACK-BACKED GULL. On the walk back to the car, EASTERN SANDHILL CRANES yelled at me.

At 8am, I headed to the state park, and attempted to bird it. There was not much going on, besides these soaring MAGNIFICENT FRIGATEBIRDS.

At about 10:30, Rosana and Emily met me there to enjoy some beach time. It was pretty fun and relaxing. In the afternoon we took a long nap, and then headed to Titanic for delicious microbrews, and some billiards with Emily and Desiree.

Sunday morning, Rosana and I slept in (7:30), and slowly got ready for a northward trip. On our way to Palm Beach, we stopped at the infamous Dania Beach 800 building for my third try at a SMOOTH-BILLED ANI this year. We immediately saw one, and got incredible looks at it. I think this kind of redeems me as an actual pro-circuit birder in Rosana's eyes. Maybe.

In the afternoon, we hung out at Eva's friends' house where they were having a cook-out. We enjoyed some horseshoes, flip-cup, and this amazing game called Ladder Ball. We took a break from the party to bird the beach before sundown, but with no peculiar sightings. Eva and I went to bed early that night as we had a well-planned day for Monday.

At 8am on Monday, Eva and I picked up Kim in Lake Worth, and headed to Eva's own Green Cay Nature Center. On our morning bird walk, we saw a good variety of species, including PURPLE GALLINULE, MERLIN, BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING DUCK, ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER, YELLOW-THROATED WARLBER, and SORA. Eva identified a NORTHERN ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW that I was not able to spot due to an aggressive shirtless jogger. To give Eva some time to get work done, Kim and I went down the street to the Wakodahatchee Wetlands. Not too much more was seen here, but a beautiful day nonetheless. Extremely irrratably and hungrily, we met up with Eva and Mo at Green Cay and ate lunch at a Chinese Restaurant. After lunch, Mo, Kim, and I hiked a fruitless death march through the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge trying to turn up one of their resident SNAIL KITE, but it was not to be. After Eva's work day was done, they dropped me off at the train to head back down to Miami, with 60 bird species on the day.

This morning I went to A.D Barnes here in Dade to see if there were any late migrants. Not too much other than a GREAT-CRESTED FLYCATCHER, BLUE-HEADE VIREO, 2 CHESTNUT-FRONTED MACAW, and this overly friendly juvenile raccoon.

I don't understand weather

2009-12-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning, I scrapped my plan to head down the the Annex near the entrance of the Everglades, due to the weather forecast. A couple of exciting birds, including SHORT-EARED OWL and CASSIN'S KINGBIRD had been seen on Tuesday, but it didn't seem worth making the drive. So I went to Matheson Hammock, and the weather was beautiful. However, I only saw 6 birds species in more than an hour of birding there. I was thinking perhaps the impending storm hunkered them all down.

Thursday was the same deal, the weather looked to be a bit crazy, so I decided to stay local. I checked out the Kendall Indian Hammocks, and only did slightly better than the day before. There was a perched female MERLIN, and also a BLUE-HEADED VIREO, so it was not a complete waste. I went to the Kendall Baptist Hospital after to see what kind of exotics were around. There were GRAYLAG/SWAN GOOSE hybrids, domestic MALLARDS, MUSCOVY, and hundreds of the above pictured MITRED PARAKEET, none of which are ABA acceptable birds. In the afternoon I went to the Pinewood Cemetery for the first time. There was a SHORT-TAILED HAWK and YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER, but no other birds present. The weather had stayed completely clear all day.

This morning the weather forecast looked slightly better than the previous two days, so I figured I was safe. It poured the whole drive down to the Annex from about 6-7am, but luckily stoppped when I got there. There were some nice birds around there, including BROWN THRASHER, CAPE MAY WARBLER, and OVENBIRD. When I started to drive to leave, I noticed a kingbird on the electric line. I got out, and spent 20 minutes analyzing him. He looked like he could have been the CASSIN'S KINGBIRD, but it turned out his feathers were ruffled, giving them a grey frontal appearance. His white tail edges and darker wings than back made him a wintering WESTERN KINGBIRD. On the drive out a beautiful SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER on some electric lines caught my attention.

Space Coast

2009-12-02T11:12:00.000-05:00

Sunday evening, Rosana and I got to Lake Worth to meet up with Eva, who at the time, was the soon-to-be birthday girl. We got some pizza with her and Kim, and from there, Eva and I set off for birding the Space Coast a few hours north. That night, Eva and I set up camp and went to bed pretty early after a few shots and views of snorting manatees in the Indian River.

Monday morning, we woke up at about 6am to head out to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Just after sun-up on the Black Point Wildlife Drive, Eva discovered a SORA. A little further down the road, a CLAPPER RAIL called me in like a siren, and gave us incredible looks. Within this drive, other notable birds included BALD EAGLE, EASTERN TOWHEE, REDDISH EGRET, BUFFLEHEAD, and unbelievable views of a Bobcat. This first couple of hours gave us 52 bird species.

We checked out the Scrub Trail, as well as Playalinda Beach, without any surprising sitings. On that note, we decided to drive a bit further out, to Huntington Road and the Shiloh Marsh. On Huntington, we were treated to some semi-rarities for South Florida: EASTERN BLUEBIRD and AMERICAN GOLDFINCH. Shiloh did not produce the sparrows we had hoped for, as it seems we would need to be in knee-highs to flush out the desired NELSON'S SHARP-TAILED, SEASIDE, and SALT MARSH SHARP-TAILED SPARROWS.

Our last big birding stop of the day was Diceranda Scrub Sanctuary to try again for a FLORIDA SCRUB JAY, but were unsuccessful. We did manage to get looks at SHARP-SHINNED HAWK and CAROLINA CHICKADEE. At the campground, we took a few minutes to bird before freshening up, which proved fruitful. PILEATED WOODPECKER, SPOTTED SANDPIPER and YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER were all "yardbirds". After changing clothes, we picked up a couple other urban birds, and finished our day list at 85 species. Eva and I celebrated our great B-day big day birding with some Mexican food, a few beers, and some Monday Night Football at a local watering hole.

Yesterday morning, Eva and I broke camp at 5:30am and headed down to the Viera Wetlands at to see if we could relocate the NEOTROPIC CORMORANT that had been posted as being seen the day before. Within a few minutes of looking for it, we did find it, and were able to point it out to some of the other twitchers looking for it. Other notable birds that we saw at this site included CRESTED CARACARA, BLACK-BELLIED WHISTLING DUCK, WOOD STORK, EASTERN SANDHILL CRANE, and many vocal MARSH WRENS. One of the birders mentioned a PURPLE SANDPIPER he had seen at New Smyrna Beach the day before. Our curiosities peaked, Eva and I got the directions and headed north to see if we could pull in another rarity for the day.

A small jetty on the south side of the Ponce Inlet is the typical wintering feeding grounds of the of this slightly south individual PURPLE SANDPIPER. It seems that it feeds elsewhere until low tide, and then frequents this jetty filled with fishermen. Low tide was around 1pm, and Eva and I did not care to stick around that long. So after seeing SANDWICH TERN, and the many RUDDY TURNSTONES around the jetty for an hour and a half, we decided to leave. A stop at a Waffle House was our final meal of the trip, and only stop of our 3+ hour ride back to Lake Worth. Our final species count for the weekend-like weekdays were 94 - not too bad for this time of year.

Thanks of Giving

2009-12-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday, I got everything ready for Rosana and I to take off for her parent's house in Central Florida. After her half-day at school, we drove up 27 in two cars (her new one, and her old one which her dad is going to try to sell in Venezuela) and made a birding stop in Belle Glade, with the hopes of seeing a SMOOTH-BILLED ANI. At the marina, we came across a LIMPKIN, but no ANI. It has been a while since one has been seen in Florida, so I think their status is questionable.

Rosana's family had a serious immediate family reunion that hadn't happened for a long while. Her parents, both of her brother's and their families, as well as her half-brother were in town for the whole weekend. It was craziness with all of the kids, and general language barriers, but it was a lot of fun. We stayed at her brother Ismael's house about a half-hour away in Auberndale, which gave us a bit of a respite from the insanity.

On Saturday, we went to Bok Tower in Lake Wales with most of the family to check out the gardens. It was pretty nice weather, with some decent bird activity. We got many of the kids as well as Rosana's brother Herman to see a pair of AMERICAN KESTREL in a snag, which they seemed to appreciate. There were also some active PINE WARBLER, BLUE-GREY GNATCATCHER, and BELTED KINGFISHER. But the big draw to the kids were the pair of MUTE SWANS and Koi which they fed.

The weekend mostly consisted of crazy conversations, being sick with a cold, watching almost all of the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing with Charlie the dog, and drinking espresso and beer. Rosana and I left on Sunday afternoon to head down south to Lake Worth to start another chapter of my trip.

Back where I started.

2009-11-24T11:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I took care of a number of administrative things, and made my lady dinner. We then went to get Rosana her new 2002 Corolla. It is nice and red.

This morning I went to the Dump Marsh in southern Dade. There were a good amount of birds there, including SAVANNAH SPARROW, BROWN-HEADED COWBIRD, MOTTLED DUCK, RED-SHOULDERED HAWK, and a dark morph SHORT-TAILED HAWK. I ran into a birder here named Rafael, who was heading up the Hialeah Christmas Bird Count, which he invited me to join him on. Rafael pointed me to where he had seen a GRASSHOPPER SPARROW, but I was unable to tease it out. On my way back to the car, I watched a PEREGRINE FALCON hunting from the electric lines.

