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“And now for something completely different.”

Posted in Birds, Natural History, Washington, United States, Western Forests with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 26, 2013 by Brendan McGarry

Oregon White Oak, Early Spring

Strip malls are the essence of vitriol, rising at the back of my throat. Who do people need several Starbucks or Walgreen’s within blocks of each other? The driver of the truck that was pushing us through this distracting mess of concrete read my mind.

“Lovely isn’t it?”

If I blurred my vision against the skyline, between the squat McDonald’s and Taco Bells, I could see twisted crowns here and there. Letting myself imagine we were in fact cruising through a Oregon white oak forest instead of what had replaced it, my heart rate slowed a bit. I’d driven this road half a dozen times with Simone, my friend, contributor to wingtrip, and pertinent at the time, a Falconer.

Rounding a corner, I looked at a corner lot that used to be full of mature Oregon white oak, now full of tasteless condominiums. They were built right up to the edge of the parcel of land that was our destination. Looping through the cemetery, we parked and geared up.

I’m always embarrassed by how much fussing I typically need to do when embarking on a photographic endeavor. But Simone had me matched, not with gadgets, but with animals to curtail. Otis, the diminutive beagle-jack Russell cross was quivering with excitement. He got a shock collar slipped over his head, not because he’s a bad dog but because we’d be close to a road and he’s prone to disobedience when on the scent of rabbits. Simone had to don her vest, a glove for holding her bird, grab a bloody container of miscellaneous animal bits, and grabbed an ax handle for beating brush. Finally, the man of the hour, Chase the red-tailed hawk, needed to be taken out of his box. All this was done in the parking lot of the funeral home, where, judging by the number of cars, a service was taking place. Simone’s been coming here since she first started as an apprentice and no one has ever said a thing to her about parking here. Then again, would you reprimand a woman holding a hawk?

We started out through the scotch broom and blackberries that are slowly being hacked back by the nearby community college. This is good for the potential of restoring a small bit of native Western Washington prairie but no necessarily great for Simone’s ability to go hawking. We were headed straight for the imposing mass of Himalayan blackberries.

You almost always look regal when carrying a bird of prey on your gloved arm. With Otis bounding behind her, Simone walked partway down the field before removing Chase’s hood. Releasing his jesses, he flew off with a jingle of bells, heading straight for his hunting perch, an adjacent telephone pole.

Falconry is not a hobby, it’s a way of life and something that you dedicate your life to. That’s one of many reasons why I’ve never delved into it myself, despite knowing that if I was interested, I’d have a teacher and support. When it’s hawking season in Washington, Simone is fully committed to flying her birds. She spends her time plowing through trashy lots of blackberries in Western Washington and agricultural fields East of the mountains with Chase, cruising random ponds for her Cooper’s Hawk Hula, and training her other two imprint falcons in between. This is a full time job, not a half-hearted hobby.

One day a few months ago, Simone, our visiting friend Danner, and I were headed up to go birding in the Skagit Flats. Danner and I met at her house around 9AM on a cold December morning, a lazy hour for birders, and apparently even more so for falconers. Moments later Simone burst through the door, soaking wet, holding her Cooper’s Hawk. She was beaming and informed us that Hula had gone for a drake mallard in the middle of a pond. Being at most a third of the weight of a mallard but possesing the notorious tenacity of an Accipiter, she wasn’t going to let go of her quarry. Simone had to crash into the pond, filling her pockets with water (containing her iPhone amongst other items) to keep Hula from drowning herself. This was all recounted joyously, while Danner and I stood and listened incredulously.

I stood by the edge of a blackberries as Simone crashed through, disregarding the brambles clawing at her. Otis, following suit, wiggled beneath the hooped vines and quickly began to whine in excitement. Chase watched from above, calling occasionally, waiting for his partners on the ground to flush prey.

Early on Chase made a dive and narrowly missed a rabbit dashing through an opening. While my intention was to stand back and watch, I quickly got caught up in the hunt. Cars zipped by a few hundred feet away, but easily forgotten as we were all focused, watching to see if Chase spied anything from his perch.

Chase started calling more frequently and soon we heard the scream of another red-tailed hawk. A pair of them circled in, unhappy that Chase was here, probably quite near their nest. They were a distracting element, always on the periphery, taunting and threatening this interloper with bells and loops on his feet. However, despite outnumbering him, they never got close enough to lay a talon on Chase.

Plummeting down and pounding into the ground, Chase was impressive. There were many near misses. I held my breath and I watched him try to find an opening on a rabbit that was frozen mere feet from me. All the while Otis was baying with excitement sounding like he was being killed, not following the trail of a rabbit.

The bloodlust I felt during this hunt is abnormal. I didn’t necessarily wish any of the rabbits we were chasing harm, but my presence inherently meant I did. Intellectually I enjoy the idea of hunting for my own meat and I’ve taken the lives of other animals in order to eat them but this rabbit was going to go to Chase. There’s an ethical cascade of issues that can arise hunting with a bird of prey, especially a bird that was once in the wild, like Chase. But I’m not one to start a debate on the subject of Falconry. I will say this: every Falconer I’ve met is beyond doting of the birds they partner with and respectful of the lives they take. If you find fault with this practice, I suggest you spend some time out in the field with the practitioners before you truly judge.

Our jaunt ended without rabbit blood but we’d had a good ramble though the patch. Simone lured Chase back with tasty cut up quail bits and we wandered back through the oaks, imagining we were in expansive prairie and not a remnant grove. Even with his hood on, he looked regal with beautiful coloration and an inherent power that had been demonstrated all afternoon. Red-tailed hawks may be common in numbers, but their grace in the air is breathtaking and you can’t help but admire every bird seen after hunting.

