Fall Birding
Posted 8 pm, Oct. 29, 2006 -------- My husband, Dennis, let out a whoop of laughter when we pulled up in front of the campground.
This campground consisted of a gravel parking lot with a portable restroom. We had arrived at Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge outside of Fallon, Nevada. We spent the morning driving around the wildlife refuge using our car as a blind to watch the birds. Supposedly, September and October were the best time to come to Stillwater to see the migration. We found birds there, however not in great numbers. Flotillas of white pelicans stood out on blue water. A golden eagle soared high above us. Occasionally, the blast of Navy jets streaking low below the foothills left me gasping. Surprisingly, the birds didn’t react to the sudden roaring noise disturbing their silent world. We passed on staying the night at the campground deciding to search for other places.
We found our perfect camp spot on an empty beach next to Lake Pyramid.
click on photo to see enlargement
Giant tofus stood out as islands forming pyramids that gave this magical lake its name. The lake is on a Paiute Indian Reservation and everyone passing through their land must obtain a $10 permit if they want to fish, hike, or camp on the reservation. This huge deep lake is mostly undeveloped with the desert mountains changing colors constantly in the background. Large waves lapping at the shoreline sounded like the sea making us think we were camped on a beach in Baja California. California gulls kept us company near the shoreline. A raft of 40 female and juvenile common mergansers floated by the shoreline closely.
The next day, we broke camp and headed north following the lake.
Suddenly, the road ran out of pavement and I could see Dennis’ eyes gleaming with excitement. Looking at the map, he said let’s follow it. It had been years since we’d taken off like this on a whim and my formerly adventurous spirit immediately started a checklist. We had a full tank of gas, a full 15 gallons of water, and a week’s worth of groceries in the refrigerator. “Let’s go for it.”.
It’s on roads like these, where we find the missing people in the United States. Missing people choose to live on the fringe and aren’t counted on the census surveys, often without an address. The map showed a dirt road to a small town called Flanagan. It turned out to be more like an encampment of broken down trailers and rusted cars with a hand written sign pointing to a school that was a trailer. We continued on past hoping to eventually hit Highway 395. A large ranch sprawled in the distance where we eventually saw a man coming towards us in a truck.
Dennis jumped out and asked him if the road would get us to the highway. Dennis said that we were bird watchers. The redneck responded, “We just shoot birds around here. No need to watch them when we can shoot them.”
Just past the ranch, I saw a huge bird sitting, and yelled to Dennis, “Whoa!” A golden eagle spread its massive wings and soared off the fence. It joined another eagle which lowered its feet and swept at the other eagle with its talons. Dennis said, “these eagles better move on fast.”
The road did bring us to the highway where we decided to head to Eagle Lake. It is named after the bald eagles that winter over there. We climbed up to 5,000 feet elevation passing through the mixed pine forest of Douglas, Ponderosa, and sugar pine trees. The lake sparkled blue reflecting white puffy clouds. Large numbers of western grebes, ducks, gulls, and white pelicans rested on its water. Their eerie calls were constantly heard. The first night we woke to the large patter of heavy rain. In the morning the rain stopped, but the cold chill of winter was in the air and the ominous thunder clouds threatened more rain all day. We bundled up and took a long stroll on a bicycle trail that surrounds the lake. We saw a red-shafted flicker attack a Stellar’s jay sitting on top of a tree. Mountain chickadees trilled their sweet song as they busily went about their search for food. Suddenly, I put my arm out in front of Dennis and said, “Stop,” pointing to a small western toad that Dennis’ foot threatened to squash. This was the first of many toads hopping on the pathway and we had to be careful not to step on them. Dennis gave up counting after 50. We found a mixed flock of yellow-rumped warblers, red-breasted nuthatches, and western blue birds. After lunch, we took another walk in the other direction where we heard a woodpecker whacking. A flock of mountain chickadees were passing through. Suddenly, a big black woodpecker came into view. It had a reddish stomach that made me immediately think that it was a Lewis woodpecker. Dennis thought it might be a Williamson’s sapsucker. Either of those birds would be a delight as it had been years since we had seen either. It wasn’t until later looking at Sibley’s book that we came to the conclusion that the bird was definitely a female black-backed woodpecker with a reddish stain on her belly. The best bird of the trip as it is only the second one I have ever seen.