I then checked out the nearby Cutler Wetland, but didn't see too much happening. The light is often difficult here, allowing me only to barely see some shorebirds (DUNLIN, DOWITCHER sp.), as well as NORTHERN HARRIER and GLOSSY IBIS.

When I got back to Rosana's house, her roommate Danny and his dog Willow were wating on the front stoop. I had locked them out, as they were on a walk when I left this morning. Eeeeeehr.

West to East

2009-11-23T10:59:00.001-05:00

Friday morning, Kim and I started the day at Bunche Beach in Lee County. We came across a good variety of shorebirds, including WILSON'S PLOVER, PIPING PLOVER, SEMIPALMATED PLOVER, WESTERN SANDPIPER, DOWITCHER sp., DUNLIN, SPOTTED SANDPIPER, and MARBLED GODWIT, as well as plenty of BLACK SKIMMER. The heat cranked up, so we moved onto some shade at Lakes Park and Six-Mile Cypress, where we picked up 5 warblers including PINE, PRAIRIE, YELLOW-RUMPED, NORTHERN PARULA, and BLACK-AND-WHITE. We finished our birding with a look at a pack of MONK PARAKEET at the marina. We were exhausted from this hot day, so we just hung out at Kim's house, engaging with a delicious homemade lasagna.

Saturday morning, Kim and I met up with Rosana at Audubon's Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary for a stroll about. The ~3 mile boardwalk hike was pretty birdy, giving us great looks at a male PAINTED BUNTING, GREAT-CRESTED FLYCATCHER, BLUE-HEADED VIREO, HAIRY WOODPECKER, and MAGNOLIA WARBLER, among many others. I left with Rosana, heading east to South Miami.

I took a birding day off to be with my lady yesterday. In the last couple days we've mostly chatted and lazed, checked out Y Tu' Mama Tambien and The Wrestler, and last night made some delicious Risotto with Danny and Emily. Oh, and had blind taste testing of tap water that was filtered by their new Brita, versus unfiltered.

This morning I drove Rosana to work, and got right to business trying to see the RED-WHISKERED BULBUL. It was a success (sorry Eva), as I saw two of them on the electric lines of their infamous Kendall neighborhood. I then went to Matheson Hammocks to see what kind of late-ish neotropical migrants were around and was decently successful. A few mixed flocks provided me with PRAIRIE, PALM, BLACK-AND-WHITE, BLACK-THROATED GREEN, NORTHERN PARULA, and MAGNOLIA WARBLERS, as well as WHITE-EYED VIREO and the bird that escaped me a few times September 1st, the YELLOW-THROATED VIREO. I also got a flyby of 3 BLUE-AND-GOLD MACAW, which are not ABA countable.

2009-11-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

Tuesday night I got to say goodbye to my Olympia folks in fine fashion. The whole house- Dave, Devin, Clara, Lexi, Babbi, and I went to a burrito shop that had this hidden lounge in the back, for a few drinks. Yesterday morning, Devin drove me to the shuttle bus in Longwood so I could get to the airport. In the airport, I heard someone call my name, so I looked back. Surprisingly, it was Will, my couchsurfing host from the Olympic peninsula! I new he was flying out on this day to head to Mexico, but I didn’t know what time (and I had mistakenly mentioned to him that my flight was the next day). It turned out that he was on my flight to Dallas, where we both had layovers. It also turned out that he had seat 24D and I had 24F. Crazy to think that even if we hadn’t met each other, two birders would have been sitting with one person in the middle of them. I politely asked the man in the middle to switch, which he was willing to do so Will and I could chat birds. For a little while, Will took a nap, and I finished up reading Under the Banner of Heaven, a book about Mormonism and its nuttiness. I noticed the guy next to me kind of reading along, and I glanced over to see he had a Ladder-Day Saints nametag on. He said nothing to me about the book, and I am glad for that.

I got to Dallas, then to Ft. Myers FL at about 9:30pm with no complications. Kim picked me up there, and we headed to her house to have some delicious pizza.

This morning, we headed to Sanibel Island at about 8:30am. Right after leaving Kim's house, we checked out the local BURROWING OWL nesting sites. At Ding Darling NWR, we encountered a bunch of the birds I hadn't seen in a while, or in this year project. Some of these included WOOD STORK, REDDISH EGRET, ROSEATE SPOONBILL, RUDDY TURNSTONE, and PALM WARLBER. On our drive to Blind Pass, a beach on Sanibel, we got great looks at MAGNIFICENT FRIGATEBIRD. At the beaches, we scoped out several NORTHERN GANNET, as well as SANDWICH TERN. A great day of birding with 53 species seen on the day.

In the evening, Kim and Alison (from Audubon of Florida) gave a presentation on bats at a local elementary school. Alison brought detectors that made sounds when bats flew overhead, which we got to hear in action. After, Kim and I got some Indian food, and now we are chilling with some starfruit wine!

Ocean Shores

2009-11-17T17:10:00.000-05:00

Last night we played some Bananagrams, and I was in bed by 10:30pm. It looked like it was going to be a rainy and windy day today, so I planned to check out the coast at Ocean Shores. Either I would get some birding in or see some intense waves.

It turned out to be birding. It didn't rain while I was there, but there were intense winds. On the way out to this coastline, about 70 miles away, I was entrapped for speeding in an area called Central Park that the limit went unnecessarily low. 68 in a 50, $93 ticket.

I went to check out the jetty on the south end of the peninsula, but it was cut off during high tide. I was trying to see if I could get looks at BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE which had been reported off the coast. I did see a number of RED PHALAROPE flocks scanning the shore.

At Chance a la Mer State Park, I drove onto the beach for a vantage point. Gulls were being fed by a man while I was here. After not seeing to much action over the water, I IDed the gulls that were around my car, which included what turned out to be a number of THAYER'S GULL, as well as MEW GULL, CALIFORNIA GULL, and RING-BILLED GULL. While scanning, I came across a solo BRANT, and HEERMAN'S GULL cruising the shoreline. A television weatherman van parked right in front of me to do a live broadcast. The star apologized for blocking my view, but said they'd be done in a half-hour. I decided it was time to leave.

Rains

2009-11-16T19:24:00.000-05:00

In the evening of last night, Devin, Dave and I chopped up a tree cookie that was about 2 feet by 4 feet. It cut up nicely, after some work. Afterward, we had some delicious dinner that Clara got going, of enchiladas.

Today I got a bunch of administrative things done during the crazy weather. I'm packed up for my trek out of here on Wednesday, so perhaps I can go explore the intense winds and severe rain on the coast tomorrow.

working hard, but hardly working.

2009-11-15T16:53:00.000-05:00

Friday afternoon, Devin, Clara and I headed under the house to install insulation. The crawlspace is only about 1 1/2 feet high, so it's quite snug under there, and not the most fun thing in the world. An hour and a half was enough for the day.

In the evening, Devin and I went to his previous employer, Windfall Lumber, where he has bartered to get access to the building during off hours. We started working on cutting boards, made from Alder and Madrone. Friday night, we got the boards glued together, and sat them aside until they dried and we could work on them later.

Yesterday morning, Clara, Devin, their roommate Dave, and I went to Tacoma to pick up their friend Shannon, and headed to Tiger Mountain to get in some hiking. The weather was awesome, but the trails were confusing.

We did about 10-13 miles of hiking, without any major outlook or summit. I was a lot of fun, and a few birds were sited, including VARIED THRUSH, HAIRY WOODPECKER, and BEWICK'S WREN. We also noticed this ree that when uprooted, lifted a pretty large rock with it.

Last night we celebrated with some Vietnamese food and booze. We played some Apples to Apples in the living room, and did not make it to 11pm. This morning, Devin and I went back to Windfall Lumber to check on our cutting boards. I used the belt sander for a couple of hours getting them smoothed out a bit. Then we epoxied areas that needed it. It is kind of a slow drying type, so we'll have to head back tomorrow to finish them up.

Stalemate

2009-11-13T12:46:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning I joined the folks who do the weekly bird walk at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. We got a good show of raptors - RED-TAILED HAWK, NORTHERN HARRIER, PEREGRINE FALCON, and BALD EAGLE. All of these birds had interactions with each other, which were quite interesting to see. The first three of these species listed fought each other over a GREEN-WINGED TEAL that the RED-TAIL caught. One of the lighter RED-TAILS we were trying to turn into a ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, but as it came to pass, it was not.

In the evening of Wednesday, and all day yesterday, I've just been having some down time at Clara and Devin's house. There have been no areas that I feel I have a good chance to see new birds at, and no rarities have popped up in the immediate area. I guess my car needs a little break and so do I. I did stop at Capitol Lake yesterday and inventoried the ducks, but no new species have arrived.

Last night, Clara gave me this present which could come in quite handy.

Going back to Oly

2009-11-10T20:38:00.000-05:00

Last night at Zoie's intentional community in Bellingham, I ended up getting to sleep in the healing room, which had apothecary medicines and instruments. For some reason there was a futon open in there, even though most of the household slept on the floor.

This morning I left at about 9am and drove to Montlake in Seattle. There is a botanical park managed by UW, with a decent amount of property, right behind the football stadium. There were a good number of ducks here, but a birder I had talked to there said that the NORTHERN SHRIKE I was looking for had not been seen in over a week.

After a hearty lunch at a vegan Thai place in the University District, I drove over to Redmond to see the infamous Marymoor Park. The part I was interested in of this enormous place was the Eastside Audubon Bird Loop. Coincidentally, this was right at the leash-free dogpark, which was ind of annoying. Before starting my hike, I checked the windmill for BARN OWLS, which nest and roost there, but had no luck. On the rainy hike, there was not too much bird activity, and after about one and a half hours, I headed back to the car. In a tree visible from the car was the perched bird I had been looking for, the NORTHERN SHRIKE. Within 30 seconds, he flew off and I could not relocate him again. Since I was lucky with the shrike, I tried the windmill another time, but had the same results.

