Birding Shorts: Very Old Friends (Colorado Edition)

Gandalf seeks his old comrade Bilbo for a birding adventure

I knew I had found him, pulling up next to the battered Subaru. There was no mistaking the “Do You eBird?” and “Sea Level is for Sissies” bumper stickers. The lad himself appeared a moment later. Marcel and I were both cute and nerdy high schoolers when our paths first crossed. I hadn’t seen him in years.

Right to left: Marcel Such, Joel Such, me. June 2010

Some things never change. He still saunters. Anything mildly funny still shatters his smirk into a goofy grin. But other things change. Now he’s a longboarding hipster dirtbag who uses lingo such as “dank” and “straight G.”  I suppose I could be described in a similar fashion, just with a less edgy parlance and no longboard.

Arguably homeless between leases, Marcel explained that we would head to BLM land in the hills for the night. That was fine by me. I love camping. And! These hills seethe with Gunnison Sage-Grouse, only described as a species within our short lifetimes, rare enough to make the palms perspire.

We jolted along dirt tracks, hoping for a road grouse. Then we switched our strategy and walked into the sagebrush, dust underfoot, desiccated branches clawing our calves. I eyed the buxom Leicas riding Marcel’s hip.

“Sexy bins,” I said.

“Thanks—it’s Travis.”

It took a moment to register. Then I realized that Marcel was brandishing a celebrity binocular, Travis the Traveling Trinovid! I was star-struck. My own tattered Trins fawned in the presence of greatness.

Can't refuse a photo op with celebrity optics

Light receding, we returned to the car for further cruising. Up a hill, down a two-track. Darkness fell. Meadowlarks warbled in the gloaming. I noticed a smudge in the two-track ahead of us—a bush? No—an ambulatory smudge! The grouse scurried into the brush, then flushed as the car approached. It was the first Gunnison Sage-Grouse I’d ever seen. Marcel punched me in celebration.

The desolate haunts of the Gunnison Sage-Grouse

We repaired to our bivouac, a site we shared with Marcel’s friend Cam. Around the fire, Cam recounted Marcel’s stint as a mercenary in the World Series of Birding. A Wall Street sugar daddy flew him to New Jersey at the last possible moment to join his team. From Cam’s perspective, he was losing Marcel forever. Young Marcel, foolish Marcel, boarding a plane, beguiled by the promise of making a few bucks, only to be dismembered in a dark saltmarsh, losing his vital organs to the black market. At least in his last moments he would hear Black Rails…

We swapped stories late into the night. Then we peed on the coals and the three of us retired to Cam’s two-man tent for the night. Road wearied, I slid into a gradual sleep. Breeze battered the fly. As my neurons punched the clock, I questioned the real purpose of the rain fly—to repel droplets or amplify night sounds.

Marcel and I awoke when the strengthening sun raised the tent’s temperature to a swelter. Cam had left hours earlier for an epic bike ride. We spent the day the way you might expect from hipster dirtbag birders—nursing coffee at the café from which Marcel lusts employment, eating poptarts garnished with peanut butter, bumming around the university, and, of course, looking for birds.

After another night of three-man spooning under the Sound Amplifier, Marcel and I absconded well before dawn for grouse espionage. Cam did not come. He cited exhaustion from his bike ride, but Marcel and I both well understood that he would not allow himself to be seen birding. In the end, it’s a good thing he didn’t come—we didn’t see any grouse. I dropped Marcel off at his fantasy coffee shop and headed east.

I wondered when I’ll see him next. Whether it will be three years again. How we will change in that time. Where our paths will cross, and what birds we will see. Only time will tell.

Marcel, me. May 2016

The Big Day (Part II of II)

Birding Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge. From left to right: Spencer Hardy, Neil Gilbert, Charles Hesse, Harold Eyster, Andy Johnson, Marcel Such. Photo by Chip Clouse.

