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Circumnavigating the Olympics

Posted in Birds, Conservation, Environmentalism, Natural History, Olympic National Park, Plants, Science, United States, Washington on October 20, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

The pine whites speckled the treetops like lofty snowflakes. If you don’t look up, you might miss them. Their peak in numbers, while beautiful in it’s regularity also signaled the annual failing of summer. Several weeks after they’d swarmed the tips of the Douglas firs, laying their eggs, and cruising below to sip succulent nectar from wildflowers in wayside or meadow, they began to litter the ground. By the end of September they were no longer high above but crushed, bruised, and weak, at the end of their short lepidoptran lives.

Fall insinuates itself in many ways. Sometimes it harshly slaps down on the doorstep. Occasionally we barely know when it’s been around for weeks. Pacific Northwest falls are second only to our often wonderful summers. This year the crisp air, noticed only when the sun dipped below the horizon earlier and earlier, was the signal.

Hurricane Ridge, seated 5000 some feet above the Straight of Juan de Fuca drys out rapidly when the snow melt is gone and rain doesn’t fall. Where high meadows of lush annual wildflowers had stretched on for miles, broken only by Krummholz of fir and yellow cedar, by huckleberry and mountain ash, there now sprawled tan fields. Different birds joined the residents on the ridge, northern harriers and turkey vultures riding thermals from the lowlands to carry them over the block of the Olympic Mountains south. I’d never seen western bluebirds there but a flock fluted their weak call notes hiking back from Hurricane Hill. American pipits now amassed in flocks, done breeding. Soon the Olympic marmots, the Olympic chipmunk, and all the other alpine adapted mammals would be in burrows and under feet of snow. Yet it was still sunny, clear, and warm. A less aware creature (a person perhaps), heedless of the length of the day, might consider it still summer.

Rainforests aren’t often dusty, but it hadn’t rained since July and the iconic temperate rainforests, the Hoh and the Queets, weren’t their moist selves. Hiking up the Hoh River valley there was a curtain of dust on the well trodden trail. The tree tops were silent except for the occasional spurt from a Townsend’s warbler either holding out on departure or tempted to tough out a sullen winter in the evergreens. Multiple times I caught the chatter of others in awe of the general silence, a half concern, half disconcerted aside on the state of nature. I wasn’t worried – the resident birds were still about. A male hairy woodpecker jumped in front of me seconds later, Pacific wrens scurried about the undergrowth, a hermit thrush faced me silently from a still chartreuse spread of vine maple.

Fall has always been a time of transition, like any other time of year, yet it seems so much more prominent to me. Most assume bird migration only happens at very specific times of year. The truth is that it’s practically always happening. While some birds are moving, others are still breeding, some simply never leave. Surf scoters were already back on Hood Canal in small numbers from breeding further North. Sooty shearwaters streamed off Kalaloch in the hundreds of thousands, ripping through seastacks with sharp wingbeats they reminded me of many scissors cutting their way across the horizon. Yet the Northwestern crows still had blue eyed, pink mouthed fledglings hounding them. There’s still plenty to eat for a highly intelligent and flexible corvid.

The river valleys show only hints of fall yet, still a month or so off when the mountain air doesn’t accelerate change. Alder and maple lining the bottomlands, accompanied by evergreens, the behemoth Sitka spruce and Western hemlock, are tinged yellow. These outer Olympic rivers, many over 50 miles long, are mostly untamed, continually resisting roads built for logging, washing out access deep into the primordial belly of ancient forest annually till most gave up. The upper Queets in particular seems worlds away from the activities right up to the edge of national park. A map without contours shows a blob of parkland with feelers shooting out the rivers to the coast; a satellite image shows dense forest lining steep valleys which eventually lead to the birthplaces of the largest rivers, the slowly dwindling glaciers of the tallest Olympic peaks. From space one also sees the patchwork of green and brown squares slicing to the edge of habitat spared the saw only by inaccessibility or insight, not self imposed restraint.

Seeing wilderness bordered by extreme resource extraction is challenging for an optimistic, yet realistic environmentalist. My mind pondered logging, “Stop Wild Olympics – $100 millon landgrab” signs flashing past. Maybe I’d think differently if I was one of many generations who had logged these hills and valleys. I still couldn’t convince myself that there was anything endless out there, that we could keep marching back, striking down thousand year old trees. These fast growing Douglas fir were renewable yes, but not limitless. There is an extrinsic value in beautiful places I think most human beings can come around to agreeing on. And yet, I still get questions about why we just let trees rot on the forest floor after we’ve discussed the essential and pretty nursery grounds they provide.

As the summer is dwindling, I look forward to the annual rebirth to come, when people will discover this place for the first time again. I’m easily excited about the renewal. Every year is different and while some may crouch in their cement dungeons waiting for the sky to fall, the sage try to pay attention on their own. I’m glad there are scientists out there working the numbers, giving caution, but I’m also grateful to see things change over my lifetime and on my own, not over years but from season to season. Radical changes are afoot but seasonal differences from year to year shouldn’t be immediately taken as evidence of foretold doom. They should be enjoyed for their variety.

I circumnavigated the Olympics many times this spring and summer and will many more times in the years to come. Birds will continue to scour the coasts, the mountain tops, and the deep forests. Plants will put their broad, adaptive shoulders into the coming season, as they have for eons. In the face of adversity and concern for a impoverished natural world, it doesn’t hurt to smile a bit, even laugh, because if you didn’t all you’d have to do is cry. Go hug a damned tree or something.

If you want to see more photos from the Olympics in spring and summer 2012 check out my Flickr photos here.

