Los fans de la lógica,
Starting today, our schedule gets crazier!
We are headed to North Carolina tonight for a pelagic trip this weekend, and the trip entails a number of firsts: our first red-eye, our first time to NC, and our first East Coast pelagic trip, among others. There will probably be other firsts involving real Carolina BBQ and visiting some historic places, time permitting, but the focus is the boat.
But first, more birds!
The season of Fall migration is fast approaching for many birds, despite Summer being officially only a few weeks old. So, we have to use all our available time to track down birds in our area before they vanish to some other Spanish-speaking country.
This morning, for instance, we woke at 5AM (8AM in the East!) to chase an Allen's Hummingbird. There was a report yesterday of two of them at a park in the Oakland hills, so we beat traffic down there and spent a few hours looking around in a misty drizzle. Alas, it was in vain.
Then, the wife gets an idea: "Where else were they seen?" she asked, pensively.
A quick check of eBird said that there was a report a couple weeks ago at other local parks and at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden.
"Well, " she asked, "if you were a hummingbird, would you rather be in a suburban neighborhood with feral cats, or in a manicured garden filled with lush flowering plants?"
Good point.
A short but hair-raising drive through the Berkeley campus and we're in the Gardens. We start in the California area, but all we find are Anna's Hummingbirds. Next, we tried the Mediterranean area, thinking that their climate was similar to ours, so maybe the birds would find something to their liking there. But, no hummingbirds at all.
"Hey, " says the brilliant wife, "There are no hummingbirds in Europe! So, maybe the plants haven't evolved to humminbird tastes, which explains why none are here! What other areas are nearby?"
Good point, part deux.
Down the path a bit was the South American section. And guess what? It was covered in Allen's Hummingbirds!
So, just remember...if you want to find a bird, you gotta think like a bird.
Now, off to Sacramento and our 10PM flight east!
Happy trails,
Me
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
The Final Countdown?
As of last night we were at 597 birds for the year. What happened today?
We struck out all morning, driving miles and miles down bumpy dirt roads trying to find any of 10 birds reported in the Truckee area that we needed for the year. But, to no avail.
Then...at 4:15pm, we climbed 200 feet up a dusty slope in the area of a past forest fire, and after an hour of looking, stumbled upon a White-headed Woodpecker! #598!
At 6:30pm, we drove the roughest, rockiest road of the day to Sage Hen Campground because of a recently reported Calliope Hummingbird. Thunderstorms were building and the sky darkened, so we had to move fast. Reaching the parking lot, we made a beeline for the nearby creek, and within 5 minutes found a beautiful male Calliope hovering over some willow bushes! #599!!
Jubilantly, we returned to Truckee for dinner, believing our night was done but satisfied in finding two birds on the day. Then, over dinner and a glass of wine, we reviewed the list of recent sightings and found that one of the campgrounds we visited had four recent reports of a Flammulated Owl. Should we try for it? Our first instinct was to turn in for the night and resume early in the AM, but then again, how badly did we want our goal?
Driving back north, we arrived at Cottonwood Campground at 9:45pm. To a dead silence. Except for the nearly constant stream of traffic that sped by for some unknown reason (seriously, people, what is so important in Sierraville, CA that everybody in Truckee needed to go there?).
At 10pm, nothing. 10:15pm and 10:30pm, likewise. 10:45pm, we began to wonder why we wasted the gas, and started whispering about how much longer we were going to sit there.
Then, at just past 11pm on July 6, 2015, a distant single "hoot"! A few seconds later, "hoot" again! And then several more! Flammulated Owl!
Please press Play on the video below:
Not only did we hit 600, but we hit it out of the park with a Life Bird!
Tomorrow, we'll try to push our total past 600 with a few other birds near Tahoe, then back home to prep for a weekend in Carolina.
Sipping on scotch but no cigars (the hotel is non-smoking!),
Me
We struck out all morning, driving miles and miles down bumpy dirt roads trying to find any of 10 birds reported in the Truckee area that we needed for the year. But, to no avail.
Then...at 4:15pm, we climbed 200 feet up a dusty slope in the area of a past forest fire, and after an hour of looking, stumbled upon a White-headed Woodpecker! #598!
At 6:30pm, we drove the roughest, rockiest road of the day to Sage Hen Campground because of a recently reported Calliope Hummingbird. Thunderstorms were building and the sky darkened, so we had to move fast. Reaching the parking lot, we made a beeline for the nearby creek, and within 5 minutes found a beautiful male Calliope hovering over some willow bushes! #599!!
Jubilantly, we returned to Truckee for dinner, believing our night was done but satisfied in finding two birds on the day. Then, over dinner and a glass of wine, we reviewed the list of recent sightings and found that one of the campgrounds we visited had four recent reports of a Flammulated Owl. Should we try for it? Our first instinct was to turn in for the night and resume early in the AM, but then again, how badly did we want our goal?
Driving back north, we arrived at Cottonwood Campground at 9:45pm. To a dead silence. Except for the nearly constant stream of traffic that sped by for some unknown reason (seriously, people, what is so important in Sierraville, CA that everybody in Truckee needed to go there?).
At 10pm, nothing. 10:15pm and 10:30pm, likewise. 10:45pm, we began to wonder why we wasted the gas, and started whispering about how much longer we were going to sit there.
Then, at just past 11pm on July 6, 2015, a distant single "hoot"! A few seconds later, "hoot" again! And then several more! Flammulated Owl!
Please press Play on the video below:
Not only did we hit 600, but we hit it out of the park with a Life Bird!
