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“And now for something completely different.”

Posted in Birds, Natural History, United States, Washington, 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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Musings from the Desk of the (Un)Epic Birder

Posted in Birding, Birds, Brendan's Musings, Natural History, Seattle, Washington with tags , , , , , , , , , on December 30, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

 

The major curse of being a birder is that you find yourself evaluating your day based on species counts and the relative obscurity of your observations.

When days are pleasant and birds are numerous enough all is well in the universe. I can stroll about and simply enjoy being outside, communing with nature. What about when it’s miserable outside?

 

Birders above the 40th parallel spend a good portion of the year bundled up, squinting through scopes or shivering in wait of a rarity. We always hear about the good times but what about the bad times? The weeks we go out birding and don’t really see all that much. I’m not suggesting I don’t enjoy just getting out. I find birding and photography very similar, the more one does it, no matter the conditions, the better one gets.

Common birds are no less enjoyable than rare ones. I always enjoy Golden-crowned Sparrows.

However, ruts happen.

A summer tanager showed up in Seattle. A huge bird for Washington State, let alone Seattle. I managed to sleep through my alarm on one cold, dark morning, which turned out to be the only time it was at either place it made appearances when I had time to visit.

The Eastern Phoebe. Well, I saw it, but for two seconds, after spending hours walking around in soggy grass. When I realize what most normal people do (not that I desire to be normal), I’m rather perplexed by what drives me to walk around gloomy, wet meadows in December with complete strangers. Sometimes I feel like someone lost their keys in the field and we’re all just do-gooders trying to lend a helping hand.

What rare birds could be out there?

At least some things are given this time of year. Drive up North and descending into the Skagit Valley, the brightest things around (because the sun can’t break through the oppressive cloud layer), are the hoards of swans and geese. This regularity may not get every seasoned birder excited but I’m always flabbergasted by the sheer numbers of snow geese, particularly when thousands thunder to wing mere yards from you. The swans too are quite the spectacle, some of the largest birds in North America just hanging out on the farm nibbling old brassica shoots. No big deal.

In the city, with a keen eye or ear, there’s always a few things to take note of. I continually out nerd my co-workers (at a non-profit for birds), by getting wound up by birds outside our office. A Bewick’s wren clinging to the tactile brick wall, pretending it’s a creeper. The almost daily red crossbills that fly over almost any time I am outside. Even when work and weather don’t allow for extensive adventures, there’s room for my mind to broaden, (…ok, so maybe thinking about birds doesn’t count as broadening).

Spend some time with a Common Raven and you'll find they're not all that common in their behavior.

But while I’m not out exploring distant or difficult terrains in search of feathered species or scoring rare birds by the dozen, my mind is cemented in those things. Asking questions, like: Do other people see at least 20 red crossbills a day in Seattle, no matter where they are? Or what a male King of Saxony Bird of Paradise is doing right at this moment? Or if that short-eared owl I watched in a field with my friends a couple weekends ago knew that the world was supposed to end in the next week? Probably not.

A Short-eared Owl cruising over its domain, oblivious to human travails.

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A Skinny on Dippers

Posted in Birds, Field Work, Migration, Mt. Rainier, Natural History, Sierra Nevadas, Washington with tags , , , , , , , , , , on November 26, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

“[H]is music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of the rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil ponds.”

- John Muir The Mountains of California, 1894

The seasons can change quickly in the high Cascades. A day in early November, a crust of fall hung over Paradise Valley, but a few juncos, Audubon’s warblers, and varied thrushes were still about. Visiting Myrtle Falls, an American dipper rattled by, the latest I’ve ever seen one there. Three days later, a foot of snow was on the ground and Myrtle Falls was all but ice. All the birds were gone, including the dipper, back to lower reaches of the mountain. The dippers gave me pause, did they just fly downstream, or was something else going on?