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A (Photographic) Year in Review

Posted in Bird Banding, Birding, Birds, Borneo, California, Chiang Mai, Doi Inthanon, Eastern Washington, Field Work, Fire Ecology, Indonesia, Kao Yai National Park, Malaysia, Natural History, Orangutan, Oregon, Pak Thale, Plants, Road Tripping, Science, Seattle, Southeast Asia, Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Sumatra, Thailand, United States, Washington, Western Forests with tags animals, asian elephant, Birding, Birds, black-and-yellow broadbill, black-backed woodpecker, borneo, Brendan McGarry, burned forest, california, cascade fox, chestnut-crowned laughingthrush, dark-eyed junco, desert, dusky leaf monkey, dusky woodswallow, eco tourism, fire, flowers, gecko, gray mule's ear, indonesia, lark sparrow, malaysia, malaysian civiet, malaysian weasel, mountains, mt kinabalu, mt rainier, Nature, nevada, orangutan, oregon, outdoors, photography, plants, rainforest, redbud, sooty grouse, southeast asia, spoon-billed sandpiper, thailand, travel, united states, Washington, whitethorn, Wingtrip, yellow-headed blackbird on January 20, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

It’s been a year since I left for an adventure in Southeast Asia. With the extremely tardy completion of a small book I made for those who supported my Kickstarter campaign for the trip, I started feeling like I’d never be on the road again. Modern expectations, the realities of money, and my desire to be a part of a stable community all seemed to be working against me, pulling me down. Yet, instead of dragging myself down the anguished path of the grounded traveler, I decided that some careful reflection was in order.

This year I’ve been a lot of places, there’s no doubt. From the temperate land I call home to the Asian tropics. To the crest of the Sierras and down to the Great Basin. Consciously or subconsciously, mountains played an undeniable role in my explorations. I was in the the shrub steppe of Steens Mountain in Oregon, the forests and alpine of Mt. Lassen in California and Mt. Rainier in Washington, the elfin evergreens of Doi Inthanon in Thailand, eruption scarred Gunung Sibayak in Sumatra, and the ancient oaks and tree ferns of Gunung Kinabalu in Borneo. In my home I wound through the high desert of interior western North America, the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest coast, the snow of the Cascade range, and the mosaic of forests in the Sierra Nevada. Abroad I traipsed the lowland rainforests of Borneo and clambered about the monsoonal forests of Thailand. I drove to the summit of Doi Inthanon, the tallest mountain in Thailand, and hiked halfway up to the tallest mountain in Southeast Asia, Gunung Kinabalu.

I was captivated by small natural wonders in my own backyard (literally) and stood in awe of a bull elephant thousands of miles away. Birds were held, eyes were met with Orangutans. Animal and plant life always figure highly in my explorations, communities shaped by the landscapes I learned in my wend.

That’s the key. My excitement and passion for this world result from a desire to learn. Curiosity rules my spirit, anyone reading Wingtrip will know that.

Below I’ve compiled a long (yet also very punctuated) series of images from my year in the natural world. If you are curious about the stories behind them please ask or follow a few of the links I’ve provided above (unfortunately, through a flaw in the program I upload photos to Flickr with, literally hundreds of the photos in other entries linked to above are not visible right on wingtrip though still on Flickr – when I have time to sit down to this arduous task, it’ll be fixed). There’s so much worth working to save, these images should remind us all of that.

In short, I’ve got nothing to complain about. I hope you enjoy these shots. May you all have a fruitful year of discovery.

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Discovery in the Past

Posted in Natural History, Oregon, Plants, Science, Washington on November 24, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Nature is a highly distracting element of my life. Last week I found myself standing in the middle of a city street in Seattle. A Merlin was running loops around a plethora of irate crows, jays, flickers, and robins overhead. The person who drove up, finding me blocking the road, slack jawed, with glazed over eyes turned skyward probably thought I had mental deficiencies. They kindly refrained from honking for me to move and sat in idle until I came to.

Nature even distracts me from other nature. I can think of a particular time, seven years ago, when just that happened.

I was walking with my fellow Spring Ornithology students down a mountain road in a range of mountains adjacent Ashland, Oregon. There was an air of excitement about the group, we were finding birds new to many of us. Several hours later we saw a Great Gray Owl, plopped stately on her snag topping nest. Yet, what caught my eye and drew me away was a delicately bent lily, emblazoned by filtered afternoon light. Everyone else walked off in search of a Hermit Warbler and I suddenly no longer heard its sweet chip notes from high in the conifers above.

This plant was captivating, the light fantastic, and I bent take a shot. Facing the ground, the base of the petals and the reproductive interior of the flower were a deep magenta. I’d never seen that pigmentation in a wild plant before. Following my eye, I captured an image that still sits among my favorites.

One of the follies in attempting to capture an ecosystem with photography is that the photographer is necessarily ignorant of some aspects. I was a naturalist and a birder long before a photographer but that doesn’t cover all bases. Even when I remind myself that I need to identify everything I manage a decent shot of, it takes a tremendous amount of effort when you are starting at zero. This was most evident in my recent time in Asia. My guess is that there are many so called “conservation photographers” that still don’t have a very complex understanding of the natural world they are immortalizing despite decades of experience (that’s ok though, they still produce valuable work). I’ve photos spanning a decade which I include species I am yet to put a name to. This lily until a few weeks ago was one of them.

Fawn-lilies, trout-lilies, dog’s-tooth violet, adder’s tongue, avalanche lily. All names for the same group of plants in the genus Erythronium. Plants are even more confounding than birds when it comes to classification and naming schemes. Depending on who discovered them and what colloquialism they ascribed, you can end up with any number of names for the same group of plants. Plant classification and names appear to change even more than the elastic and dynamic rearrangement of the class Aves. The pendant like flower I knelt to photograph was most certainly a lily, I knew that at the time. I thought it’d be in my trusty Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast by Pojar and Mackkinnon, a staple for naturalists in my region.