1500 hours

Afternoons are generally less productive than mornings for birds, yet we are still racking up the birds. We did not pass the one hundred mark until past noon, but in slightly less than three hours of afternoon birding we have found over sixty new species!

Bolivar.

Most of the morning was spent either tracking down breeding passerines in the Piney Woods or sitting in the car scanning for raptors and trying not to fall asleep. Dozens of new species awaited us on the Bolivar Peninsula. The first few minutes at Rollover Pass were exciting, indeed—terns! plovers! gulls! herons!

Now, however, we are cleaning up. Standing on the edge of Frenchtown Road, we scan the shorebird-laden ponds for uncommon species. “TEXAS TRUCK!” someone yells. We hurriedly shuffle farther off the road as the oversized pickup roars by. Returning my eye to the scope, I pick through the ranks of dowitchers and Dunlin, hoping for a…

“Hey, can I borrow the scope for a sec? I think I see a Baird’s,” I quickly surrender the scope to Andy, who zeroes in on a sandpiper the rest of us had passed over. “Yup—Baird’s!” We cluster around the scope, each peeking through for a second before moving aside so the next teammate can see it.

“Baird’s—good!” our British mentor Charley Hesse exclaims. “We need to be getting to High Island…”

1800 hours

High Island. If you are a birder, you’ve probably heard of it. It’s famous.

We are finding out exactly why as we frantically chase new birds as the daylight fades. At times, we barely move at all, too busy picking through the dozens of warblers filtering through the trees to keep walking down the trail. Other times, we sprint down the trail in a ragged pack after that alleged Canada Warbler, or Bay-breasted Warbler, or…

A brilliant male Scarlet Tanager flashes through the mulberry tree just overhead, yet I ignore it. We’ve already seen dozens. Big Days are no time to appreciate birds; the last hour of daylight is particularly hectic. A clump of leaves quivers in a nearby oak—I nail it with my binoculars and am quickly greeted by the flaming orange throat of a male Blackburnian Warbler. I ignore it, too. On any other day, I could spend an hour watching a single Blackburnian Warbler. But today is a Big Day.

Tennessee Warbler…Black-and-white Warbler…Golden-winged Warbler…Baltimore Oriole…Red-eyed Vireo…Magnolia Warbler…Swainson’s Thrush…Blue-headed Vireo…with every new migrant, our list creeps closer to two hundred.

I whip my binoculars to my eyes for perhaps the five hundredth time in the last half-hour. A new face pops out from behind a leaf. “CHESTNUT-SIDED!” I yell. My teammates hustle into position and quickly find the bird. Yet another species added to the list of birds we can ignore for the next six hours.

2100 hours

“Who-who who who, who-who who-WHOOO?” My Barred Owl imitation is so pathetic that we can’t help but laugh. In reality, it’s not that funny—but when you’ve been awake for nineteen hours, almost anything seems funny. Even tripping over a pebble…

I try to whoop again. And once again, it sounds like a gagged tomcat.

My crude imitation is enough to fool (or seriously tick off) the local Barred Owl. Only a couple of us are looking up when it flashes over—a big, blocky bird, the white spots in its wings glowing in the moonlight. It apparently isn’t very impressed, since it remains silent and never reappears.

But it was enough. Two people are enough for it to count.

0000 hours

It’s over. Actually, it ended fifteen minutes ago when we filed up the steps into the Tropical Birding house (our base of operations) at High Island. I lie on the thin, lumpy mattress, joking with my teammates and not even trying to sleep. I’ve been birding nonstop for twenty-two hours, but I do not feel tired. Yet.

I blame those two bowls of ice cream.

It’s over.

The Big Day (Part I of II)

The 2010 Great Texas Birding Classic Tropicbirds Team. From left to right...bottom: Spencer Hardy, Chip Clouse (team mentor/driver/cook), Andy Johnson. Middle: Neil Gilbert, Harold Eyster. Top: Marcel Such. Oh yeah, and that's Furious George in the front.