Tomorrow, we'll try to push our total past 600 with a few other birds near Tahoe, then back home to prep for a weekend in Carolina.
Sipping on scotch but no cigars (the hotel is non-smoking!),
Me
From:
Truckee, CA 96161, USA
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Blowin' In The Wind
A mis compañeros de ratas del desierto,
Perhaps nobody was more surprised than the tumbleweed.
Just moments before, it had been rolling along the desert contentedly, bouncing off fences and cactus and the occasional derelict building like tumbleweeds are wont to do. Then, it picked up speed as the heat-driven winds accelerated, bounded across three lanes of traffic, and was now milliseconds from being obliterated on the grill of my car.
While my surprise was no match for the tumbleweed's, I admit that I was not expecting the impact that shattered the poor tumbleweed into literally one billion pieces. Then again, I probably shouldn't have had quite so much faith in my ability to play Frogger with tumbleweeds during a blinding dust storm, surrounded by other cars and the occasional semi-truck, and with everybody else (not me!) driving just a bit too fast.
Here, we have captured this moment for your viewing pleasure:
A moment of silence now for the tumbleweeds that met their untimely demise somewhere around Casa Grande.
Thank you.
Now, the evening didn't start with a dust storm. We deplaned in Phoenix to a beautiful, sunny, 105F evening with perfectly clear skies. Only 30 minutes into our drive to Tucson, the skies started darkening as thick clouds of dust were blown up from the desert floor, and eventually we hit nearly black-out conditions.
The desert is a study in contrasts like these: bright, azure skies transition quickly to dark, brown dust. The landscape of rock and sand and thorny cactus that looks nearly uninhabitable is full of plant and animal life. And the time when the temperatures are hottest is also when most of the annual rain falls.
Monsoon season in the Sonoran Desert usually begins in July and continues through August, but it arrived early this year. So, days typically begin calm and clear, puffy clouds form around mid-day, and then thunderstorms attempt to batter you into submission from mid-afternoon until evening. Each day of our short trip south followed this pattern.
The good news is that we found our main target, an extremely rare Tufted Flycatcher! Not one, but two! Fewer than 10 have ever been recorded in the US, but this summer, two flew up from Mexico and decided to try to raise a family here. Can anybody say, "Anchor Baby"?
The bad news is that we missed all the exotic hummingbirds we had hoped to see, and we got rained out the one evening we had to find a nocturnal bird, the nightjar. Sad face. So, we get to take another trip to Arizona in the next 6-8 weeks, as the birds will move back south to Mexico after August.
Our count is now at 594, just 6 shy of our original goal for the year (which we are thinking we should reset to a new target, since we still have 6 months of birding to go!). Next up: a long weekend in Tahoe! There are far, far worse places one could go birding, and with 10 birds in the area that we need for our year, there's a reasonable chance we could hit our goal soon!
Stay frosty,
Me
Perhaps nobody was more surprised than the tumbleweed.
Just moments before, it had been rolling along the desert contentedly, bouncing off fences and cactus and the occasional derelict building like tumbleweeds are wont to do. Then, it picked up speed as the heat-driven winds accelerated, bounded across three lanes of traffic, and was now milliseconds from being obliterated on the grill of my car.
While my surprise was no match for the tumbleweed's, I admit that I was not expecting the impact that shattered the poor tumbleweed into literally one billion pieces. Then again, I probably shouldn't have had quite so much faith in my ability to play Frogger with tumbleweeds during a blinding dust storm, surrounded by other cars and the occasional semi-truck, and with everybody else (not me!) driving just a bit too fast.
Here, we have captured this moment for your viewing pleasure:
A moment of silence now for the tumbleweeds that met their untimely demise somewhere around Casa Grande.
Thank you.
Now, the evening didn't start with a dust storm. We deplaned in Phoenix to a beautiful, sunny, 105F evening with perfectly clear skies. Only 30 minutes into our drive to Tucson, the skies started darkening as thick clouds of dust were blown up from the desert floor, and eventually we hit nearly black-out conditions.
The desert is a study in contrasts like these: bright, azure skies transition quickly to dark, brown dust. The landscape of rock and sand and thorny cactus that looks nearly uninhabitable is full of plant and animal life. And the time when the temperatures are hottest is also when most of the annual rain falls.
Monsoon season in the Sonoran Desert usually begins in July and continues through August, but it arrived early this year. So, days typically begin calm and clear, puffy clouds form around mid-day, and then thunderstorms attempt to batter you into submission from mid-afternoon until evening. Each day of our short trip south followed this pattern.
The good news is that we found our main target, an extremely rare Tufted Flycatcher! Not one, but two! Fewer than 10 have ever been recorded in the US, but this summer, two flew up from Mexico and decided to try to raise a family here. Can anybody say, "Anchor Baby"?
 |
| Tufted Flycatcher, sadly eyeing the throng of birders below, wondering when they will just GO AWAY, and whether he made the right choice to come to America. |
 |
| The clump on the left is their nest, and you can just see the top of Mom's head peeking out! |
The bad news is that we missed all the exotic hummingbirds we had hoped to see, and we got rained out the one evening we had to find a nocturnal bird, the nightjar. Sad face. So, we get to take another trip to Arizona in the next 6-8 weeks, as the birds will move back south to Mexico after August.
Our count is now at 594, just 6 shy of our original goal for the year (which we are thinking we should reset to a new target, since we still have 6 months of birding to go!). Next up: a long weekend in Tahoe! There are far, far worse places one could go birding, and with 10 birds in the area that we need for our year, there's a reasonable chance we could hit our goal soon!
Stay frosty,
Me
From:
Tucson, AZ, USA
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