I arrived in Olympia at about 4:30. It was nice to get a shower and unpack a bit after my few day journey northward.

Vancouver is...

2009-11-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

...probably my favorite city thus far in my short life.

After I dropped Greg and Kim back at the house on Sunday, I spent the afternoon checking out Stanley Park, which is quite possibly the best city park I have ever been to. It's an island between Vancouver and North Vancouver, accessible by a major road and bridges connecting it. The ecosystem is impeccably intact for being in an urban interface, even though it did lose much of its older growth to an ice storm a couple years back.

From the many stops around Stanley Park, I was able to see a ton of ducks. There was a huge raft that included hundreds of SURF SCOTER, and lesser numbers of HARLEQUIN DUCK, WHITE-WINGED SCOTER, and BARROW'S GOLDENEYE. In a cove not far from this raft, I saw two male COMMON GOLDENEYE.

At the Lost Lagoon within Stanley Park, there were a number of people feeding the "wild" animals. Nuts, corn, and grapes were fed to willing BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE, CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEE, SPOTTED TOWHEE, DARK-EYED JUNCO, COMMON RAVEN, FOX SPARROW, RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD, MALLARD, CANADA GOOSE, MUTE SWAN, black squirrels, and about 7 too-friendly raccoons.

In the evening, I walked Main St., and ended up having a Phillips Lager at The Reef. When I got back to the place, Greg, Evan, and I had some of Evan's beer from the Red Truck Brewing Co. that he works for. Then we had some of the red wine that he had made at home. We talked a lot about Evan's impending trip, coinciding with getting out of Vancouver before the Olympic hell starts. He's planning to check out breweries throughout the U.S. for several months, and then in the spring, do the Appalachian Trail from GA to ME. I may end up getting to see him in FL, since he'll be down there visiting family before his hike.

This morning I got a very late start, and said goodbye to my incredible hosts. I stopped by the West Dike in Richmond again to try for the SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPER and EMPEROR GOOSE, but no luck. After crossing the border with much less grief than on my way up, I stopped at Birch Bay State Park, where the weather cleared to show this nice rainbow. At about 5:30pm, I got to the intentional community in Bellingham that I'm staying at tonight. My host Zoie showed me around, and I've just settled into the communal floorspace that will be my temporary residence.

Neighborhoods to the north

2009-11-08T15:21:00.000-05:00

Not too much to report here over the last few days. I left Olympia Friday at about noon, missing all the good weather of the day, and tried to bird in the rain in Seattle. I gave up quickly. So I checked out a coffee shop in Pioneer Square, then met up with my cousin Max at her house in town. We had some Vietnamese food in the International District, then had some ice cream, then stayed at her boyfriend's house.

Saturday morning, we hung out at the house for awhile, then headed back to her's to get my car. I too off for north, getting money, gas, and my phone situation settled and crossed the border in Blair. The border patrol guy gave me some grief, and seemed to very much think my explanations painted me as the scum of the Earth. Regardless, he let me through, and I was in Vancouver at about 5pm.

Arriving in Vancouver, I realized that my couchsurfing host Evan lived in a pretty awesome neighborhood. When I got to the house, a disheveled character named Nick answered the door, and let me get settled in. He was a neighbor that was hung over. Eventually Evan and his girlfriend came home, and within a bit, headed to see Lights, the band. Within 10 minutes, Evan's roommates Kim and Greg got home, and we hung out for the rest of the night. These two are New Zealanders who have been travelling for quite some time, but are settling in Vancouver for a bit to work for a bit. It sounds like those commonwealth (Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) passports can let you do pretty much anything between those countries. Anyway, we hit a bar nearby and chatted the night away.

This morning at about 8:30, they came with me to check out a birdy area in Richmond. There had been reports of a SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPER and an EMPORER GOOSE here recently. We saw about 25 species, but neither of those two.

Lurking

2009-11-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

People walking in the rain in downtown Seattle look like ghosts. I'm mildly disturbed.
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Installation

2009-11-05T20:10:00.000-05:00

I got back to LeSage, my hosts in the Olympic peninsula's house on Lake Crescent, Tuesday night at about 6pm. The place was empty, unlike the night before. Will had said they were working until 6, and they might end up staying at the office. They did, so I had the huge house to myself.

The next morning I woke up and headed out at about 9. I drove the western part of the peninsula, which went through the Twilight-famous town of Forks, as well as Ruby Beach.

I decided to head down to Tokeland to give another try at seeing the BAR-TAILED GODWIT. It was high tide, and a group about double the size of MARBLED GODWIT I had seen before were on the docks. This time, it included WILLET and DOWITCHER. There were two birds that were lighter, that looked like they could have been good candidates for the rarity, but nothing else checked out. I spent well over an hour scanning these birds for the BAR-TAILED, but once again, could not find it.

Last night, Clara made a pizza, which Devin, their roommate Dave, and I enjoyed. I also tried another of Clara's homebrews.

This morning, Devin and I continued on the birdhouses. To finish the job, we just had to put roofs and hinges on the large ones, and change all of the smaller's hinge screws out for galvanized ones. We finished at about noon, and Devin headed out to try to get aluminum nails for us to hang them with (aluminum is lighter than steel, so when loggers come in send the trees to a sawmill, it won't break their blades).

At about 2, we met up with the grantwriter for this project, Kurt, at the landowner's house. He explained the larger restoration project that was taking place on the landowner's 80 acres that had been sold by Weyerhaeuser 10 or so years back. The land was mostly Alders now, but the Doug-Firs and Grand-Firs would soon take over when given the opportunity. It was mostly these trees, and some Big-leaf Maples that we posted the birdhouses to, while it was raining on us.

Tea on the dock at LeSage

2009-11-04T12:02:00.000-05:00

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High and Low

2009-11-03T18:57:00.000-05:00

Last night I got to my couchsurfing host Will's house in Olympic National Park at about 7:30. He and his 3 roommates who all work as environmental educators in the park, were having some people over for bridge night. They had lots of good food made, which they let me dig into.

Their house was a home that had been sold to the park service during the couple who owned it's divorce, and is right on Crescent Lake. Will, his friend Marisa, and I had some conversations regarding birds, which led into us going out last night looking for NORTHERN SAW-WHET and WESTERN SCREECH OWLS, but with no luck. When I asked will about SPOTTED OWLS, he said "you're not gonna see one." When we got back, Will's roommate KC offered me his room, since he and a couple of the other roommates always like to sleep outside (you can see one of them on the dock in the picture above).

This morning I took Will's advice for targeting some birds I was interested in. Since most of the sub-alpine entrances to Olympic National Park are closed for the winter, he gave me directions to Hurricane Hill, and his employee ID to get in free. As soon as I got there, one of my target species found me. A pack of GRAY JAYS descended upon me and humaned me.

Out on the 1.5 mile, 700 ft. incline trail, I didn't come across the BLUE GROUSE that Will had said was pretty reliable for him out here. I did see male and female EVENING GROSBEAK in a patch of spruce trees.

I left Hurricane Ridge at about noon, and came down from 5700 ft. to sea level in less than an hour. I got to Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge for another try at seabirds. Out on the spit, I saw three species of loon, including the lifer YELLOW-BILLED LOON. I also noticed a intermediate plumed RED-BREASTED MERGANSER. A few minutes later, I saw another loonish bird that wasn't fitting, since it had a orange fading to black bill. As it came closer, it turned out to be a RED-NECKED GREBE.

The Olympics

2009-11-02T20:32:00.001-05:00

Last night I went to "Northern" in Olympia, which is an all ages venue. Jeremy Jay, a dude on K Records, was playing. One of the groups was pretty good, called Good Neighbors, kind of like The Blow meets Ani DiFranco. Jay was not that exciting.

This morning I started feeling the effects of my cold. I went to the hot tub with Clara and Devin, and was out the door by 11am. I headed up 101, to the Olympic Peninsula, for a couple day adventure. There were a ton of state parks and recreation areas along the way with great vantage points of rivers that had salmon jumping. I also saw a seal eating one, and a river otter.

When I got to Port Townsend, I stopped at Old Fort Townsend State Park, looking for sea birds. When I got to the beach, it started pouring on me. A few birds in a Pacific Madrone, caught my attention, and there turned out to be four VARIED THRUSH, hopping around. I then headed to Fort Worden State Park, which as a cool spot. There's a hostel and a lighthouse here. I went to the dock which had a Marine Science Center on it. It started pouring on me again out here, but within five minutes, I found both a close-up, messy looking MARBLED MURRELET, and a sharp looking, but far out PIGEON GUILLEMOT!

In Olympia, there are AMERICAN CROWS and NORTHWESTERN CROWS, and some that are hybrids. I wasn't able to deduce a NORTHWESTERN CROW until today, since they are incredibly similar, but there are no AMERICAN CROWS on the peninsula.

I stopped at the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, but daylight savings had something to say about it. I had to leave as it got dark and they were closing at 5, and now I've just gotten to Port Angeles.

All Hallows

2009-11-01T19:47:00.000-05:00

Friday night, Clara and Devin's neighbors came over and we played some games. We tried Fluxx, but that is way too confusing, so Apples To Apples it was.

Yesterday morning I went out to try to hit a few of the local hotspots. I went over to Millersylvania State Park. As soon as I got there, it started pouring out, so I waited a while in my car. After a bit I went for a short hike and found nothing too interesting, other than the observation that GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS are way more common on the west coast.

