It's Official

Yes, it's official--I've finally gotten around to deciding about college! I'll be entering Calvin College as a freshman at the end of August. Calvin is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan--only a couple hours from my old house outside Detroit. Needless to say, I'm super excited, especially since I already know so many people in Michigan!

For the geographically-challenged westerners who are probably reading this, Grand Rapids is on the west side of the Lower Peninsula, near Lake Michigan. Still clueless? Here's a map.



My mobility will be limited--I won't have a car or even a bike--though I'll do my best to mooch rides off other birders. However, the campus is very green (and there's a nice ecosystem reserve just across the street), so I should manage well on foot. Here's a satellite image of campus.



I'm going to enjoy my last few months of birding in California over the summer. My workload promises to be excruciatingly heavy, so I'll do less birding than I'd likely, but I'll get out--someway, somehow.

Quick Midwest Trip

I just got home from a whirlwind trip through a good chunk of the Midwest this last weekend. It wasn't a birding trip, but, not unexpectedly, I fit in a lot of birding. My parents and I left Thursday afternoon, getting into Grand Rapids late Thursday night. We spent all Friday visiting Calvin College in Grand Rapids. Saturday was my main birding day. I birded most of the day around Muskegon with Alison Village and Jonathan and Joseph Lautenbach, all young(ish) birders from Michigan. After a full day of birding, my parents and I headed home by way of Pennsylvania to visit my brother near Pittsburgh. We drove to Dundee Saturday night, and set off early Sunday morning for Pennsylvania. A two-hour pause at Crane Creek was in order, my last main birding of the trip.

I'll try to post more details sooner or later. In about a day of birding total, I found 122 species, including many eastern species that I haven't seen since moving. Unfortunately, the trip was all too brief and I didn't get the chance to see a bunch of old friends in the Michigan and Ohio area. Next time...

First Batch of Michigan Photos (Belated)

I am sure many reading this blog have been wondering the past month where my report of my trip to Michigan in April was. Well, I have excuses. I've been working hard the past month finishing up my AP classes, and I simply haven't gotten around to posting photos or a report. So, here is the first batch of my photos from the trip, over a month late. I don't have the time to write a full report, but here are some photos with short descriptions.



The main purpose of the trip was to investigate two colleges in western Michigan, Hope College in Holland and Calvin College in Grand Rapids. I took this American Robin photo in Holland. I didn't like Hope College, or Holland for that matter; my mom and I saw few birds during the few minutes we poked around the area (though, of course, that was not the only reason I didn't like the college or the city.) However, robins were abundant. Robins are relatively uncommon in California, so it was a treat to see and hear them in masses again.



This unspectacular photo shows a very nifty bird. The Midwest experienced a massive invasion of White-winged Crossbills this winter. I angrily read of crossbills being seen within a couple miles of my old house. I had never seen one before. And, just as luck would have it, almost all of the birds had departed by the time I arrived in Michigan. A handful were sticking around Brighton State Recreation Area in Livingston County, so we stopped there on our way from Grand Rapids to Detroit. I easily located several quietly feeding in the tops of some tamarack trees. After a few minutes they became restless and took off. I was happy to see at least a few after reading about hordes of them all winter. Interestingly, in several years I saw an extraordinary number of rare birds within a few miles of the crossbill spot: White-eared Hummingbird, Rufous Hummingbird, Bullock's Oriole, Spotted Towhee, and Townsend's Solitaire. These may sound ho-hum to the seasoned Californian, but to Michiganders these species are rare and exotic.



A rare sight in California, but a common one in the Midwest: a sprawling corn field. One of the days we were in Michigan I went birding with a few old friends of mine, including my mentor Karl Overman. We made the long drive to Mercer County, Ohio, to chase a flock of Smith's Longspurs that had been reported from this field. It's a good three and a half hours of driving to get there; fortunately, we easily found the birds. Another life bird for me, but unfortunately the birds were not cooperative for photographs.



This photo shows a meadowlark, more specifically a Western Meadowlark. Now, a Western Meadowlark is not a big deal in California, but in Ohio it is. The day I went birding with Karl and several other birders we also made a short detour to see it. A state bird for me.



Our vanload of birders also hit Oak Openings Metropark, a beautiful park west of Toledo. Oak Openings is one of my favorite spots for spring and summer birding. Several species breed there that are extremely difficult to find elsewhere in Ohio, including Lark Sparrow, Summer Tanager, and Blue Grosbeak. I photographed this White-breasted Nuthatch at the nature center feeders.



Another visitor to the feeders at Oak Openings was this cute little Red Squirrel. We don't get these guys in Southern California, so it was nice to see them again. I used to spend countless hours attempting to keep them off my bird feeders in Michigan.



Another interesting sighting at Oak Openings was this beautiful Blue Racer. We were walking along a road, seeing Red-headed Woodpeckers, Field Sparrows, Eastern Bluebirds, and others, when I looked down and nearly stepped on this snake.



