Adventures on the High Seas, Part Deux: The Slow Boat to Petrelsville

No other type of birding gets my heart beating like ocean boat trips. And, this isn’t the type of beating like, “I’m in love!” or “My team won the Super Bowl”. Rather, more like “I think I’m having a reaction to this seasickness medicine”. And yet, in the pursuit of Big Year Greatness, we continue subjecting ourselves to this.

So, Sunday morning, we ended up at the dock at Point Loma in San Diego at 5:30AM, watching a curious mix of people milling about while they prepared for their sailings: weathered old salts in rubber galoshes, bros with flip-flops and fishing poles, and an odd assortment of characters wearing hiking boots and khaki-colored North Face pants. We instantly knew which group was ours.

Our boat, a large, gleaming white fishing craft appropriately named, “Grande”, departed on time and chugged through the glassy San Diego Bay, past obvious reminders of the military presence. The juxtaposition of a submarine coming in to dock, with the lines of white headstones from Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on the hill above, was a poignant moment:

You can barely see the headstones along the top. If only I had realized this at the time, I could have had a really nice shot... But you get the idea.

Cruising through the harbor was a slow process, but, we thought, maybe we are just in a "No Wake” zone? When our pace didn’t pick up upon reaching open waters, we knew we were in for a long day. That did mean less bouncing, which was nice, and more time to see birds as traveled, so...silver linings and all that.

Unfortunately, birding across the day was somewhat slow compared to what the guides expected. They suspected a primary reason for this was the unusually warm ocean temperature. Water temperatures ranged from 72F-77F throughout the 90-mile trip, which is about 5-7F warmer than usual. Since heat rises, warm water doesn't circulate downward as much, which means it tends to lack nutrients. No nutrients means no plankton, which means no animals that eat plankton, which means no animals that eat animals that eat plankton, etc.

The highlight of the day was a group of Least and Black Storm-Petrels that we located about 45 miles north of San Diego. Now, we had seen just a handful of these birds for the entire 7-8 hour trip at that point, when one of the guides said, "I think I see a raft of them in the distance!" The boat changed direction to head that way, and upon approaching the area, we saw several huge clusters like this:

Getting closer, the thick groupings of birds looked like this:

I believe they estimated the total number of birds at around 2500-3000 individuals, although counting was nearly impossible.

We could get fairly close to one group, and I got this picture:

Which I think has a couple nice comparisons of different birds. On the left side of the photo, I believe there is a Black Storm-Petrel next to an Ashy Storm-Petrel in the same wing position (the Ashy being the bird on the right with a lighter gray wing):

And on the right side of that picture, a nice comparison of a Least Storm-Petrel and a Black, with the Least being the tiny bird at the bottom-left, and the Black being the bird right behind her:

Least Storm-Petrels are about the size of a sparrow, so it's amazing that we found any of them in the open ocean!

So, two more birds added to our year total, which is SLOWLY inching its way up.

Next stop this weekend: Montana! Because, Gray Partridge!

Adios, y a ser un buen huevo!
Me

Internet Stalking for Fun and Profit

The tale of finding the American Woodcock is yet another tale of Birder Comradery. And, how Internet Stalking can really pay off!

Our usual approach to finding a specific bird is to look the bird up on eBird, find recent reports in the area to which we are traveling, and then review all the report details to get clues as to where, when, and how to find it. These might include notes the person has left, the time the report was submitted, the frequency with which the bird has been reported, and so on.

In this case, we noticed that there was one park outside Chicago where the Woodcock had been reported almost daily for the past month. By the same person. At basically the same time of day. With that kind of frequency, finding it must be a no-brainer, right? But a little extra help couldn't hurt.

With the information derived from the eBird report and some advanced use of various search engines, I managed to find the person online, and his picture. I even found that he had posted a video of the Woodcock doing its "winnowing" flight display in the spring, at that very same park! However, I couldn't find a way to message him, and calling out of the blue seemed a little, well, stalker-ish. So, no extra help that way.

All the reports began around dawn, so we knew that was when we needed to start. Rising well before dawn on Saturday, we checked out of our hotel and made our way through the gloaming. We arrived at the park on schedule, only to discover a multitude of potential trailheads and parking lots. Which one do we choose?

A few minutes later, a car approached and took the road to the right. On a hunch, we took off and tailed that car to where it parked about a half-mile away.

The sun had started to just barely peek over the horizon when the driver parked and got out of his car. He was a young man, wearing a floppy hat, fishing vest, and rubber boots, and carrying binoculars. He looked like the picture online, so this had to be the same guy reporting our bird. I approached him, cautiously, so as not to spook my prey.

“Are you a birder?” I asked innocently, in the friendliest voice I could muster at 6AM (which of course was 4AM at home).

“Yessss?" he replied warily.

"Well," I proceeded as if blissfully unaware of his eBird fame, "My wife and I are from out of town, and we're just here for a few days. We were hoping to see an American Woodcock, and had seen a number of reports online that they were reported here. Would you happen to know where we might look?"

His eyes lit up. "Those were my reports! I've been birding here regularly before work just to see how things changed over the year."