Tired of being cold, we decided to descend to lower elevation. The drive around Lake Almanor was eerie with fog surrounding us with a deep chill. Our next adventure was to drive the scenic highway that follows the Feather River through an amazing and beautiful canyon. The road is a masterpiece of road construction, built in the 1930s with long span bridges, and many long tunnels through solid rock granite. The most excitement was watching a helicopter hovering low in the canyon after having dropped a couple of climbers who rappelled down a steep cliff to install a huge steel grid ladder to keep rocks from coming down on the railroad tracks. Farther down the road we saw the helicopter rising again trailing another one of the steel ladders.
We ended up in the foothills just above Oroville, camped along one of the fingers of Lake Oroville at a brand new State campground, Lime Saddle. Acorn woodpeckers were plentiful, and the oak titmouse soon found my seed bell I hung from a tree near our campsite. We spent two warm days thawing out before heading home to Sonoma County.
Mother Nature Fighting Back
Posted 8:30 pm, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2006 -------- About the time our eyes were focused on the Hurricane Katrina victims a year ago, another bit of ecological news went mostly unnoticed. Researchers announced on September 29th, that they had traced the global SARS epidemic, to one small creature: the horsehoe bat. The SARS epidemic traveled to 26 countries and infected thousands of people with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, (SARS). The virus has been conclusively known to be transmitted from animal to human. Animal to human transmissions are increasingly the case to emerging diseases: Monkeypox, West Nile Virus, and Avian Flu. In our fast-paced world of travel, consumer trade, development, and environmental disasters caused in our unrelenting pursuit of diminishing natural resources, these diseases will emerge because of human activities. If we were to protect ecosystems, we’d help protect both animals and humans’ health as well.
About the time the bat/SARS connection broke, another ecological news item was lost between the words about the Katrina disaster. The floating cap of ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank to probably its smallest size in a century that summer. Scientists say this appears to be in part to human caused global warming. The most telling part of this story is the size factor. The difference between the average ice area and the area that persisted was about 500,000 square miles. Think twice the size of Texas, and that will give you some idea.
In the Brazilian Amazon rainforest region, severe drought has been felt, leaving rivers running a trickle or drying up completely, cutting off many communities from the world. Some scientists now think that this harsh dry season may be linked to the violent hurricane season in our northern hemisphere causing Katrina, Rita, and Stan. When warm surface water in the Pacific Ocean creates El Ninos, droughts in the Amazon have traditionally happened. Scientists speculate that the unusually warm water in the North Atlantic has caused more air to rise causing severe hurricanes to take place. Add the impact of deforestation where a fifth of the original rainforest has been cut down in recent decades, and we can double the drought equation. Cleared areas release less moisture into the air causing the inability to hold water in the ground when it does rain which causes excessive run-off. Drinking water is becoming scarce leading to fears of disease outbreaks.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or an astronaut looking down at earth to see that Mother Nature is fighting back. However, the Republicans hold on the White House, Congress, and the Senate for the past six years has attempted to undermine every segment of environmental protection of our natural resources. With fears mounting that high energy costs will hurt economic growth, Mr. Bush finally five years too late, called on the American people to conserve gasoline by driving less after Katrina left several broken oil refineries. In 2001, Vice President Cheney said, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it cannot be the basis of a sound energy policy.” In that same year, a question was asked about reducing American energy consumption, and Ari Fleischer, then Mr. Bush’s press secretary responded, “that’s a big no.”
At the end of September 2004, the House approved broad changes to the Endangered Species Act making it much more difficult to list species as endangered and to limit development of habitat that biologists say is critical to the survival of endangered wildlife. These new rules establish entitlement programs for developers and requires taxpayers to pay them unlimited amounts of money.