I then headed to Woodruff Bay, which were a nice series of trails leading to a penninsula in the Puget Sound. Among the many ducks visible were COMMON MERGANSER, BARROW'S GOLDENEYE, and SURF SCOTER.

Devin, Clara and I headed downtown Oly last night to check out the Halloweensanity, after visiting a friend of their's house to see trick-or-treaters. We only lasted a couple beers in the city, and ended up back home by way of the bus at about 11pm.

This morning I stopped at Capitol Lake, which had at least 3 times as many ducks as compared to my presious visits. This time the SCAUP were closer, and I was able to deduce a LESSER SCAUP out of them. After this, I checked out Preist Point Park, which was a pretty nice spot on the east side of the bay. Then I cruised up the west side of the bay on my way home, looking for waterfowl.

This afternoon, Devin and I continued birdhouse work. The right side of the smaller houses needed to be hinged by just putting a screw in each side. We also made screw and wire latches on the bottoms of these so that they could be fastened shut. The idea is to have houses that can be cleaned and maintained in the field without the use of any tools. The only things left to do are put the holes in them, and get roofs on the large ones.

Work in the ornithological field.

2009-10-30T17:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning, even though it was raining, I stopped by Capitol Lake in front of the WA state house to try to catch a TUNDRA SWAN that a birder had posted from the day earlier. I had no luck, but did see a good number of ducks on the lake, mostly being BUFFLEHEAD.

When I got back to the house, Devin and I began working on making bird nesting boxes. A friend of Devin's applied and was awarded a grant to create 30 bird boxes for DOWNY WOODPECKER, HAIRY WOODPECKER, and NORTHERN FLICKER. The grant pays for 90% of the work, the landowner the other 10%. Apparently the grant pays about $40 per box.

The whole nest box is made from one plank, which I cut up in the backyard yesterday afternoon. During which, Devin was putting one together, and getting all the smaller pieces cut.

This morning, I headed to the Cannon Trail in town, where I could get some good views of the Puget Sound. I saw a good diversity of birds, including good looks at the very common GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL, which I had been unable to fully identify until today. After, I went to try Capitol Lake again. No TUNDRA SWAN, but there were even more of a diversity of ducks. BUFFLEHEAD, CANVASBACK, unidentifiable SCAUP, and REDHEAD were the most apparent.

When I got back, Devin and I started working again. I put together the smaller, DOWNY and HAIRY WOODPECKER boxes, which we needed 10 of, and got some of the 20 of the larger NORTHERN FLICKER boxes that we need.

Western Washington rarities continue!

2009-10-28T19:18:00.000-04:00

Last night, Clara got home from teaching swimming, and her, Devin and I had a mad good stir fry that Devin had made. Then we played some music, and went to bed pretty early because we all had an early morning to prepare for.

I got up at about 7am, which I was surprised that I was surprised that it is still moderately dark. I met up with a volunteer group from the Tahoma Audubon Society who were helping with a survey of the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Our task was to write down every bird we saw, in 200 meter quadrants, within all of the refuge. FWS was looking for research on how he current restoration of the property was effecting birds, particularly shorebirds and waterfowl. It was very cold, but our group saw some decent stuff in the riparian areas and sloughs. RUBY and GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS, CEDAR WAXWINGS, WINTER WREN, BEWICK'S WREN, and LINCOLN'S SPARROW were some of the notables.

When we were done at about 11:30, I drove up to a Tacoma marina to join the local, regional, and national birders who had "flocked" to get a glimpse of the seldom-seen in North America, BLACK-TAILED GULL. I found the extremely small flock of 3 birders at a pull-out on Marina Drive. All over the docks were BONAPARTE'S GULL and CALIFORNIA GULL, and I took the time to notice a HORNED GREBE. One of the people was my age, and he had relocated what he thought may be the gull using another person's scope. It was tough to see, as it was sleeping and tucking it's head in it's side. We got to talking after he was showing me how to identify the WESTERN/GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL hybrid. He said he was from Salt Lake City, and as it turned out, he is a very good friend of the two guys, Jeff and Carl, that I had birded with in SLC. His name is Colby, and within a couple minutes, he was proved right, as the BLACK-TAILED GULL had given us plenty of authoritive looks.

Come As You Are

2009-10-27T20:04:00.000-04:00

Last night, I went over to where Clara was staying, at her friend who had just given birth's house. Clara was supposed to have been there for the birth, but it happened super-early on Monday (2am-5am) and Clara missed the call. Regardless, she was to be over there for 24 hours to help her with anything she needed. We watched Year One, which was as horrendous a movie as it looks.

This morning I shoved off to Hoquiam, by way of Kurt Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen. I was in search of a few birds that had the "Patagonia rest area effect" going on. That's when a rare bird is spotted and reported, good birders show up to see it, and subsequently more good birds are reported. This was a trilogy of local rarities that included ORCHARD ORIOLE, CLAY-COLORED SPARROW, and CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONGSPUR.

When I first got to the wastewater treatment facility these were reported at, I didn't see any birders, so I too the time to tease out a MEW GULL from the close by feeding gulls. I then noticed some binoculized people, so I herded up with them. They were in the spot that the first two birds I mentioned were recently seen. Within 5 minutes, the CLAY-COLORED SPARROW appeared.

Since I have seen an ORCHARD ORIOLE before, I got the directions of a short walk down the road, where some birders had already rediscovered the CHESTNUT-COLLARED LONGSPUR, which was partially in breeding plumage. I got some excellent looks of it. I also talked to a local birder a bit about some other spots where rarities had been seen recently. He gave me directions to Tokeland, which was about a half-hour drive away.

When I got to the Tokeland docks, I found the pack of roughly 100 MARBLED GODWIT and WILLET that I was looking for, but was unable to track down the stray BAR-TAILED GODWIT that had been seen about 3 days ago. On the drive back, I stopped at Grayland Beach and Bottle Beach, with no spectacular sitings.

Northern West

2009-10-26T20:26:00.000-04:00

On Thursday morning, Rupp and I headed to the Lower Table Rock, which is a pair of peculiar mesa-type outcroppings in southern Oregon. We took her dog Chiparre, even though I don't think we were supposed to.

She had ot head to class in the afternoon, so I got my stuff together, and headed out at about 4:30. I stopped in Corvallis on my way to Portland and had a beer with Florida's own Joe "The Barnacle" Cannon at a local brewery. I got to Portland just in time to pick up Ms. Rosana Portillo at the airport at about midnight.

The next morning, Rosana and I checked out the Cup and Saucer restaurant, and Hawthorne in general. It was pretty gross weather, so we took in Where the Wild Things Are. After the movie, we headed to the coast, and camped at Cape Lookout State Park, and the weather had cleared up for us. Saturday morning, we cruised up the coast, looking for birds and beauty, and found a little of both. I did manage to get a new bird for my list, a female HOODED MERGANSER, and we did get to take in the eerie Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach. We also gandered this marvelous fall at Munson Creek Falls State Park.

In the evening of Saturday, Rosana and I made it out to the Green Dragon, which had excellent beers, and shuffleboard. Then we checked out a McMenamin's, which had very cheap microbrew and veggie burgers. Sunday during the day, I had to let Rosana leave unfortunately, and she caught a long flight back to Florida that got her in this morning right before her school started.

I started my trek north and stopped at the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, which someone had posted a SHARP-TAILED SANDPIPER at. I didn't come across any shorebird habitat in either of the units of this refuge. I did see a huge number of both SANDHILL CRANES and beavers!

In the evening I got to Olympia to my new temporary home at Devin and Clara's house. We chatted for awhile, and since the weather looked bad for today, and neither of them had Monday work, we checked out a couple bars downtown, and they too had shuffleboard.

Today has been a lazy rainy day, but I did manage to move in and make some birding plans for the next couple of days. Stay tuned... I know I will.

Fall in Southern Oregon

2009-10-21T19:31:00.000-04:00

The drive through the Redwoods was incredible. Eventually, in the dark, I made my way to my couchsurfing host Jared's house in Grants Pass. He didn't get home until decently late, but allowed me to let myself in. He had been consoling a friend who is in the midst of a divorce. When he did get home, we chatted for a bit. He's a cool guy, fellow traveler who is currently a masonry foreman.

This morning I took the backroads to Rupp's house in Ashland. Very pretty drive, it is certainly fall with incredible foliage. When I got to her house, she had a bunch of birding resources written out for me by her advisor who is a birder. On of them worked, and I got this lifer AMERICAN DIPPER in Lithia Park!

Humboldt County (or, Awesome ducks!)

2009-10-20T18:40:00.000-04:00

I drove up Route 1, then 101, to get to Arcata yesterday. I stopped by the Arcata Mash & Wildlife Sanctuary, which is a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility. The marshes here were full of ducks as well as BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON. The GREEN-WINGED TEAL and AMERICAN WIGEON males were in their breeding plumage. Then I noticed a CINNAMON TEAL male, which was incredible!

This was mostly all I saw, besides MALLARD and GADWALL, so I headed to the outer lagoon. I ran into a local birder with a scope who let me take a look into the saltwater lagoon at the LONG-BILLED CURLEW, LEAST SANDPIPER, and DUNLIN. He mentioned that someone yesterday saw a male EURASIAN WIGEON in the ducky marsh I had been scanning. He told me a better place to look from light-wise, and within 5 minutes, I found the vagrant!