Yet, I still don’t completely get the dedication. Simone and Otis were covered in scratches, Otis had blood streaks across his face. I remembered that this favorite hunting spot was spitting distance from a cemetery, an wrecking yard, and a housing development. Did I mention that Simone is vegetarian?

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Bad Pictures of “Good Birds”

Posted in Birding, Birds, United States, Washington with tags , , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2013 by Brendan McGarry

Dawn was just breaking as we sped by Bellingham. I stared out the window, trying to quell my anxiety. Bald eagles held sentry over every field and rain was imminent, sodden gray clouds making it impossible to tell the North Cascades arched just to the East. Chasing vagrant birds makes me anxious.

I have inconsistent luck finding vagrants. I say “vagrants” specifically instead of “rare birds” because plenty of birds considered rare may also be resident. Recounting my American Birding Association list (a list of birds, vagrant or otherwise, confirmed and seen in the contiguous US, Canada, and Alaska), I was mostly reminded of past failures. For some reason, the worst culprits seemed to be ducks and gulls. These are big, hardy birds, fairly easy to see. So how in the world could I expect to see two birds that would fit in one of my back pockets?

Dashing off to see a bird, whether it’s a vagrant from Asia or simply an unusual occurrence for your state or county, is a time honored tradition in the birding world. People drive and fly countless miles, spending hours, even days standing in wait or circling around suspicious looking bushes searching for birds. We spend lots of money to see them too. The ABA (American Birding Association), even has a code scale by which to rate species occurrence. With codes ranging from 1 to 6, (1 are regularly occurring, 6 are birds that cannot be found e.g. those extinct or extirpated), the vagrants of the day were a 3 (Rare) and a 4 (Casual).

However, to be quite honest, birding by numbers makes me cringe.

I’ve struggled with the inherent issues of chasing birds elsewhere, so I’ll keep it short. I find chasing birds unromantic, fairly unintellectual, and resource guzzling.  I also dislike the value system it places on an order of vertebrates that are all of worth and interest.  Yet, I am still compelled to do it because I have a twisted love of seeing rare or unusual species.

Mulling this over, my parents and I crossed the border into Canada. While my parents are not ardent birders, they enjoy seeing birds more than your average person and we enjoy going on trips together. In fact, over the course of my adolescence they were darn-right indulgent of my passion for birds. Who uses their hard-earned American vacation time to take their kid on a birding trip to Southern Texas?

Our directions were very specific. Drive to Queens Park in New Westminster, a sleepy suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia. Once there, walk to the playground and shuffle around until you see the bird.

Bird one was a Code 4. A small, old-world flycatcher with red flanks and a blue tail. No one had seen it when we arrived, so we shuffled around, squinting in the understory of second growth Douglas Fir with the rest of the rabble there at 8 AM on a Sunday. The bird has a very descriptive name, the Red-flanked Bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus). And for people who really don’t get birding, this won’t make any sense at all, I’d seen one before.

But, not in North America, and that was the crux of it. The last time I’d seen one was on top of the tallest mountain in Thailand, Doi Inthanon, where they winter. I was anxious to see it here and understandably nervous we’d driven 130 miles for nothing. I wanted it for my ABA list, not just my life list (the total list of species I’ve seen in my life). And unlike quite a few other occasions, we managed to see the bird within twenty minutes of arrival. The weight on my shoulders was lifted.

A horrible picture of the Red-flanked Bluetail, the best I could get considering it was flighty and I don't have a 600mm lens.We followed it around for an hour, watching it flit about the understory just like I’d seen them do in Thailand. This little female bird, pleasantly adorned with reddish flanks and a blue tail (though not as striking as the males I saw), seemed totally at home here. Afterall, it’s a bird that breeds in Northern Eurasia and winters in the more temperate regions of Southern Asia. While I had my doubts about it returning to breed, I expected that unlike some birds that show up in strange places (like a Summer Tanager that showed up in Seattle in December), it was hardy enough.

A male Red-flanked Bluetail on Doi Inthanon in Thailand.The second bird, less of a priority and only rated as a 3, was just up the road in Vancouver. True to the oddity of vagrant birds, it was in a residential alleyway. Also a bird I’d seen before (but in Ireland), this was a stunning Eurasian finch called a Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla).

The Brambling, just being a regular bird in a bush.Similarly, seeing the Brambling was a breeze. We drove up, got out of the car, walked into the alleyway, and there it was. Another Northerly bird, it seemed totally at home, happily sharing a tangle of bushes with our native sparrows and finches. Maybe it was glad to have some company, being a rather gregarious bird, found in flocks of thousands in it’s normal range. A group of birders had gathered by the time we left, gushing over the Brambling, oblivious to the rain and the dingy alleyway they stood in.

My paparazzi shot of the Brambling. My parents and I didn’t do a lot more birding that day, but made quick stops to see Snowy Owls along Boundary Bay and then in the Skagit Valley to see a Gyrfalcon. Both are birds many birders have never seen, especially if not from Northern areas. We drove over 300 miles in a day to see all this and some might call this odd.

And really, it’s all too easy to flaunt how strange the world of birding is, but I do it all the same. However, I’ll never be convinced that seeing a bird far from home, out of place, is more exciting than seeing it in it’s natural habitat. Chasing vagrant birds is a detached extrapolation of studying birds and while I may sneer at it, if it makes people get excited about and care for birds and nature, I’m a fan.