0300 hours

We’ve been awake for an hour, but our bird list stands at only one: a Northern Mockingbird singing across the street from the Tropical Birding house where we were staying at High Island. A fierce wind rips through the treetops at Smith Oaks, where we are listening for owls.

I can’t blame the owls for remaining silent on such a windy night.

We trudge back to the car, our minds still dull with sleep. Somehow, every speck of dust and crumbled leaf manages to blow into my eyes and get wedged between my contacts and eyeballs.

0600 hours

All is silent save for the whispering breeze in the pines and a few distant Chuck-will’s-widows chanting the night away. We had already heard Chucks; Eastern Screech-Owl is our real quarry here in the Piney Woods well over a hundred miles northeast of High Island. Raising my chin, I whistle through a large glob of saliva on the back of my tongue, making a trembling whistle that sounds vaguely like a screech-owl.

Nothing.

I continue whistling for a minute, and then—“There!” Spencer, one of my teammates, whispers and gestures off to the woods to our left. No one else heard it, but fortunately it continues calling so the rest of us can hear its muffled whistle. Another joins it, and then another.

0900 hours

I lean over the backseat of our fifteen-passenger van (dubbed the “Smelly Sanderling”) and rummage through the large cardboard box of food in the trunk. “Don’t run into anything!” I shout over my shoulder to Chip, who is behind the wheel. Apples—no, dried apricots—no, JERKY—yes!

“Gotcha!” I hiss as I snag three bags from the jumbled box. “Wild Chicken Barbecue, A1 Beef Strips, or Tender Beef Nuggets,” I announce.

“Let’s try the A1,” Spencer decides.

After a brief tussle, I manage to rip open the bag. The sharp scent of A1 sauce invades the interior of the van, adding to the mixed aromas of dirty socks, mud, and dried mango slices. Stuffing a couple slabs into my mouth, I pass the bag to the waiting hands a couple rows up in the van. The jerky tastes like leather soaked in A1 sauce—which is basically what it is.

Suddenly, someone shouts “HAWK!” through a mouthful of the jerky. Chip reacts instantly, whipping the van to the shoulder with alarming speed. Doors fly open, feet crunch on the gravel, binoculars rake the sky. There it is—a small, slim bueto with pale crescents at the end of its wings. “Red-shouldered,” I shout, directing my teammates to the bird. “Got it?”

“Yup,”
“Yep,”
“Yup,”
“Uh-huh!”

“Let’s go. GET IN THE CAR!” I yell, following my teammates as they plunge back into the depths of the Smelly Sanderling. We were stopped for less than twenty seconds.

“We’re out of jerky,” Marcel announces as we speed away from the scene.

1200 hours

Large portions of many big days are spent driving. It’s only noon, but we have already been awake for ten hours, and the two and a half hour drive from the Piney Woods to Winnie is taking its toll. I glance over and notice my teammate Harold is sleeping, his head slumped against the window as he gently snores.

Sleeping is a cardinal sin on big days.

I jab him mercilessly until he wakes up.

Tearing It up in Texas

Well, it's over. Yesterday afternoon I got back from birding the Upper Texas Coast for the Great Texas Birding Classic on the ABA Tropicbirds team. I'll try to write up a few more detailed posts, but for now I'll post some statistics of the trip

207--species of birds on the Big Day
2--boxes of Poptarts consumed
12--hours of sleep (spread out over three nights)
1--adult male Painted Bunting found stunned under a gas station window
26--species of warblers
1--armadillo
8--life birds
1--Yellow Rail
1--Jalapeno/cheese/bacon burger from Whataburger
6--bags of jerky consumed
1--Fork-tailed Flycatcher missed by a matter of hours
1--expedition through poison oak, chiggers, and underbrush to see Bachman's Sparrow
3--Purple Gallinules
1--tree backed into

It's pretty easy to tell that I had a lot of fun. Not only was the birding spectacular, but the company of four other enthusiastic young birders (Andy Johnson, Harold Eyster, Marcel Such, and Spencer Hardy) and two excellent leaders (Chip Clouse and Charles Hesse) was unparalleled.