Nope. And that was the end of it for several years.

This summer I decorated the wall of my room in the Sierras with various photos. I kept staring at this image and wondering. A summer of wondering past and back in Seattle, I asked my mother what she thought it might be. She knew it was a Erythronium, a fawn-lily, a native perennial. With small edible bulbs, they have delicate and attractive, pendulous flowers that are often early spring bloomers. After a bit of poking around in books and on the internet I figured it out: Henderson’s Fawn-lily, Erythronium hendersonii.

E. hendersonii is a fairly restricted species. In fact I was smack dab in the middle of the sole range of the plant, the Kalamath-Siskiyou mountains of Southwestern Oregon and Northwest California. While they are locally common and it’s amusingly silly, I felt a twinge of excitement in unwittingly photographing a pretty plant that was endemic to the small area I had been in (instead of it being an invasive or widespread plant). Walking through their typical habitat of open, dry woodland composed of Garry Oak and Ponderosa Pine, I’d stumbled upon a unique beauty.

The Siskiyou mountains specifically, are noted for their endemic plants and broad diversity. Wedged between the coast and the cascades with isolated peaks and a complexity of climates, it’s not hard to see how a wide variety of plants could have developed here. There is also a fair amount of serpentine that has been exposed for at least 5 million years. Soils over serpentine minerals are generally thin, poor in nutrients, a noted paucity of calcium, and rich in growth retardant, toxic elements. Serpentine plays a complex role in endemism around the world, from places like Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo and throughout California. Eventually specialized plants develop that can handle the poor soils, filling a niche and diversifying. I’ll leave it at that for serpentine, I’m no expert. The takeaway is that it’s no surprise I stumbled upon an endemic plant in these mountains.

Wait a minute though. Henderson? Who the hell was this Henderson? There’s thousands of old white men whose names are affixed to a myriad of organisms. Henderson happens to be well known for his role in Pacific Northwest botany.

Born in 1853 in Roxbury, Massachusets and attending Cornell University, he didn’t arrive out west until 1877 when he became a high school teacher in Portland, Oregon. From that point on, he started botanizing throughout much of Oregon and Washington during free time. He then successively Moved to Olympia, Washington to be a state botanist and forester and then to Moscow, Idaho as the University of Idaho’s first botanist professor, founding their herbarium.

Even after initial retirement in Hood River, Oregon in 1911 he didn’t falter in his passion for plants. He eventually became curator of the University of Oregon herbarium’s native plant collection, further enriching the existing collection. Strangely enough, he may have got this position by swimming across the Columbia River, a day before his seventieth birthday on September 8, 1923. The feat received statewide coverage and it may have caught the eye of the head of the botany department at U of O because he began a correspondence several days afterwords. Who cares really – dude swam the Columbia river at age 70!

Not until a few years before his death did Henderson slow down. He passed in a nursing home in Puyallup, Washington in 1942 at the age of 88. His specimens number in the tens of thousands, filling the University of Washington, the Smithsonian, University of Oregon, and Oregon state herbariums, among others. Among his achievements, one of the most notable was that he was the first American botanist to explore the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state, a member of the 1890 Olympic Exploring Expedition. At least sixteen species of plants have been named after him, including some I’d already known but never considered a namesake. Included in these is a favorite, Dodecatheon hendersonii, Henderson’s Shooting Star, which he and his wife Kate found on a hike east of Portland.

I discovered all this merely prompted, more than anything distracted, by this one photograph and one flower. I can now see this “grand old man of botany of the pacific northwest” slowly stepping down hillsides and through valleys, stooping to enjoy a particularly beautiful specimen just as I had done. The appreciation of nature most definitely transcends human history.

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Post Fire, Post Season

Posted in Bird Banding, Birding, Birds, California, Field Biology, Fire Ecology, Migration, Natural History, Plants, Science, Sierra Nevadas, United States, Western Forests on August 31, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Seasons are built to move fast. Drag yourself through the early mornings for months, but one day wake to realize you’ve missed beating the sunrises, standing in still, frosty mornings, trunks towering, grass glistening. Nothing envelops being like the quiet of a morning chorus with humanity pulled into the forgotten depths by nature.

The Northern Sierras came and went for me. The flash and chortle of a half recognized woodpecker, gone before I could acknowledge or even take the time to appreciate it. Some of us drift off to another adventure, perpetuating our desire to never step off the path. The foolhardiest drift back to flip-side of their duality, almost immediately longing for the woods. To the sweat. To the bugs. To the endless summer.

There are plenty of unfortunate aspects of being a field biologist. Few jobs have benefits or pay a reliable, constant, livable wage. Most involve exertion at indecent hours of the day in unpleasant conditions. Those of us who love being outdoors can easily forget all of this when something momentous happens. Three years ago I came upon a Coyote and her den; two pups eying me with the thinly veiled curiosity of domestic puppies. Everything I could ever dream up to complain about became irrevocably inconsequential for weeks.

So, it was a good season, it was a bad season. The weather was shit for a month, we battled late snow, worried about endless salvage logging, washed out roads, and illegal pot farms. Getting home, I can easily forgive and forget. This was a good job, benign, well paying. Unlike the multitude of projects out there that never make a dent despite the funds they wield, we collected data that actually contributes to the guidance of forest management. Without sounding too sentimental or jingoistic, the Western forests are one of America’s best renewable resources. Being a part of something like this is plain sensible, as opposed to helping a graduate student study something that might soon become a forgotten paper or deemed superfluous by a body of their peers or superiors. (A myriad of valuable studies exists and I’m lucky to know some fine young scientists driving them, but that said, there’s a lot of crap too. Sorry, it’s true).