 

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A 2012 (Photographic) Year in Review

Posted in Birding, Conservation, Malheur Bird Observatory, Mt. Rainier, Olympic National Park, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Wisconsin with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2013 by Brendan McGarry

Forming habits around my creative work is always a boon. So, I figure that since I did this last year, I might as well do it again. Some of the photos may be redundant from previous posts but my guess is that most won’t notice or won’t mind.

Another year has passed. My best friends are no longer school peers but life colleagues. My association with the Pacific Northwest region deepens, I’m at a point in my life where a lot of naturalists begin to recognize their home ecosystem. Yet, I also recognize there are many new things yet to see all over the world. That makes me antsy.

Comparing years to one another is a bit of folly but one can’t help but do it. The year of 2012 immediately seems less vibrant than 2011 simply because I didn’t spend over a sixth of the year in the Asian tropics (the farthest I got from home was Wisconsin, a wonderful place nonetheless). However, I did continue to broaden my understanding of the natural world which is the point. My time in 2012 was spent on home ground, on familiar ground. The thing is, that we never know everything.

I’ve never spent so much time in the Olympics or on Mt. Rainier. Even if those repeat visits were to the same spots, guiding people, repeating the same facts, things were always different. I saw magical things in 2012, some of which I managed to photograph and some of which I didn’t. For example I watched a male and female peregrine falcon catch a pigeon in swirling victory mere feet over my head from a kayak near the Ballard locks. That spectacular display of teamwork suffices as memory. The young black bear at Sunrise on Mt. Rainier licking the sap from a freshly peeled fir trunk? I photographed that.

This year I (nearly) made summit on the Brothers, a double peak most Seattlites recognize across the Sound in the Olympics. I got my hands dirty in my friends’ fields, helping build an organic farm, while ravens checked our progress overhead and Pacific chorus frogs jumped between my feet. Regular attendance to the bounty of mountain wildflowers found me all the more impressed with my home. I’d say 2012 was a success.

So for the next year? Somewhat financially grounded from international travel (only momentarily), I plan to see more birds, more corners of my state, and learn even more. That’s always the goal. This year might see me pursuing science or pursuing writing and photography or both (why not?). I’ll probably add farm hand (in the beautiful San Juan Islands) to my title as well. I’ll keep guiding people and sharing my passion. I’ll keep my childish imagination and poetic fascination for this planet. And this problem with verbosity.


A good year to everyone.  Thanks for all the support!

(A finale note – as I attempt to move in the direction of supporting myself with my work, I’d like to point out that all photos can be viewed and purchased at http://www.brendanmcgary.com.  I’m open to all inquiries on writing, photography, and naturalist work.  I love guiding and teaching and would be happy to do either in the Pacific Northwest.  Thanks so much for reading, looking, even peeking!)

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Red and Yellows, Fall in Wisconsin

Posted in Birding, Fire Ecology, Natural History, United States, Wisconsin on November 22, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

A patchwork fall decline spread below as the plane dipped into Madison. Washington is not known for autumn color, vine maples, growing as an unassuming shrub in most places, are the most assertive of native hues. Wisconsin, I would soon learn, had a plethora of colors to choose from.

 

Intimating that the landscape below reflected a native state would be a falsehood. Less than 200 years ago the scene below would have been of prairie with encroaching hardwoods in an eons long land struggle. The area we call Wisconsin was very different before plow, cow, and the human aversion to wildfire. Buffalo would have roamed the grasslands and the only the toughest of trees would have been able to stand strong against the annual fires that renewed the quilted prairie. My home of Washington state can easily bemoan the loss of stable ecosystems, of species, of diversity. But our state still resembles what it was, albeit less grandiose. We have also lost much of our native prairies and shrub steppe in the same schemes that have gobbled Wisconsin’s. I guess we’ve just had less time to muck things up.

 

My first walk through the beautiful hues of fall was with my dear friends Dave and Jamie, my hosts and impetus for my trip. I’ll never travel somewhere without binoculars, meaning that plans to scamper off are never so spur of the moment that I’ll not consider birding, but this wasn’t necessarily a birding trip. The season wasn’t known for birds and I simply wanted to see a new place. Cherokee Marsh, my first step outside, embodied exactly that.

The overcast day lit the parkland in subdued tones complementing colors dripped across the landscape. None of the birds were new, laughably common to the ardent birder, but I struggled to think about the last time I’d seen an actual blue jay, or seen more than one white-throated sparrow foraging along the treeline. American tree sparrows were always a treat and stayed true to their names. Warblers were scant but an ovenbird walked down the path before us and the constant chip of myrtle warblers accompanied me every day during my visit. The familiar trumpets of sandhill cranes summoned memories of wetlands bordered by shrub steppe not prairie, my connection to them wholly different. Canada geese flew over in loud strung out skeins just like anywhere up north.

 

Birds may have shared similarities to home but the plant life was far flung from my world of evergreens. Maples, oaks, basswoods, hickories – the species were all new to me. My favorite of them was the burr oak, one of the most fire resistant of the bunch with a fine shield of cork swaddling their trunks. Shag-bark hickory was a close second, simply because of the wonderful loose texture of a mature tree’s trunk. No matter that my friends didn’t know all the native grasses, their mosaic was unlike any I’d seen. Seedheads had long replaced the prairie flowers but this made for interesting investigations too.