Missed your chance to support the American Birding Association's youth education program? It's not too late to support the Tropicbirds! Another team will be competing in the World Series of Birding on May 15th. If you're interested in making a pledge, please visit http://www.aba.org/yb/tropicbirds/pledge.html

Support the Tropicbirds!

Do you care about the future of birding? I imagine it's safe to say that you do. The future of birding rests on the interest and participation of young people in the birding community. One could argue that many birders discover the joys of birding in adulthood, but it's no coincidence that many of North America's top birders--Jon Dunn, Kenn Kaufman, David Sibley, and Pete Dunne, to name a few--began birding as children.

Alright, we've established that young birders are crucial to the future of birding. Allow me to introduce the American Birding Association's (ABA) youth education program.

The ABA provides fantastic opportunities for young birders. I've benefited from many of them. Three main opportunities exist: the Young Birder of the Year Contest (YBY), camps geared for young birders, and publications about birding. The YBY encourages young birders to hone their skills in note-taking, photography, writing, and illustration. Its participants invariably come out as better birders. In addition to allowing young birders to travel and see new birds, the ABA's camps give young birders the chance to meet like-minded young people, often creating life-long friendships. Lastly, the ABA's publications--including Birding, Winging It, and North American Birds--allow young birders to learn more about birds and to connect with the birding community.

Well, that's great, but how can you help? It's simple. The ABA can't run these programs without financial support. Donating to the ABA's youth education program will enrich the lives of young people and help the future of birding.

That's where I come in. I've been selected to participate in the Great Texas Birding Classic on the ABA's Tropicbirds team. For the uninitiated, the Great Texas Birding Classic is a competitive birding event in which teams try to find as many species as possible in a day. The Tropicbirds, a team of five enthusiastic young birders, have the goal to raise funds for the ABA's youth education program.

If you have any interest in supporting the Tropicbirds, please visit the pledge page on the ABA's website for more details: http://www.aba.org/yb/tropicbirds/pledge.html. You can pledge an amount per species we find on our Big Day, or just play it safe and donate a lump sum. Donating online is probably the easiest option. If you have any questions or do not wish to pledge online, feel free to email me at prairiemerlin AT gmail.com.

Thanks!

Summer Flies By

Summer is disappearing at an alarming rate. It seems only yesterday I was leaving for the Young Birder's Conference in San Diego, yet that was well over a month ago. The past four weeks have been a dizzying blur of leading bird walks, hauling trash, and teaching bird lessons for birding day camps at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine. August, the last month of summer remaining, promises to be quiet and filled with plenty of summer school. My hectic life of the last month or so has not allowed many blog posts, so here the pictorial highlights of the last week of camp.



Instead of sleeping in and driving to San Joaquin on Monday, I woke long before dawn and rolled out of the driveway on my bike at five-thirty. I planned to do a big day bike, though carefully engineered to not interfere with my work at camp. I arrived at Upper Newport Bay by quarter to seven and birded there for about an hour and a half before heading to San Joaquin to work at the camp. This Green Heron was patiently fishing from a rock near the Jamboree Road bridge.



The ride around Back Bay Drive always produces lots of birds. Shorebirds swarmed over every mudflat; careful scoping revealed more uncommon species such as Red Knot, Short-billed Dowitcher, and Semipalmated Plover among the abundant Willets, Marbled Godwits, Western Sandpipers, and others. A bedraggled Surf Scoter was a good bonus. Clapper Rails are always difficult to come by, so I crossed my fingers and kept my ears open. I was pleasantly surprised to spot two of these elusive birds walking around on an open mudflat! Another surprise was a single Loggerhead Shrike on Shellmaker Island.



