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Rhodostethia rosea

Posted in Birding, Birds, Eastern Washington, Environmentalism, Migration, Natural History, Road Tripping, Washington with tags animals, bird, Birding, Birds, Brendan McGarry, eco tourism, Environment, Environmentalism, mountains, rare birds, Rhodostethia rosea, road trip, Ross's Gull, Science, Seattle, Sustainability, travel, Washington, wildlife photography, Wingtrip on January 17, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

Who the hell set my alarm for 3 AM?

Right. That was me.

Four hours later I was in Ephrata, Washington, doubting my sanity.

There were two cars in our caravan. Five demented birders. We had about twelve hours of driving from Seattle, Washington to Palmer Lake near Loomis, Washington and back. Where is Loomis? That’s what most people say.

A steel gray morning broke as we climbed onto the Waterville plateau, out of channels of basaltic flows that blanketed out over 4 millions years ago. When lava began to periodically sweep over the landscape millions of years before this, it was lush and wet, a polar opposite of the now arid high desert.

The sun wasn’t yet strong enough to budge the hard frost, an elegant tinsel about the trees lining the few farm houses dotting vast fields of cultivation. Agriculture reigns throughout this part of Washington like many others. We power through it and the small towns heading north. Bridgeport, Omak, Okanogan, Riverside, and finally, after almost five hours, Tonasket. Turn off to the Loomis-Oroville highway things start feeling rustic, exhilaratingly obscure.

If I’d told you we made a 10 hour drive to see one bird, would you think me crazy? Not just any bird, but a gull that without careful observation, most wouldn’t notice as particularly striking in basic (non-breeding) plumage. What about the dozens of other birders clustered around Lake Palmer squinting across the water, shivering and straining through scopes? My non-birder friends would hardly be surprised, but that doesn’t mean they get it. Yet, across the water was a gull that inspired this frenzy of driving. With a vague hue of pink, like the pale sunrise hours before, there sat a Ross’s Gull (Rhodostethia rosea), Washington’s second.

This bird is not only rare here, it is a sought after species in normal range. This is a truly unique and superbly adapted species, exciting enough to see in its own landscape, let alone Washington. If you want to see a Ross’s Gull, typically you head to Barrow, Alaska in October for migration, or to Siberian or Northern Canadian marshy tundra during the breeding season. If you are truly demented, you could peruse the edge of arctic ice flows during winter. Spending one day with hours of driving across Washington and back, with the strong possibility of dipping on the gull, was odd. Yet, here we all were, some of the hundreds who visited the lake tucked away in the precipitous mountains of north central Washington, thousands of miles away from this bird’s home.

Named for James Clark Ross, an English naval officer who explored the arctic and the antarctic, the Ross’s Gull is monotypic (but certainly not unique in being named after a dead white man). Sole membership to the genus seems immediately appropriate when one is adorned in striking alternate (breeding) plumage. Despite their beauty, there is no accurate count of populations I’ve ever heard, or extensive information on their natural history. Territory on the edge tends to restricts our knowledge base. Their summer diet revolves around insects, abundant for the punctuated profusion of arctic summer. Winter is spent scraping by on algae and likely whatever else is found.

At first the atmosphere was reserved. When we arrived around 9 AM, they’d seen the bird. The deer carcass sustaining the gull’s vagrancy was still iced over; it had flown. Only certain portions of the lake were accessible or visible and there was concern that it would settle in an obscured corner. Thankfully, we didn’t have to drive the frigid lake shore for hours. The chase was fruitful.

A chase was exactly what this was. We saw the bird, watched it for about an hour, and then left. In many ways I was happy to leave. This didn’t feel organic or entirely enjoyable. Thirty birders huddled around watching one bird. Seeing it was a pleasure, how it flew and jumped above the drift ice in foraging behavior that seemed particular to a bird that winters on the edge of arctic ice. We had diagnostic views of dark underwings, a pinkish wash, a wedge shaped tail, and a small dark bill, but it never came close.

Yet something wasn’t right. Without sounding like a hermit or agoraphobic, I don’t relish this aspect of birding. Too many people vying for room, vying for attention to their ego. A crowd is still a crowd, even looking at a cool, rare bird. I didn’t need to hear the woman shouting out every little detail about the gull, as if she was announcing a horse race. I didn’t need to hear the pretentious discussions of binoculars, cameras, and trips. Too much showing off, too little reserve, appreciation, time spent learning, and ultimately, respect. Call me negative but this wasn’t what I looked for in a community. The numerous pleasurable people I spoke with were overshadowed by this miasma of obsession. I was reminded why I don’t always chase rare birds, despite admittance of enjoying adding them to my life list.

What was the point of driving all this distance, using these resources, to see a bird almost certainly destined for death far from home? This little gull had probably gotten lost, arriving here in attempts to find food. As I’ve grown older, this internal battle has raged, largely because I know the value of birding isn’t housed in vagrant species. Yet a part of me is still giddy in the chase or discovery. Some aspects of it warrant intellectual pondering, postulating on the why and how. Yet, the most benficial part of traveling to a remote locale for birding is that it can have a positive economic impact on the communities visited. Very simply, more habitat will be saved if a community sees gain in catering to nature oriented visitors. This works well around the world, a strong basis for local driven conservation efforts.