I can’t help but compare what’s familiar with the new, a habit that’s useful but is also a distraction. The Rocky Mountains and vast plains may separate my chosen home from that of my friends’ but it’s still in the Northern Hemisphere. They too had great amounts of ice cover and scour their land. The cordilleran sheet sent out the Green Bay spur into what would be called Wisconsin. Washington had a spur called the Vashon lobe that crept into a river valley that would become Puget sound and the strait of Juan De Fuca. Naturalists in both places appreciate the hardscaping provided by the ice, viewing it as a part of our heritage.

Nothing beats having the time to poke around and on a clear, cold day I took off on a bike to explore the expansive University of Wisconsin campus. I followed the contour of lake Mendota eventually leading out to picnic point, a popular wooded peninsula jutting into the water. Flocks of palm warblers, a different race from those that show up in Washington, flitted low through the open woodlands, pumping their tails enthusiastically. Strolling towards the point I enjoyed the intense yellows of the fall palate, the few hints of red were from northern cardinals and red-bellied woodpeckers. Out on the point I looked across to Madison and thought about two of my heroes Aldo Leopold and John Muir, both of whom had a home and found inspiration in this part of the world.

 

Cycling back I saw some other inhabitants. A turkey, simply sitting by the side of the bike trail was unassumingly scratching at the dirt. My jaw dropped a bit and I slowed down (this is not the norm back home). It looked back, suspicious, as if to say “what’re you looking at freak?”

Sound being such an inherent part of my understanding of the natural world, new places are a whole new challenge. Every utterance seems different, out of the context, and during the times I was able to sit quietly I would try to sort through the birds I could hear. Red-bellied woodpeckers reminded me of the black-backed woodpeckers I spent hours with in the Northern Sierras, with odd raspy croaking. The chip notes of cardinals echoing through the trees were not new but so far flung from the cardinals I know best in the American Southwest. Myrtle warblers, less common than their counterpart Audubon’s in Washinton, dripped from trees around Madison; their skewed call took some getting used to. White-throated sparrows surprisingly took me the least effort to recognize and meld into my aural vocabulary.

Just Northeast of Madison sit some forest land covering the largest hills in proximity. Amongst them is Devil’s Lake, a glacial lake in a quartzite basin damned on either end by morraines left during the previous ice age. Yet, just as that description is too simplistic to describe how the basin was formed, it does no justice to the beauty of the lake. Bordered by tall, pinkish walls that attract rock climbers, the forested cliffs are an emblem of beauty in that part of Wisconsin. The hills that Devil’s lake crouches in are part of a defunct mountain range, the Baraboo mountains. When I wandered off to explore, I didn’t realize the rock I was scrambling over rock that was 1.6 billion years old. Geologically speaking, most major land features I’ve been around have been infantile in comparison. This rock began as sand, conglomerated into sandstone and yet again warped, pressurized, to become enduring quartzite. I assumed that the valley where Devil’s lake sat was carved by the Green Bay Lobe that extended along the Eastern edge of the Baraboos thirteen thousand years ago. I was wrong, this feature was prexisting and likely where the Wisconsin river used to run. Metamorphic quartzite is far too strong to get pushed around by some ice, it merely got a nice glacial polish.

 

Lonely oak woodlands in autumn are next to none. It was a clear day and sunlight filtered through the rainbow of fall overhead. Little stirred, these forests were home for the breeding season to neotropical migrants, but the doors were closed to most business till next spring. Aldo Leopold’s red lanterns illuminated the floor, but this wasn’t a swamp for quail and I had neither gun nor bird dog. However, I had my ears, my eyes, and I continued to wander till the shadows were long, pondering prairies, oak woodlands, glaciers, and great naturalists.

 

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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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In a Rut

Posted in Conservation, Current Events, Environmentalism, Natural History, Olympic National Park, United States, Washington with tags , , , , , on August 9, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

Sometimes the birds just don’t want to cooperate. Sure, I could hear many but I couldn’t see a damn thing. Down the slope of Hurricane Ridge I was squinting across, only six trees were likely candidates for a Olive-sided Flycatcher I could hear pipping away, but no tapered silhouette materialized. American Pipits spirited about overhead and in open alpine meadows directly in front of us, apparently invisible. Don’t get me wrong here, I love wildflowers, but I was begging to lose steam talking about them. Something alive and lacking roots was in order for variety’s sake.

Those snow patches were in an oddly exposed southern face….No, not snow, Mountain Goats!

There’s a million and one stories about introduced species, intentional or otherwise, the vast majority are not positive. How Mountain Goats got to the Olympic Peninsula isn’t a mystery, a few sportsmen got it in their heads in 1920s that they could do with some more things to hunt in the Olympics. Apparently Black-tailed Deer and the largest subspecies of Elk in North America, the Roosevelt Elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti), weren’t enough.

In a place that designated a National Park, a Biosphere Reserve, and a World Heritage Site partially because of marked floral endemism, (and notable endemic fauna) you might guess why a significant introduced goat population is be a problem. (Ok, ok, they are actually goat-antelopes but who’s counting?) The point is they trample, munch, and wallow in all those gaudy, endemic, fragile plants I was half complaining about earlier, (I also incessantly have to remind my fellow mammals to not trample them so I can’t really blame the goats too much).

The goats have been a point of contention for a long time. The park service initially tried to remove the over 1000 strong population by live capture during the 1980s. This was dangerous, eventually deemed impractical at best, taking care of 521 animals. Between some hunting outside the park and the removals, the population dropped back to a somewhat reasonable number. In 1997 there was a push to shoot the remainder but public opinion apparently shut that idea down.