I met up with Kevin Damstra's friends Liz and Lou at their house in Arcata. We went to a pizza shop downtown, where I got a 6 Rivers IPA and some slices. These two were really cool, and incidentally went to college in the small town of Athens, OH where I had been earlier in the trip. We had some great conversations about Arcata's designer homeless, constructivism in education, and the amount of marijuana that is around Northern California. We talked about other stuff too.

This morning I called the Arcata Birdbox to get an idea of where I should go, and there was good stuff listed at "North Jetty". Since I didn't know where that was, I went to the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. I stopped at the office first to ask some questions, where a young birder dude was working and was willing to talk me through where to go to see birds. He wrote out directions to a handful of places, which I ended up checking out including the south jetty, where he said I may be able to find the same things. He was right. I came across many SURF SCOTER, and 2 male and a female HARLEQUIN DUCK. On the shorebird trail near the headquarters, I saw quite a show put on by the resident WHITE-TAILED KITES. There were also an abundance of Aleutian CACKLING GOOSE.

Satisfied with the NWR, I headed up to some of the more northern places he suggested. Trinidad Headlands and Bay, as well as Big Lagoon were unbelievably beautiful. Now I'm heading into Redwoods National Park, which might be pretty.

Pelagification!

2009-10-19T15:34:00.000-04:00

Camping on Saturday night at MacKerricher State Park was great. I got to sleep at about 10pm, which was perfect for how much sleep I'd need for my long day Sunday. The only problem was that even though it did not rain overnight, it is so humid and foggy on the coast that the trees dripped as if it had rained all night, soaking my stuff. This was the view from my campsite:

I got myself together at 5:30AM and headed to Noyo Harbor in Ft. Bragg, CA to meet the Telstar and the Shearwater crew. There were about 30 of us on board the charter fishing vessel, and we headed out in complete fog. Within the first couple miles offshore, we were seeing an incredible number of COMMON MURRE. The sheer number of them helped me get comfortable with this species. Pretty soon, one of the crew members was dropping popcorn off the stern to attract gulls, and later, cut up bait. This worked, and shortly thereafter, BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS joined the trail. At one point, we saw as many as 60 of these. In the picture below are the albatross, as well as a gray race NORTHERN FULMAR in the bottom right.

As the day went on, we started seeing some shearwaters. I got great looks at PINK-FOOTED SHEARWATER, BULLER'S SHEARWATER, and the rarer FLESH-FOOTED SHEARWATER. Unfortunately, a SOOTY SHEARWATER had been seen a couple of times, but I was not able to get on it. POMARINE JAEGER was another species that I dropped the ball on. Although I had looked at about 15 of them, I missed the field marks each time.

As the day went on, the diminutive CASSIN'S AUKLET and RHINOCEROS AUKLET would get scared by the boat, and try to fly away. Some succeeded, and I think the younger ones just did a half swim/fly thing to the best of their ability.

Marine mammals also showed themselves. We got close looks at white-sided dolphin, harbor seal, and near the end of the day, two breaching humpback whales. We thought that was the frosting at the end of our 11-hour day at sea. Instead, it was close looks at ANCIENT MURRELET. These are a fantastic bird, even more than the drab winter-plumed, but great-named rhinos.

After that successful trip (which many of the pelagsperts say was a not very diverse day, due to it being the last trip of the season), I took the advise from one of the local birders I was talking to on the boat, and headed back to MacKerricher. I didn't come across the PACIFIC GOLDEN-PLOVER that he said had been seen recently, but did get a BLACK TURNSTONE.

As it got dark, I headed over to my couchsurfing host, Ted's house. He lives right on the water, just a mile north of MacKerricher State Park. His house was beautiful, and I had dinner with Ted and his friend who was in town. They are both Buddhists, which set the tone for some very calm and interesting conversations. This morning, since Ted was really interested in the notion of birding, he came with me to bird along the beach in front of his house, which coincidently was a place suggested to me by the local expert on the boat. There was a big pack of large and small plovers. Try as I might, they were BLACK-BELLIED PLOVERS and SNOWY PLOVERS, and not the PACIFIC I was hoping for. Regardless, conversations with Ted were incredible. He has this ability to frame things, and ask questions unobtrusively in a way that made me question a lot of what I do and why I do it. Rather Socratic.

I left there at about 11AM today after another great vegan meal, and started heading up the coast. It's been rainy all day, so I haven't been birding the rocy cliffs as much as I'd like to. There's always tomorrow... and the next day... and...

Pre-Pelagery

2009-10-17T20:02:00.000-04:00

I got to Tyson's house in Chico, CA at about 6pm on Thursday. One of his first questions for me was, "do you like beer?" Needless to say, a lot of beer was drank between then and going to bed last night. Tyson brews his own beer, and had 5 home-crafted types in his kegerator.

After trying one of his "special" beers, we checked out the Sierra Nevada brewery, as this is their hometown. I got a sampler that had 16, 1.5 ounce beers. There were some very nice ones. I think the coolest thing about the place is how sustainable their business is trying to be.

Friday morning I woe up and headed to the Llano Seco unit of the Sacramento River National Wildlife Sanctuary. It was nice, but the water levels were down, so not much in the way of shorebirds or ducks. There were at least 30 SANDHILL CRANES out in the wet prairie.

In the afternoon, I checked out the Chico city park called Bidwell Park. This is a nice riparian stretch that has campsites all along it, but for day use. I day used one for a nap. At the end of the lower park, there is a place that they opened up and cemented to make a swimming pool type area.

Last night, Tyson, his friend Derrick, and I headed out to a few bars in town. The bars in the downtown remind me of some of the bars in Tallahassee that I did not chose to frequent very much. The only difference is that these bars all have great microbrews on tap.

This morning I drove the 3+ hours to get back over to the coast. I set up my camp at MacKerricher State Park this afternoon, and this place is beautiful. Just on my short coastal hike, I noticed BLACK OYSTERCATCHER, many SURFBIRD, and female WHITE-WINGED SCOTER. There are also tons of white seals hanging out on the rocks here.

I checked out the port that I need to meet at for my trip out to sea tomorrow. Here's my ride:

Central Valley

2009-10-15T20:11:00.000-04:00

Last night was weird. I arrived at my host's house, and asked for the wrong person. I was really confused but they let me in and I sat down with 5 people watching the documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston". After the movie, a couple people were playing guitar, doing handstands, and arm wrestling. The beers were flowing.

I was really confused for the whole night as to who my host was. I finally figured it out about 10 minutes ago. I emailed two different people who were roommates asking to stay, both Shannon and Amanda, not knowing they were roommates. A different roommate called me on their behalf, and had a conversation about wildlife. I wrongly called her Tracey on the phone because I had asked another person on couchsurfing if I could stay in Sacramento with them who listed on her profile that she was a wildlife biologist. When I got there, the person I conversed with was not home yet. When she did get home, she did not make it apparent that I had talked to her on the phone. I thought I was at the home of a person who had emailed me back earlier in the day offering to host, that I had replied no to. It turns out I delined to one of the roommates who just wanted to send me her phone number in case she wasn't home when I got there. If you're confused reading this, then you probably understand what I felt like last night.

Anyway, this morning I got up and went ot the Sacramento Audubon Society's Bobelaine Sanctuary. It was an incredible riparian system. I spent half the day there, seeing a WESTERN TANAGER, NUTTALL'S WOODPECKER, and BEWICK'S WREN. The best part was when I was checing out a flock of BUSHTIT, RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET (which I could see the ruby for the first time!), and a few BLACK-THROATED GRAY WARBLER, I noticed an odd looking yellow-headed warbler. I lost him, but stayed with the flock for about 15 minutes. Luckily he showed himself again for a good bit, and confirmed my suspicion that he was a HERMIT WARBLER.

On my way up to Chico, I stopped at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge complex. My first stop was Colusa NWR, which had an insane amount of GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE. I also got good looks of a RING-NECKED PHEASANT here.

Just up the road, I went to Delevan NWR and Sacramento NWR. I noticed, and had to back up, for an AMERICAN BITTERN. There were also thousands of SNOW GEESE here. On the day, I would have to say that I saw no less than 100,000 GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE.

I also came across some recent research today that shows that my September 23rd posted picture of a Richardon's subspecies of the CANADA GOOSE is actually now recognized as a separate species, CACKLING GOOSE.

Jackpot!

2009-10-15T11:32:00.000-04:00

In the rain, but the YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIE has been birded!

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Did I get all of the birds?

2009-10-14T20:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday had incredible storms on the California coast. Winds were over 20 mph and there was constant rain. Needless to say, I used yesterday as an administration day, and didn't bird at all. Last night, Kevin made some pasta, and we watched the second in that National Parks documentary that was recently on PBS.

This morning I said goodbye to Kevin and Kelly, and birded the East Bay. My first stop was Sobrante Ridge, which was decently birdy with BUSHTIT, BROWN-BACKED CHICKADEE, OAK TITMOUSE, and lots of WESTERN SCRUB and STELLAR'S JAYS. I also got great looks at a CALIFORNIA THRASHER.

Next I went to Big Break, which is a new shorline park. According to Kevin, there have been WHITE-TAILED KITE there, but I didn't see them. I then headed to the Dow Industrail Wetland Preserve, which was kind of weird. I'm not sure that it's a wetland as much as a pond. I thought I saw a NUTALL'S WOODPECKER and a GREAT-TAILED GRACKLE which would be a bit out of range, but I could't confirm with myself either of them.

I tried to go to the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge, but it is closed, only opening for docent led walks once a month. I got my oil changed and decided to make my way to Sacramento. I stopped in town at Southside Park to look for the YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIE, but no luck. Out of 52 species today, only that one thrasher was new for my list. I think I've beginning to hit a standstill with my coastal CA novelties.