Eight species of woodpeckers were focal to our work in these burnt Sierra peaks and valleys. Two more were occasionally noted. This is astounding when you recognize there are only twenty-one (extant) woodpeckers in the entire United States and Canada. Seen regularly in appropriate habitats, one begins to maneuver alongside their behaviors. Taciturn parents on eggs, wildly frenetic when feeding young. Some birds you never figure out or before you’ve realized it, they give you the slip.

The two Red-breasted Sapsuckers quarreling in stubborn willows, cut by a derelict skid road, seemingly with nothing better to do besides play chicken on narrow branches and gape absurdly at one another for thirty minutes. The White-headed Woodpeckers that carried food away but always avoided my careful observations. As soon as I learned something I was humbled by how little I’d gathered.

I wasn’t the best out there. One of our goals was to find cavity use, more data points are better. I found the least nests in use this year. During a second time around most self-respecting individuals look to improve. This wasn’t all for lack of effort (don’t believe a damned word they tell you), maybe I’m just not good at finding nests. Yet, I understand fires, the Northern Sierras, woodpeckers, and forest management better than ever.

Seasons run their course and at the end you half wish they’d continue. I probably won’t go back and live in Meadow Valley, California despite my admiration for this sleepy town. Before the season began, I crouched in the murky depths of springtime in the Pacific Northwest and plotted all the things I would do. Half of those things never happened, surprise events irrupting instead, one’s that I’ll cherish. Look at me, I’m so bloody sentimental that I’m thinking about going back in ten years to see what the burns all look like.

A seasonal study terminates when you can no longer collect good data on the focus of your study. In our case, once the male birds have provided their paternal input, via a cuckolding copulation or a devoted pair bond, they have no need for those heavy gonads and they dissapate. No hormones flowing and cock AMRO (American Robin) ceases the demented singing in the inky hours before other sensible diurnal animals believe in consciousness. What I’m saying in so many words, is that most birds cannot afford to sing year round. In temperate climes most don’t need to continue to hold a territory because they are snowbirding in the tropics, the land of plenty. The few that stick around are generally a reasonable lot and don’t bother. The MacGillivray’s Warblers I saw in desperate struggle for their adjoining territories stop caring once they’ve cemented their parental deals with a cloacal kiss, squirted out some nestlings of dubious patrilineage, and fattened up to fly to Guatemala.

Eventually we can’t find any active nests. We don’t know what birds are about because half of them aren’t making a peep. If we waited too long, the ones around might not be resident birds anyway, but ones in post breeding dispersal leaving the breeding grounds. Outliers exist and some birds keep singing even when we’ve stopped listening, but the real silence sets by the mid August. I returned home to Seattle only to the resident Bewick’s Wrens and Steller’s Jays hacking up over their lilac bush dynasties, their post forest slums, keeping them perpetually intact.

To finish up we banded those dispersing birds for a week. Verdant high meadows usher the birds of Western lands on their way to maturity and to the off season. Gathered with some of our nomadic ilk on the way to our off season, we touched some birds, gave them jewelery, and sent them on their way. Ring em and fling em.

Don’t believe what a satisfied field technician spouts about enjoying being a scientist or practicing method. That’s all a big hog’s wallow of nonsense. Sure we may be competent, some may even become visionaries for the future of their fields. The best of the best still are just curious, relishing the smell of sun baked Ponderosa while they spy on a Pileated Woodpecker grubbing away rectangular scars in a great decaying snag. Don’t be fooled. We’re all just a bunch of kids that couldn’t wait for our parents to kick us outside. No, no, they couldn’t find us because we’d already stole off to the bushes, watching the world turn.

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Danum Valley

Posted in Birding, Birds, Borneo, Conservation, Environmentalism, Malaysia, Natural History, Plants, Southeast Asia on March 22, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Have you ever been to tropical rainforest? While exploring this part of the world, one is sure to eventually encounter a resemblance to the primeval forest of their imagination. Tumultuous vines, ethereally green, fundamentally impenetrable. Here, this run-a-muck growth is often the result of plants desperately trying to win the race to refill empty space once held by behemoths. Until Danum Valley, I’d not seen examples of what Sabah would have looked like around 60 years ago, before deforestation.

Before I begin, I need to vent a second: Sam, a gentleman named Rob (who we met in the dingy town of Lahad Datu and also happened to be a graduate student at the University of Washington!), and I had a wonderful, though abbreviated exploration at Danum. Yet the field center played no hand in this, at times actively working against enjoyment. I don’t want to completely lambast this place, but it was the most expensive and frustrating place I’ve seen in my two months (more frustrating than a bus in Sumatra). If there hadn’t been Bornean Gibbons and Black Magpies, giant Dipterocarps and canopy platforms, it would have been unbearable. My vote goes to stripping the “hospitality ranger” of her ridiculous title. I don’t want to appear petty or abuse the freedom of the internet forum, but I would strongly dissuade people from visiting, simply because of the nature of how the center handled people. Poorly.

And now that I’ve got it out of my system……

Because of the cost limitations (doubled and tripled from advertised prices), we were only going to stay one full day. Immediately on arrival, we slogged down a trail, shrugging off the heavy rain and muck, stubborn to see something with our evening. We returned with nothing but leeches, engorged with our fluids. My logic failing me, I’d worn sandals and shorts, equating to a whopping 20 tiger leeches from my scalp to my soles.