Considering a constraint that appears rather limiting, being obligates of running, relatively clean water, the American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) is an extremely versatile species. They range from Alaska to Panama, generally west of the Rocky Mountains when in North America. Migration South, for a plush winter hideout in a tropical creek isn’t part of the deal either. They are not migratorial in a latitudinal sense. Rather they are altitudinal, yet a pair will often occupy a productive territory throughout the year. So if a territorial pair stays in the same place (believe me they are territorial) and these birds exclusively inhabit rivers and streams, how does their dispersal work? Where do they go when the weather gets bad up in the mountains, assuming there’s others downstream? Being territorial, generally solitary birds, it’s not as if they gather up in winter flocks.

John Muir, among his other florid labels, would have called dippers “water ouzels.” The name dipper describes not their habit of dipping into water to find food, (for they and their three congeners are the most aquatic passerines in the world), but for their movement on land. Anyone who has spent even a few minutes watching a dipper will have seen them alight and bob their body up and down in a weird little jig. A more agitated bird will even dip more rapidly; this might be a method of display that doesn’t require them to constantly raise their voices above the torrents, although they are fairly adept at that too. Most times when I see them, I hear them first.

So back to the initial question – where are the birds nesting in places that receive snow and freeze during the winter going? Dippers are extremely hardy birds (reportedly enduring -50°C winters in Alaska) and if their stream doesn’t freeze and has food, they’ve been noted year round where they breed, relying on a low metabolism and extra thick coat of feathers to endure. Multiple pairs of dippers can occupy a single drainage, simply dividing up the waterway in parcels, and in cases where a pair above disperses seasonally, it’s surmised they may skip over a pair wintering below them. These answers are about what I expected but I always enjoy delving a bit deeper to test my ideas with research that’s been done. I’d have never known that in some places, winter densities can get quite high, including a finding of 35 birds/km along British Columbia’s Okanagan River. For a bird that will fiercely chase away interlopers during the breeding season, it’s funny to think of them in such proximity. Frozen water is only one thing forcing these birds to disperse, the underlying reasons revolve around the dipper’s exclusively animal diet.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of spending several afternoon with a family of dippers in the Sierras. Beneath the bridge that crossed a rushing creek to my summer quarters, a pair of dippers had raised their young. One afternoon in particular was spent watching a youngster being fed. The interim between parents stuffing food down its gullet the fledgling spent singing a mangled dipper slurry. It was so charming I couldn’t help but giggle at this bird that appeared to lack all self awareness at his butchered song. Had he noticed me, I suspect the reaction would have been that of a teenage caught singing boisterously off key.

After his parents had finished their job of raising him, he’d eventually disperse to another drainage nearby. But while he flew off, his parents would do something pretty astonishing, they’d molt all flight feathers simultaneously. This means that they cannot fly for a short period, fully relying on water for protection from predators. For a passerine, this is incredibly peculiar.

I’ve never seen a dipper anywhere but along running water or the occasional lakeshore or coastline but these youngsters have to disperse between drainages at some point. This means they might occasionally cross land. Some have surmised this happens at night since there are no observations of cross drainage dispersal during the day. This only sort of makes sense to me. On the one hand, traveling out of their element at night would be safer. However, you’d also think that they’d just go downstream till they found a fork and follow that elsewhere.

If I got to choose, I’d imagine them waiting till the cover of darkness, listening for the moonlit tinkle of running water as they hurry through the forest or high above on their search. A night exodus in search of the torrent.

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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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Big Day. May 5. 2012.

Posted in Big Day, Birding, Birds, Eastern Washington, Natural History, Road Tripping, Seattle, Washington with tags , , , , , , , , , , , on May 11, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

A quick note: for those of you haven’t donated yet, my big day was in support of Seattle Audubon. This money is for a general fund but continues programs like Birdwatch, the high school group I volunteer with and have blogged about. Please consider pledging to my Birdathon. Thanks so much for your support!

I woke in the confusion of deep sleep, unsure where I was. Blearily, I cast about for my glasses, brushing frost off my sleeping bag. When my brain caught up it was with a mournful reproach. What had I gotten myself into. Oh no…this was just the start of the day. This could be the intro to a horror movie.