Now I'm at Pangaea Cafe' enjoying a snack before heading to my couchsurfing hosts house here in Sacramento.

Ah-a-a-a-a-alcohol!

2009-10-13T00:04:00.000-04:00

When I got back Saturday evening, we decided to go out for sushi. It was a pretty good restaurant, that gave us some ideas. Since Kevin and Kelly had the last two days off, we planned out our time a bit, which started with some jacuzziing.

Yesterday morning, I walked up the hill from their place, which is a private property trail that a few miles away connects to the Marin Headlands. I got a pretty long look at a lifer WRENTIT on this walk.

After, we got ourselves together and took Kevin's dog Ronin to get shots at PetCo, which was not as bad as we thought it would be. Then we moseyed to the farmer's market and bought some stuff that we would need for otu eggplant lasagna dinner. After the market, we went to Sho Chiku Bai Sake factory in Berkeley where we checked out their museum, and had a 7-course sake tasting. Kevin is no longer a sake hater. To spend a little more time in Berkeley, they showed me a pretty good brewery called Jupiter, which has a bluegrass band playing.

This morning I went to a brackish wetland I had seen on the previous day's driving. I had seen a couple of terns and waders, and thought it might be worth checking out during a low tide. It was. I saw 6 species of ducks, including bird #250 of the year, a BUFFLEHEAD. The wetland, Corte Madera Shorebird Wildlife Sanctuary, was incredibly diverse avifauna-wise, including AMERICAN AVOCET, BLACK-NECKED STILT, BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON, DOWITCHER, YELLOWLEGS, and FORSTER'S TERN, to name a few.

Kevin, Kelly and I went to Napa in the afternoon, since they had to get some things taken care of on their new used car. While they were fixing the small issues, they gave us a courtesy car, which we used to hop some wineries. Kelly is a club member of the Whitehall Lane Winery, so we got a personalized tour and free tasting.

On our way back to the car dealership, we decided to hit another one, Chandon, which specialized in champagnes. It was decent, but the reds at Whitehall were hard to beat. I can say that now, because I'm kind of a wine professional.

San Rafael farmer's market

2009-10-11T15:27:00.000-04:00

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A bird a day keeps the blue angels away.

2009-10-10T18:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning I drove to Muir Woods, which is a small patch of redwoods north of Sausalito. While the trees are undeniably insane, the place had a bad vibe. It was like walking in Times Square: crazy busy, loud, and people speaking a variety of languages. In some ways it was worse though, as everyone was staring up, bumping into each other.

I headed to Muir Beach, with Kevin's JEEP brand scope. It actually works pretty good, but it has a bunch of attachments that are meant for stargazing. Regardless, there were not any exciting birds there besides a RED-THROATED LOON.

Defeated bird-wise, on my way back, I stopped on the side of the road at a marsh, hoping for a bird for m'list. Luckily there was a pack of WILLET, in addition to BLACK-NECKED STILT, and a SAY'S PHOEBE.

Last night, Kevin, Kelly and I made some pasta and watched the Sox ruin themselves. Kelly and I planned out today.

This morning, Kelly and I went to Marin Headlands, which is the northern natural area of the Golden Gate Bridge. We stopped at Hawk Hill, but it was extremely cloudy. It was actually so cloudy that the Blue Angels canceled their air show that was supposed to be this afternoon. We then went to Rodeo Lagoon, and went for the couple mile hike around it, with nothing special showing itself. Kelly was tired and had some stuff to do, so I went on to Point Bonita to check out the avifauna. There were some far off cormorants, WESTERN GREBES, and a couple of BLACK OYSTERCATCHERS around there.

I then headed under the highway to Fort Baker. This was a little cove that could have housed some interesting ducks and grebes, but there were so many people around, waiting for their gashawks, scaring any potential for birdery.

San Francisco Treats (aka lifers)

2009-10-08T20:47:00.000-04:00

Kelly was willing to take me to San Francisco this morning. I didn't want to pay the $6 to go over the Golden Gate Bridge, so since she was going anyway, I went with. She let me borrow her car to drive around the Presidio, which is the northwestern part of the city, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Right at her building, there was a little scrubby valley. I checked it out, and in there was a CALIFORNIA TOWHEE, many LESSER GOLDFINCH, FOX SPARROW, and ANNA'S HUMMINGBIRD. A great start to the day.

I took the car over to Crissy Field and looked out into the ocean and marshes for birds. By Fort Point, there were a good number of WESTERN GREBE, and a small cormorant near a DOUBLE-CRESTED CORMORANT. After a few minutes, I determined that it was a PELAGIC CORMORANT.

I stopped at Baker Beach, and found a RED-THROATED LOON, and another further out that took me awhile to allow him to be a COMMON LOON.

Needing a break, I drove down to the Haight. Since it was a quarter for every 7 minutes of paring, and because I got the point quite quickly that marijuana is awesome and Bush was the worst president ever, and partly because there were too many designer homeless people, I was ready to get back to birding.

I stopped at the Cliff House and Ocean Beach to see if I could pick up any other ocean-dwellers. I did see some unidentifyable scoters fly by in their V formation, and the cormorants on Seal Rock were also to go unidentified.

I took the bus home and left Kelly her car. The bus driver was very mean to me. I guess I'm the first person to ride his bus that was not from here. I did not know I was supposed to wave down the bus while I was at the bus stop, and exactly how to use the odd card swiping system.

San Francisco has this big orange bridge.

2009-10-08T13:44:00.000-04:00

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Go west(coast) young man.

2009-10-07T19:51:00.000-04:00

Tyler and I headed out to the Silver Peaks Brewing Company on Monday night. They have a very good IPA. The next morning, I checked out the Galena Creek Regional Park. I went for about a 3-mile hike around the mountain, seeing many aggressive CLARK'S NUTCRACKER. My goal was to see two lifer woodpeckers: WHITE-HEADED WOODPECKER and WILLIAMSON'S SAPSUCKER. Oddly, I did find two, the WHITE-HEADED WOODPECKER, and a suprising RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER.

I drove away from there, past Lake Tahoe, and through the Sierras. I made a couple stops in Sacramento to hazard a try at seeing a YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIE, but no luck. At a softball park in the city, I did catch a long look at a lifer BLACK PHOEBE.

I got to Kevin and Kelly's house in Sausalito, CA at about 6pm last night. Kevin and I stocked up on supplies (beer), and made a couple pizzas. Their house has an awesome view of the bay.

This morning I went to Point Reyes National Seashore. On the way there, the Bolinas Lagoon was perfect for ducks and shorebirds, so I made stops for looks. I came across lots of NORTHERN PINTAIL, MARBLED GODWIT, and LONG-BILLED CURLEW. Amongst them, I also pulled out a WHIMBREL and STILT SANDPIPER.

I stopped at the Visitor's Center, and went on the Earthquake Trail, which is right on the San Andreas Fault. Immediately, I saw and watched these ACORN WOODPECKERS, which I think I'd like to nominate as coolest looking birds of my trip so far.

Further down the trail, I saw CHESTNUT-BACKED CHICKADEES, lots of TOWNSEND'S WARBLER, a CASSIN'S VIREO, BLACK-THROATED GRAY WARBLER, and OAK TITMOUSE.

I then drove to the Limantour Spit. On the beach, there were WESTERN GULL, SANDERLING, CALIFORNIA GULL, SNOWY PLOVER, and these incredible looking second year HEERMANN'S GULL.

In the afternoon, I checked out Five Creek Trail, which circled around a small pond. The pond was filled with AMERICAN COOT and AMERICAN WIGEON. On the trail, I got close looks at CALIFORNIA QUAIL and GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW.

On the way back to the "K"s house, I drove through a cloud, which was nuts. Now the whole city is foggy. I'm exhausted.

I have seen the elephant...

2009-10-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

I let myself into my hosts' home in Elko, finding evidence of Mormonism all over the place. When David and Devin got home, they were bearded, dirty from camping, and carrying a jug of whiskey. They are both AmeriCorps historical education volunteers in the Great Basin. It turns out they just moved into this apartment that was previously occupied by missionaries, and the bagatelles were left for irony's sake.

This morning, David gave me a tour of the facility that he works at, the soon to be opened California Trail Interpretive Center, which has undergone a huge push from Senator Harry Reid.

I left Elko at about 8 and took the 4 hour drive to Fallon to chec out the Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge. Many of the species here were similar to what I had experienced in Utah, but I did come across a few new ones. A SAGE SPARROW made himself known, on top of sage no less. I also saw the giraffe known as CLARK'S GREBE in one of the wetlands. On my way out, a HORNED LARK walked across the road (sorry Eva).

An hour dive to Reno brought me to the Oxbow Nature Study Area, which had great riparian habitat. While my search for AMERICAN DIPPER here came up short, I did see a COMMON MERGANSER swimming upstream.

Now I am at my host Tyler's house listening to some music. We just made burritos that were delicous.

Out with the Utah, in with the Nevada

2009-10-04T19:48:00.000-04:00

Last night, Bill, Marin and I too the train to a few bars after our amazing tofu curry. We got a pitcher at Cheers To You, then went to Junior's, then Murphy's. At Murphy's we chatted with a couple of high energy friends of theirs.

This morning, we ate breakfast at a vegetarian place called Vertical Diner. It was pretty great. Then I took off to get to Elko, NV, which is where I am now. When I just finished that last sentence, I was questioned by a policeman as to why I was sitting in my car at the Elko City Hall- to which I explained that I was using the WiFi. I also told him to have a good morning, even though it is afternoon. If you never see me again, you can assume why.