We couldn't bird northwestern Ohio without a stop at Crane Creek. This legendary migration hotspot located on the shore of Lake Erie is an incredible spot for seeing warblers and other migrants in the spring. Unfortunately, I was a few weeks early for the big rush. In fact, birding was quite dull along the boardwalk. However, I enjoyed strolling along the boardwalk I've stalked so many times. I visited Crane Creek every year, starting in 2000 (almost a decade ago!) The most interesting bird we saw was an Eastern Screech-Owl that popped out of a tree cavity when Karl began imitating its whistled call.



Common Grackles, though obnoxiously common in Michigan and Ohio, are truly beautiful to behold when the sun strikes them. This one was rummaging through the leaf litter at Crane Creek. Pretty handsome guy, eh?

That's all for now. Hopefully I'll get some more up soon. It was an excellent trip. I liked Calvin College in Grand Rapids, so we will be going back in the fall to take a second look. It was also great to go birding again in Michigan and Ohio and see old friends.

Back from Michigan

I got back on Monday night from a week-long trip to Michigan and Ohio. The main focus of the trip wasn't birding (visiting a couple colleges was the real reason for the trip), but I fit in a lot of birding around the edges. Even though mid-April is a pretty awkward time to bird in the Midwest - many wintering species such as ducks have departed and most migrants have not yet arrived - I managed to scrape together a little over one hundred species for the trip. This total surprisingly included two life birds, but I won't spoil it for you!

Unfortunately my schedule is absolutely crazy right now as I spent practically every spare moment preparing for my AP exams in a couple weeks, but I'll try to make a couple more thorough posts with photos from the trip. Just thought I'd post so everyone would know I didn't drop off the face of the earth!

This Is The West

One year. That may not seem like a very long time to most people, but my life has changed so drastically in the last year that it seems to stretch way back into the distant past. I haven't always lived in California; in fact, I am a relative newcomer to western birding. However, the previous fourteen years of my life suddenly seem slightly blurred as I look back upon them.

Exactly one year ago, June 16th 2007, I was standing on a roadside near Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was late in the day, about the same time of day as it is right now as I write this. The sun was slowly sinking beneath the horizon, bathing the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher perched on the wire above my head in golden light. I spent several minutes photographing it. I remember cars rushing past a few feet away, throwing walls of wind into my face. Where were they going? Undoubtedly most were locals rushing home after work. Maybe there was another family moving cross-country going by even as I was standing there...


Since I'm a birder, the drive from Michigan to California was undoubtedly more interesting to me than it was to the rest of the family. I noticed subtle changes in the bird life as we traversed the country, east to west. As we rolled out our long driveway in Beverly Hills, Michigan, for the last time, I could hear Black-capped Chickadees, Blue Jays, and Northern Cardinals through the open windows. On the second day, I saw the first Northern (a misnomer - the mockingbird is generally a southern bird) Mockingbird in southern Ohio. Indiana and Illinois dragged by; endless miles of corn fields seemed to stretch to the horizon in all directions. I did, however, see Blue Grosbeaks and Dickcissels. I picked off my life Scissor-tailed Flycatcher as we sped down an interstate in southern Missouri at seventy miles per hour. Oklahoma was the next state. In retrospect, Oklahoma was the best part of the trip. In under twenty-four hours, I observed sixty species of birds. And not just the plain old eastern birds; novelties such as Bell's Vireo, Bewick's Wren, Mississippi Kite, and Western Kingbird.

Birding around the parking lots of hotels is generally dull. Our hotel somewhere in the heart of New Mexico was an exception to this rule. Located on the edge of a virtual ghost town and surrounded by desert grassland, the hotel was a great spot for birding. Noisy groups of Western Kingbirds called and squabbled among themselves constantly. A thrasher - Bendire's Thrasher! - skulked in a line of bushes around the edges of the parking lot. Eurasian Collared-Doves, Swainson's Hawks, Say's Phoebes, Cassin's Sparrows, and Western Meadowlarks all showed up right around the hotel parking lot. That's what I call high-quality hotel birding!



Arizona proved hot and birdless; California turned out to be much the same. On our last day of driving, we passed through Riverside and Corona. The smog was so thick that we could hardly read the road signs! This made me feel sick inside... we're moving here? Oddly, I have never since seen smog nearly that thick. Finally, we reached Orange County. I was practically bouncing out of my seat by now. Driving down Chapman Avenue... turning right into our new neighborhood... and finally wheeled around a corner onto our street. Thus started a new chapter of my life. I birded nonstop the next several days, finding all kinds of amazing birds: California Towhee! Wrentit! Pacific-slope Flycatcher! California Gnatcatcher! Nuttall's Woodpecker! Oak Titmouse!

I find it strange how my attitude has changed. A year ago, I was excited and nervous about moving, but I was looking forward to the new experience. Now, I sorely miss Michigan and the east. Sometimes I catch myself wishing I could go back forever... but now I know that if I did that, it wouldn't be too long until I started missing California and all the once exotic, but now familiar, birds.