Welcome to our big day: 12 AM on a dirt road in Wenatchee National Forest on May 5th.

Five hours later we were sitting in the car waiting for first light. Our first bird had taken nearly two hours – a Spotted Owl barking in a distant drainage. We stood watching wind push surreal globular clouds across a full moon the rest of the time. The second species in four hours, was a Northern Pygmy Owl right at dawn.

I’ll freely admit that I despise owling. Owls are indelibly special birds, species which have always held a corner of the human imagination. However, interminable hours standing in the cold, listening to air move over your ears and the gaseous irruptions of your fellow owlers, imagining distant barks, hoots, or whines, are almost never worth it. Not the best way to get excited about a big day.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, a big day is when manic birders try to see as many species of birds as possible in 24 hours. This could be in a county, a state, even a city. My expedition mates, Adam Sedgley, Micheal Willison, and I were making our go in Washington State. Adam and I were raising money for Seattle Audubon with pledges for our endeavors.

We secretly knew from the start that we wouldn’t approach the state record of 211 birds. For one we were going out a bit too early in the year for some vital species. Give or take a few weeks, May is universal big day month in North America yet early May in Washington doesn’t afford time for some neotropical migrants to arrive. Second, our route needed some fine tuning. Third, completely out of our control, was wind. A birder can never get worse luck than high winds.

A big day more or less consists of rushing about from place to place. We’d see or hear a bird, make sure everyone got on it, and rush off. This wasn’t about beautiful views or remarkable observations, it was about efficiency and tallying off species within our 24 hour frame.

We started daybreak on Bethel Ridge, which is on a random forest service road near Rimrock Lake on Highway 12. In typical dawn activity we dashed off most species we could possibly snag. Wham bam. Time to move on.

Down Umptanum road between Naches and Ellensburg, we weren’t feeling particularly enthusiastic. Aiming to hit certain habitats is key and it’s a serious issue when you miss birds with only one opportunity to see them reliably. Later in the day when we were going over species we still needed, minutes before a Red-breasted Sapsucker flew across the road I said something like “they’re easy to see flying.” I wished we’d had that kind of fortune with White-breasted Nuthatch or White-headed Woodpecker in the few Ponderosa stands visited. We were getting skunked.

Early in the game we’d adopted a strategy of running to and from the car. After finding Sage Sparrow along the Old Vantage Highway, Adam and I dashed back out of the sage, warily eyed by two geared up gentlemen on dirt bikes next to the car. They were probably used to seeing birders but were maybe a bit uneasy as to our running.

“Stop! Back up a bit……there….a bit further. It just flew. Pull forward…”

Equally so our driving probably wasn’t convincing any bystanders of our sanity. Stopping in the middle of the road or weaving to see a bird. All in all we were safe. But erratic, very erratic.

Things were not looking fantastic by mid day. Noon was literally the halfway point, we’d been up for 12 hours and would be for another 12. Sheer lunacy.

Despite feeling pessimistic I was having a surprisingly good time. That’s what big days are about. Testing yourself, in planning, in ability to pick out birds whizzing by or calling quietly, pushing your limits of sleep deprivation.

By the time the crest of the Cascades at White Pass came and went I’d already started to nod. Time was slipping by as we crossed into Southwestern Washington, hoping to scoop what we could before the sun traded places with the moon around 8:30 PM.

I’d never been to Rainbow Falls State Park but I was grateful to stretch my legs. Everything counts, even common birds (which are so often missed). Pacific Wren, Townsend’s Warbler, Pacific-slope Flycatcher, and Wilson’s Warbler were all birds I can potentially see minutes from my home in urban Seattle. Hermit Warbler however was not. Time to move on.

Desperation setting in and we saw our first gulls in a field near Roy. Luckily they were worth studying, Herring and Mew Gull represented. We were tempted to waste precious minutes to make another bird a Thayer’s. I made an unethical, silly, and unsuccessful attempt to get the bird to fly by running down the road parallel to it.