By 5:30 AM the rain had subsided and we groggily rolled out the door. A little less cavalier about hiking trails, we slipped into the forest, en route to a fabled canopy platform. Fog coiled through mature trunks, with a much more open feel than I’d expected. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a thick jungle, just with less of the indomitable looking undergrowth. Half expecting a dilapidated platform, we reached a solid looking, two tier platformed built around a towering Dipterocarp. I felt like I was staring at a ladder into the heavens.

I can scarcely imagine a better platform. Within minutes we’d seen a troop of Red Leaf Monkeys, Black Magpies, Bushy-crested Hornbills, and the crown jewel of many birders visiting here, the Bornean Bristlehead (both Bornean endemic and monotypic, the only representative of its family). The view of massive, lichen dappled bark, branches alive with epiphytes, all swirling in endemic diversity, made an hour pass swiftly.

During breakfast I started to hear Bornean Gibbons calling and surprisingly close, (if you hadn’t guessed it, they are also endemic, the only gibbon in Sabah). Just behind the compound, a male squatting high in a snag, hollering away as a good gibbon should. Below a second gave us a spectacular show, with a careless fling across the gap above the road. They seemed loath to our presence and quick to veil themselves. Sometimes I wish I could brachiate.

The day continued with a walk to to find an Orangutan. Sam was getting more desperate to see a wild one before his time was up but I was more concerned about birds (but yes I’d have been excited by one). When I find myself in a new place, surrounded by a myriad of new species, I tend to develop tunnel vision. After all the Spectacled Flowerpecker, a bird that’s only been seen a handful of times, was described not too far off. A distant pair of Wallace’s Hawk Eagles and a flock of Dusky Munia were the only birds of real note and no apes.

The clouds had cleared by lunch which meant two things. Temperature up, activity down. Because of the foreshortened stay, I was eager to spend my time up in the trees, while Sam and Rob decided to go for a hike. So I spent the next five hours concerning myself with the temporal clouds, my crow’s nest, and a spread of undisturbed forest below and on all four sides.

A favorite teacher and friend of mine often mentions that walking further doesn’t guarantee you’ll see more. The entirety of Sabah’s fauna didn’t fall into my lap, but as I climbed the teetering ladder, 150 feet up, 3 honking Rhinoceros Hornbills winged by. I was so transfixed by their surreal beauty and the magical setting, it was all I could do but hang onto the ladder for giddy excitement. This finally felt like Borneo.

Confining oneself, as naturalist and photographer, to a small area, even one with such vantage, is a good exercise. It forces you to examine things in a variety of manners. I’d climbed all the way up, so naturally I didn’t want to descend quickly, and for the absence of birds, began to note the many insects sharing my perch. The insects in Danum already had made me wish dually that I had a macro lens and that I knew more about them. I had my first stick bug, diminutive and skittish, and a mantis, perfectly camouflaged for lichen speckled trunks and too quick to photograph. Six distinct (to me) ants segregated across the planks of the platform to the tree it circled.

Rain came and went, but I enjoyed just gazing about me in wonder. I sat and walked in circles, engaged in a near meditative state for nearly four hours. Sifting through my mind, I watched the few birds and coming clouds. Soon I was joined by Sam and we sat through a squall and took in the sun creeping down into the building fog. While it was a shame we’d go the next morning I was glad I made it at all.

I’ll see you next in the Gomantong Caves for some Bird’s Nest Soup.

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Doi Inthanon National Park

Posted in Birding, Birds, Environmentalism, Natural History, Plants, Science, Southeast Asia, Thailand on February 2, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Yesterday I stood on top of Thailand. I made the steep trek and it was well worth it. Don’t leap to conclusions though, I rode a motorcycle.

Doi Inthanon is the highest point in Thailand, as well as in most of mainland Southeast Asia east of that pesky Myanmar and its blasted Northern reaches (I really wanted to summit this part of the continent). At 2565 meters (8,415 feet) tall, this hunk of granite batholith is paltry compared to the Himalayan mountains it leads up to, yet it still feels very tall. Height also means it hosts a broad array of bird species and corresponding habitats (yes, yes it’s ecologically diverse, it’s not all about the birds).

Again, a national park it may be, but most of the lower reaches are deforested and well populated with various hilltribes. Constantly while traveling in Southeast Asia you find your Western ideals confronted (while the thought of thousands of people living in a national park year round isn’t too foreign, having them not be people operating trams or cooking french fries is). I sort of relish these revelations; from squat toilets that don’t flush (meaning you have to wash the offending bits down with ladles of water), to realizing that a vehicle rental company is willing, no, thrilled, to hand over a sound, operational motorcycle with no question of my aptitude astride it. I also rather like that staying within the park, I am not restricted to bland tourist restaurants and can venture over to the immoderate world of greasy food stalls in the nearby village. (People talk about returning from Southeast Asia skinner than when they left. This would be easier to imagine if I wasn’t such a frothing glutton).

Back to nature.

The height of the mountain means it is one of the few places that you get true alpine habitats including Thailand’s only sphagnum bog. This surprised me because I associate peat moss with places like Ireland or Northern Europe and archeology more than the tropical species that bounced about the bog. Certainly the temperature was spot on.

Ryan and I rode up the mountain about 8:30 AM, after checking into Mr. Daeng’s Guest House at 500 baht or about $15 US a night (which seems expensive considering we’ve only been in places for 250 baht or less split but isn’t even). Mr. Daeng has been hosting birders here for years with magnificent birds on property. When scoping the spot the evening before, we’d seen Black-throated Sunbirds (Aethopyga saturata) and Chestnut-flanked White-eyes (Zosterops erythropleurus) both quite dapper looking birds.