In the wake of disastrous hurricanes, the fear of the next pandemic flu outbreak, and droughts in the rain forest, it does appear that Mother Nature is pissed off. Even my 12 year old grandson has noticed that it might be wise to tread more gently on the earth. Mr. Bush’s blind eye approach with the Congress and Senate’s support to drill and not conserve our natural resources will be viewed as a disaster when the inconvenient truth is evident. I will always his remark about global warming in his first year as President when he said, “We’ll get use to it.” Now it is up to the citizens of the United States to help save our planet by voting the Republican Congress and the Senate out of office.
Bush Bashes Birds
There are nearly 70 million people who consider themselves bird watchers in the United States according to the National Audubon Society. If all of them had cast their votes for the environment in 2004, Bush would not be President. Most Americans want the environment protected, but when it comes time to vote, they don’t vote the environment. I think most of the citizens think that the President will take care of the environment in the tradition going back to Theodore Roosevelt. Unfortunately, Bush has betrayed that tradition since the beginning of his first term in office.
The Bush rhetoric is clever and deceiving to the public. For several years now, the Bush Administration has actively engaged to dismantle the Clean Water Act, to remove the federal protection for wetlands that 50% or more of our nesting birds need for survival, and to eliminate the designation of critical habitats for endangered species.
In regular photo ops, President Bush has told the public how he wants to set aside an additional 3 million acres of wetlands for protection of birds, but in truth, he has done the exact opposite. The Environmental Protection Agency under the Bush Administration and the Army Corps of Engineers have routinely permitted draining of isolated wetlands. The EPA has estimated that up to 20 million acres of wetlands have been lost under this Administration.
With the Everglades, and its coastlines surrounding the state of Florida, it has become a key state for bird watching. There are hundreds of thousands of bird watchers living in that state with a large number of them being Republicans. If only 270 of these Republicans had taken notice of the long standing pollution to the Everglades by the Bush brothers protection to Florida’s sugar industry, and had changed their votes in the 2000 Presidential election, Gore, an environmentalist, would have won the election. Repeatedly, Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida with his brother has collaborated with the sugar industry to continue to pollute the Everglades, America’s most important wetland, and its millions of birds. Florida has more threatened or endangered bird species than any other state. The delay for a 10 years regulations governing the clean up of phosphorous run-off from sugar farmlands into waterways isn’t the only problem facing birds and their watchers in Florida. Bush has departed from a 30 year legal precedent and has eliminated the Clean Water Act protections from 300,000 acres of Florida wetlands. He has encouraged real estate development on almost one million acres of wetlands, and has also made saving endangered species a low priority.
Closer to home, it only took the Bush administration nine days after he took office in 2001 when he removed 11 national forests in Arizona and New Mexico from the list of protected habitats for the Mexican subspecies of the spotted owl. In California, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the spotted owl didn’t warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. A Federal judge ruled this “nonsensical” blasting the administration for knowingly violating the Endangered Species Act. Secretary of Interior, Gale Norton, refused to obey the court order to protect the spotted owl by arguing that a lean budget made it impossible for the administration to comply. This same logic has endangered other populations including trumpeter swan, mountain quail, and sage grouse.
By tweaking the language, the Bush administration has been able to circumvent rules prohibiting the dumping of coal mining waste into the waterways. By reclassifying debris to now be called “fill” it is now acceptable for dumping waste into streams where it was prohibited before. Now rather than digging shafts and excavating the coal from the mountain, the new reclassification permits “mountaintop” techniques which destroys acres of forested bird habitat. The estimation is that over 700 miles of mountain streams have been buried by deposits in recent years.
It is estimated that possibly 50 million birds die each year from crashing into man-made structures. Regulators appointed by Bush to the Federal Communications Commission have given the green light to build far more cell towers in order to improve service for customers that will have a devastating impact on all birds.
The most absurd story, was when a Harvard-trained lawyer for the Department of Defense argued that by the military bombing the American-controlled Mariana Islands, it helped disperse the birds to other islands where more bird watchers could see them.
Perhaps the telling truth is when hunters join forces with bird watchers to protect birds and their habitat. There are an estimate of 47 million sportsmen and women in the United States. Of that 47 million, 68% voted for President Bush in 2000. Hunters are now opposed to the administration’s policies on wilderness areas. There are 470 gun clubs across our nation, including 40 in Texas who sent petitions to the Forest Service asking protection for our national forests for hunters. Eight years of Bush bashing birds will definitely take its toll on their habitats.