There’s a certain salvation in getting to an entirely new habitat. Suddenly coastal Washington and all its marine, intertidal species spread before us. Crunch time and we crunched much of what we’d hoped for, waterfowl, shorebirds, a few songbirds. Yet, those missed species always make you cringe.

Big days are unapologeticly crude. You eat horribly, relieve yourself in convenient, not polite, places, and largely reject courtesy. Vespertine sputtered out on a platform at the Wesport Jetty. Pelagic and Brandt’s Cormorants were our last species roosting offshore. As we scanned with flagging enthusiasm, we probably managed to ruin a man’s attempt to photograph the blood orange moon creeping over Gray’s Harbor, shaking the platform and his tripod.

153 species, 890 miles driven.  Not terrible but not great either.  Definitely fun.  The callous road trip nation easily folds into the world of birding. Maybe we could have driven further and seen more? Then again the need for dinner, rest, and the camaraderie of sharing a meal surpassed a more hours standing in the cold, hoping for owls. I wasn’t going to suggest that anyway. Like I said, I sorta hate owling.

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Malheuring Around Part 2

Posted in Birding, Birds, Malheur Bird Observatory, Migration, Natural History, Oregon with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

Shoving as much natural history as a place holds into the space of five days will never promise restfulness. During the course of a few days we drove hundreds of miles in pursuit of birds, mammals, and reptiles. I’m feeling pretty pooped just thinking about it now and blogging about it during the trip was ultimately beyond me completely. In younger years I would have blown off writing completely but I’ve come to realize that memories fade and that this is the craft I wish to work and grow in. When these experiences are penned (or typed), they take on a whole knew life. The photos of this trip will always exist but the embellishment of a good yarn is equally important in immortalizing stories. Years from now I’ll thank myself for recording any experiences I had. I’m already kicking myself for not doing a better job in more formative times.

I left off on day three of our twisting navigation of the Malheur area. We continued to drift on and off the refuge and saw much of the birdlife the place offered.  A few surprises even popped up along the way.

To begin the day we decided to drive Central Patrol Road in hopes of seeing some good birdlife by using our vehicle as a blind. While we certainly saw a few nice things, including the first Brewer’s Sparrow of the year, this turned out to be unproductive in terms of seeing new species on the trip. Adam was particularly vocal in letting us all know we’d not seen any new species much of the day. However, it was a pleasant drive along the Donner und Blitzen River surrounded by the eroded walls and hills of basalt. (No, this river was not named after the reindeer but with German for the thunder, Donner, and lighting, Blitzen, that an early exploration encountered in a crossing).

Central Patrol Road runs practically the length of the refuge North to South, ending at the base of epic block fault Steens Mountain. While the gate to the top is closed till June, when snow from Steens has mostly melted bringing life to the wetlands below, Page Springs campground at the base offers variety to the sage weary. We retreated into the bowels of the upper Donner und Blitzen for a break amongst willows and juniper.

As I mentioned before a lot of the breeding songbirds hadn’t arrived yet. So as we entered the canyon, it was to enjoy new sights more than new birds. We heard both Canyon and Rock Wren, the later of which sat singing in plain sight, but that was the extent of our avian experience. Tristan and Ira sprinted off in search of snakes (and a potential Mountain Quail), hoping the hot day would reveal some serpent treasures (they caught a large Gopher Snake). The rest of us took our time along the slow river, admiring butterflies, plants and geology. Afternoon found us strolling about with no particular aim, what I consider a great joy in life. A few of the more bird manic of the group were initially disappointed as this pace but later admitted it a pleasurable way to spend the less active afternoon.

Night drives are one of the pleasures of being out in a place rife with mammals. You’ll never know what will be bounding along the road. What’s more, it offers and opportunity to acquaint yourself with a few of the animals more easily convinced to say a quick hello. Many cottontails and jackrabbits skittered about the roads on the nights Tristan, Ira, and I went out exploring but we were particularly keen to encounter kangaroo rats the most common of which was Ord’s Kangaroo Rat (Dipodomys ordii).