The ride to the top was actually very chilly. This is the first and possibly last time I’ll likely ware long underwear on the trip. Of course we didn’t make it to the top without stopping for birds. This was largely done at inopportune blind corners with no shoulders. I spied a Great Barbet (Megalaima virens) just as we rounded one such bend and I spied several more new ones from my wobbly perch atop my motorbike. Another stop for Mrs. Gould’s Sunbird (I’m sorry, I’m all for naming birds after women as much as men….but couldn’t it have been Elizabeth’s Sunbird instead of this silly mouthful?) and Eyebrowed Thrush (Turdus obscurus) stymied an early arrival at the top.

Bird activity was at a high when we arrived; there were gobs of birds, the sun was shinning, and I was on top of the world (well Thailand at least). Ashy-throated Warblers (Phylloscopus maculipennis), a specialty up here (one will not find them elsewhere in Thailand except this peak) were all over the place and numerous sightings meant I finally got a decent photograph of a bird!

The boardwalk around the bog was full of life. Hoary clouds whipped overhead for periodic and welcome sun breaks, but lets be honest, I didn’t notice the cold with this much great nature unfolding. Green-tailed and Mrs. Gould’s Sunbirds were dripping off trees, Rufous-winged Fulvetta (Pseudominla castaneceps) clasped to the sides of the trees, and an Orange-flanked Bush Robin (Tarsiger cyanurus) skulked below the walkway. Once I’d taken a second to relax, I began to truly appreciate the rare beauty of this habitat.

We came just in time to see two varieties of Rhododendron blooming, a burst of white and pink against the shaggy mossy environs. An off shade between umber and chartreuse, everything looked so soft, a nice nap crossed my mind. I’d heard it described as stepping into Lord of the Rings but that was an impoverished description. Once I’d spent time on alone, immersed in the landscape, I felt like I was witnessing a world of gnomes and fairies. The avian characters about were not far off from fantasy.

(An aside: I need to say that I am highly envious of the squirrels here at Mr. Daeng’s – they have a veritable playground all about, dashing down vine and pole highways all about my head as I sit writing this.)

I ran into a Thai birder decked out in a ski mask (this was Siberian cold for the Thai) who introduced himself as Pat. He was there for fun but was training to be a guide (I told him I’d plug him back home). He reconfirmed several of my auditory identifications, pointed out the high elevation only Golden-throated Barbet (Megalaima franklinii). Like most people I’ve met and I’ve spoken English with here, he apologized for his poor ability and in turn I admonished him for the apology. My inability to properly speak the mother tongue is embarrassing enough, let alone my Thai, Spanish, French, or Pig Latin. He had rather good English and I wished him luck.

After chatting with Pat, I couldn’t believe my luck with some of the birds. An Orange-flanked Bush Robin was very cooperative, Bar-throated Minla (Chrysominla strigula) acted as if I was not there (so close I couldn’t focus on them), and Ashy-throated Warblers sat still enough for some real bird photos. Up at the food stands, the coffee shop had both Dark-backed Sibia (Heterophasia melanoleuca) and Rufous-crowned Laughingthrush (Garrulax ruficeps) sneaking in for tidbits when the barista wasn’t looking.

Long days of birding end in exhaustion and this was no different. After more time spent at the top, we drifted down into broadleaved evergreen forest to varying degrees of success. New worlds of nature have the spectacular ability of wearing you down and I was ready for a good long rest at the end of the day. And yet I had to sit down and write.

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Pai(land)

Posted in Birding, Birds, Chiang Mai, Conservation, Natural History, Plants, Science, Southeast Asia, Thailand on January 29, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Pai could easily be seen as just another town on the tourist track. It used to be a sleepy town in a valley in Mae Hong Song Province until recently, when a couple Thai movies were filmed here and tourism exploded for the wealthy Thai. Luckily best parts of Pai is the environment of the surrounding hills.

Climbing from Chiang Mai, you find yourself passing through coffee plantations up to vistas that seem another world away from the plains of Bangkok. The apogee of the drive takes you through what would be considered alpine here, the drier sides of the hills home to long-needled pines, this is another place altogether that I fear I won’t get to fully explore.

Pai is approximately 50 miles from the border of Burma. There is no border crossing in this province, they are few and far between with the volatile neighbor. That doesn’t stop illegal animal trading, drug trafficking, and the hill tribe Karen of the region fleeing over the border into a slightly more tolerant Thailand. The modern sense of borders is certainly challenged here, regional consideration of the people and land seems more important than much else.

While it is a quiet place to relax, there has been turbulence in the past. I suspect people have moved through this region much more recently than 800 years ago, yet the first recorded settlement was of the Shan ethnic group of Burmese origin in a place called Bang Wiang Nuea near modern Pai. This land however was seen to be a part of the Lanna Kingdom of Nothern Thailand. Loyal Lanna were expected to migrate to the outer regions to secure them and soon conflict arose, forcing much of the Shan to migrate back North (established families were allowed to stay by the Prince of Lanna). In the late 1800s there was another push to populate the borders to secure Siam from foreign interests of France (via Laos) and England (via Burma) which resulted in further fighting between the Shan and the Lanna. This one burnt the village to the ground in 1869 and the rebuilding resulted in the modern placement of Pai.

Away into the hills here there are many birds and you would never know of the extensive human history nearby. It remains still one of the remaining expanses of intact forest left in Thailand (Thailand may be 12% National Park, Wildlife Area, etc. but the rest is startlingly devoid of habitat). Being the dry season here, hillsides are turning red and yellow. The Dipterocarp trees (I believe the predominant species being Dipterocarpus tuberculatus), deciduous in response to lack of water, tower above the rest of the forest lofting their massive, withering leaves down to earth. In a month fires, natural or otherwise, will begin to stride over the horizon.