Antelope Island: Take 3

2009-10-03T18:45:00.000-04:00

Since many of Bill's teammates were out of town, I was asked to fill in and play last night. It was a double-header, one hour each. My hitting was pretty good, I went 5/7 on the night. My 2nd base playing was horrendous, with a .250 fielding percentage! Regardless, we won both games so Bill's team starts the playoffs on Monday. Now I'm sore.

This morning, Bill's other birder friend, Jeff Bilsky, picked me up, and we headed to Farmington Bay. This was a nice little shorebird hab that had a good deal of LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER, and we also teased out two STILT SANDPIPER.

Next, we headed to Antelope Island again, in search of LONG-EARED OWL and CHUKAR, neither of which we found. We did come accross a SAGE THRASHER on top of one of the many rocky outcroppings. On the way to the ranch, we stopped at a small patch of forest along a marsh, where we were able to call in two VIRGINIA RAIL with Jeff's MP3 player. We also saw two porcupines in a tree. This one seemed dead, but I'm not sure. I was surprised how sloth-looking they are.

At the Garr Ranch, we saw many of the western warblers again (MACGILLIVARY'S, WILSON'S, YELLOW-RUMPED), and great looks at a lifer WARBLING VIREO. We got back around 3:30, and I've just cleaned up and am getting ready for my last night in SLC.

Basketball, is the greatest.

2009-10-02T17:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Bill, Marin, and I decided to go to a Utah Jazz preseason game. They were playing the Nuggets. It was pretty cool to be able to walk 5 minutes from their house to the arena. After the game, we used these orange flags supplied to cross a sidewalk at night. I felt like a loser... but a SAFE loser.

This morning we went to the Miller Bird Refuge, which was more like a refuge from birds rather than for them. We left after about 45 minutes, and tried to find the Mehraban Wetland Trail. We got lost at a golf course, but found a WESTERN SCRUB JAY playing in someone's yard. We eventually found the wetland, where Marin noticed a small bird with a long bill. She had found me a RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD displaying his nice red behind.

After we left there, we did some batting practice in preparation for tonight's softball game. Put me in coach...

Rain Delay

2009-10-01T16:49:00.000-04:00

After having another celebratory afternoon Pabst on Wednesday, Bill and I went to the local farmer's market for some resources, and then on a bike ride around SLC. The streets are so wide and unbusy, this is the best place I have seen for bicyclists.

Yesterday morning was rainy and dreary. We decided to skip birding for the day (my first "day off" since I started). Instead, we went to Mormon thrift stores and watched daytime game shows. The woman on "Deal or No Deal" was dumb. In the afternoon, after some sleet, the weather cleared. We went for another bike ride, then headed to Brook's comedy show at a bar called Wiseguys.

This morning we got up at about 7, headed over to pick up one of Bill's birder friends, Carl, and went to Antelope Island again. It was very helpful going there this time with someone who goes quite often. We came across some good new species for me, which included RED-NAPED SAPSUCKER, CALIFORNIA QUAIL, CORDILLERAN FLYCATCHER, ORANGE-CROWNED WARBLER, and MACGILLVRAY'S WARBLER, all in the wooded migrant trap near the ranch. Then we headed to the Visitor's Center to try to flush out a CHUKAR, but with no luck- but we did see a BREWER'S BLACKBIRD.

America's Fake Ocean

2009-09-29T21:46:00.000-04:00

Last night after resting a bit, Bill and I went to his softball game. They won 22-1. After, we got a few beers with his teammates, which includes two very good local birders. We talked over what Bill and I should do today. When we got home, Brook, who lives in Bill's artist community, came over and chatted for a bit about her upcoming trip and future move to NYC.

This morning, I got my latest start of this trip, waking up at about 8:15. We headed to Antelope Island State Park, which is a huge island, connected by a causeway, in the Great Salt Lake. We came across some great birds on the causeway. This included a hunting PRAIRIE FALCON, BAIRD'S SANDPIPER, CALIFORNIA GULL, EARED GREBE, an injured RED-NECKED PHALAROPE, LONG-BILLED CURLEW, BLACK-NECKED STILT, and AMERICAN PIPITS walking along the rocks.

We headed onto the island and checked out the Garr Ranch. This was a pretty cool place that was settled by Mormons, and now the Utah DNR has the site set up as it likely was, and allow visitors to use the tools, go into rooms, and pretty much have free access to amazing stuff. There is a wood pile on the ranch that someone had reported a GOLDEN-CROWNED SPARROW two days ago, but due to wind, and probably the bird's location, I was not able to relocate it.

Bill and I wanted to check out the water, so we went to White Rock Bay, where we had to walk about a mile to get to the shore. While we were walking there, we thought we saw some people way off on the beach. Upon binocing them, we realized it was some of the island's bison. The water was covered in brine shrimp, but it was so hot and tempting, we had to get in. Walking out into the water didn't get very deep, but I did get to try out the science experiment of floating in the high density super-saline water. It was incredible.

"At Altitude"

2009-09-28T16:20:00.000-04:00

Friday night, I had good beer with dinner, a Blue Paddle Pilsener. I was pretty dehydrated, and I got a headache. It got worse, to the point that I went to bed at about 7:30. Luckily I woke up about 11 hours later, and felt great. Saturday morning, I left Boulder, after a typically awesome breakfast with the Chase-Jacobsens. When leaving town I stopped at Lookout Mountain. While it wasn't too birdy, I did come accross a lifer PYGMY NUTHATCH cleaning out a hole for himself in a pine.

After another hour or so of driving, I diverted from I-70, and went out on Loveland Pass. This place was incredibly beautiful. I attempted to find a WHITE-TAILED PTARMIGAN and BROWN-CAPPED ROSY-FINCH on a mile or so hike through about 6 inches of snow, but with no luck.

I arrived in Grand Junction, which was a very different environment than where I started the day, at about 5pm. I met with Mike from couchsurfing, and we headed to the Breckenridge Brewing Co. for dinner and a few beers. I went to bed pretty early to get a good start on Sunday morning.

At about 8am, I headed to the Colorado National Monument. Immediately, I came accross tons of WHITE-THROATED SWALLOWS, roosting in the walls, and flying around the canyon. During the ~30 mile drive through the park, I saw a number of other southwestern specialties, that'll give me a headstart on some of the species that I'll be searching for in the spring. ROCK WREN, BUSHTIT, and JUNIPER TITMOUSE all presented themselves to me here.

I then drove about 5 hours to Salt Lake City and met up with Bill. We hung out at his house for a bit, then headed over to Carl and Britt's house, which is a loaner home for Carl's volunteer work with HawkWatch International. We talked birds most of the night over bean burritos, and Carl gave Bill and I some tips of where to go birding today.

We woke up at about 7 to head to Wasatch National Forest. The hike took us to a couple nice lakes, and over a pretty large peak. It wasn't all that birdy, but we repeatedly got excellent looks at a calling CLARK'S NUTCRACKER.

Exhausted, we have just come back to his house for a celebratory Pabst.

The view from 12,000 ft.: Loveland Pass

2009-09-26T13:33:00.000-04:00

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Rocky Mountain High

2009-09-25T19:13:00.001-04:00

I couldn’t sleep well Wednesday night. I was way too excited about the birds and sites I was about to see in my new location. I finally got up at about 6am and got going before the Chase-Jacobsens awoke. As soon as I left the house, two COMMON RAVENS were flying and squawking overhead.

My first stop was a Boulder Mountain Park- Shadow Canyon. The minute I got there, I was hearing odd things. As I hiked the foothills, I started picking up some birds that I new from the east- EASTERN TOWHEE, DARK-EYED JUNCO (but the grey-headed subspecies), and WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW. It wasn’t too long before new things started jumping out. At this point, I was equal times looking at the birds as scanning my Peterson Western Birds field guide. By about 30 minutes into my hike, I had seen GREEN-TAILED TOWHEE, BLACK-BILLED MAGPIE, STELLER’S JAY, MOUNTAIN and WESTERN BLUEBIRDS, and the beautiful Audubon’s YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER. Much like the DICKCISSEL from the other day, I spent far too long in the sparrow section before finally identifying a lifer PINE SISKIN. After about a two-mile walk, I decided to head back to my car, since I had no water. On the way back, a ROCK WREN presented himself and started singing to me.

I then headed up to the mountains, and stopped in the Roosevelt National Forest, at the where it was lightly snowing on me. I went for a short hike on the Ceran St. Vrain trail, where I came across a MOUNTAIN CHICKADEE and RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH in my binoculars at the same time. While looking at a pack of YELLOW-RUMPED WARLBERS, I asked myself if it was worth methodically checking them. Within a minute, it decidedly was. I noticed an awesome looking male TOWNSEND’S WARBLER.

After a long day, I headed back to the house and planned out my next day. At about 6pm, Mark and Jaylynne invited me out to an Asian stir-fry restaurant with, which reminded me of Mama Fu’s. After that we stopped at Trident for a coffee, and we walked along the downtown Pearl Street Mall.

This morning I couldn’t sleep well either, but managed to stay in bed until about 6:30. After an awesome breakfast of oatmeal with fresh peaches, pecans, dates, and flax, I headed to another Boulder Mountain Park, this time it was Gregory Canyon. I started birding in a riparian area, where I noticed two WILSON’S WARBLERS gallivanting, if birds can do that. Then I headed up the hill, which was pretty steep. At the “Amphitheater”, there was a calling BROWN CREEPER, creeping. I headed back down the same way I came, and although it may have only been about a half mile each way, I started to sympathize with how Rosana and the gang felt in the Grand Canyon.