So then this guy hiking in the Olympics in 2010 got gored by a male Mountain Goat in rut. He died. People got upset (understandably) and there’s a lawsuit pending. Knowing full well that mountain goats are aggressive and potentially dangerous, it’s still easy to want to get closer and we hiked on intent on better views.

We’d been watched the group of seven goats, three of them adorable yearlings, when the largest and closest animal, dashed inexplicably closer to where we stood on the trail.  While rushing away in terror I also noticed he was shedding his winter wool coat quite rapidly, tufts wafting off as he sprinted.  I thought of the warm blankets the people of the Olympic Peninsula would have traded for with tribes from near the goats’ native range in the Cascades. Then I noticed the man running in our direction and realized why the goats were running.

I’ve never had a ranger at park tell me to throw rocks at a wild animal until this year. Much less have I ever seen a ranger running full-tilt down a trail shooting a paintball gun at Mountain Goats. They’d gotten much too close to the trail, following about all the wonderful annual foliage in the subalpine swale just below us.  Deterring animals from living in areas where high numbers of people visit is the temporary solution.

I don’t envy the National Park service, trying to appease animals rights interests by not killing the goats but being asked to do so by concerned hikers (and likely a few botanists). Sure these animals shouldn’t be there, but they are always enjoyable to see. And quite honestly I didn’t mind seeing rangers shoot hot pink paintballs at seven caterwauling goats. It was possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen all summer (however let’s pray next summer consists of something better).

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Summertime?

Posted in Birding, Birds, Migration, Natural History, Seattle, United States, Washington with tags , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

It’s rather amusing to think about the Summer Solstice in the Pacific Northwest, especially considering the weather today. Here in Seattle, we don’t consider it summer until after the fourth of July. Yet many of the breeding birds are done singing by then, having had at least one brood. So many of us grow up with these strange ingrained memories of birds singing on bright summer days.

I’ve been bemoaning that I feel like I missed spring. I did plenty of birding and it’s not as if the birds are totally done. Yet, it feels like the weeks are slipping by, as work not specifically ornithological keeps me distracted. I guess I’m feeling out of touch. My journal, of what I’ve heard and seen almost every day helps, but doesn’t make up for the early hours traipsing about during point counts or banding.

So, I’ve decided that I wanted to commemorate the passing of our the longest day of the year by listing some of the more notable bird encounters, sightings, and aural identifications during this spring away field biology. These are encounters not sought after. In a way I’m grasping for content where I haven’t had time to seek it out; however I think noting the every day is just as valuable as seeking out the obscure. Establishing a norm is understanding for stasis, for conservation.

March 23, 2012 17:10 – The air feels of spring and technically it is. Sitting on a bench on the edge of Union Bay at the Montlake Fill, I’m privy to territorial stirrings. Three Virginia Rails call within 80 meters of my seat. One suddenly appears, bounds across an opening in awkward half flight, jumping gait, and crashes into another rail at the edge of a bank of cattails. This is the first time I’ve ever seen rails physically attacking one another, presumably because of their veiled lives. The attack lasts a second but feels monumental.

April 21, 2012 15:20 – Spring in the Hoh Rainforest. Blooming Salmonberry with Rufous Hummingbirds in attendance. Varied Thrush are tantalizingly close but still unseen, their insect calls reverberating in my ears. Pacific Wren are always singing but they seem particularly brazen today, standing ground on their nurse log perches when I approach. Everything is bathed in a sunlit lime.

April 29, 2012 6:45 – The pair of them are flying right at eye level in early morning glow. The tiercel, he’s notabley smaller, lofts up to land on a light pole along the freeway. The hen, seemingly floating by, suddenly tucks and drops out of view below the bridge. I can’t complain about having Peregrine Falcons on my morning commute.

May 26, 2012 12:20 – There’s an adult Bald Eagle flying over the freeway, being dive bombed by a Red-tailed Hawk. I’m driving with my mom, trying to split my attention between the road and the birds. An American Crow joins, focusing on the hawk. The eagle does a series of barrel rolls, extending its talons at its oppressor. They form a strange triple tiered circus act that begs a giggle. Birders aren’t always the safest of drivers.

May 30, 2012 15:40 – My first Willow Flycatcher is calling somewhere amongst the Red Alder stand before us. I’m guiding a group through the Hummock Trail in Mt. St. Helen’s National Monument. There’s no time to suss out the bird, to actually see it. Satisfaction in hearing a fitzbew will have to suffice, and it does.

June 3, 2012 11:00 – Hurricane Ridge is coming to life. American Pipits are already twittering about the matted ground where the snow has been peeled back by the sun. An Olympic Marmot lay sunning itself, probably just now unburied from a winter slumber. The precipitous icy peaks, gashed by glaciers and the elements, remind us that it’s not yet spring. In trade for a good portrait, I let a hungry Common Raven take a look in the car trunk.

June 13, 2012 13:00 – I’m talking to one of my Wilderness First Responder classmates during lunch. I hear the piercing call of an Osprey and look up to see one high up, performing a display I’ve never seen. A second bird joined higher still, the first continued a series of shallow dives while thrusting its legs out, screaming insistently. Getting home I discover (as I surmised) that this was likely a male bird displaying to a female. Nuptial displays are bizarre no matter the species.

June 14, 2012 15:20 – Two Common Nighthawks are flying over the field by the Environmental Learning Center at Discovery Park. I’m supposed to be listening to a lecture on reducing dislocated limbs in my Wilderness First Responder class but I’m highly distracted when we’re outside. These two goatsuckers are a surprise and are high enough that they only caught my eye by the pattern of their flight. Normally I detect them by their strange mechanical call. I wonder if they are nesting nearby.