With almost a week here we’ve seen a lot of nature. And while this is not “real” Thailand in a cultural sense it’s been a good introduction to getting about and self sufficiency. 110cc mopeds serve as our transport, an ideal freedom, which we will certainly take advantage of in the future. Simple exploration of the weedy fields adjacent to the guest house has revealed many new birds included our first birds of prey, Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) and Rufous-winged Buzzard (Butastur liventer). Dazzlingly adorned Wire-tailed Swallows (Hirundo smithii) slip over the soft hills and Indian Rollers (Coracias benghalensis) flash bright blue wings against a dusky gray body. The birds still are spectacularly shy and difficult to photograph. My biggest hope is that in long established National Parks (Khao Yai, is the oldest est. 1962) further south will hold better opportunities.

Waterfalls are all about, pouring out of the hills into the valley. Every one of them has a lattice of PVC pipe running out of them, necessary for the fields all about the lowlands. Water attracts birds, which means we’ve explored several, some you can drive right up to and some taking hours over optimistically placed trails to reach.

Elephants used to live in the wild here but now serve only as tourist attractions and further out for work in the forests. They’ve been an important aspect of culture here for ages both symbolically and in practical means. Scott and I both avoided the topic of riding elephants because we expect the other would find this an overly touristy option. After playing in the river with two forty year olds, I realized that even if this was exploitation (which is a western idea certainly), it certainly provided good contact to build an appreciation for the declining Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus).

In terms of bird life, thus far I’ve seen nearly 80 new species of birds. That seems paltry considering the wealth of species here but without extensive knowledge of bird song or guides, I think we’re doing pretty good. Trying to catch glimpses of birds in bamboo undergrowth or high above in back lit flowering Dipterocarps towering over forest, means we inevitably miss things. But if the goal was to arrive and tick off every species, I likely wouldn’t even bother blogging about it and I would likely be a much wealthier person.

Scott, Ryan, and I are parting ways at this point. Scott is headed to India on Tuesday and will stay another day in Pai after we leave tomorrow. Ryan and I plan on getting back to Pai early, renting mopeds, and heading to Doi Inthanon National Park to explore the tallest mountain in Thailand.

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Summer Ornithology

Posted in Bird Banding, Birds, Conservation, Environmentalism, Field Work, Natural History, Oregon, Plants, Science on September 7, 2010 by Simone Lupson-Cook

As the nighthawks fly with lazy yet determined wing beats I know the road to Hart Mountain is approaching. I’ve been greeted by nighthawks here before. I watch them as I turn onto Hart Mountain Road and consider them my welcome home as they wheel in the fading light.

The Warner Wetlands, at the base of Hart Mountain, host many birds and through my binoculars I see a line of American Avocets, their heads tucked into their backs. I don’t stop long. The excitement of returning to Hart Mountain every summer never diminishes. The drive to our camp in Robinson Draw, inside the refuge, takes me past rocky outcroppings, a sea of sage, grasses and snowberry and a small, wary herd of pronghorns. Songbirds flush from the shrubs on the side of the road as my car bumps over the washboard road. The landscapes here look, from afar, as though they are perhaps devoid of life. You can see no trees as you approach Hart. But to think that this area and this habitat have nothing to offer would be a tragic assumption.

My ornithology professor, Dr. Steve G. Herman, has been bringing students here for 25 years. This place is special, even sacred. The draw, with its grove of aspens and the willows dotting the base, are home to countless birds from diminutive Brewer’s Sparrows to Long-eared Owls and Sage Grouse. Although I am a visitor in this landscape I feel a strong connection to it. Does this feeling of connection root in the fact that I have held this draw’s birds in my hands? Looked them in the eye and after close scrutiny been able to determine their age, sex, and even if they were recently warming eggs under their bellies? Perhaps this connection is because a tiny piece of the mystery of this place has been revealed in my hands. Looking into a thick wall of aspens with a spring running though it and tall, lush green grass below, I see great potential for discovery and exploration. To me the chance to explore a patch of habitat like this, in this unique wilderness holds more opportunities for excitement than most I can think of.

Perhaps what I love most about Hart is the pulse of life seemingly indifferent to the outside world. Yes, there are people here (and there used to be cows and sheep) but I imagine Hart (and other areas of southeast Oregon) as an increasingly rare example of a place in the lower 48 that is much the same as it was 500, 1000, 2000 years ago.

As I write below a juniper on the hill overlooking the other side of Robinson Draw, a chipmunk scolds me from around the trunk. The wind blowing through the juniper branches sounds deeper, more fierce than it really is. Beaty’s Butte rises in the distance, fluffy cumulus clouds throw their shadows at her base, and the scattered Mountain Mahoganies conjure images of Africa, though I have never been.

Of what importance is a place like this? I suppose for some, there is none. But for the countless students who have come to this place to learn about it and its birds, the answers are obvious. As you hold a Pacific-slope Flycatcher in your hand, feel its heart beat, see the whiskery feathers that surround its bill, you are changed. Students may enter this classroom, with its walls of aspens and carpets of grass and daisies, knowing nothing about birds. By the end of three weeks here, if they have absorbed the cascade of information coming at them daily, they can tell you intricate details of plumage, condition, age, sex, and molt of a variety of bird species.

Here on Hart coyote song greets you in the morning. The call of a poorwill mingles with the sound of banjos and voices, becoming background to your dreams. A few lanterns glow through the aspens as dusk settles and tents are filled with laughter and the murmur of voices retelling of the discoveries of owl pellets, bird nests, and sapsucker wells.