I had to be at San Joaquin by quarter to nine, so I abandoned Upper Newport Bay far sooner than I would have liked. The first day of the last week of camp was much like all the other days - bird walk in the morning, lessons later in the morning and afternoon. I left the marsh in the mid-afternoon heat (not before enjoying some nice cake and watermelon, though!) and after a very long and hot ride I arrived home. My house is situated near the edge of the foothills, and therefore has different bird species. A quick walk around my neighborhood before dinner produced new species such as Say's Phoebe, Black-chinned Hummingbird, and Pacific-slope Flycatcher. I birded Irvine Regional Park in the evening, finding species like Acorn Woodpecker, California Thrasher, and this Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.



I birded Irvine Regional Park until sunset. I would have stuck around later to look for owls, but I was tired from riding about forty miles and had to prepare a bird lesson for the next day of camp. In just an hour or so I found about a dozen new species at Irvine Regional Park, enough to bring my total for the day to one hundred and four. Not bad for July, especially by bike!



The rest of my week was considerably tamer. I birded Huntington State Beach briefly on Wednesday afternoon, having arrived early for a beach party. So little was around that I resorted to photographing the Heermann's Gulls out of boredom.





The last day of camp, traditionally the most hectic because it runs all day and includes a sleepover, was briefly interrupted when Trudy Hurd popped over with a Common Yellowthroat that had managed to get inside one of the other buildings and collided with a window.



The evening walk on Friday was productive. Lots of birds gather in the ponds to roost, included these two Whimbrels.



We finished our evening walk at dusk, quietly enjoyed the sunset in front of one of the ponds while watching and listening to the birds. All the camps were finally over, I finally realized as I drove home from the sleepover on Saturday morning. Now that I have more time, I look forward to writing some more serious blog posts.

YBC: Day Five

The last day of any camp is always sad. Friends that are quickly made quickly leave; life returns to its boring old routine. We spent the last full day of the Young Birder's Conference birding the Laguna Mountains of southern San Diego County searching for species typical of higher elevations.

After yet another very early departure time, we arrived at Kitchen Creek Road soon after sunrise. This spot, along with the next few places we birded, were fairly low in elevation - two thousand feet at most. In the oak groves and boulder-studded slopes clothed in chaparral, we found species such as Phainopepla, Rufous-crowned Sparrow, Rock Wren, Oak Titmouse, and Western Wood-Pewee. The out-of-staters were most excited by the Lawrence's Goldfinches. This normally elusive species was easy to find that day; we ran into them in several places.



When everyone had had their fill of the Lawrence's Goldfinches, we jumped back into the vans and drove higher into the mountains. Among the ponderosa pines a couple thousand feet higher, we found Mountain Chickadees, Pygmy Nuthatches, Violet-green Swallows, Purple Finches, and Steller's Jays. As the morning progressed and the sun rose higher in the sky, bird action dropped off only to be replaced by butterflies. Here's a Mormon Metalmark we found on a short hike.



We paused to enjoy a crude picnic lunch at a campground high in the mountains. I think I ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day of the conference. Fortunately, the leaders had purchased chunky peanut butter, which is, as we all know, far superior to creamy. While wandering the campground after lunch, someone spotted a Gopher Snake and we managed to grab it. I was involved in the capture of the snake, so I didn't get any photos of it. However, I did have someone take a picture of me holding it.



A stop to snap some landscapes at a random pullout along the highway after lunch produced some decent birds. At first, all was quiet. A Lazuli Bunting showed up, then a pair of Black-throated Sparrows, and then a Black-chinned Sparrow! These species were lifers for many of the participants. I had a cause to celebrate, also: all three species were new county birds for me, although the novelty of finding new county birds for San Diego had quickly worn off, since I found over sixty new county birds during the conference.



A number of practically microscopic butterflies were flitting about in the brush near this pullout. This one, which I incidentally photographed from about two inches away with my short lens, appears to be a Gold-hunter's Hairstreak.