A Surprising Day at Bodega Bay
Three nesting pairs of western gulls were resting on top of the rocks off Bodega Head. Peering through the telescope, I watched three pigeon guillemots floating on the water in the distance. Their white wing patches on their all black bodies stood out like white flags. Every once in a while one of the birds would raise a bright red foot and scratch at an undisciplined feather on its cheek. Somebody yelled excitedly, “Look over here. It’s a weasel out in the open.”
I turned my head and looked where everybody was pointing. Andy Lacasse from Petaluma spoke with authority telling us that we were looking at a long-tailed weasel. This tiny animal had a reddish golden coat, a white face mask and dark ears. Her long slender body reminded me of a daschund but with more grace and agility. I assumed it was a female because she was out hunting during the day probably because she had young ones to feed. Once thought nocturnal, but actually weasels are diurnal.
Leaping and spinning, she was hunting for mice or voles, their common food. But weasels can take many other animals including ones bigger than themselves by attacking their victims at the base of their skull and then curling their long bodies around them while grasping their prey with its forelimbs. It then eats the head and the thorax first.
Bounding forward, its back was humped at each bound with its long tail trailing. After a few minutes displaying its athletic appeal to us, it ran under a parked car and hid for a few moments. Then with incredible speed she sprinted over the asphalt parking lot and headed for the hills.
The morning spring bird walk had started out quite well. We immediately had spotted several cedar waxwing on our walk around the rail ponds. I immediately located them by their high-pitched trilling whistles. Their silky plumage appeared so soft. They are silky brown with a yellow belly and wear a perky crest with a small black eye mask. Waxwings are social birds who gorge on berries and have been known to be tipsy after eating too many overripe fermented berries.
Looking over at the Bay, I saw one small white gull with a black face flying. I called out “Bonaparte’s gull flying” to Dennis and he confirmed it.
This smallest and most delicate gull of the Western Hemisphere is a winter resident along our Pacific Coast. So it is unusual to see one in breeding plumage wearing the black face. This one must have been late departing for its northern breeding grounds. We usually see Bonaparte’s gulls wearing white faces with a smudge of black behind their ear.
After leaving Bodega Head we stopped at Hole-in-the-Head to see what was on the pond. A couple of black-crowned night-herons, one breeding bird, and one immature sat in the willows across from us drowsy in slumber. Suddenly, Betty Groce from Santa Rosa pointed across the pond and called out “river otters.”
Sure enough, three sleek shiny otters appeared on the banks and slipped into the water without a splash. Up and down they disappeared and then reappeared while staying close to the side of the pond. These animals are also a member of the weasel family and they have existed back to the Pleistocene period. The day was turning into quite a mammal day. We began to speculate about how these otters got into the pond as it is completely fenced in. Don Toms from Bodega Bay explained that he had seen river otters before in this pond and he had watched them enter through a drain hole on the other side of the fence.
After the river otters disappeared, the group moved over to see what was on the Bay. Off in the distance, I saw one grebe with a reddish neck. It kept diving and disappearing and then resurfacing. Finally, I got a good enough look to be sure, and I called out, “red-necked grebe.” Usually this stocky grebe is seen in the winters off our coast and we seldom see the bird in its breeding splendor with its orange-red neck. This bird was just beginning to turn into its breeding plumage. One other red-necked grebe was spotted but still wearing its drab gray and white plumage.
The bird highlight of the day for Dennis and me, was seeing red-necked phalaropes up close to the water’s edge. These birds are common during spring and fall migration and rarely seen here in the winter. Phalaropes appear dainty but are hardy birds that survive on the ocean during winter and breed in the Arctic tundra in summer. Often they are tossed inland during fierce winter storms causing them to become victims to car collisions, and easy pickings for raptors. These tiny birds with needle-like bills were already changing to breeding plumage showing us their bright red necks. We watched them spinning in tight circles to stir up the small invertebrates they eat bringing them to the surface.
We departed with smiles on our faces after having had a marvelous birding day with many surprises and a total of 67 bird species.