June 21, 2012 12:57 – As I am writing this, a group of exceptionally noisy Bushtits are at my window, dangling about the birch just outside. I presume this is the pair I’ve been seeing all spring, now towing around their fully grown young, just barely discernible from their parents. The fledglings are incessantly crying for food, the parents hurriedly searching for morsels, shoving them in ravenous mouths. Just as I am about to turn away, a crow swoops in, presumably to grab a little bushtit morsel. Alarm calls irrupt but in seconds things are back to normal.

I feel a bit better now that I look at it this way.

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Life. Death. All in the backyard.

Posted in Birds, Conservation, Environmentalism, Natural History, Seattle, United States, Washington with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on June 7, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

Feathers were strewn everywhere. Body and head asunder. Something had been eating the skull custard. A murder in my backyard.

I’d been walking my bike to the back patio of my urban home in Seattle when I’d been stopped in my tracks. A bird lay there, dead, left in the middle of the cement. Immediately my mind tore into superstitious, paranoid thoughts. Was this an ill omen? Who was the culprit? The neighbor’s cat, who roams freely, accompanying me while I tend my vegetable garden? Was I responsible because I’d not chased him away? Or was this something entirely more natural, a Cooper’s, a Sharp-shinned Hawk?

This mess was a female American Robin (Turdus migratorius). Most likely the one I’d been watching collect heaping billfulls of earthworms for nestlings nearby. I had a selfish moment of annoyance. I’d just swept the patio, now it was littered with feathers and a half eaten corpse. What a strange reaction to a gruesome death. Annoyance at the inconvenience?

Walking inside, I pondered how I should be reacting. A couple attitudes, moral directions presented themselves.

On one hand, this is just a part of life. Mortality, particularly in short-lived species like American Robins, is commonplace. Death is often apparent during the breeding season. Failed nests, naïve fledglings, there’s a reason many species have large clutches. The American Robin population is generally increasing, so certainly there was nothing to worry about. While I know these things are true, I’ve never been able to fully submit to this scientifically objective tone. I’d argue that most good biologists have emotional attachment to whatever they study and generally care more than their publications admit.

(And, I do enjoy seeing a natural predator catch prey, but that doesn’t mean I relish death.)

On the flip side is my desire to honor or rather cherish all life. Assigning values to different species seems absurd, horrible in fact. Yet we do it all the time, from valuing vegetables over weeds or killing mosquitoes while encouraging lady beetles. Life isn’t so simplistic to totally adhere to one train of thought. I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t be more upset if I’d found say a Cooper’s Hawk or even an American Crow dead in my yard.

However, what if I was indirectly responsible for the death of this bird? I connected the dots: petting the neighbor’s cat, encouraging it to come back, giving it an opportunity to catch this mother robin. There’s an entirely different issue here:  this cat was outdoors in the first place. Outdoor pet cats probably kill hundreds of millions of songbirds every year. This is an inflammatory issue, but you can’t ignore that fact that house cats are not natural and can have a serious impact. With an estimated 60 million pet cats in the United States alone (many of course are kept indoors), if even half are outside and kill a bird every year, that’s around 30 million birds dead of just one of many human causes*. I myself have had pet cats that went outside too.

So basically, should I be moved to tears or stoically look on as a trained scientist? As usual, I landed somewhere in the middle. There’s a good chance that if this female had a nest, it would now fail and that was a sad image; baby birds wasting away in the nest. Males do help with rearing young but it’s not typically a one bird job. Yet, as I said, American Robins are extremely common and that this was not a disaster for the species.  However, whether or not we choose to acknowledge it, humans have impacts on other species, even the common ones.

Mulling it all over I’d concluded that another bird had likely killed the robin based on the state of the corpse. The scientist in me decided that I might as well use this as learning experience, I started to do a little research on American Robins.  Maybe I could also figure out the age of the bird or something else. Time for some forensics.

Just as I had that thought, I heard the ominous rush of scavenger wings outside. Crow wings. It doesn’t take long for a mess to be cleaned up. More wingbeats and knocking on the gutters. I crept outside to watch the crow and its prize.  I wasn’t quiet enough. Flushing, it left a robin corpse in the gutter. Maybe that full crop was going to some babies. From death comes life? I continued thinking about how to approach life and death in my backyard and I heard the crow return two more times.

Inspecting my patio a half an hour later, I found no head and no body.  Somehow this resolved the issue for me.

As I stood there with feathers strewn about my feet, Bewick’s Wrens were noisily herding their shakily flighted fledglings about the yard. Death and life were spinning about, even in my urban yard.

* a few sources and extra info for those who get up in arms about cats: http://library.fws.gov/bird_publications/songbrd.html ; http://www.fws.gov/birds/mortality-fact-sheet.pdf ; http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/06/cats-tnr-birds-feral

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Malheuring Around Pt. 3 (Conclusion)

Posted in Birding, Birds, Conservation, Environmentalism, Malheur Bird Observatory, Natural History, Oregon, Road Tripping, United States with tags , , , , , , , , on May 23, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

The unflagging exuberance of young birders (or simply those enamored with nature) is draining on those even just slightly older. Certainly it’s uplifting and I felt energized as we left the Sage Grouse Lek on Foster Flats. Energy was entirely welcome after all, we still had a full day ahead of us.