We pressed on. Cuyamaca Lake was too close to the highway to skip, so we paused there. A quick foray along the lakeshore produced several dragonflies, including this Bluet Sp., probably a Tule or Arroyo Bluet.



Some strange whistling calls that sounded oddly like Say's Phoebes turned out to be some juvenile coots on the lake.



Our last stop of the day, Paso Pichacho Campground, was probably the highest spot in elevation of the day. We were hoping to find White-headed Woodpeckers here; unfortunately, none were found, much to the disappointment of the non-Californians were were eager to see this awesome species. However, a quick walk produced species such as Olive-sided Flycatcher, Hairy Woodpecker, Lawrence's Goldfinch, and Western Bluebird. On our way back to the vans, someone spotted this Wild Turkey (or, as I insist, a Not-So-Wild Turkey, since it is not native to California) wading across a meadow of deep grass.



Thus ended our birding for the day and actually the entire week. On the way home, I discovered why people do not eat Coke Floats as opposed to Root Beer Floats. I tried adding coke to some ice cream, and the result almost made me sick.

Instead of spending our last night owling, many of us decided to hang out in the lounge deep into the night. Long games of cards, air hockey, wrestling matches, and taping shut the mouths of certain hyper thirteen year-olds kept us occupied until two-thirty in the morning. It was a fitting end to an awesome week of birding and camaraderie.

The Final Frontier

I'll take a break from my narration of the Young Birder's Conference to report on my day of biking and birding today. Last night, upon discovering that I had no plans for the next day, I decided to ride my bike down to the beach and try to get some sea birds for my Bigby list. Pelagics are awfully hard to get for Bigby lists, and prior to today I had only gotten Black-vented Shearwater and a few loons for a couple brief seawatching sessions.

One common misconception of seawatching is that it can be done at any time of day. This is simply not true. Seawatching is overwhelmingly more productive the first couple hours of day. This presents a problem for bigbying. The nearest beach is a twenty-one mile ride from my house, probably an hour and half of riding. To remedy this problem, I left my house very early, around five-twenty, and pedaled like the devil to the west. I didn't allow myself any stops; I didn't even stop when a Clapper Rail sounded off near the road at Upper Newport Bay. It was my first new Bigby bird of the day.

My relentless pedaling paid off; I reached Little Corona City Beach at ten til seven. Unfortunately, seawatching conditions weren't optimal; it was clear, and the ocean was as slick as glass. Under conditions like these, the birds are usually farther offshore. They were. After a few minutes of scanning, I managed to spot a couple Black Storm-Petrels way out over the ocean. A few Sooty Shearwaters began to trickle by several miles out. After an hour of staring out to sea, I finally spotted a bigger shearwater with lumbering wingbeats; when it banked, I could see its pale underparts. A Pink-footed Shearwater! To make matters even sweeter, an out of season Pacific Loon winged by. All these, along with Elegant Tern, were new Bigby birds for me. Also new for my Bigby list were these sea stars clinging to a rock below the overlook.



After eight o'clock the sea birds thinned out, so I loaded my bike back down and retraced my steps. I actually stopped for birds on my return trip around Upper Newport Bay, but I didn't find much. A smattering of early migrant shorebirds - Willets, Western Sandpipers, Short-billed Dowitchers, and others - were present, but otherwise it was very quiet. Even the large Black Skimmer colony, usually bustling with noisy activity, was deserted. Here's a shot showing a smattering of the birds present: Mallards, Snowy Egrets, Caspian Terns, Black Skimmers, Willets, and Marbled Godwits.