You don't say, I thought. Go on...where is this damn bird!?!?! TELL ME WHERE IS THE BIRD!

He paused and looked around. "But, as high as the sun is," which was just barely over the horizon, "if you haven't seen it by now, then you're not going to today."

And just like that, with his casual toss of the truth, my spirit was broken. You don't need to see a Woodcock this year, my internal dialog went, they're really stupid little birds and you won't be any better for it. Move on, let it go.

"So, how should we go about seeing one?" asked The Wife, somehow unaware that I had already scratched this bird off the list and was contemplating the best place for a nap.

The Birder then proceeded to give us the rundown: Get there earlier (ARGGG!) the next day, and walk the road. If we don't see them there, then be at the parking lot before dawn and they'll almost always fly over.

Thanking him profusely, we regrouped and made a new plan. We would go look for some other local birds (as discussed in this post), stay in the local area that night, and return earlier in the morning for one more shot. Sigh. OK.

The next morning, we arrived 30 minutes earlier. The gate to the park may have been locked, and we may have parked outside and slipped around it. I don't recall. I'm sure it was open, as we wouldn't violate a rule like that just to see a bird, would we?

Walking the park road in the pitch-black morning, we scanned from side to side with our flashlight, but no luck. Reaching the parking lot, we decided to stand, listen, and wait until the sun came up.

About fifteen minutes later, as the sky began to lighten, three things happened in rapid sequence:
A round shape with a long, pointy bill rocketed over our heads -- could that be? Then, The Birder appeared on the road with his flashlight, and exclaimed, "Did you see it?!?" Suddenly, two more similar shapes zoomed by together and plunged deep into a thicket of brush, at speeds that should have caused grievous injury.

"Wow," he said, "Three of them! I didn't realize there were that many still here!"

Now, if that had been the first time in our lives that we had seen an American Woodcock, we would have been sorely disappointed at not getting more than a few milliseconds' glance. But, we've seen them before, and we had an expert ID them, so we'll call it good for this year.

Given that we never would have found that bird on our own, we owe (and gave) a huge thanks to The Birder. You keep on doing your thing, my friend. And I promise not to stalk you any more. Until our next Big Year.

Full-contact Birding

They say that Birding is for wimps. They say that Birders are the proverbial 95-pound weaklings of the Recreation World. They say that, "Those that can, do, and those that can't, sit in a lawn chair looking for an American Robin under a feeder".

Actually, I've never heard anybody say that, but I'm sure somebody thinks it. And, I'm here to prove that person wrong. WRONG!

A few days ago, we found ourselves in Norias, Texas, located about an hour north of Brownsville, or three hours south of San Antonio. In the Travel Haze in which we find ourselves, we aren't completely sure how we got there, but presumably it had something to do with the plane flight from Chicago. Or where ever it was that we were on Tuesday. Or whatever day that was.

We were in Norias, population Nobody, for a tour of one part of King Ranch. This ranch was founded in the 1860s, and is comprised of multiple huge tracts of land that, combined, are larger than the state of Rhode Island. The land is managed for cattle ranching and farming, but also has hundreds of thousands of acres left in natural conditions that are managed for sustainable hunting.

[Aside: It turns out that people (and corporations, which we know are people, too) will pay tens of thousands of dollars per year to lease land in the middle of nowhere where they can take their friends and business associates for a nice relaxing hunt. Who knew?]

While learning about that part was interesting, our motivation for taking the tour was to see a Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl. This species is fairly common in Mexico and parts south, but can only be found in the US in a few places in southern Arizona and south Texas. Rather than trekking through miles of desert on our own, we decided to hire a guide, and the King Ranch tour was an ideal way to get our primary target while also having a chance at something else rare.

We met our guide at the gate to the Norias Division of the ranch at 8am, and spent the next few hours driving dirt roads, learning about the ecology and history of the area, and stopping every few minutes at groves of oak trees to listen and look for the owls. As the sun climbed and the temperature rose into the 90s, the going began to get rough:

• I stepped on a branch with 2"-long stiff and razor-sharp thorns. A thorn went through my boot and into my foot, and The Wife had to pull it out. While I looked away, of course. 
• The Wife brushed past some kind of spiny plant, presumably an angry one with an attitude, and the plant furiously embedded several spines into her hand. We're still trying to get the last one out, two day later.
• Hidden in the grass was a long stiff branch, which reached up and tripped our experienced guide, causing him to go sprawling, breaking the mount on his scope and drawing blood from his arm.

As he said, "Here in South Texas, everything bites, stings, scratches, or pokes, and that's just the plants!"

But we soldiered on, and finally after hearing a call, we plunged into the bitey, stingy, scratchy, pokey underbrush (while I'm thinking, "Snakes! Snakes!"), popped out into a clearing, and managed to get our scope and binoculars onto a beautiful owl. I would share a picture, except I didn't take any, as my camera feared for its life and refused to leave the truck.

We're home now, getting some work done and recharging before our next adventure, which is currently scheduled to be a pelagic trip (OH JOY ANOTHER BOAT) out of San Diego this coming weekend. But, since migration is in full swing right now, who knows what will pop up between now and then?

Adios,
Me