Passing through Loomis I considered all this. We’d seen other captivating things this day but had to rush by. Two ram Bighorn Sheep, crossed the road in front of us and stood veiled behind bare Douglas maples eying us from mere feet away. A deer kill, I’d guess from a Cougar (they tend to return to a kill and eat, incapable of devouring in the manner of wolves), was covered in Black-billed Magpie, Common Ravens, a young Golden Eagle, and two adult Bald Eagles. I counted a dozen Rough-legged Hawks between Palmer Lake and Seattle, wintering from the north.

The day ended with a beautiful sunset over Cle Elum and the eastern Cascades. I felt justified in having taken this trip but I still felt uneasy about aspects of it. How much of birding recklessly ignores impact in favor of valorous exploits? Does this make our pastime, in extremes or not, any better than something sneered at as explicitly impactful like say, snowmobiling? Did anyone learn anything in seeing the Ross’s Gull or did they just get their check mark?

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The Art of Blending

Posted in Birding, Birds, California, Conservation, Environmentalism, Field Work, Fire Ecology, Natural History, Science, Sierra Nevadas with tags animals, bird, Birding, Birds, black-backed woodpecker, Brendan McGarry, burn, california, Field Ornithology, fire ecology, natural history, Nature, north sierras, photography, Science, sierra nevadas on July 9, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

Two years ago this stand was all dark trunks and loose soil, dusty with soot. The canopy here seems even more diminished, sun rays more harsh on my stubbornly and blindingly untanned appendages. Some things are the same as before, when I trip and catch myself from hurdling downslope on a tree trunk, my hand comes away black, which later I unknowingly smear about my face warding off thirsty mosquitoes.

An untrained eye might have seen a ravaged, sterile hill of trees marching into darkened oblivion. The reality is that life is abundant here, with equal or greater diversity to the nearby green forest. Seasons past have sprouted shrubs and a formidable herbaceous layer, keeping my nostrils clear of aerosolized charcoal, but more importantly providing nesting habitat for a bevy of sparrows, warblers, buntings, and flycatchers. Flowers are everywhere, Calliope Hummingbirds flourish. Woodpeckers rattle about in high numbers, more flycatchers and warblers, tanagers, and grosbeaks dine on the smorgasbord of insect delights. Snags have continued to deteriorate providing homes for woodpeckers, in turn coop-ted by bluebirds, American Kestrels, and potentially a few owls. To say the least, the dawn chorus is only rivaled by that of a riparian meadow in the profusion of varied voices.

Before Europeans flooded west of the Rocky Mountains, fire, high intensity or otherwise, was the predominant form of disturbance here. Some fires were set by aboriginal peoples to their hunting and gathering advantage, some sparked without human influence. I’d hazard that all should be considered natural. Science would have to work hard to find many climax forests that haven’t felt a few blistering licks of flame at some point in their history. From conifer cones that only bare seeds with heat, to the sporadic and profuse ecological communities taking purchase on a burn, the significance of fire in the natural Western landscape cannot be denied.

A bird of particular interest to those who study burns seems to be everywhere this year, clucking and squawking about the char. I felt especially lucky at such frequency two seasons ago. I still did, standing meters from of an apparently oblivious woodpecker, chiseling murderously and pointedly into a particular charred, decayed mast. They’ve expanded to take temporary advantage of the trees that are in a slow downward spiral. Debilitating beetles are amassing to bore their wayward paths through the tree’s living layers. These beetles play their role in the stable ecosystem here, not only as a woodpecker food source, but in maintaining the fitness of unhealthy forests, making way for a new one through years of natural succession.

Black-backed Woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) are not a common species. Here in California we are in the Southern nexus of their Black-backed range, which extends from central Alaska, throughout most of Canada and portions of the Northern and Western US. They fill a niche that many others of their ilk have only generically flocked too; they have embraced burns as primary habitat. Their main source of food are the grubs of wood-boring and bark beetles of the families Buprestidae, Cerambycidae, and Scolytidae, which means they do also occasionally show up in areas where disease has struck such as dutch elm or in particularly nasty windthrows. The birds and beetles are both after large scale disturbances in forests, the beetles to lay their eggs there and the birds to eat the larvae. In Washington, Oregon, and Idaho Black-backed Woodpeckers are designated as sensitive species. This is because burned forest of the right qualities isn’t common either. With fire suppression and post fire salvage logging what it is, priority is often in wood production and protection not woodpeckers population.

To provide an example before such practices, in the Rockies half the forest burned every 100 years and 35% of the forest was less than 40 years old at any one point. Fires resulting in stand replacement, ones with enough intensity to kill all the trees in a given area, happened 1.5 times more frequently. Forest that is left to regenerate naturally, when salvageable wood exists, is less and less common. Just having a fire in a forest isn’t the key to the importance to the many species that are using burns. For woodpeckers it’s about the intensity, which in turn dictates the number and size of the dead or dying trees, in turn affecting the infestations of their favored food items.

All woodpeckers that are common here in the Northern Sierras use burns to some extent. Even Pileatated Woodpeckers, whose size dictates older secondary or primary stands, will use adjacent burns for the excessively rotten cavities and roosts they prefer. Burned forest offers a good source of food and softer, decayed wood for cavity excavation. Both Williamson’s and Red-breasted Sapsuckers need partially living trees for their sap wells, so they are slightly less prolific dwelling on the edges. Yet the burned forests aren’t a homogeneous spread of charred trunks and dead canopy, they are a complex mosaic. Except in extreme cases, fire doesn’t sweep through a forest leaving uniformity behind.