I drove out to the Boulder Reservoir, which I had quickly looked at yesterday in the wind and rain. Today was much better, and I went to a birdier part of it. Along the shore were tons of gulls. Someone had posted a FRANKLIN’S GULL here from the other day. I came guns blazing ready to try to separate him from the LAUGHING GULLS, but didn’t have to. After looking over all of the gulls with black heads, there were no LAUGHING GULLS! They were all FRANKLIN’S, which made my life easy.

In a pasture in the reservoir’s park, I saw something that looked like a robin, but was unsure. When I got closer, I tried to make him a TOWNSEND’S SOLITAIRE, but it just was not. He let me get really close, and I was able to determine his reality to be that of a SAY’S PHOEBE, a lifer for me.

In the afternoon, I headed to the Walden Ponds, where one of the ponds was filled with geese and ducks. The lighting and distance was great for being able to identify all that was in there, which included PIED-BILLED GREBE, CANADA GOOSE, AMERICAN WIGEON (males in fantastic plumage), REDHEAD, and RING-NECKED DUCK.

I’m a bit sun and wind-burned and pretty tired. Since it’s been a few days since I’ve had a beer, and I’m in the hotbed of microbrewification, I may have to have a celebratory one before bed.

IMG00081.jpg

2009-09-24T11:07:00.000-04:00

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Kansas

2009-09-23T22:40:00.000-04:00

Before getting to my couch for the night in Hutchinson, I briefly stopped at the local Dillon Nature Center. While I didn't see any new species, I did come across this diminutive CANADA GOOSE, which is either a Richardson's or Lesser subspecies. I thin that's the first time I've ever noticed a significant size difference, which was obvious since it was hanging out with Common ones.

When I got to Kalene and Jason's house, they were maing a tofu stir fry for me and their pastor's family. They home was an old farmhouse which they were restoring- with the upstairs still being incomplete. I had an awesome night talking religion and politics with my new Mennonite friends.

This morning I headed to Quivira NWR, which was about a 45 minute drive. It was pretty unproductive in the beginning, until I came across the Big Salt Marsh. There were tons of ducks and shorebirds, amny of which were difficult to identify for me because I don't have a scope. I was able to pull out some of the more obvious birds here for my list, which included AMERICAN WHITE PELICAN, GREATER and LESSER YELLOWLEGS, AMERICAN COOT, WHITE-FACED IBIS, and WILSON'S SNIPE.

On my way out of the refuge, I noticed a juvenile SWAINSON'S HAWK in a field that was currently being plowed. He took off right after this picture.

At Cheyenne Bottoms, kind of the kid sister refuge to Quivira, there was an unbelievable amount of shorebirds. I was getting pretty frustrated with my skills and physical resources for this mission. I was able to pick out BLUE-WINGED TEAL, AMERICAN AVOCET, and NORTHERN SHOVELER, but not any of the little dudes. I found an elderly gentleman sitting with a scope at one of the ponds, with his wife sitting bored in the car. I parked near him and struck up a conversation with him. He let me take a look at the SNOWY PLOVER that he had picked out of the pile of SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPERS on one of the banks. I felt a little better.

At about 2, I headed west. While driving the long, flat ride in the rain, I switched some plans around. Since it was 30ish degrees with possibilities of snow in Colorado Springs, I decided to wait on camping there for a different night. I came instead to Boulder, to stay with Rosana's friend Emily's family. Now I'm clean and ready to do my research for tomorrow.

It's time to put the Eastern Sibley away.

Little Yaris on the Prairie

2009-09-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

I got into Lawrence at about 5pm yesterday, and met up with Taylor, a new friend from couchsurfing, at his house. His back porch overlooks the KU football stadium, which was incredible! After showing me around his house, we headed out to check out the town for a bit. It reminded me a lot of Tallahassee. We got a delicious and cheap beer at the Free State Brewing Company. Taylor had to head to a meeting, so I met up with his neighbor Kim at Johnny's Tavern for some pizza. I let it slip to Kim that it was my birthday, so she ended up making chocolate chip brownies, which between 5 of us, we completely demolished.

This morning I woke up at about 6:30, and got going to check out the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. While it was cloudy and off-and-on rainy (for the 3rd day in a row), I ended up fiding some great stuff. In a tree near the parking lot, there were several LARK SPARROWS, a lifer for me. When I headed out on the trail, I flushed several NORTHERN BOBWHITES. I spent some time attempting to ID a very cooperative sparrow-looking bird. It had a yellow breast, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. After 10 minutes, I tried pretending that the yellow was just goldenrod that had stained its feathers. Still no luck. 5 minutes later I looed in other categories of birds desperately. As soon as I saw the DICKCISSEL in my book, I knew I had found it, and grabbed another lifer on the day.

After Tallgrass, I headed back east a bit to the Flint Hills NWR. On my way to the preserve, I came across a SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER on a post on the side of the road. In the refuge, I attempted to track down both a BELL'S VIREO and SORA, with no luck on either. Now I'm heading to heading to Hutchinson, KS for the night.

Bir(d) Day

2009-09-21T15:44:00.001-04:00

I headed into St. Louis on Saturday, hoping to put an end to my nemesis bird in Dogtown. the last time I was there, about a year and a half ago, I was not able to see this invasive/exotic bird that happens only to be in St. Louis suburbs. This time, I had luck seeing the EURASIAN TREE SPARROW within 10 minutes of scanning the neighborhood. That night, I stayed at Kimarsh's friend Bob's house. He showed me around town, including a stop at the Shlafly Brewpub. In my mind, St. Louis is no longer a town of crappy beer.

Friday morning, I woke up to severe rain, which was not forecasted at all the night before. I decided it was birdable anyway, and boy was it ever! I headed to Powder Valley, and came across some good stuff. Immediately after getting out of my car, I saw a NASHVILLE WARBLER, CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER and easily determined a LEAST FLYCATCHER. On the trails there, I encountered a red fox crossing my path. Great place.

Then I headed to Castlewood State Park, and came across a few flocks of warblers, including another NASHVILLE WARBLER. A lifer twice in one day. They must be in droves at this time of the fall. I got lost in a number of the flocks, as there were so many CEDAR WAXWINGS around. Still raining, I decided to make the long haul for Lake of the Ozarks State Park. I camped there, enjoying the provisions that anyone would need on their birthday eve: canned beans, bread, whiskey and Diet Coke, cloves, and a book by Kingsolver about eating locally.

This morning I woke up and birded the campground. Not too much was happening, but I did see a RED-HEADED WOODPECKER, new for my list. I headed out at about 9:30. A couple hours into my drive, I was coming across prairie conservation areas, and decided to stop into one: Paint Brush C.A. I didn't come across any groundbirds, but did get a lifer HENSLOW'S SPARROW. Thanks Kimarsh, for deeding it to me.

Gas-hawks

2009-09-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night, I went out with Lindsay and her crew of soil scientists. We drank at a microbrewery in town, which was pretty sweet. We loaded up on the beers that coast $2 between 8 and 9pm. Delicious, but I felt it a bit the next day for the 9 hour drive to the Lantz's house.

The last couple of days there were a lot of fun. On Thursday, I took Joshua, Nathan, and Brittanie out to Refuge that Carl works at, Crab Orchard NWR. We had a pretty productive go at it, seeing 37 species. We came across 3 YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOOS, and some good flocks of warblers. In one of the flocks, we saw a MAGNOLIA WARBLER as well as a GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.

That night, I had heard a BARRED OWL. We played screech owl and barred owl tapes, and called them in. Carl brought out a spotlight so we were able to see the BARRED OWL quite well.

Friday, the whole gang went to a local castle playground that looked like it would be a great site for the 43rd Annual LARP Convention. Castles, dragons, and Depeche Mode playing.

Today we went to the Air Show at the Scott Airforce Base in Illinois. It was pretty loud, but the kids were having blasts. Now I'm in St. Louis, preparing for a couple days here, in the gateway to the west.

Back in the South?

2009-09-15T15:19:00.000-04:00

I fell asleep on Sunday night, to the sounds of a GREAT HORNED OWL, which allowed me my longest night's sleep of the trip. After the late start of the morning (10:00am), I headed towards Ohio. I hadn't really looked at the map, and was surprised to find out that my route took me through Maryland and West Virginia. It seems that I'm weaving in and out of the Mason-Dixon, but decided that perhaps a more useful way of dividing our country geographically is the CAROLINA CHICKADEE/BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE line. I think it works out.

I got to the home of Weymouth's own, Lindsay Scott, a little before 8pm last night. Lindsay, her roommate Chase, and I made dinner and watched a movie. I went to bed decently early to get a good start on today.

At about 7am, I got up and headed towards the Hocking Hills, where a few parks are supposedly good for birders. Immediately after arriving at Conkle's Hollow, I came across a HOODED WARBLER. Likely my longest, best look at an adult male. Throughout my walk, I came across several unidentified immature thrushes, which was getting me kind of frustrated. Luckily, an adult HERMIT THRUSH gave me a few good looks with which to identify him.

I then went to Cantwell Cliffs to have a look at their birds. I encountered a pretty big flock of neotropical migrants, many which I was not able to identify in the limited time they were around. I did however, catch long enough glimpses of the BLUE-HEADED VIREO, BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER, and TENNESSEE WARLBER in the pack.

After leave in Cantwell Cliffs, I took a look at the Ohio Rare Bird Alert and realized that I would be choosing to miss out on another opportunity of seeing a NORTHERN WHEATEAR. One has been seen for a few days just north of Columbus. If I decided to check that out, it would be about a 6 hour drive to see one bird. I decided I'll put that gas money towards seeing the wheatear in its natural habitat.