After the mandatory lunch stop at In-N-Out Burger, I birded around San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine for about an hour around midday. I wasn't expecting much, and indeed there weren't too many birds around. I did, however, find one exciting new Bigby bird. I was poking around the edge of one of the ponds looking for dragonflies when I heard the unmistakeable call of a Least Bittern from a nearby stand of tules. I crept forward, craned my neck, and peered into the tules, but it was buried out of sight. I walked around to the other side of the pond to scan the tules, and after a couple minutes of futile searching, the bittern suddenly burst from the vegetation and gave me a very brief view as it flew across the pond and melted back into the tules. This species is incredibly elusive and I was not sure whether I would get it for my Bigby list this year.

Birds may not have been overly plentiful at San Joaquin this afternoon, but dragonflies were. Unfortunately, since I had my scope, I couldn't bring my good camera to photograph them with. Several got away unidentified, including one that I'm fairly confident was a Spot-winged Glider. One dragonfly that actually cooperated for photos was this gorgeous Blue-eyed Darner. I digiscoped it from fifteen feet away... I can't say I've digiscoped a dragonfly before!



I headed for home around twelve-thirty. I took my time getting home, particularly going up the arduous hill along Jamboree Road, since it was hot and I was weary. I rode forty-four miles and saw seven new Bigby species - over six miles per bird! Despite this seemingly low number of new species, it will probably be the most new species I get in one day for the rest of the year. I will have to get back down to the beach by bike to get some more sea birds for my Bigby list - alcids and jaegers, perhaps?

YBC: Day Four

Last Thursday, on the YBC, we took the hottest (literally and figuratively) trip of the entire week. Like the trip out to Santa Cruz Island, it required a ridiculously early start time. The headlights of our vans burrowed through the dark mountains as we sped east toward the sea. The sun eventually rose, and through the smudgy van windows we spotted Burrowing Owls, Western Meadowlarks, and others.



By the time we finally reached our first destination, the Wister Unit, we were eager to jump out of the vans and begin to search for birds. Around the parking lot we found Black-tailed Gnatcatchers, White-winged Doves, Inca Doves, and Verdins. The most exciting bird here was a Bronzed Cowbird, a state bird for me.



The Salton Sea is also a rich area for dragonflies. Unfortunately, we had limited time and I spent most of my time birding rather than looking for dragonflies. Some of the species I noted in passing included Blue Dasher, Common Green Darner, Red Saddlebags (lifer), and Flame Skimmer. I paused to photograph this diminutive fellow and later identified it as a Rambur's Forktail (Ischnura ramburii.)



We worked our way along the southern edge of the sea, birding the entire way. The most exciting bird was a Wood Stork that flew over Davis Road, but unfortunately it kept flying and didn't land. Our next couple stops, the end of Schrimpf Road and Red Hill, produced many new species, including Snowy Plover, Cinnamon Teal, Laughing Gull, Yellow-footed Gull (a very exciting species for those who hadn't visited the sea before), and others.



The headquarters of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge is always worth a stop. The desert scrub around the visitor's center is a good place to find Common Ground-Dove, Verdin, and Gambel's Quail. We easily found all these. I managed to creep many people out with my very accurate imitation of the guy at the visitor center who once offered to show me the resident Barn Owl that roosts in one of the palms next to the visitor's center. I asked, "YA WANNA SEE A BAHN-AWEL?" and led the rest of the participants to the base of the owl's tree.



After a quick stop at Obsidian Butte that yielded nothing save chunks of obsidian, we headed south to check Fig Lagoon and Sunbeam Lake before starting back for San Diego. Unfortunately, a monstrous fire blocked the road to Fig Lagoon, so we had to turn around. It looked like a controlled fire to burn a field that had gotten out of hand.



Fortunately, no inferno prevented us from visiting Sunbeam Lake. A Greater White-fronted Goose and a Cackling Goose have been living with the domestic geese here for a couple years, and we easily spotted them upon exiting the vans. There was little else to be had there, save a single Common Moorhen and some swallows, so we hit the road and made the long, hot drive back to San Diego.