These desert adapted rats were surprisingly easy to find along the road on the nights I got up enough energy to drive us around. Most active at night, they spend their days deep in burrows and emerge in cooler weather to find seeds, which I learned they cache for later use. We spent a lot of time catching reptiles and amphibians during the trip, so it should come as no surprise that kangaroo rats were also handled. Luckily I’d learned from past experiences prowling for nocturnal mammals that they are beyond friendly in the hand, cuddling up, sitting calmly, or gently exploring your shoulder and hair.  (You may take issue to catching wild animals simply to admire but I think the benefits of understanding and appreciation that result far outweigh the negatives – every rat we caught was handled with care and released uninjured).

Bleary eyed from rat catching, I woke to rain and wind the next morning. The sage and rabbitbrush turned a pleasant saturated gray-green to match the weather. Us Seattlites weren’t going to let the rain hold us back and besides this weather was needed. According to Duncan, a director of the field station, it was drier than normal, with 60% less rain than the average. The state of the more pluvial loving Greasewood (Sarcobatus vermiculatus) was evidence of this, having lost most of their succulent leaves in response to the dryness.

Again we had a full day ahead of us and we struck out on a similar route we’d driven our first full day. This reaffirmed my notion that repeat visits gain you new, different sights. Almost immediately we noticed Clark’s Grebes amongst the Western Grebes on Malheur Lake. Stopping to admire one and some Cliff Swallow nests, Adam spotted a rare sight, a Great-horned Owl nest beneath a bridge on a highway!

The rest of the day was spent tooling around, just like we’d done on days before but with more activity. We were treated to a herd of Pronghorns right off the highway – a cooperatively perched Golden Eagle (we visited a nest too) – hundreds more American White Pelicans (which I tried to sneak close to unsucessfully) – a Common Raven nest – for once a sitting Prairie Falcon (all we’d seen were ones on determined wing). And there was one more delight and total surprise, a Snowy Owl!

If you paid any attention to the news or nature in North America this last winter, you’ve probably heard about Snowy Owls being all over the place. Last season was a good lemming year and there were a lot more owls born, which means they need to disperse to find food, often very far from their tundra homes. Many young birds die when they get far south (and in the case of the first record in Hawaii are shot….). That fact was not far from thought as we crept up to this shining white emblem of the North, sitting placidly right off the highway. The theories to explain it’s reluctance to fly were that either it was very sick or that it was stuffed on abundant food. Snowy Owls eat lots of waterbirds in addition to rodents, which could very well have meant it was simply in a blissed out state of heavenly indulgence while the weather stayed cool. Whatever the case, we saw it three times during our stay and it seemed content, even with two trailer semis zooming by mere feet from its fluffy face.

There will be one more installment on the trip coming soon. There’s some star characters to be sure, spectacularly absurd obligates of the shrub steppe that lek. See if you can guess what I’m talking about and stay tuned!

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Malheuring Around Part 1

Posted in Birding, Birds, Malheur Bird Observatory, Natural History, Oregon with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2012 by Brendan McGarry

Hours of driving take it out of you. Even if you aren’t behind the wheel the whole way, you’ll feel tired after a 12 hour trip. There were a few birds along the way to ease the pain, fifty some Red-tailed Hawks, Mountain Bluebirds, a Great-horned Owl, a Prairie Falcon, and quite a few twittering White-throated Swifts.

In Burns, Oregon we stopped for food in a Subway. Accompanying our fine dinning experience was a sour colored water feature which began dripping on one of our party suddenly and vigorously from a crack in the drywall ceiling. The employee’s response resounded with familiarity of such nuisances:

“Oh, is it raining again?”

Welcome to Eastern Oregon.

On the plus side, and there’s always a plus side, we managed to coerce a friendly kangaroo rat to join us for a visit post dinner.


I’m sitting in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Harney County, Oregon. Yesterday we trundled out of Seattle in a van stuffed with food, camera gear, and skivvies for five days. Somehow we found room for six high school students and four chaperones. I’m out exploring the high desert, of lava fields and wetlands, with Seattle Audubon’s Birdwatch Program.