I don’t really know if she had a nest or not. Sidling about the top of a half dead Jeffery Pine, she was scolding a Northern Pygmy Owl that already had its fair share of excited attendants. Her odd reptilian shrieks were spouted as she bobed her head pedantically, left and then right again. Woodpeckers often seem very tense to me. Wasting twenty minutes with the other disapproving rabblerousers, even on a threat like an owl, wasn’t what I’d expect from a responsible mother. Especially one that should either have eggs to incubate or nestlings waiting for a meal. Another twenty were spent spanning a series of trees, squeaking each time she jumped to a new trunk, and chasing a male Hairy Woodpecker who dared enter her glade. At the edge of a shrub field and the edge of my transect, she disappeared downhill, presumably to shriek and eat more bark beetles. I don’t believe she had a nest. Maybe the pygmy owl ate her male.

Dusty, charcoal is the defining plumage characteristic of the Black-backed. Again, in the burns they likely evolved alongside, this helps them blend in. Other species are easy enough to find in living habitat and to be clear, you find Black-backs in live forest as well, high numbers are almost exclusively in forest that’s been burned or disturbed. If it wasn’t for their frequent vocalizations and their relative calm tolerance of people, I doubt many people would see them because of how splendidly they blend into the bark of a burnt tree. A female is mostly charcoal black with only slightly contrasting ventrally with a dingy gray (white when clean). The white moustacial stripe, black and white barred sides, white spotting on wings, and often concealed white outer tail feathers are easily missed, they look generally black, white, and gray. The male mirrors this, yet has a golden forecrown that is often tinged with the sooty product his lifestyle. Another thing that distinguishes them from most of their congeners in the genus Picoides is that they have three toes instead of the usual four zygodactyl, (think of an X with each point being a toe). The only other woodpeckers in the genus that share this trait are Three-toed Woodpeckers (of Eurasia and North America).

You can hear them throbbing, boring, scraping, pupating, the antithesis of a heartbeat. Pulsating pestilence. The wood-boring beetles, the bark beetles, taking advantage of the weakness a burn creates, they are still a part of the system. Those wormlike tracings of inner wood one finds from time to time, on a barkless snag or on beached driftwood are the tracks of these beetle grubs. Investigate a fresh forage mark on a tree; bark is chipped away in an oval, exposing gleaming cambium, with a smaller beak sized hole in the center. A tunnel extending from any which way, will probably terminate at this excavation. The beetle, eating its way through a dead or dying tree, met an end at the awl of a Black-backed Woodpecker or maybe a cousin Hairy Woodpecker. Whether they can avoid their demise I don’t know, but with obvious strength with which a woodpecker hammers in investigation, there is little likelihood a beetle grub can do much beyond bare wood-boring jaws.

Bark beetles may seem ominous, even malicious, the gruesome death rattle of a tree going out, but nature doesn’t trade in villainy and heroism. Woodpeckers also help degrade the forest, burned or otherwise. Foraging is destructive, but also potentially spreads fungi. Like big pollinators, woodpeckers may act as vectors of wood degrading fungus. Imagine them spreading fungus unknowingly when visiting one tree with a fungal colony and then another without; they’d unwittingly get quicker access to wood best for cavities. Those wounds in the trees allow spores easy access to still live trees. This is a stunning example of a mutually beneficial behavior, surprisingly simple, and while it is elegantly plausible, it needs more research.

Their nests aren’t very easy to find just by looking. Searching for cavities is always most effective by watching behavior, but you can find cavities by looking for the right snags. You’d have to be supremely lucky to find one just marching through the forest, particularly a Black-backed who I’ve only found in dense stands of trees. Unlike their relatives the Hairy Woodpeckers or White-headed Woodpeckers, who usually like broken topped, well decayed snags with various species preferences, a Black-backed seems less picky, a half dead or fully dead tree with a lot of bark and branches is suitable. Even though they aren’t necessarily loud, they are talkative enough and easy to track down. In a further three or four years however, Black-backed Woodpeckers will likely have moved on from the burns I traverse in favor of more recent ones, both for food and housing.

A sensitive, enigmatic species, Black-backed Woodpeckers are the focus of many studies focusing on many aspects of a healthy forest and how we live with fire in this landscape. It is all too easy to look at a burnt forest as a wound, a loss of resources, but the exact opposite may be true. There is likely room for all the things we need from forests as well as what the birds need to maintenance their populations. Comprehension of all the swirling aspects that come into play is highly complicated, fire alone is enough to fill a lifetime of work. Yet understanding how a woodpecker uses a burned forest can provide measures to help forest managers keep our best renewable resource vibrant and productive as well as protect important species. I like to preach connectedness but I can’t squeeze all those ideas into a few paragraphs so I’ll leave with this: I simply enjoy noisy, odd Black-backed Woodpeckers. Their lives as irruptive, opportunistic species, makes for exciting variety to a casual observer and evocative study species to a researcher. They are enigmatic and specialized, the fact that they are so uncommon makes them all the more enticing. Next time you see a large burned forest, maybe devastation won’t be the only thought cross your mind, maybe a Black-backed Woodpecker will sputter through squawking.