Vesper Sparrows (Pooecetes gramineus) and Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) serenaded us down from the lek “parking lot.” In a couple slimy sections of the road, I inwardly thanked our lucky stars for making it up. After the other visitors had squirmed upslope, the track was a sloppy mess of mud ruts. The refreshing air wafted through aromatic shrubs had a calming effect though. The were windows rolled down and ears pricked at notes from the steppe.

There.

Just as I expressed doubts about the promise we’d see a certain sage obligate, we heard cheery, ebullient notes tossed across the shrubs. The Sage Sparrow (Amphispiza belli) is a delicately colored bird, enjoyable and beautiful in subdued shades of gray and brown in the way we find subtle geology dazzling. I’d also reckon it has one of the prettier sparrow songs. The first individual sat dutifully staking claim, broadcasting for mates long enough for Eric and I to creep near clutching cameras.

Before we made it back to the highway we couldn’t resist a few more stops to enjoy the sunny morning. A Ferruginous Hawk (Buteo regalis) sailed far above and more sparrows sang around us. We all developed platforms of mud, inches thick, caked to our soles that had to be scraped off each time before returning to the van.

Already pleased with the sights, we curved down the highway to the The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Diamond Craters Outstanding Natural Area. The mention of the BLM never gets me excited except knowing that the land has few rules to fetter the adventurous. When entering their properties (or as many say, “our property, our land”), I vacillate between imagining open pit mines and overgrazed riparian areas festering with watery cow pies. “The Bureau of Land Mismanagement.” Let it be said that the road we traveled in to see the lek was a derelict BLM road, so I can’t entirely grouse. Diamond Crater’s must be the crown gem of all the BLM land.

What pleased me the most about visiting this area was the fluency of the Birdwatch kids in all things natural. Sure, they wanted to go far and see much birdwise, but they could enjoy roaming geology and settling down for a good old fashioned lizard catching romp too. Before we’d even made it past the first designated stop on the auto tour of the “Outstading Natural Area,” we were crawling over the thin crust of a basaltic flow in search of reptiles.

 

Midday birding what it is, we had the geology and herps to keep us busy. This first stop saw us clambering on a vertically tilted slab of basalt attempting to outwit several behemoth Western Fence Lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis). A cooperative Sagebrush Lizard (Sceloporus graciosus) proved much more easily caught and photographed. At the same time, someone noticed that many of the cracks in the rock were filled with Pacific Chorus Frogs (Pseudacris regilla)! Between trying to capture images of frog faces wedged in fissures and snagging lizards, we laughed and scrambled away an hour. This was good, respectable fun that had nothing to do with age or ability or knowledge.

The Diamond Craters are true geological wonders, much deserving of their cornball designation. I’d visited previously but hadn’t been compelled to contemplate the spread. Much of the rock we’d seen before this point was from a comparatively ancient 9.2 million year old vent located near where Burns, Oregon is today. The Diamond Craters are a geologically young formation, around 25,000 years old, and display a huge array of basaltic volcanic features localized and easy to see. Massive craters admired are in various states of erosion, collapsing in on themselves. The evidence of explosive events, fueled by the interaction of water and magma, were strewn about. I couldn’t help but wish to have viewed this from afar over the thousands of years of activity. The tumult, the explosions, the flows of viscous lava bubbling from vents to cover lakes and millions of years of older formations. I reckon I could probably give up television for that opportunity.

Possibly the gravity of the geology was lost on some of the students but they couldn’t ignore the unique features. Nor could they deny the desire to roam the slopes or climb into the craters. (Parents, don’t worry, this is no longer volcanically active). At the particularly stunning Lava Pit Crater, a collapsed shield volcano that repeatedly flooded lava over the surrounding slopes until it subsided and began to crumble, we had another good scramble. Here we found some delicate Side-blotched Lizards (genus Uta) near the crater rim and the more intrepid accidentally sussed out both a Great-horned (Bubo virginianus) and Barn Owl (Tyto alba) while exploring a particularly large vent.

The day went on like that. Driving, stopping at a gaudy volcanic feature, spreading out over it till we looked like ants, and circling back up to pile into the car. I don’t think any of us could have asked for a more enjoyable afternoon to cap the day and the trip. As the weather began to foul again, we turned back to the field station, satisfied and tired.

Back at the field station we discovered a Bushy-tailed Woodrat (Neotoma cinerea) that had been captured in the director’s residence and left for us to release. Only in this bizarre world I’m a part of does releasing giant rats count as fun. The giddy troops were dispatched and those of us who drove at 3 AM took a rest. Somehow, when they returned, I got convinced to hunt Kangaroo rats one last time.

So, excuse my lack of eloquence here: this shit is important. These kids are going to grow up and change the world. They are going to be stewards of the environment, no matter what choices they make in their career paths (doctors, business people, politicians need to have a connection with the natural world too). The volunteers of the program said this about my cohort when I was in Birdwatch and they were right; we’re working on it. I can think of little that is more important than helping this generation along, particularly considering this is a dying pursuit amongst the youngsters of America. Nature Deficit disorder may not be diagnosable but it is real. There is a widening disconnect between young people and nature, in my generation, and those after. I’ll never stop asking this of you, of myself, of anyone: how we can expect to save things we don’t understand, let alone care about? Simply knowing an animal or a landscape is endangered doesn’t inherently fuel action.

I’ll calm down and stop jumping on my soap box in just a second. My point is, if you have kids, get them outside and let them get dirty. If you are a kid (read: if you are young of heart), get out yourself. You don’t need to know what everything is or fret over dangers. For shit’s sake, live a little!