Wind was tossing the loose, eroding landscape when we all pulled ourselves from a much needed slumber. Ground squirrels (there was a continued discussion of their identity all day), Nuttall’s Cottontail, and Black-tailed Jackrabbits didn’t seem to mind the buffeting and the cold. Neither did the California Quail. I was a bit concerned because I knew wind wouldn’t favor birding.

Feeling like we’d entered an entirely different vehicle, we spread out in the emptied van and readied for a day of birding. For some, like Adam (who you’ll hear from below), this was a new habitat full of new species. For others like myself, though I’m far from an old hand, we’d been here and explored a bit. Either way we had a blast.

People visit the area for various things. The geology alone is spectacular, consisting of eons of erroded lava and I’m pretty enamored with the shrub steppe ecosystem in general. Yet birds always manage to top the list. Waterbirds flock here because it is an oasis in the desert, excellent breeding habitat with abundant food and safe nesting areas for a myriad of waterbirds. Though a very dry and hot for much of the year, there’s a good amount of open water between the lakes and ponds of the refuge. While National Wildlife Refuges are largely purposed with managing waterfowl populations this also means that other animals are about too. Large ungulates like Pronghorn and Mule Deer stand out most, but Coyotes are common and rodents and rabbits abound. With many small mammals come many raptors. And if you get tired of birds of prey and waterbirds you can jaunt over to some sagebrush and find a whole new community of birds there.

With the first day past, we’ve clean up a lot of the birds that are present. This is the “shoulder season” in many ways. Most of the songbirds have not arrived yet and many of the wintering waterbirds are only around in low numbers. No matter, we saw a lot of flashy, sought after birds.

A target bird of one of the teens, a Ferruginous Hawk, flew by within the first half of the day. Ross’s Geese were a nice surprise, sitting for comparison with a few Snow Geese. Black-necked Stilt and American Avocets gave our mobile blind cold shoulders, but we saw them well anyway. Franklin’s Gulls, Sage Thrashers, Loggerhead Shrikes! Birds, birds, birds!

The most notable for me were the multitudes of American White Pelicans, at least 400, which soared overhead, sailed across the horizon and sat majestically in bright groups that shone across the xeric landscape. Adorned with their breeding “horns” (growths that develop for the breeding season on the upper mandible) and neon orange faces, they looked to me the kings of the shallows.

Probably the most numerous besides blackbirds were American Coots. You could sail a rock blindfolded and probably hit one. Their comical waddling and strange noises prompted an amusing quote from a student:

“If any bird makes being a bird look difficult it’s a coot.”

And in some ways he was right. They were the most numerous dead animal we found all day.

It was still cold in the afternoon but the sun soon got to us. After a much needed siesta we explored some proper shrub steppe habitat. A good deal of people, even honest naturalists and birders will see only monotony in such ecosystems and I made it my goal to erode that mentality a bit with the students. It didn’t help that the wind and early season meant many of the migrant songbirds that are obligates of the sage were absent but it forced us to look at bit harder for things to enjoy. A Coyote track, scat filled with reptile exoskeletons, some cryptobiotic crust. We still saw plenty.

Evening set and the Short-eared Owls changed shifts with the Northern Harriers. Snowy Steens Mountain caught the last of the sunlight as the storm clouds lifted, revealing the tall peaks. We watched a Coyote drooling after a group of geese, laying in wait for an opening in twilight. Black-crowned Night Herons and White-faced Ibis flew dark across a brilliant sunset. Our light had gone for the day.

Adam, a member of Birdwatch had this to say about his time out on the range:

“On my first day in Malheur I saw at least 20 new birds. The habitat is awesome and something I have never seen before. The sagebrush habitat holds many different types of animals including jackrabbits, scorpions, and Sage Thrashers. I learned today that Malheur has many different weather patterns from very sunny to all the sudden cloudy and very windy. I will never forget my first day day here.”

Sounds good to me Adam! Stay tuned in the next couple days, I’ll have more to share and a few more dispatches from the students before we are headed home.

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