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Focusing on the Owl

Posted in Birding, Birds, California, Environmentalism, Field Work, Natural History, Reading Suggestions, Sierra Nevadas with tags animals, bird, Birding, Birds, Environmentalism, Field Ornithology, fire ecology, natural history, Nature, Northern Pygmy Owl, photography, Science, sierra nevadas on June 1, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

He’d been sitting there for twenty minutes, tooting at the young Red-tailed Hawk soaring over head. The hawk was attempting to mind its business, but two Common Ravens were relentlessly dive bombing it, drawing the whole forest below into a reel of uneasy glances and murmurs of displeasure. No one in the forest likes ravens or hawks.

I wasn’t bored, it was just time to start moving on and search for more cavities. Wrangling my pack, weighed down with rusty metal the pack-rat in me couldn’t resist, I slowly stood up on the old growth stump that had been my seat. Just as I was about to hop to the ground, he darted up, narrowly missing a surprise grab of a female American Robin. She turned at the last moment, spurting a single alarm and ducking away. Cowed, he landed nearby and hooted haughtily, pumping his tiny tail and flexing his oversized talons.

His intended prey didn’t think too much of him. She buzzed him once, alighting adjacent, squawking irately. Without a surprise, there wasn’t a chance to take a bird as large as himself. Silently, he flew off, the robin in tow, never relenting her display of displeasure. She was telling the whole forest about his existence. If it wasn’t for her, I might not have found where he had stooped to. In a snag to the left of his new perch, was an old woodpecker cavity. Filling its circumference was the full moon glare of a Northern Pygmy-owl, obviously disturbed from her incubation by this noisy thrush.

I’d found my first Northern Pygmy-owl nest!

Most naturalists have some intellectual struggles with society, now-a-days magnified by technology. All those gadgets ultimately create waste, distract from our need for a healthy world, and sometimes change our ways of thinking a bit too drastically. I’ve been vacillating a lot lately on this subject. There’s no arguing that I rely heavily on nature for subject matter alone. Yet there’s plenty of reasons that society needs nature around us. I never feel as alive as I do, even in capsize moments away from humanity. I’m never more focused, more creative, more jovial – more healthy.

Yet I love people and many of the interweaving cross sections of the urban, modern, technological life I live are near and dear to me. I am passionate about hip-hop culture (really an amalgam of the following), music, visual art (the greatest immersion of which is in a city), and the exchange of ideas that flows in a thriving community well cultivated in a larger populace. I’d have missed the point if I didn’t mention the internet, my personal use of a camera and a computer to convey what I find important and hope to be my lively hood. Much technology that is commonplace today I’ve never been without from adolescence on.

This pair of Northern Pygmy-owls were unveiled to me because I’m a city kid fortunate to have discovered passion for something other than video games and computer screens. Later, decompressing from a day in the field, I read an article by one of many authors I’ve been meaning to read, but haven’t yet. Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” in his popular book Last Child in the Woods. There’s a real and significant divide between many kids of the developed world and nature. The thing that struck me more than anything else, was Louv’s emphasis on focus. Time spent outside allows you to use your senses, to focus, instead of actively working to block out all the unhelpful distractions of urban life.

I didn’t bring Louv up to rally against technology or urban life, I think the benefits far outweigh the pitfalls. So as to not be misconstrued: of course the environmental impacts of technology are a problem and can be improved upon. People still need nature in their lives just as much as ever, even with the medical, educational, and creative advances all these bundles of circuits provide. Moving on.

Ruminating on what luck I’d had to come across such a rare sight, I realized it wasn’t just luck. I actively tracked down the owl because I heard it. I patiently watched it for cues and after a good wait, was rewarded. Throw in someone who spends their time glued to a screen and you would probably had different results, even if they were fit and had spent that time studying birds. As a teen I was out watching birds – my formative years gave me a gift. People can regain these sorts of deficits, but it’s likely harder to do once you’re older if you grew up devoid of them. Just like learning a new language. Although I’d never thought about it so directly, I am lucky to have the connection to nature, the observational, sensual skill that I have. Being able to notice, intuit, and as a direct result, enjoy nature is another thing for the laundry list of things I am grateful for. As a good friend of mine has said to me many times: “Some people don’t do anything.”

I know more now than ever what he means by that.

While I got my recording work done, the male owl watched me with an impressive impassivity. He was small, but I wasn’t going to take too many chances. I didn’t need an owl stapled to my skull. I trotted off through the lime green, post fire shrub layer, goose stepping over downed logs in search of more nests. Hearing a Hairy Woodpecker in the distance, I turned for a last glance at the fiery fluff ball and his nest. Once the coast was clear, he barreled down to make sure I hadn’t done anything irretrievably human.

I suggest you enjoy some nature every day. Einstein went for a walk in the woods everyday.

Bangkok to Chaing Mai

Posted in Birding, Southeast Asia, Thailand with tags animals, bird, Birding, Birds, Environment, natural history, Nature, thailand, travel on January 21, 2011 by Brendan McGarry

“I wish our common birds were ridiculously colorful.”

Ryan, Scott, and I were eating a “breakfast” of Pad Thai in Chaing Mai, on plastic seats in a street stall facing the river Pai. Opposite a Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) and not far from a rat scrounging for scraps, was a Coppersmith Barbet (Megalaima haemacephala). While not the gaudiest or sought after of barbets in Thailand, the setting was odd. A palate of shades of green, yellow, red, and black it surpassed Washington’s most vivid birds yet here it was mingling with the street riffraff.

In my opinion, when visiting a foreign country, it is absurd to jump into nature without first spending time to see how the people live. Wandering Bangkok for the sake of exploring was magical but after a few days of city grime, the “hey you, where you go?” of the tuk-tuk drivers (a tricycle taxi), and thumping backpacker slums it was time to move on.

Ryan’s first day in Bangkok was also his last for the time being. A simple breakfast of Pad Thai and iced coffee, sufficed and we hit a nearby park to think about our plans for Chaing Mai. Santichaiprakan Park, adjacent to Phra Sumen Fort that guarded the moat to the old city, had a surprising amount of bird life. While Scott read the Thailand guide, Ryan and I couldn’t help but get engrossed in the animals overhead.

We’d already seen Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) but quickly noticed a White-vented Myna (Acridotheres grandis) gulping down figs along with the other species. Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopaceus), a large black cuckoo sat veiled by vegetation in the top of a tree, constantly calling back at someone in the park imitating it with a flute. Scarlet-rumped Flowerpeckers (Dicaeum cruentatum), a more common species in Bangkok foraged along with Common Iora (Aegithina tiphia), a single Yellow-browed Warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus), and a lone Asian Pied Starling (Gracupica contra). Some Asian Palm-Swifts (Cypsiurus balasiensis ) bent over the Chao Phraya river. With birds so very different it wasn’t surprising the squirrels overhead, dropping half eaten figs on us, were equally as foreign, piebald rodents.

Although this was only my second day in Thailand and I’d already seen nearly two dozen new species, I was anxious to get further afield and into actual habitat. A 12 hour, overnight bus ride to Chaing Mai with other backpackers was fairly welcome. It is the jumping off point into more forested areas of Thailand, places still with primary forest and much of their original avian fauna (mammals as a rule appear to be heavily hunted and not easily found). Reclining seats and air conditioning meant the trip was bearable certainly.

As we were trundled into Chaing Mai at 6:30AM, we slipped through narrow streets and slid by a morning market. Groggily we stumbled our way to the first reasonable guest house, in a back alley lined with plants (the Thai have a way of making urban places seem pleasant with traipsing vines everywhere). Red-whiskered Bubuls chortling and cavorting through the building tops greeted us as we made our way out to find breakfast at a market.

Transportation for the day was by bike, for less than two dollars each. We visited Wat Phrasing (the most visited temple in Chaing Mai), spoke with two 19 year old Monks for a half an hour (amidst a few shy younger monks who couldn’t get the courage to talk to us), and pedaled off towards Chaing Mai University (the first in the region). Biking was hectically fun in the city and combined with navigation challenges of un-named streets, we took a bit to reach the forested grounds. Apparently it was graduation time for some of the students, some of whom seemed confused by three farang gliding through on aging bicycles.

Birding wasn’t a great option being the middle of the day, but we still managed a few new species. An immature Chinese Pond Heron flew from a man made pond, at a flowering tree Chestnut-tailed Starlings (Sturnia malabarica), Ashy Drongo (Dicrurus leucophaeus), and the surreal Greater Racket-tailed Drongo (Dicrurus paradiseus). Even just a few new species were welcome while we were still acclimatising but I could feel the shrouded mountains behind the university pulling.

Late afternoon food and beer made for a groggy evening and we called in an early night. Tomorrow we head for Doi Suthep National Park, a few kilometers from the city, and will hopefully make a good run of exploring it – birds and all!

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Interview: Ben Freeman and a Spine of Papua Biodiversity Pt. 2

Posted in Bird Banding, Birds, Conservation, Environmentalism, Field Work, Interview, Natural History, Papua New Guinea, Science with tags animals, bird, Bird Banding, Birds, Brendan McGarry, Environmentalism, Huon Penninsula, Nature, Papua New Guinea, Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project on November 18, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

Brendan McGarry: I’m guessing that you were working hard for a short period of time and that was about it – did you have any time for recreating or was it just eat, sleep, work?

Ben Freeman: We were pretty regimented due to the amount of work we had to do. It was a busy schedule, but we took a couple days off towards the end of the trip to let workers hike back to their villages for Sunday breaks — their day of rest, church time etc — and to do laundry, sleep etc. So it was eat, sleep, work but on a given day the work came in patches; the nets were most active in the morning and much of the midday was usually fairly relaxed; we’d all stretch out if it was sunny and make little dens of ferns to sleep on (fern stay dry and make good bedding).

BM: Did you spend any time interacting with ‘locals’?

BF: Yup. All the time. Everything we did was thanks to the hard work of our workers and porters. PNG is famous for its linguistic diversity — over 700 languages spoken on the island — but everyone uses an English-based creole language called Tok Pisin to communicate. So we tried to learn Tok Pisin and tell stories of life in America while the local guys tried to teach us Tok Pisin and tell us stories about village life and hunting trips to the bush (the “bush” being the forest, or anywhere that is not a human-dominated landscape).

BM: What were your favorite species while you were there? Avian or otherwise.

BF: The birds of paradise were of course fantastic; I think we saw a total of seven species. But among the many many exciting and wonderful birds, I think I was most taken with the Papuan Hornbill. We first encountered this lowland bird at the 900 m camp; I heard incredibly loud wingbeats and looked up into a small sky gap to see two large elongated dark shapes pass high overhead. I don’t think I’ve ever been so confused as to what type of bird I had just seen. I was considering eagles, cranes, all sorts of crazy possibilities, when Casti — one of the head CI fieldworkers — told us they were hornbills. Wow. We later were able to watch them closely in feeding trees, in groups of a dozen or more, and I remained captivated by them. So prehistoric; a huge bird with a wingbeat audible from hundreds of meters away…

BM: Give us an idea of the diversity – what is your take on the avifauna there and the general wealth of biodiversity. New Guinea has a reputation.

BF: Tropical humid forests contain the majority of terrestrial vertebrate diversity on Earth, and this diversity is especially pronounced in tropical mountains, as the bird communities (and plants, and mammals etc etc) completely change as you change elevation. For example, the birds we observed at 2400 m were 100% different from the birds we observed at 200 m. This kind of diversity is emotionally exciting, perhaps especially to biologists, but also I think to most people. There are just so many species, and you consistently find new species at a given site, even after two or three full days. It’s a bit like being in a candy store — the candy store is emotionally exciting because of its tremendous diversity — different candies everywhere you look! It wouldn’t be as intriguing if the whole store was just full of tootsie rolls…So I think diversity in and of itself is stimulating, certainly to biologists, and PNG is certainly home to a huge amount of biodiversity. It’s also the biggest expanse of tropical forest left in SE Asia. PNG’s forests have numerous threats — massive logging and mining projects run by foreign multinationals – but so much of it is so remote that it seems a promising place for conservation actions that also have strong social benefits, like the YUS project.

BM: Did you see evidence impacts from climate change or other human influences in the places you visited?

BF: We were told that people could now grow coconut palms at higher elevations than they could historically. If true, this would likely be a direct result of climate change. The human influences are pretty obvious — the areas around villages are mostly cut and serve as gardens to grow food. But they also plant coffee (often shade) and cacao (for chocolate) as cash crops. Imagine the difficulties in getting product to market though! carrying 40 kg bags of dried coffee beans 3 hours by hand to a place where a small plane can take it to a central processing location! Perhaps the most interesting human impact on the landscape for me was the existence of large montane grasslands. These grasslands have existed for (likely) thousands of years, and are a result of repeated fires set by people. People like these grasslands, as they are a good home for wild pigs, which are hunted for meat. And, more generally, people worldwide like to live in an open landscape…

BM: What were some challenges of the work?

BF: It was obviously very remote. One big challenge was finding water, and enough of it. The local guys drank very little, but I need a gallon or so of drinking water per day when I’m working in a hot, humid environment. Plus water for cooking, washing dishes and at least a little bit of bathing. Finding water was surprisingly hard — at one field camp the nearest flowing water was 45 minutes hard walk downhill! We’ll just say we went easy on the bathing at this camp… Luckily the lowland field camps generally had small rivers nearby to bathe in daily.

BM: What’s next? Where are you now? What’s in your future?

BF: I’m now starting a Ph.D program in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. Alexa finished her Ph.D. in ecology at Virginia Tech in December 2009, she’s writing grants to get a post-doc studying reproductive physiology of birds. I’m hoping to study the diversity of tropical mountains for my dissertation (possibly in PNG, possibly in the Andes); why are elevational distributions so narrow in the tropics?

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Bird-a-thon 2010 (Long)!

Posted in Big Day, Birding, Birds, Eastern Washington, Natural History, Seattle, The Montlake Fill, Washington with tags big day, bird, Birdathon, Birding, Birds, Brendan McGarry, Seattle, Seattle Audubon, Washington, Wingtrip on May 12, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

I’d like to preface with a warning. This entry contains the manic depictions of deviants. Birding has many manifestations. Some are the gentle musing of the causal observer, no less informed, simply less hastened or statistic driven. This is a trip report of the absurdist, the crazed who don’t sleep for 24 hours, the big day birders.

Favored with employment in an organization that focuses heavily on birding, this April I was lucky to participate in our major fundraiser for work. Birdathon is an event created to fuel fundraising through friendly competition. Solo or on a team, birders get sponsors who either foolishly give $.50 per species (this gets expensive when lists soar above 100 species) or pledge a static amount. Then they go birding and try their best to see as many birds as possible.

The big day has roots in the East (I could never see it coming out of say, California). According the Scott Weidensaul’s book Of a Feather (a brief history of American birding), as early as 1898 birders in Ohio were out on grueling daylong assaults. Different areas had colloquial terms for their endeavors. The bottom line was that you end up spoiling a perfectly respectable and cerebral activity into baseball statistics. I’m the first to point out the flaws in this extreme form of birding, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun!

Half of Seattle Audubon’s staff was willing to ship out the night before our Birdathon and camp on the Columbia River, where we’d begin. When we arrived at Wanupum Damn State Park, the reason for the windfarms perched on nearby hills was evident. It was a blustery night. Wind isn’t good for birds and if you haven’t figured it out yet, this practice in mania is grounded in number of species seen.

Thankfully the morning was calm. With time to rake the surrounding area before a 7:30 rendezvous with the rest of the staff in Vantage, we wasted no time. While only two of us were so far removed from reality as to wake up at 5 am to bird (before light), we had a good showing for the morning walk. Yellow-rumped Warblers (Audubon’s specifically) dripped from the poplars, but they seemed to be the only songbirds about. I started to get nervous. But no worries, we soon stumbled into a Dusky Flycatcher, some Ruby-crowned Kinglets, a House Wren, Golden-crowned, Lincoln’s and Fox Sparrows. You cherish every bird on a big day, you may not see it somewhere else.

With a large staff and no one nearly as enthusiastic as Adam, our science associate, and myself, a real big day wasn’t entirely possible. Contrary to what you might believe, not all the staff at Seattle Audubon are expert birders, who would have been fine with a slapdash day. People actually wanted to see birds, not rush through, ticking them off. We also weren’t going to be able to go owling. A final admission was that most big days are centered on mid-May. My most epic have always been as late as possible to coincide with Birdathon dates to maximize incoming migrant birds. Late April was slightly premature. My main goal was to beat our board members’ team. They’d amassed a respectful 122 species a few days earlier. (To avoid sounding like a sniveling snob, I had a great time birding with my coworkers regardless of their sane tendencies).

On the other side of the Columbia River, the Shrub Steppe opens up into the willow lined shores of the potholes and Moses Lake. Water always attracts birds and we soon found ourselves another twenty species deep. Never a certain bird, a Black-crowned Night Heron flushed into a tree at Martha Lake and we saw, astonishingly, our only sandpiper of the day, a Least. Swainson’s Hawks glided on gracile wings overhead, back from their sojourn in Argentina. Cinnamon and Blue-winged Teal floated on many a waterway.

Before we knew it, we’d blasted through the wetlands and headed back over the Columbia River to Vantage. Wind had picked up again which meant finding things in the quickly diminishing shrub steppe (read: land being bulldozed for wind turbines), wasn’t going to happen. We still managed Sage Thrasher and both Mountain and Western Bluebirds en route to Ellensburg.

Unfortunately one of our stops, Robinson Canyon, was closed till May (to allow Elk to winter in lowlands without being bothered by people). Luckily Carly, a former staff member who ran Birdwatch, came through for us and suggested we visit Taneum Canyon.

Not only were the high basalt walls that wrapped the road in the canyon beautiful, we managed some good birds in Taneum. Townsend’s Solitaire busied themselves on the hillsides, Evening Grosbeaks flew over, and we finally got both Mountain and Black-capped Chickadee. A bonus was a Golden Eagle that came in low over the road! Not being able to get into Robinson still cost us key species – it was time to get back on the road!

The intersection of the Teanaway and Yakima Rivers just outside of Cle Ellum is a traditional spot for any serious Washington-wide big day. This is mainly because it’s a reliable and simple place to find American Dipper. Rufous Hummingbird (which I unfortunately missed), Downy Woodpecker (astonishingly only the second woodpecker of the day, and Vaux’s Swift were also about.

It was time to cut our losses and head to the less fruitful western slope. With weather moving in, a stop a stampede pass didn’t seem promising but out of the car we had Golden-crowned Kinglets, Varied Thrush, Pine Siskin, and Red-breasted Nuthatch. The beauty of big days is that they make every bird exciting!

Our only owl of the day was pure luck. A few staff were trailing behind and luckily for the rest of us, heard a pair of Barred Owls! Sitting listening to them we heard Red Crossbill, just as I had said they were something we hadn’t seen yet. Finally we had Oregon Junco, a shock to not get sooner on the trip. A Red-breasted Sapsucker called, giving Adam and I views. Just as we started to walk back, I heard the quick, sweet call note of a Brown Creeper. We could still beat those board members yet – I was above 100 species.

Rain was slamming down through Snoqualmie pass but when we finally started to get close to Seattle, during rush hour, the clouds parted and traffic was actually moving. The group, diminished from dropping off a few deteriorated staff in town, descended on the last main stop at the Montlake Fill. This was crunch time and Adam and I took off from the rest of the group to try to see as much as possible. Cleaning up on easy species we had Savannah Sparrow, Anna’s Hummingbird, American Wigeon, Glacous-winged Gull, and Common Yellowthroat. While we didn’t get Wood Duck, a regular at the fill, we had Cedar Waxwings and a Virginia Rail. A Bewick’s Wren was singing as we left the park. Chomping at the bit, we headed back to the office to drop off the rest of the staff, empty the van, and head to the rental place. I followed Adam in his car and after the van was parked – we jetted off to West Seattle, our final stretch.

As absurd as it sounds, just writing this report is getting my heart rate up. Birding like this is about uncertainties and it calls into action your absolute ability and attention. You have to be on point perpetually.

Pigeon Guillemot, Western Grebe, Horned Grebe, Red-necked Grebe, Mew Gull, Brant. We were doing well and the light was cooperating, it was past 8 pm by the time we’d reached the final park on our loop around Alki Point in West Seattle. The sunset over the Olympics with a contrasting storm was so spectacular that I had break for a photo but then it was back to business. An Eared Grebe was nestled in a group of Horned Grebes. Finally a Harlequin Duck! A Barrow’s Goldeneye flew away from us as we strained but failed to find Long-tailed Duck or Marbled Murrelet further out on the Sound.

As the light failed, we made out last-ditch attempt to find Western Screech Owl or Winter Wren in the forested section of Mee-Kwa Mooks Park. Every crow back in the trees seemed to be an accipiter (it’s embarrassing to admit that we missed both Sharp-shinned and Cooper’s Hawks) as we stood patiently listening. Finally the strangled croak of a Hermit Thrush rang out, as if calling the end to our day. We’d been up since 5 am and by the time I got home it was 10pm.

As it turns out, I managed to squeeze by the board members at 124 species. But that doesn’t really matter too much. What was really important is that I raised over $600 for Seattle Audubon and all that money will be going to leave a legacy of the environment. Maybe if I have kids and they are so unfortunate as to find themselves addicted to birding, they’ll be able to follow in my footsteps.

Thank you to all my sponsors (there’s still time to give money, till the end of May): Linda Carroll, Marti Davis, Rebecca Evans, Al Ferkovich, Thomas Mansfield, Jean Mills, Eldon Olson, Roberta Roberts, Paul & Barbara Webster, Diana Aubin de Paradis, Barbara Clark, George Johnson, Penny Koyama, and last but certainly not least Virginia Morrison!

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Mexico Part 3 – The Ranch

Posted in Birding, Birds, Conservation, Mexico, Natural History, Navopatia Field Station, Sonora with tags bird, Birding, Birds, Mexico, Sonora on March 15, 2010 by Brendan McGarry

Danner’s truck skidded through a huge mud puddle and we all held on for dear life. Speeding through the Pitayal at 7am I couldn’t have felt more contented. A behemoth above the desert landscape, the fig tree of the ranch loomed ahead.

As AWA began to explore the region in the early days, they found a nearby cattle ranch that was fine with a buncha geeky gringos sneaking around and shouting about “los pajaros.” With considerable stands of mesquite scrub, a small freshwater creek, a squared man made lake, and the aforementioned fig tree, there were of birds aplenty. They were chattering away as we made our way towards the lush creek banks sloughing warblers and the fruit heavy fig.

Kiskadees and Gila Woodpeckers were making a ruckus gorging fruit. Behaving much more respectably and frustratingly cryptic was a species I’d long wanted to see, the Rufous-backed Robin. For a millisecond birds would pop into view and stuff their faces, before disappearing behind the shroud of leaves. Someone said something about them “just being robins,” as I sat patiently enduring their infuriating shyness.

Along the lakeshore we found masses of Lark Sparrows. I’d never seen so many in my life; they were in small flocks of six or eight birds and seemingly everywhere. Seeing huge amounts of migrant birds was surprisingly one of my favorite things about Mexico, (considering that I enjoy birds largely because of their ecology and not for the baseball aspects of birding, this actually isn’t a surprise at all). Imagining the odyssey rivaling journeys that these birds endured to arrive at Navopatia, knowing that possibly they’d even be from Washington State boggles the mind (which end of their migration are they actually from anyway?). Seeing clouds of Orange-crowned Warblers of the same subspecies that breed in the Northwest continued to enliven imaginative drifting on avian life. It certainly put the rest of us humans in our place. As if to keep reminding me that we were still in North America and that, yes most of these birds could be seen within 100 miles of where I live, a male Bufflehead screamed down to land.

Neotropic Cormorants bobbed up and disappeared beneath the murky surface of the lake. At the far end, Least Grebes sat nicely along with Pied-billed Grebes accommodating those who were new to them. Mexican Mallards floated together like any other mallard pair would, despite their practically imperceptible dimorphism.

Vermilion Flycatchers are so stunning that I think they overwhelm people. Danner and I followed a male around snapping shots as he patiently went about his day. It was too easy to see these birds everywhere and get dulled to their stunning red and black plumage – but being a pale, color starved Northerner I couldn’t get enough. People may balk at that statement and suggest some notable birds that display the shade, but no I’m sorry, there’s nothing so brilliantly crimson in Washington. After probably 80 photos of this little gentleman, I got distracted and went off to find a Harris Hawk that had flown by with nest material clutched in it’s talons.

A couple ranch hands rode by on horses, friendly enough but seeming a bit suspicious of the bunch of us. I couldn’t blame them. Despite the natural wealth of the land here, everyone living on this ejido (land made communal by the government) was poor. Here we were, a bunch of kids running around with binoculars, scopes, cameras, things that would cost many people here more than a years salary. It reminded me of a time in Ecuador when our group stood watching some gaudy, extraterrestrial bird in awe of the exquisiteness of nature, when a group of cattle ranchers drove their cows past our group. Wearing torn clothes, their cows visibly infested with bot fly larvae, it was immediately hard to feel happy about this place. These Mexicans weren’t unhappy and probably weren’t starving but I couldn’t help but feel a wash of guilt about my luck.

It was easy enough to slip back into my astonishment of birds and nature almost as a remedy for such feelings. A Bell’s Vireo sang in a clump of mesquite and I succumbed to my excitement once again. But I didn’t want to completely forget about the disparity of the world and the fact that this is not only horrible for people but the environment as well. I used to think that we couldn’t help the environment without first helping people. While that is conditionally true the simplicity of that view doesn’t permit a holistic approach. Considering people and place separate, animals apart from people, won’t solve problems but more likely than not actively promote the downward spiral. Health of the environment means health of the people. While I’m not suggesting a Utopian ideal, it’s obvious that when the air is clean and the water clear, people are better off. What makes me ashamed of my economic status more than anything is knowing that it is built on the backs of people like this and that companies knowingly continue to callously ruin people and place for things like Pop Tarts and TV Dinners.

I continued to think about this as we headed back to Navopatia. Ahead, six Harris Hawks started from some particularly tall pitaya and my mood lightened a bit. Life strode on in the face of everything people thrust upon it and ultimately no matter what happens to us, nature will get through the human hiccup. That doesn’t meant can sit back and watch it all fall down but it’s comfort knowing that people are still part of a system we neither control or completely understand. My awe of this planet will never cease and neither will my drive to make it a better place for all considered. Face to face with biodiversity and environmental strife in the pitayal, we slowed to watch an immature Gray Hawk just before returning camp ward.