There are plenty more details, stories, and exciting things to share about our travels in Oregon but I choose to leave it here. We had an immeasurably good time and were all sad to leave and head back to the city. All ten hours back there were constant pleas from students (and whispered from the volunteers) to stop and explore. To get sidetracked.

Get sidetracked.



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Malheuring Around Pt. 3

Posted in Birding, Birds, Conservation, Environmentalism, Malheur Bird Observatory, Natural History, Oregon with tags , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

Flattening animals is never a good way to start the day. The jackrabbit was in the opposite lane when the brights caught it. Why it made the decision to hop daintily beneath my tires is beyond comprehension. As Tristan put it later, slowing would have made the difference between creaming it at 40mph rather than 60. I’d rather a clean job of it. I was still unerved.

Foster Flats Road slid about under the tires like the thin layer of wet snow most Seattlites find an insurmountable obstacle. When rain falls heavily on ground only half prepared for absorption, a sickly alluvium forms. We’d been warned such mud could make for disaster. However, there’d been no rain overnight and at 3:50AM a collective decision made. Yes, we were still in pajamas and the twin beds were, at that moment, the most luxurious in the world, but there was a greater pull. Time to get up the kids.

A vague hint of a slaty first light began to push over the horizon. The windows rolled down, Horned Larks were audible in dawn chorus. They were also apparently sleeping the middle of the road, groggily or stubbornly flushing seconds before our tread.

After eight squelching, sliding, jostling miles we slowed to a crawl. It was about five AM and we should have been able to hear them. We didn’t.

“Turn off the engine. I can’t hear anything.”

“Vesper Sparrow. Horned Lark. Meadowlark.” I grasped for other sounds in the inky depths.

“Stop crinkling that granola bar wrapper.”

A frumpy bird flew across the road. Our pulses quickened and I immediately cut the engine. Still nothing. I was starting to worry because we’d driven several tenths of a mile too far. People in the van began to ask pointed questions about the decision to drive beyond the bird. Collective decision making has never existed when the driver can be blamed for any potential problems. We circled back.

As if by magic, our eyes adjusted in the still waxing light. Something, looking uncannily like a pillow filled with a pair of matching balloons, adorned with a pointy fan on one end, was pirouetting about outside. We started to notice these queer shapes all over in the twilight. We were here.

Out on the sage it sounded as if a group of overweight people wearing corduroys were alternating between running and resting on elliptical machines – their inner thighs rubbing together audibly for contracted periods. As the pants rubbed, they were desperately clutching milkshakes and the viscous liquid was popping about in odd percussion inside their cups. This is a perfect example why written descriptions of avian sounds pale in comparison to a recording or a real thing. I’ve merely succeeded in describing weight watchers subscribers.

Jokes aside, what was really happening out there? Why had we woke at 4 AM, driven a sketchy muddy road, and crept about in the dark? In reality, the apparitions meters from our van were Greater Sage Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in Strutting Display. This was their lek, a place where males collect to show off for females. We were attending one of most magical avian displays in North America.

Portraying this scene, so compellingly unique and fascinating as it truly was, might just be beyond me. As I watched the males dance about in the hopes that the females, lurking on the sidelines might find them worthy of copulation, I was awash in a passion that takes me now and then. Evolutionary time spread before me, I was lost in a branching whirlwind of specialization and runaway selection. I found myself swelling with excitement, in a tizzy over the beauty of the natural world. This was the second Sage Grouse lek I’d ever seen and these males were unconcernedly bouncing about just meters from us.

The noises we were hearing were partially from esophageal pouches, which swelled as they prepared for the breeding season. Males fill these pouches with air and as they do so swish their wings against the feathers of their necks and breasts. The air sacs plop (like the milkshakes, which in this case call all the girls to the yard) and the wings rub against chest to create the swish (the corduroys).

Besides the fact that these birds were an amazing sight to see, they are becoming rarer and rarer. Biologists on the state and federal level have been dancing around listing these birds for years now. This area of Oregon happens to be a stronghold but that doesn’t mean they are safe. They’ve merely benefited from occurring in the least human inhabited corner of the lower 48. Mines, natural gas, windmills, cattle ranching, and hunting seem to trump saving an animal that is an embodiment of this habitat. Sure they’re chickens, but they’re North America’s largest, only residing in the West and in shrub steppe. They need to be nurtured not stomped out of existence by clumsy cattle and gas pads. I use resources, everyone can be blamed for these problems, but denying protection for special animals does nothing but further the problem, leaving them prone to further decline.

There were nearly thirty males strutting about, amply bosomed and obviously thoroughly out of their minds. Several of the males in more central locations fought over space, displaying at eachother and occasionally physically attacking. There’s a dearth of consistent information to explain their nuptial behavior. What is apparent is that prime males come together to display, only a few of these males actually mate, and the females will nest and raise young completely on their own. We noticed that the males in the middle of the lek seemed more active, both fighting more and displaying with more frequency. The best of the best?

The sun began to creep higher, casting a harsh glare across the display grounds. Before long the males would be flying off for the day, to return in the early hours the following morning. Soon these grounds would be quiet until next March when the strutting begins anew. We’d been perched in our van for nearly three hours and I was pretty sure I was getting deep vein thrombosis. It was time to slide on off and leave these outrageous birds to their shrubs and their flouting.

If this wasn’t a formative experience for the Birdwatch students then we’d probably never find one.

(Ok, so I lied, there will be one more entry to tie up all the loose ends on our trip to Malheur. We had fun, which invariably means I have too much to say!)

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