I suppose I'm a glutton for punishment with respect to unsuccessful owling. Several of the other campers had heard of our wild but mostly unfruitful owling escapade of the previous night and wanted to look for owls too. So, we looked for Western Screech-Owls down in the wash again, this time prudently taking the nice trail down to the trees. We almost heard them again, but not quite. The Common Poorwills and Barn Owls were still easy to find, and we also saw the first and only Great Horned Owl of the trip. I also managed to almost completely destroy my big toe by scraping it against an unseen speed bump. It scraped a nice chunk of skin and flesh away, leaving a oval raw patch of flesh on the tip of my toe. Ouch. We ended up staying out even later, and I didn't hit the sack until around one in the morning.

YBC: Day Three

The leaders had wisely planned a slower-paced outing between the two biggest trips, to Santa Cruz Island and the Salton Sea. On Wednesday we spent much of the day at the San Diego Zoo, wandering through the aviaries and talking with some zoo employees about working with animals.

We had the option of sleeping in fairly late on Wednesday (until almost eight!) Many of the campers took advantage of the late start and caught up on sleep, but several of us got up bright and early and wandered around the campus in search of birds. We didn't find anything too different from other forays around campus, but we enjoyed looks at Red-shouldered Hawks (below), California Gnatcatchers, and Hooded Orioles.





The ten minute drive to the zoo felt like blink compared to the three hour drive of the previous day. We arrived at the zoo just as it opened. For the first couple hours, we met with a couple zookeepers who showed us a few birds (Laughing Kookaburra, Great Horned Owl, African Pygmy-Falcon, and Galahs) and talked about working with captive birds. It was very interesting, and it was fun to see all the interesting birds up close! Here's the African Pygmy-Falcon.



We spent the next several hours wandering the zoo at will. Aviaries were, of course, the main points of interest, put we saw other animals as well. I haven't been to a zoo for many years (last time I can remember visiting one was when I was eight - the Detroit Zoo.) I'm not a big fan of zoos, but I enjoyed seeing all the exotic birds, from California Condors:



to Flamingos:



to Green-and-gold Tanagers.



One of the more exciting aviaries was the hummingbird aviary, where dozens of brilliantly colored hummingbirds and tanagers flitted through the plants. Here's a Sparkling Violetear, a large hummingbird that completely dwarfed all the smaller hummingbirds that I was more familiar with.



Less brightly-colored, even drab, but placed in the hummingbird aviary, were several Sunbitterns. I can't wait to see these in the wild!



The most impressive birds of the day were the Harpy Eagles. Two of them, caged but still magnificent, ignored us from their high perches in their enclosure. Another species I wouldn't mind seeing in the wild...



My favorite exhibit was the arctic duck pool. Even though I'd seen many of the species it contained - Long-tailed Duck, Harlequin Duck, and Bufflehead, to name a few - it was fun to study the exquisite ducks from a few feet away.



We also saw some wild (i.e., non-captive) birds in the zoo. The zoo's lush plantings are a big draw for migrant and wintering birds, but not so much for the local breeders. This spunky female Anna's Hummingbird was feeding on flowers in the shadow of the condor exhibit.



House Sparrows are obnoxious and I generally ignore them, but I couldn't resist shooting some up-close and personal photos of some hopping around the sidewalk while waiting for the rest of the group who were buying snacks for outrageous prices at one of the restaurants in the zoo.



It was Wednesday night that we began to defy the scheduled 9:30 bedtime. Several of the participants wanted to see Western Screech-Owl, some more desperately than others, so I suggested that we go owling down in the wash adjacent to campus, where there are some nice oaks and sycamores that looked good for owls. After bushwhacking down a steep slope covered in dense brush, cactus, and thistle plants, we finally made it down into the wash. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any screech-owls, but we did hear Common Poorwills and Barn Owls. As we wandered down a trail through the middle of the wash, we discovered a nice paved trail that led right down the hillside. Had we walked just a bit farther along the top of the hill, we could have avoided descending the treacherous hill. Oh well, it was an adventure.