As I sit under my juniper tree, a female Northern Harrier patrols the canopy of her sagebrush forest and the magic and beauty of Hart Mountain continues untouched and unnoticed by the majority of people.

Hart Mountain National Antelope Wildlife Refuge is located in far South Eastern Oregon. At 278,000 acres, it is one of the largest expanses of shrub steppe habitat free of domestic cattle. Dr. Steve Herman of the Evergreen State College, has been taking students here to learn to band birds, find an appreciation for the high desert, and live in a remote field camp since 1985. Simone and Brendan were both previous students and teaching assistants and are consequentially life long devotees to the landscape.

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MABO 2010

Posted in Birding, Birds, Malheur Bird Observatory, Natural History, Oregon, Plants, Road Tripping, United States on June 5, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

A far parcel of Oregon houses a lasting corner of my imagination. Down a seemingly endless road of silty dust, potholes, and bovine distressed shrub steppe, I find myself at a gate in late May. It keeps happening every year now. No sign of nearby water, yet Franklin’s Gulls (Larus atricilla) dip over the sage and Willet’s (Catoptrophorus semipalmatus) call in the distance. This is a place of seeming discordance.

The Malheur Bird Observatory (MABO) is admittedly a bit of a misnomer. Yes, work that would depict a scientifically founded organization has happened there and many of the field scientists of the West have found themselves there at some point or another. But it’s not a functioning group like say, the Point Reyes Bird Observatory. In the blandest of descriptions, MABO is a nice bit of shrub steppe acreage.

And arguably that’s the best thing about it. Steve Herman, the owner and the inspiration for the gathering of the multi-generational students, just wants to get together with old friends and to make new ones. Simone and I headed out from Seattle and saw people we admittedly could have seen in less than a 10-hour drive. However friends from Wyoming, from Northern California, and elsewhere attended. It was a sort of central meeting point.

At MABO we enjoy the company of our fellows, relax in the sweet smelling patch of intact shrub steppe, become enveloped by the dusty loam, and most importantly – watch birds! An experienced birder of the Western United States will recognize Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as one of the best birding sites around. Not only does it house a huge system of wetlands that nurse many a breeding waterbird but during migration songbirds descend on the refuge headquarters and other areas with planted trees, the artificial lushness we cultivate. So amongst the Black Terns (Chlidonias niger), the White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi), and the Willets, you find Western Tanagers (Piranga ludoviciana), Swainson’s Thrushes (Catharus ustulatus), and Townsend’s Warblers (Dendroica townsendi). Frequent “rarities” attract the so called “elite.”

As much as part of me wanted to dash out and find as many birds as possible over the weekend, a more persistent part of me wanted to slow down a bit. I did just that for the weekend. Sure, Simone and our close circle of friends (housed within a larger circle of Hermanites) got out and birded. But it wasn’t rushed and we enjoyed quality not quantity.

Although the refuge headquarters didn’t quite live up to the fame of pulling rare birds this year, we had some fun stuff. The “rarest” bird of our stay was a Black-and-White Warbler (Mniotilta varia), a bird that isn’t typically western but because it winters in Northwestern Mexico, tends to show in regular vagrancy. Also out of place, a Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) worked the compound of cottonwoods.

But I had just as much fun watching the family of Great-horned Owls (Bubuo virginianus) and Black-billed Magpies (Pica hudsonia) both with recently fledged chicks. An opportunity to watch awkward adolescence, full of imaginative approaches to locomotion is full of endless hilarity. I was disappointed when the Magpie fledglings moved out of range of easy observation on the second day.

Further out from the headquarters or MABO there’s much more. Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) spurred up periodically in a wet field to sing their hearts out before flashing back to hide in the grass they so like. I often wish I could spy on them in their moist domain. Ibis dotted the countryside, either flying by in formation or probing spotted wetlands. Crane cacophony rolled through the dust as we sped past ditches brimming with ruddy Cinnamon Teal (Anas cyanoptera). A well established (multi-generational) Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) nest we’d discovered the year before was active with well developed young. Just beyond the dwindling town of French Glen, at the base of the east climbing slope of Steens Mountain is Paige Springs Campground. I’ve never seen Yellow-breasted Chat’s (Icteria virens) in higher numbers or so atypically visible as at the entrance to the campground.

Wildlife in general abounds in Malheur (where cows haven’t been grazing). We watched a Long-tailed Weasel (Mustela frenata) hunting Belding’s Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi) at the Malheur Field Station. Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) strutted through the shrub steppe. Coyotes (Canis latrans) rang out every night, culminating in a shouting match with our amassed dogs.

The time always comes to say goodbye (if I have anything to say about it, I’ll soon stop having to say goodbye to exploration and do it for a living). All our dear friends parted ways, we brushed off the soot of good times, sighed our last breath of sage, and hit the road home. Rain ushered our departure and the Cryptobiotic crust gleamed as we bounced down the road in admiration of a greatly undervalued landscape of shrub and steppe in the Great Basin.

Check out my photos from this year and last year on Flickr.

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Malheur Bird Observatory Time!

Posted in Birds, Natural History, Oregon, Plants, Road Tripping, Science on May 27, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

Simone, a large number of our cohorts, and I are off to the Malheur Bird Observatory for Memorial Day weekend. It’s a tradition upheld by Steve Herman, seeing as he is the proud owner of the observatory. So – down to Central Oregon for the weekend! It’s a time of celebration, old friends and new, wonderful birding, and peace. I for one can’t wait. You’ll hear more about it when we get back. Here’s some shots I took last year for now: