Using this Blog

In order to read the trip reports, refer to the below. I've put the reports in the archives in their natural order, rather than blog order (last post first) That means ignore the posted dates, and refer to the dates in the posts themselves.

WARNING: If you're not a fanatic bird lister, some of this will seem real boring.

This project is not completed, so some disorder is to be expected.

Ten day Gulf Coast trip is archived in February 2007
Platte River Crane viewing is archived in March 2007
Mississippi River lower valley is archived in April 2007
Ten day Kansas etc trip archived in May 2007
New England trip is archived in June 2007
The Northern Prairie trip is archived in June 2008
A fall trip to the Four Corners is in November 2008

Four Corners Trip Overview

I made a trip west, mostly in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, in November 2008. I was sorta hoping to break 7000 total tics, and fell just two short. Normally it wouldn't be a good time for birding for new species on state lists except that several states had very few waterfowl and it was a good time to catch them going or arriving south. I was also just plain needing to get out of town, and gas had become suddenly affordable again.

The basic route was west through Oklahoma and across the Texas panhandle, then diagonally southwest across New Mexico. I spent several days in Silver City, where I had lived, to visit friends and strenghthen old relationships of various kinds. From there it was north farther than I'd planned into Colorado, clipping a corner going to Moab, Utah, and some more friendship boosting. A prime focus of the trip was Bear River Refuge in northern Utah, which lived up to my hopes, then a short excursion into Idaho, and a corner of Wyoming, back into Utah at Flaming Gorge, then eastward for three days in Colorado, and homeward across Kansas.

The weather on the outbound leg was clear and mild, the nights slightly chilly as I gained elevation. The altitude headache lasted four or five days, but was mixed with a standard cold and some allergies. On the way back I got to see the world freeze up before my eyes as a big cold front came down the west side of the Rockies.

Highlights were several bright nights around the full moon on the outbound leg, lots of Great Horned Owls, Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese in New Mexico, Snow Buntings on the south edge of their normal range, a herd of Bighorn Sheep at Red Canyon, two chasing in a circle around the truck, and four Tundra Swans in Kansas. I was more sucessful than I'd anticipated in finding new tics, even getting four in Texas. The whole trip took 16 days, and cost about $1600, including nice meals and some books and maps.

And I had some great visits with old friends, Bob and Diana Leyba, and Patrck Mulligan in Silver City, and a renewed crush on my old crush Laura Ramnarace. Managed to get in a good visit with Serena Supplee, the great Colorado Plateau artist, even with showing up un-announced.

Arkansas to Muleshoe NWR in Texas

November 10 - 11, 2008

I left Arkansas via Ft Smith after a nice drive down the Pig Trail, Highway 23, and stopped for gas at one of the cheapest stations in the state. Very pleased to fill up at $1.82/g. I took a byway that paralleled the Interstate into OKC, looped south of there, more byways to avoid a Turnpike, and was eating in Lawton before heading into the Wichita Mtns NWR somewhat before sundown. It had rained the whole way from Arkansas, but the sun came out as I got onto the refuge. I stopped at a parking lot at one of the lakes there, just looking for ducks, but found an unfamiliar looking gull.

Dark gray back and wings, black wingtips, medium size judging from the pace of the wingbeats, bright white tail, and duller white head. That's looking through the windshield before stopping the engine. I jumped out hoping for a closer look, went out to the end of a dock there, but couldn't find it again. Field guide study came up with the closest fit as Lesser Black-backed. That's a remarkable bird for OK, so I knew it wouldn't be something folks would be inclined to believe. Figured I'd get somebody to check it out and see if they could refind it. I headed for the visitor's center, thinking there might be something in the sightings book, but arrived minutes after closing. I tried a call to Eric Beck, a top-notch local birder that I had a number for, but could only leave a message.

Anyway. I was hoping to maybe find either a Burrowing Owl or a Short-eared Owl. Drove by a couple of Prairie Dog Towns, but had no luck. At the second I did meet a couple of guys who were also looking for owls. One turned out to be the former Super of Malheur NWR in Oregon, a place I'd stayed years ago and found excellent. Ended up camping and falling in love with Steen's Mountain in the distance. They hadn't had any luck with the owls either, and the list showed both as occasional, ie, not easy to get. I later found that there were BUOW at another dog town on the refuge. The habitat seemed good for SEOW, tall grassy big fields with indicator Harriers about, it may have been too early in the season, we hadn't seen any real cold weather yet.

I stayed there until almost dark, then drove back slowly watching the fields for the big bat-winged birds. Stayed at Doris campground, no owls there either, and was back to the dogtown before first light. I love watching the sunrise on the prairie, and quite a few birds started showing up in and around the dogtown; the short grass and bare ground must be attractive in low light. Finally it got late enough for the visitor center to open, and I checked the sightings book. Nothing about LBBG. I wasn't about to commit anything to the book, I hate that stuff after experiencing the disbelief of people who weren't present. I don't know how those asswipes can say I have imagination when they imagine that they can do remote viewing. Possibly unfortunately, I ended up mentioning the sighting to one of the staff, and as I was leaving he stopped the truck and put me on his phone to a guy who was a local prof. So I went through the description as clearly as I could, without trying to sound sure. He said he'd alert some locals to look. Also got a call from Eric finally, and he said he'd look too. There never was anything about it on the list-serv. so I guess nobody found it.

From the Refuge to the Texas border isn't too far, and I was trying to decide whether to go to Palo Duro Canyon, or just head on straight to Muleshoe NWR. Decided on the latter, more direct, free camping, and probably better birding.

Muleshoe NWR, TX to Bosque del Apache NWR, NM

November 11 - 13, 2008

When I got to Muleshoe it was fairly late afternoon, but before closing hours. Unless of course it's Veteran's Day. So I couldn't get a checklist or anybody to quiz about sightings. I wandered around, drove to each lake and playa, found some usual suspect ducks, and maybe thirty Sandhill Cranes at one place and about fifty at another, but nothing really exciting. Well, anyway, I could look at the campground which I remembered as a treeless barren place, but fortunately my memory was missing some stuff. There was a nice brushy dry creek bottom along one edge, there was a bit of bottomland Cottonwoods, big enough to support some territories. Beyond that was a trail along an arroyo that had a different feel from the campground creek. The three together ended up being some great birding. The whole zone was packed, lots of White-crowned Sparrows, others including Clay-colored and Fox, both good TX tics, Roadrunner, Great-horned Owl, two kinds of Thrashers, a flock of Eastern Bluebirds, and in the morning, my first TX Eurasian Collared Dove. Four new tics in a place where I'd hardly expected to see a bird.

The night was the first cold one of the trip, heavy frost in the morning, and saturation moonlight as it approached full, a high winter moon. Up early trying for any dawn chorus action. Tried the office again at 8, but nobody was there. I headed north and a little west to Grulla NWR. The TX/NM border is it's eastern fence. It's the biggest playa lake I've ever seen, but it was almost dry and any birds were well overa mile away, and me not inclined to walk down in. It's a geological puzzle, almost exactly round, with high sides in a mostly flat country. I later started wondering if it might be a meteor crater, or maybe a collapsed salt dome, but haven't had time to follow the question. Anyway, it wasn't a very birdy start on New Mexico.

From there it's about a hundred fast straight miles to Bitter Lake NWR outside Roswell. I ran the tour loop there, fairly good waterfowl variety, but no outstanding numbers. Did nail a Ross's Goose for NM. I needed gas, and was grossed out by the $2.47 in town, finally drove into a station and when I reached the pump it was $2.29. They had just changed it on their computer. That lifted my spirits some. From there it's about three hours driving to the Rio Grande valley and Bosque del Apache NWR, one of my focal goals. The drive is a lot of old bumpy two lane blacktop, but you do get to go through Lincoln County where Billy the Kid has become a local industry. They have a pageant dedicated to a psychopathic killer. Tourism at its best.

It was still a couple of hours to sundown when I got to BdA, and I was able to drive the tour loop. Good numbers of Cranes and Snow Geese, but nothing like my first visit years ago in February. The elevation drop had let things warm up nicely. I had hoped there might still be some shorebirds, but my departure from AR had been delayed enough to lose that possibility. As it got dark, I headed into town, Socorro, for overpriced fast food (a misnomer on two counts), and then went west up the mountains to Water Canyon, about twenty miles, and stayed there. I read through the New Mexico bird finder, and it turns out to be a very good place in spring and early summer, especially for night birds. Maybe I'll try next spring.

Back down in the dark next morning, after another cold bright night. I got to the refuge about sunup and got to see some of the big flights taking off. I was more interested in passerines, which were really weak on my NM list, so headed to the south end of the loop where there are a couple of trails through wetlands and dessert. Had an excellent morning. Several new Sparrows, a Marsh Wren, a Verdin which was only my second ever, and sharing it's bush with a Brewer's Sparrow, a late Ash-throated Flycatcher, and several other satisfying sightings, quails and hawks, thrashers and Western Grebes. The best section was a piece of dirt road below a small bluff along the south edge of the pool that the trail circled, which had a great combination of cover, perches, and water edge. Great morning. I was still intersted in getting on toward Silver City, and hit the road a little after noon.

Black Range and Silver City

November 13-16, 2008

Thursday: The turn off from the Interstate into the Black Range is just south of Truth or Consequences, known as TrC to locals. At first it's just a long climb across typical NM dessert, but then it starts twisting and seriously climbing, passing through Hillsboro and Kingston. Coming into Hillsboro I saw a sign for "New Mexico Birding Trail", so stopped in the general store to ask if they knew anything about that. Met a birder easily enough, Patty Woodruff, who had advice, but after trying three places, we couldn't find a site map. She's interested in some enterprise organized around the hundredth birthday of Aldo Leoplold, a festival or business, not clear, but she was gonna email some questions, which never happened. Too bad. I eventually found a map in Silver City. More importantly, I got a great hambuger with Green Chiles, one of the five basic food groups. The others are salt, sugar, grease, and chocolate.

Patty and another bird-wise person recommended stopping at Emory Pass, where I'd had a great night once with astro-geeks and big telescopes. Beyond that was Irons Creek campground, and Gallinas Canyon, where I'd once eaten a formal Thankgiving dinner, complete with china and silverware, set up on folding tables out in the open, an inspiration of the unforgettable Bob Erman ("Wood works for me, I would work for thee"), and his wife Polly. I made stops at all those places, not very birdy late on a cool afternoon except for more Brown Creepers than I'd ever seen in one place or one day, maybe half a dozen.

On into Silver City by the back north way through Mimbres and Santa Rita, home of an immense copper mine, one of the world's biggest excavations. That's a whole 'nother story. My main focus in SC was visiting old friends and renewing our affections. First on the list was Patrick Mulligan, who had been my partner in carpentry in Philadelphia, and was the last remaining close male friend after five years of deaths among my cohort. Second was Bob and Diana Leyba, a couple also from Philly, who in fact had introduced me to Pat at a party at their Germantown house. My first stop in Silver was in front of their art supply store, called Leyba and Ingalls. There was a parking space waiting for me. After a couple of hours talking to Diana, who I'd met when she was in my home-room at an alternative high-school in Philly, It had become a lifelong friendship. I headed over to Pat's house and spent a couple of hours there hearing tales of mountain biking and retired desperation, told with the exquisite timing of a perfected political and social curmudgeon. It was great. Back at Diana's the three of us went to Jalisco's for good Mexican and then they gave me a tour of an array of buildings they've rehabbed and rented, Bob, a pro painter, was pleased to show off his handiwork. They had a guest house too, big bed, hot shower, and a lizard who crawled between the sheets for warm company while I slept. That was a thrill.

Since I'd lived in Silver, i had a lot of other acquaintances that I hoped to see. One was an old heart-throb named Laura Ramnarace, Irish-Indian who I'd corresponded with for awhile after leaving, but those things often fade. Even the contact with Pat and B&D had gotten thin. Diana encouraged me to give her a call, and I left a message. I was very pleased when Diana told me the next day that Laura had called back. We made arrangements to go hiking on Saturday.

Friday: I stopped by Pat's early, still chilly, drank coffee and told stories, then headed up Little Walnut Rd to the picnic area. Good birding, even got a couple of tics, Acorn and Hairy Woodpeckers. I had gotten my start birding while I lived in Silver, but hadn't hooked into the serious birder network and its resources of books and groups. So I was pleasantly surprised at how many birds I had missed through lack of skil and not knowing where and when to look. I found the local internet cafe and did some catching up, worked on reading the books I'd brought to get through long evenings, watched a movie at Diana's called "Mirror Mask", very Jungian, Slept well, but still had three headaches, one from a cold, one from allergies, and one from altitude. They all faded before the trip's end.

Silver City Part 2

Nov 15, 16

Saturday: More reading and hanging at store and cafe until Laura showed up. She was in the middle of a project for work, and somewhat time squeezed since a co-worker was staying the weekend to work along with her. She knew of a place to go hiking at Bear Mountain Lodge, which I'd seen advertised in birding magazines. Nice place, lots of trails in typical habitat fro the area, no birds I'd not seen the day before at the picnic area. Which didn't matter much since we were mostly talking intensely about what had been happening in our lives. First she caught me up on news of her daughters, then aboout herself going back to college and getting not only a BA, but an MA from a more challenging school. Like somebody waking up to her true self, suddenly a setting where she could use her intelligence and drive, and the organizing skills from raising three kids mostly alone. Then we started talking about people dieing. She had spent something more than a year involved in her mom's decline and demise, with all the stresses and sadness. I told her about my mom as well, plus went down the roster of all the close men friends who I'd lost in the last five years, Not just friends, but my mentor, and my favorite Uncle. I was teary by the time we got done, and found a Buddha on a viewpoint. Folks had left coins and mementos, so I left the Buddha token that I'd been carrying in my pocket for over a year for comfort with impermanence. It seemed to belong, and I figured I could get another when I got home.

That was the most thorough telling of the accumulated losses that I'd done with anyone and twas a relief, as well as a sudden binding and recognition between us. I had said I would probably leave the next day, but she said it would be good to meet again after the project planning was done. That made sense to me when I figured out how much I'd needed that contact. She dropped me off back at the internet cafe, I met her friend, she said goodbye with hugs and kisses. And when I checked my mail, there was an email from my best friend in college who'd I'd lost track of for around forty years. He found my address on some Ivory-bill site, I don't even know which one, but it was like a gap closing that I'd forgotten was there. The rest of the evening was back with Bob and Diana, watching videos of her grandchild, then noshing at a store opening, and general goofing. It felt like a day when something important had changed.

Sunday: I got up early and had a biscuit at McDonald's, then hung around with Pat until 9 when we met up with Diana and Bob for a nice breakfast at a little place up from the store. More green chiles. I guess about 11 I set out up the Pinos Altos road to check out birding sites in the Gila NF. I wasn't expecting a lot from the campgrounds along the road, but had some hopes for higher elevation species on Signal Mountain at the firetower. According to the GPS I was within just over a mile of steep road when I turned back, since the road was slick icey packed snow on the north side of the mountain. Just have to try again in the spring. I'd already decided for certain to make it back on my projected spring trip to pick up some more NM tics, try some backup sites for Flamulated Owl, and mostly check back in with Laura.

I still had hopes for waterfowl at Lake Roberts, and that did work out. Once I'd figured out the good spot for the scope and was working over the birds one by one, a woman ranger from the Fish and Game agency stopped and got out her big binocs and we searched for goodies. Hooded Merganser was good. Also Gadwall and Western Grebe. There were decent numbers and fair variety. Worth the trip. It was getting late and cooling down and I headed back to Silver to meet Laura for dinner, then we went to her house to watch a movie and cocoon on the couch. More good talk, and she showed me a lot of her soap-making operation, which has been a big success. They were multi-colored and -shaped and -fragranced with essential oils, made with good oils and Shea butter. She gave me samples and knew I'd be showing them off when I got home. When I did that there were rave reviews.

Back into Colorado, then Moab etc

November 17 - 19, 2008

Monday: It turned out to be a frustrating day. I got all my stuff from Diana's guest house and she had done a load of laundry for me. What a great friend! Somewhere along the road I discovered that I hadn't brought my extremely useful Lands End jacket, given by my mom years ago. Diana later checked the palces where I might have left it, and it was gone, gone. Anyway, I headed northwest out of Silver and made several short stops at NM birding trail sites, but no new birds. Took minor roads along the western edge of the state, and up thorough El Malpais. Got some good birds there, a Golden Eagle close and on the ground, and a Merlin flying along a cliff face. Stopped at their eastern Info Center, the BLM version, and got their bird list. Have to say it's the finest production I've seen from a public agency, great work.

I had been reading the New Mexico birdfinder book, and decided that Bluewater Lake a little west of Grants looked like a good place to bird and spend the night. Grants seemed to have changed since the last time I was there in the early nineties. I remembered it as a dirty, gritty, poor and desperate place. It looked a lot better, and felt friendlier. But I just grabbed a bite, so can't say for sure. Got to Bluewater Lake, nice place, big and empty of folks, no staff it seemed either. Not many ducks, but there was an arm that I couldn't see up. A little map studyshowed I had to go back to the Interstate, then take another local highway to get back there. It was about three pm, and somewhere along there I figured out how far it was and how long it would take, and started looking for an alternative. The road atlas showed another state park a little further along, with an easy exit. Guess what? No exit by that number, no signs of any kind for a park.

It was getting dark, and I headed north on the highway up the eastern edge of the Navaho Res. All the way to Shiprock in the dark, and no camping. By then I'd decided to just get into Colorado, and the atlas showed two campgrounds near Dolores. When I got ther I couldn't find them, the atlas didn't have enough detail, nor did the GPS software. I drove around here, then back then ther then back farther until I just got frustrated and headed into the National Forest to look for a roadside parking place. Found a good one, slept well. Getting colder.

Tuesday: I woke up and figured out I was a little south of the Home Creek Rec area on McPhee Reservoir. That was one of the elusive campgrounds from the night before. I just hadn't gone far enough, a mismatch in my scaling from the atlas to the GPS. It turned out to be a pretty good spot, with lots of Common Mergansers, and lots of Bald Eagles, at least twenty. Before I left I also found one Hooded Merganser, and a durable Great Blue Heron. There were four lakes around Dolores and Cortez, and I got sort of systematic. The inlet end near Dolores for McPhee had holding pools that suppressed dust blowing into town, and a Bufflehead. I stopped at Narguinnep Res, which the Colorado birdfinder hadn't spoken well of, but it had a lot of birds with good variety. Also a couple, local birders, who sent me to other good sites.

One was the dam for McPhee, which had a Western Grebe, and the dirt road beyond it proved good for sparrows. Then as recommended I went back through Dolores and south around the east side of Totten Res. which had lots of waterfowl, mostly Coots, but a few others. The last stop was Danny Park on the east end of Cortez, a pond really, but with a Red-breasted Merganser. Trifecta on mergs. I ended up with 7 new tics by around noon.

From there I decided it was time to get on to Moab, I could make it before dark, and I was anxious to see Serena Supplee, good friend and great artist. There was one more stop the couple had recommended, just into Utah, wher Gunnison Sage-Grouse had been seen. I bit, even though I live under a curse to never see certain galliforms. Scanned the area four times with a scope, curse was effective. On to Moab, where I'd lived for a year in the early nineties. The drive up was beautiful, as always, renewing my acquaintance with red-rock hoodoo country. The town was kinda overrun with tourists then, but had now reached the truly disgusting stage. Endless motels, "attractions", condos, and what not. Still the scenery is magnificent, too steep and rough to settle buildings on, and thus self-protected mostly.

Serena was home, working in her yard with a young assistant, and pleased to see me. She had had a very sucessful show at the Grand Canyon during the summer, and had gotten down in the canyon to paint numerous times. She glowed. We agrred to meet up later for dinner, and I went off to drive around and try my luck at bookstores. Moab now has three, all owned by the same concern. I found a good book in the used division, and was attracted to a couple of new ones at "Back of Beyond", which had been my center of operations when I lived there. But my friend the amazing coyote Jose Knighton had moved away, rumor said Portland OR. I went to the library to check email and send Laura a note, and then Serena and I had a great pizza and a long talk before we went back to her house for the private art show and works-in-progress. I slept in the truck in her driveway, a place I'd used a score of times.

Wednesday: It was good to have the guest-house for morning hygiene, crisp fresh start. I wanted to check out a couple of sites on the Eastern Utah birding map. Matheson Preserve, a TNC site, had been one of my earliest birding places, where I'd stop almost every morning before goinfg to work. First Ibises and Soras and half a dozen other species made it dear to me. But they had a bad fire in the invasive Tamarisks, and the fire control efforts had wrecked a lot of other habitat. Lots of dozing and brush-hogging through the vegetation, presumably for fire lines, had really torn up some of the area . Not to mention the burn. It was officially closed, but I poked my nose in, enough to be grossed out. Just a little further down the road was Moonflower Canyon, a sweet short bluff ended creek bottom with big cottonwoods. It was cold and not very birdy, but looked to be an excellent prospect for a contemplated spring stop next year.

After another bookstore stop to show the staff the Utah birding maps as a suggestion, and another short but good visit with Serena, I headed north to Salt Lake and Bear River. The stop at the Green River sewage ponds was good, almost any open water in Utah would get new tics, but some of the other stops I'd targeted didn't pan out. Either the season was wrong, or the roads were snow bound, or they ended up being too far off my best route. Once I got into the metro area it was just plain 'ol thruway driving. The directions on the northern Utah map were not ground-truthed, and made no sense. By the time I figured out what I should have done from driving in circles way out of my way, and studying the GPS, it was getting late enough to look for a place to sleep. More problems: the state parks were closed, it being normally winter by this time of year, even though the season was running late.

I finally spied a place in the atlas just east of Bear River, and was able to find it. It was closed too, but the road through it was open, and I finally just parked in a pull-off, already dark, read my books a little and crashed.

Bear River Refuge, Idaho and Wyoming briefly

November 20-22, 2008

Thursday: Sometime deep in the night I woke up with the inside of the campershell all lit up. I stuck my head up and there were headlights a few feet away, and a voice asking if I was alright. It was a young cop, and he actually seemed to care if I was alright. I said no problem, told him the campground had been closed. He'd apparently already checked the license for stolen, but did sheepishly ask to see my driver's license. I told him the plan to get into the refuge early, and got a recommendation for a breakfast place. No problem. Asked if I have a phone, wished me well, and went away.

I was up way before dawn and found the diner he'd mentioned. Standard Utah, with standard Utah early risers, ranchers and construction, very white but a couple of ethnics showed up before I left, fueled up on eggs and pig meat. I was driving in at first light just starting to be able to make out ducks on the wetlands along the entry road. It was a great morning. A few swans flew over, but there were thousands about a mile off the road. The expected good variety of ducks, a few Pied -bill Grebes, but no diver species. There were also surprisingly late small batches of Long-billed Curlews, Long-billed Dowitchers, and American Pipits too. I was in there until nearly noon, me and the hunters. On the way out I stopped at the Visitor's Center, deserted but for one woman minding the store. Found a Marsh Wren in the reeds outside along the walkway bridge.

Escape from urbanity was almost within reach, I was on the far northern edge of the City. It was about twenty miles to Golden Spike National Monument, and that was one of the few Park Service palces I'd not been. I'd recently read a book about the building od the western railway and had a mental picture of the immense undertaking that had finished there. It was a wide and drear land of rolling topography. There were a few traces of the parallel roadbeds, and some obviously major cut and fill operations, but the modern railway was relocated a few miles to the north. There's a big Thikol plant near there, with rocket testing facilities hidden over some taller hills.

I had spotted some likely looking sites along a route into Idaho, but they were duckless, totally, hunter swept clean. Between wrong roads and dead ends I managed to waste a couple of hours before getting to the state line. Once in I could start adding tics since Idaho was one of the places where I'd not kept records from earlier trips. I added 19 tics of roadside birds in about three hours. Finally got to Bear Lake (not river, different) NWR by a really roundabout northern approach that put me on the wrong side of a washed out bridge, so another twenty miles of dirt roads had to go by before I could get to the refuge proper. The best part was a lady in a fried chicken place who looked me over (I get to looking pretty well used) and said the pieces were running small so she'd give me three breasts for the two I ordered. They were the biggest I'd ever seen. Blessings on her. It was getting late, gray and windy, and just before I parked I spotted a small flock in the failing light that showed clearly white patches on the upper wing. I puzzled them out in the field guide as Snow Buntings, the first I'd seen in years. I slept by an outhouse on the tour loop after not seeing a soul or a vehicle for a couple of hours.

Friday: I got out early and was into Wyoming around sunrise. This was another just nip the state's corner opportunity with Seedskadee NWR along the way. The bad news was that somewher in the night or morning I'd gotten just far enough north or just enough higher that the refuge was mostly frozen, and the world pretty much stayed that way until I was back in Kansas on the way home. Saw a few small flocks of ducks on the river but they flushed at a distance, hunter shy I guess, and I was only able to actually ID 3 new tics in WY. Ended up going through Green River and into Flaming Gorge. I tried afew likely overlooks and boat launches there but no luck, very few waterfowl. Just before crossing back into Utah I had stopped at a wetland overlook, and spotted some sewage ponds along a county road. Turned out to be the border road, and the ponds were in Utah, and bermed up and fenced so that I could just barely see in by standing on the tailgate, tippy-toe, with the scope legs folded to make a monopod. There were good birds, including some divers that had been missing at Bear River. Ring-necks and Ruddys.

I had stopped at the Visitor Center in Green River and the woman there had explained where I could camp free on the south side of the highway in Utah. I drove along that stretch, noting little roads back into the forest and finally came to the Red Canyon area. That VC was closed, the view was stupendous, but the ranger that came by made me nervous since I hadn't purchases a daily use permit. As I was driving back to the highwayhe was parked in the middle of the road taking pictures out his window of a dozen Big Horn Sheep. There were three rams, and two of them were pushing and chasing. I parked and eventually the pair ran all around my truck as I watched, passing within ten feet. When I finally drove on past I talked to the ranger who said they were almost in rut, and the serious head-banging was a few weeks off.

Just on a whim I drove down to the restaurant that I presumed was closed, but the sign said they would be open at five, it being Friday. And ther was a catch-and-release pond out front with waterfowl. In fact with Common Loons, Goldeneyes, and Mergansers. I also found Clark's Nutcrackers. When five arrived I got coffee, and told the waitresses I was birding, they offered me the Flaming Gorge list, and then mentioned it had been compiled by the owner who happened to live in back. Great luck, huh? His name was Mark Wilson and he invited me in when I knocked and introduced myself. And I got two more tics on his birdfeeders outside the window, Steller's Jay and Hairy Woodpecker. Strangely he didn't know about the sewage ponds I'd found, and I was pleased to turn him on to something new in his own patch. Duty finally called him to the job, and I went back and parked back in the forest. Tried some owl calls but nothing called back.

Utah briefly and East across Colorado

November 22-24, 2008

Saturday: The next morning the truck started OK, it had been a little balky, but the computer wouldn't boot at twenty degrees and 7500 ft. Once I was going and warmed up, it was down the long slope into Vernal for breakfast and gas. Another Utah rancher place. The computer lit up when the cab had warmed up.

The first goal was to take the highway west from Vernal and then a minor road south to Pelican Lake and also Ouray NWR. Pelican had been a great find when I lived out that way. There's some free primitive camping. I saw my first Common Loon there, and my first Bobolink. I guess my first Phalaropes twirling up a meal too. And there had been a Peregrine Falcon on a fence post eating a duck. This time it was very good also, lots of birds and good variety, the water was mostly open, just a small fringe of ice where it was shaded by the bank-side vegetation.

Ouray was disappointing, the smaller water features there were mostly frozen, but there was a small flock of Sandhill Cranes, my first for Utah. I drove the tour loop, but it was pretty birdless. Back to Pelican and get back in the reeds with a scope for an hour. That was satisfying. But I had some hopes for northern Colorado so it was back through Vernal and east. It was a long cold and generally birdless drive, and was already dark by the time I got to Granby. The most interesting thing was a sky phenomenon just before sunset, called anti-crepuscular rays. It's the complementary phenomena to the rays one sometime sees coming through clouds that look like the glories in religious paintings. It's a trick of perspective that they seem to diverge, since they're actually parallel. If they come from a sun nearly set (or just risen) they reconverge on the opposite side of the sky. I had never been conscious of them before, but they had shown up in a picture on an astronomy site I check daily, and when I saw them I knew what it was.

I had sort of targeted the pass south of Georgetown to camp, and then look for Rosy-finches in town in the morning, but when I got there in the dark and realized from studying the GPS how much of a climb it would be, and how cold in the morning, it seemed wiser to head down to the plains beyond Denver. There was also the lack of snow up high, which is what drives the Rosies down. They hadn't been mentioned on the listserv. I'd already come over the Berthoud Pass, 11,000' plus but snowless, so it was a long downhill coast. It had gotten late enough that the city traffic wasn't bad, and the GPS got me through the freeway labyrinth without a hitch, and headed north toward Ft Collins. There were some sites there too, mostly big lakes with a tendency to get vagrant winter gulls, that had aroused my lifer hopes while following the bird listserv for Colorado. But first I needed to sleep. Found a truck-stop with a restaurant for breakfast, and got tucked in between two semis. When I woke the next morning two more had tucked in even closer, and lulled me to sleep with their rattling and rumbling in the night (not).

Sunday: Up around first light and fed and coffeed up, and only twenty miles or so to Fossil Creek Reservoir. The water was open, but it was a chilly windy day. There were lots of Canada Geese on the opposite shore, but I couldn't make out any others. The lake itself had some waterfowl, including Common Goldeneye, Bufflehead, and Western Grebe. Farther north at the Visitor Center for Ft Collins, I found out there were a whole bunch of public access areas called the Prospect Ponds along the Cache le Poudre River. They had a lot of useful literature and maps, in fact it was one of the best welcome centers I'd seen. They filled my coffee cup too.

Headed down to the first parking lot, and had the great good fortune to meet a couple of young birders, Rollie and Mike, who were familiar with the site. I asked if I could follow them around, and they assented. Turned out they were sorta new to birding, but were really interested. They didn't know about the listservs, and I hope they found them, since I never got an email that would let me send a bunch of useful links. I got several Colorado tics with them, Yellow-headed Blackbird, Belted Kingfisher, and Cinnamon Teal. Later we found Snow Geese and Cacling Geese too, in a place I'd have never found on my own since it required climbing down a twisted rebar ladder, crossing a small dam, and then climbing back up. One of the geese had really strange markings, we hoped for something rare, but it was a bizarre Snow. I ended up spending a couple of hours with them in a cold wind, but it was obviously well worth it.

I made some shopping stops too, at REI where I got a new headlamp, brighter than the one I'd been using for reading. Next door was Barnes and Noble, and I couldn't resist some Moleskin notebooks. Also got the cheapest gas of the trip so far. Then it went back up until I got to Missouri a couple of days later.

It's not too far from Ft Collins to Pawnee National Grasslands where I'd stayed a couple of times before. This was the most wintry visit, I didn't have much hope for good birds, but dutifully walked the trails in the little stream-side woodland at the campground. Lots of White-crowned Sparrows, not much else. But an Eastern Screech-Owl in the night gave me 201 species for Colorado.

Monday: It was 16 degrees in the morning, and the truck was balky starting. That was starting to be a background concern all the time. This was just a driving-all-day day, my homing instincts had kicked in, and it was straight to Great Bend, Kansas and stay at Cheyenne Bottoms. The motel that had always had good wifi was dismally slow and sketchy, but I did manage to get an email on the Kansas listserv regarding Trumpeter and Tundra Swans maybe (they had been way off) at Quivera and another about a Black Scoter at a Wichita site. There was nobody at the campground at CB, no hunters, so It was a good sleep.

Home through Kansas, 2 stops

November 25, Tuesday

Given the reports of good birds, new species for Kansas which were geting harder to find, I didn't even bother to drive around Cheyenne Bottoms, but just headed for Quivera as soon as I'd had some breakfast. I got in there just as the sun was rising, and the air was filled with geese on the water and in the air as far as I could see, remoter and higher skeins stacked behind one another each time I looked for smaller specks. About two thirds around the tour loop I found the swans, first one pair, then another, the second being an adult and a cygnet. Approaching gradually, driving fifty feet and stopping, then again and again, until I was even and at the closest possible approach, it was easy to see the yellow bill mark on one of the adult pair, making it Tundra. The second pair was a little further, but the pairs converged as time wore on. That gave me a chance to compare head shapes. Trumpeters make a sort of straight line bill to crown, and Tundras are more rounded, at least in the Geographic Guide. Sorta like the difference between Lesser and Greater Scaup. I looked for thirty minutes against different backgrounds as they drifted, and finaly decided they all looked the same, so all Tundras.

Glad I didn't post it, even though I did call Pete Janzen who had the original sighting. A couple of days later another birder got a much better look, with them near the road rather than across the pool, and his conclusion was two of each, the original Janzen call. I wish getting out of there was as easy as getting in. One problem with the GPS mapping is that it sometimes shows roads that have locked gates. I was trying the most direct route out and ran into that situation. The complication was the leg shot deer in the road. It was staggering around, could put some weight on the bad leg, but it was seriously hurt. I went real slow, trying to think harmless and compassionate thoughts, and it got off to the side and let me go by. Then I got to the dead end gate and had to turn around. This time it panicked, running and slipping and falling in the mud, bouncing off barb-wire fencing, and breaking my heart. I hated being there and hated whoever hadn't followed their wounded deer, and hated the whole business. It finally manged to get across the fence, and I got back to the highway to Wichita.

It was fairly easy to find the Scoter site, but it was big water only viewable through a fence at one end. Old sand pits, and the area still very industrial. There must have been at least 500 ducks and coots and what-not out there, and I must have looked at each one at least four times, but none turned into a scoter. I found one other viewpoint but it had intimidating signage and big trucks being loaded by big machines, so I just turned around after a brief look. I was ready to get home, and a few hours later I did.

I considered the trip fairly sucessful, I had added plenty of waterfowl to several state lists, and some other unexpected species, not to mention good visits with friends and some renewed affection with Laura. When I totalled up the total tics at trips end I had 6999. Gadzooks, what a frustration. A few days later at home I had an inspiration to look through some old checklists to see if I'd written anything down in the pre lister software days. For closure, years ago I'd visited Malheur in Oregon, the place of the manager I'd met the first day out, and I'd checked off quite a few species, 56 that I'd never enterd in AviSys. So the count at year's end was 7055 total tics.

North into a cold wet Spring

In my typical way, with time on my hands as the winter passed, I had studied maps and checklists and cash reserves figuring what kind of trip would net the most new state ticks, the most lifer possibilities, and the most new landscapes. Subject to time and money constraints. It used to be just time, but gas prices were changing everything in terms of any kind of distance birding. Which was true for a lot of folks, attested by numerous mentions on the listservs, and a growing interest in "green birding", fuel free and muscle intensive.

I was drawn to another Gulf Coast trip, with the possibility of making the 50% in Louisiana, Mississippi (I was really close), and critically building on Tennessee and Alabama. But I missed the prime time window for those when the migrants were coming ashore on the April/May cusp. So the alternative northern loop through several prairie states started looking best. It had a lot more lifer hopes too, all chickens, my nemesis the Gray Partridge, both Sage Grouses (Grice?), and Spruce Grouse if I went into Minnesota Boreal habitat. I was also drawn to a trip to Isle Royale National Park, almost the only lower 48 one that I hadn't seen, the least visited NP, but one of the top ten for back country permits. Not a real birding goal, tho I could get some good MN ticks with a little luck, obscure woodpeckers, big water ducks and loons, that sort of thing. It also held the opportunity for breaking 100+ species in four more states, and adding to a bunch of others. Like a fool, I listed them out, with their goals, and figured around 300+ ticks possible would give the list a big boost. Plans jelled.

Getaway, start Nebraska and Iowa

Thursday, June 5 and Friday, June 6, 2008

I took my time getting away in the morning, first checking email and delivering some work, then back home to clean out the truck, vacuum everything and wipe it down, then load for travel. I always wonder what I'm gonna forget, any fool would make a checklist, but maybe the next time. I'll make a post of the stuff I take and other logistical considerations on these trips. I did manage to make a note of the mailing addresses and due dates and amounts for several credit cards. Then I mowed the last section of the lawn that was slightly tall, knowing that I'd face a jungle when I returned. We'd had an extremely wet spring, with flooding and over-filled lakes on the news, so plants were thriving. We'd already cut the hay, a month earlier than usual, I usually delay beyond the local custom to let ground nesters get their babies up, but his year I would have lost a lot of grass falling over from its own exuberant weight. Back through town headed north with a stop for the last decent meal I'd see until I got back, at the Oasis, favorite-of-locals semi-vegetarian mostly home-made tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant. When I'm in strange places with some counter-culture flotsam I always hope to find places like it, usually without luck.

First long drive of the trip is north-west across a corner of Missouri, opportunity for the cheapest gas in the nation, and up the Eastern edge of Kansas. I always stop at Schermerhorn Park south of Galena, still looking for Black Vultures and Bewick's Wrens for the KS list. After that it was just a grinding drive, I could have made several stops, but I wanted the feel of being gone from the familiar. Crossed back into MO at Kansas City, and Interstate to the Squaw Creek NWR exit south of Mound City, for another MO gas dose and dinner. The station there was associated with an Indian Reservation, cheap gas and a big cheap plate of food recommended by a trucker on the next stool, good too. Now all this time the weather had been fairly dramatic. I'd had a welcome tail wind going north. I drove along keeping pace with the cloud shadows, which were going fifty plus mph. Not very good birding anyhow. At the station the sky had darkened and it looked like rain, actually it looked worse than that. The waitress I'd fallen in love with (I always do) said there were tornado warnings for the area, and a few minutes later that there were tornadoes on the ground just west of there across the Missouri River in Kansas and Nebraska where I thought I was heading.

Then a few minutes later she announced that there were tornadoes around us, it looked scary outside, low gray fast moving clouds with shreds of green and yellow weather scraps moving like flying trucks. She invited everyone to head for the basement just as the power failed. Folks had a few flashlights, and we crowded into a decent size room with not enough seats. I was on the floor. The guy next to me had his dog. Truckers and staff and kids from the Res, travelers, a cop, made a good mix. We stayed for most of an hour until the spotters said that the worst danger was past. By then it was storming horizontally, with lots of fireworks. It was dark, I was tired, a splashed to the truck knowing that the rain would make the campershell into a drum head. Got the bright idea to park under the station canopy, let the rain fall on that, the lights and pumps were off. But in about an hour I got woke up when the lights came on. So I got up and moved the truck back to a dark spot in the truck parking area, still raining. Well, that was an interesting start.

Friday - I was up before the kitchen opened, so grabbed a muffin and headed to the refuge only a few miles away for premium early morning birding. I drove the tour loop hoping to see a Ring-necked Pheasant, and one finally crossed the road ahead of me. I'd missed them before. Also got a Spotted Towhee for MO. I'd entered Warbling Vireo range, but didn't recognize the song at first. Figured it out later, and it followed me for the first part of the trip, some places they were quite numerous, not having dispersed on territories yet. I added three ticks for MO, better than I'd hoped for. Crossed the river into Nebraska, and worked my way up to Indian Cave SP with one stop when I saw a sign for an arboretum in Fallsville. Indian Cave is great place and I'd been looking forward to catching shorebirds at a couple of places there, one a wetland and then along the river. Both were closed due to flooding. I did OK there, but was disappointed. The flood induced lack of mudflats was a theme of the journey after that.

I was working my way north along the Missouri River, I'd tagged several likely looking places in the mapping software on the laptop, GPS enabled, on the passenger seat. At Nebraska City I crossed into Iowa to check out Waubonsee SP. It wasn't a good birding place, so it wasn't a long stop. Back into Nebraska and up to the Lincoln area. I had been following the NE listserv, and had marked some sites around there. It was very good birding, especially when I found the Spring Creek Audubon Preserve a few miles southwest of town. The afternoon was already hot and muggy, but there was a new Visitor's Center, hereafter VC, with AC. Yesss. Good birding too, nice prairie remnant, and a very kind woman at the VC sent me up the hill for Henslow's Sparrows, which hid forever almost but eventually came out and rasped their little songs and calls. Good bird for the trip and year as well. Back into town for the Pioneer's Park Nature Center, but I was late and some trails were already closed. They'd had some vandalism problems. Looks like an excellent place to hit early in the day during spring migration. I needed to find some camping, the previous night hadn't been good rest, but had some awful luck for a while. I tried a WMA that was over-run with kids, Friday night, the good campsites were closed due to flooding, and the others were both expensive and ill-equipped. The next likely place was a SP where I'd been stormed on a previous trip, and I knew wasn't much for habitat. Kinda hot and frustrated. Ended up back across the river at Lewis and Clark SP, almost flooded, but with good showers. Tried evening birding and got driven back by rain. Logged sightings into the computer.

Siouxland area into South Dakota

Saturday and Sunday, June 7&8, 2008

Birded around the state park in the morning, the rain had stopped. On the whole trip, even though I was rained on over and over, almost all of it was at night. I lost no actual birding time to the weather. A different kind of continuity to the trip was the Lewis and Clark story. Since I was following the Missouri River pretty tightly from Kansas City to the far end of Fort Peck Lake, I was following the trail of the Corps of Discovery. What brought that up was the full size replica of the L&C boat at the state park. I had seen models, but for some reason had never realized how big the main craft was. Reading the journals had made me wonder where they had put all that gear and supplies and trade goods and twenty some men. The full size operating craft would look big at most inland lake marinas, and was accompanied by batteaus as well. Worth seeing if you pass that way.

A couple of years ago I had ordered from ABA Sales a brochure called the Siouxland Birding Guide (or something like that). I broke it out now, and started checking out the sites it highlighted. There are quite a few, enough for several days of more focused birding, but I only spent a day at it. One of the best things about doing total ticking is that each state has to be explored more than superficially. The Siouxland brochure thrust me into places I'd have never expected. Iowa has a lot of flat boring ag fields, but it has a lot of other terrain as well. Anyway, I drove around northwest Iowa checking out maybe ten sites and anything that looked interesting on the map. Very little mudflat as noted, most rivers and ponds were over-full. There was some woodlands, grassy hills, ox-bow lakes, ag fields and what-not. By the end of the day I'd added 14 tics for IA, making 32% of their list. I ended up in Sioux City at Stone State Park on the northwest corner, there's a really nice nature center with well developed trails and some birders there got me on a Scarlet Tanager, always a great bird to find. It alone would be worth at least a half day during migration.

I had to take a break for lunch and Wally World, needed gas vitamins for the truck and allergy meds for me. Say what you will, they have almost everything you need, and the stores are laid out to a pattern so shopping is quick unless you have to walk from end to end for something. From there it was a small bridge over a small creek to put me in the very southeast tip of South Dakota. The attraction is the Adam's Homestead Preserve, and well worth it, got lots of woodpeckers and flycatchers, and some other fillers. Walked about three miles on good trails, but it was a hot and humid afternoon and I was whooped. From there I needed a place to camp, and Ponca SP back in NE along the river looked good. What a great place. Wonderful woodland habitat, and I had somehow gotten above the worst of the flooding so that the river shore was accessible. That meant Least Terns and Franklin's Gulls and Bank Swallows, and a Scarlet Tanager there as well. There are Piping Plovers as well, but I couldn't see them from where I was. I had gone to the Missouri National Scenic River VC, which is in the park, and there was a ranger guy who really was into the birds. He showed me where to look for various things, and also recommended a WMA that the park manages few miles west. I put that on the next day's morning plan. After some exploring and checking out an isolated campsite, I went back to the VC to pay up and find the ranger again. He was gone, turns out he was the park super, young and very casual and into birds. Hope I meet him again when I can go birding some morning. Back to the campsite on the edge of a meadow surrounded by woods and one corner overlooking the river and South Dakota. Just about dark the rain started and lasted all night.

Sunday - I was up early for a soaking world, headed into the little town on the highway looking for food. No luck on a Sunday morning. Went on to the WMA, a large flat bottom-land with some ag fields. And really muddy roads. Went down one until I was sliding some, remembered being stuck in similar circumstances (at least this was flat) and backed up a quarter mile slowly in four wheel until I could bail out. Further west there was a bridge into SD, into Vermilion for breakfast, then back to the north side of the river in a public recreation area and boat launch. I had the scope set up and was scanning for Plovers and Terns. A couple of locals pulled up, and we got to talking. Told them what I was doing, they puzzled over my maps, then recommended going about a mile up-river where they said a guy lived who had a good river view and was into birds. Went there, introduced myself, described my informers, was welcomed to check out the bars and channels. After a few minutes he came up and told stories of exploring the islands and bars in the river, and recalled various kinds of bureaucratic incompetence by state folks studying the wildlife. I did get my birds, and after some map study figured that I had the tics for both NE and SD. I ended up adding 12 species in Nebraska, less than my goal, but OK considering the flooding. Enough so I'm motivated to push that list for the ABA threshold. Now at 37%.

Now begins the continuation of the Tale of Nemesis. One target lifer was Gray Partridge. I have looked for this bird on a half dozen trips through its range. I had made a note from one web posting about the entrance road to a State Park just over the border east in Minnesota. I went there. I drove the target road back and forth twice. I stopped in the VC and quizzed a ranger. He laughed off my prospect of finding GRPA this time of year, seems they hide in the tall grass of the road verges, and only the greatest good luck, which I manifestly lacked for this bird, would get it to reveal itself. I birded their campground briefly since it was an open house day, but then headed on north toward Big Stone NWR. Couple of hours drive and a worthwhile stop. I'd been there before but had somehow not gotten deep into the refuge. This time I did with good results after spending several hours, ducks and waders and scattered shorebirds. Back into town for a little city park with camping, where I thought I'd stay for another morning pass at the Refuge. I caught up my records for the day, and realized that given my latitude and the long days around the solstice, that there were still hours of daylight. Started driving back into SD. Unremarkable except for the first road-killed Beaver I'd ever seen. Actually, I got some good birds in roadside ponds and pools, but the best was when I was at the turnoff for Waubay NWR. It was after sundown but still good light. I had gone ahead just a half mile or so to some possible camping by a decent size lake, and when I was returning to the turnoff the lake on my left had a smattering of ducks. Good ducks, and variety too, Redheads and Canvasbacks, Ring-necks and Ruddys. Between that lake and the one adjacent I managed to make my SD goal, 100 species, and I hadn't hit the refuges yet. It was deep twilight when I got to Waubay, the gates weren't closed, and no signs saying I couldn't so I parked the truck in the first decent pull-off and slept well, dark and no rain.

SD refuges to far Northeast Minnesota

Mon-Wed, June 9-11, 2008

Waubay was a pretty good place to wake up, early enough that the world was songs and calls across the water, not enough light except for vaguely perceived motion. But in twenty minutes I could start making out gulls, and then more. I walked around the parking spot and up to a little viewpoint, but there wasn't much to see, a fair wind was blowing. Drove on across the causeway to the island where most of the refuge infrastructure is located, VC and sheds, fire tower, and lots of trails, not long, it's a small island, but with some habitat variety. Started on those with good luck on the lea side, not so much in the wind. Did see two fox dens with kits. There wasn't much on the water, and no mud except on the trail. Went slow enough that the staff finally arrived just before seven, they were friendly, I remember that from a previous visit and they invited me to coffee and donuts. One interesting thing was the biologist showing me pictures of the refuge from 20 plus years earlier when the island wasn't an island. She said the speculation was that a series of wet years, by raising the water level, had broken the fire continuity in the area and allowed a lot of woodland to survive and thrive, creating a woodland habitat island all around the lakes of the refuge which made it the western-most woods in the area. And a real trap for normally absent species.

By then I was seriously hungry and headed back to the main highway, hoping for more ducks where they had been in the evening, but the wind had cleared the lakes. I'd been lucky the night before. A little further west in Webster I found a wonderful small town eating place, lots of locals, lots of food without a crater in the wallet, and Wifi for an email scoop. That sent me off coffee jazzed and smiling for the hour drive to Sand Lake NWR. It's a big refuge north of the village of Columbia, a village with a sign on its two lane blacktop advising that I should take any of the next twelve or so exits. I took one at the PO and got some envelopes for Credit Card payments. I drove the refuge tour loop, lucked into quite a few more new state tics, and by the time I was driving into North Dakota I had exceeded expectations, making 30% well beyond my 100 species target. 55 new tics.

North Dakota was a much different problem. I'd been there before but hadn't recorded anything but new trip birds after already crossing a lot of similar habitat. So I had nine species on the list and a target of 100 at least. That was the steepest goal of the trip. It's pretty easy at the beginning, Mallards and House Sparrows, Barn Swallows and Pigeons. I routed my way through Tewaukon NWR but found it disappointing, not many ducks and small lakes surrounded by grass. Some sparrows of course, but it's probably better when migration is staging. Muddled my way on toward Fargo via Cheyenne National Grassland, but it too was virtually birdless. In Fargo I found a PO, actually in Minnesota, mailed off one bill catching the clerk just as she emptied the outside drop-box. Then into MN, heading for one of the pivots of the trip, Isle Royale National Park. Skirted Detroit Lakes with its miserable traffic, and cut north and east through Tamarac NWR. I'd had a great visit there on a previous trip, but the VC with its good bookstore was closed, it was drizzling, I'd been up and drive/birding for fourteen hours, and I just wasn't motivated to do anything but get further east and sleep. Ended up paying for a place in Chippewa National Forest by a little lake. Just stayed in the truck in the rain, logged in sightings and crashed.

Tuesday - My notes say "mosquito driven morning". Thankfully I bet, there's no recall of what that means exactly. It did rain a lot, so sleep wasn't good, and I was troubled by curious engine noises which meant checking under-hood stuff in the gray buzzing drizzle. Then off to Duluth, where I'd recalled someone who wished I could see again, but had no way of finding other than her family name. I found a bakery/bistro/Internet cafe that I'd hung in before on the owl invasion trip, harvested email, sipped coffee, studied a phone book, but finally couldn't get myself to make some cold calls. That didn't add much to dismal exhaustion. Got on the north shore highway and headed for Isle Royale. The weather forecast was a week of rain with highs in the fifties and lows in the thirties, a little chilly for a week from the solstice even by MN standards. The highway had a lot of water damage, lanes closed, edges undermined, one bridge just barely functional. They'd had gully washer rains two days earlier, the creeks were still high, and my spirits were battered. It's quite a ways from Duluth, scenic as hell, three hours driving with the road damage.

One of the main motivations and hopes around there was a possibility of finding Spruce Grouse. I was in serious Boreal habitat and the Kim Eckert MN birdfinder book had said they were present, but scarce. Can't win if you don't play. The IRNP checklist didn't have them, so the best hope was on the mainland around Grand Portage and its National Monument. I spent some time at the VC there, quizzed the desk woman, a youngish Ojibway, about the boats to the Isle, the weather forecast (daunting), and the grouse. Turns out she went hunting with her grandfather in those woods and knew them in detail, grouse hunting. So we ran our fingers over the local maps, she wrote names and reminders on some paper, and I resigned the boat trip for some woods exploring. While I was at the monument I checked out the displays and reconstructions and re-enactments. It's really informative, the interpreters were top notch, able to follow any line of questions and full of telling details. I won't say much about those, except it's really worth spending half a day getting to know. I had lunch at a local's favorite place near the border, then headed back to wander around in the woods.

One road was the old federal highway. Don't go there; it's one of those things with pavement damaged by years of winter and neglect, endless potholes, bumps, grinds, occasional fifty yard stretches of decent surface, then screech and crawl. Twas a relief to get back to the real highway. South a little way to Arrowhead Trail, which turned to good dirt pretty soon. I found the most recommended of her roads, which wasn't in the GPS mapping, but was a good road anyhow. Followed it most of twenty miles north, almost to Canada, and found a gated side road that looked like I could park, bird and camp. Not much traffic out there, less than half a dozen vehicles in the next twelve hours. The birding was magnificent, numerous Boreal warblers, woodpeckers, flycatchers, grouse, Ruffed, booming, Snipe winnowing, and scattered spells of drizzle. I was in heaven, especially with two Connecticut Warblers. It helped the mood a lot, but still a nagging sense of time running out. It had kept me driven for days, choosing to keep moving when I could have kicked back and spent more time working over good spots.

Wednesday - I spent three hours back down my prime road and then headed back to the highway. Mostly I was hanging around on the chance a Spruce Grouse would materialize, not much chance of that. What the focus was in the meantime was scaring up a Mourning Warbler, which shouldn't have been too hard. I walked into maybe four overgrown old clearcuts, soaking dewy boggy brush-fields, patiently playing the calls on the tape, and with no luck. Something else to make me go back. Then an hour plus driving south to the turnoff for Ely, gas in Finland, cheapest in MN that day, and on to Ely with lots of stops for MOWA, still no luck. At Ely I had a good yuppie sandwich served by summer co-eds at Piragis outfitters, where I scoured the store for useful and non-yuppie items for my canoe. From there on I was goal oriented and drove pretty much straight to Agassiz NWR.

Trip to Agassiz NWR, then North Dakota

Wed to Friday, June 11-13, 2008

Wednesday continued - I had spent a day at Agassiz on a previous trip, and loved the place. I wanted one of their baseball hats but they were sold out. It was blowing about thirty mph, but I was still able to get some good duck tics when I could find clusters hiding near cover. South of the official NWR is a WMA, and I had some info that I should check that. On the way down a storm was piling up, and bay the time I headed north the rain had started. There was a parking area with a modern outhouse, so I got that between me and the wind and hunkered down for an outrageous storm through the night, severe wind and continuous flashing and thundering until almost dawn.

Thursday - What I discovered then was that the lot I was in was at the beginning of a trail along a levee with woodland, long but narrow, on one side and some open boggy habitat on the other side. The trees had some fresh wind broken limbs, but the path was open. I spent about an hour there before heading back to the VC about 7 when they opened. Actually I was enough early that I had time to hike the short woodland trail by the HQ as well, which was pretty productive. Some Tundra Swans had shown up in a pool across the road, with a fledgling. In an hour there were three pairs and two young visible, and they said inside that this was their first day in public. I did my normal quizzing of the desk folk, mostly trying to find locations for Hooded Mergansers and Pintails, about the only ducks still missing on the MN list. I'd been lucky with the cool wet spring running late and had found Greater Scaup and others that should have been gone. They also gave locations for a missing Tern and an uncommon gull, but I dipped on those. They were very pleased at the report of Western Grebe's and, no, I couldn't make any into a Clark's. Got a heads-up on Garbled Modwits at a road crossing, which had been driven off for the morning by a working read crew, and was sent back to the WMA for my ducks-of-desire. I drove that levee to the bitter control burn end, no luck, but did get a Red-shouldered Hawk, not on the refuge list and well out of its range. A good look, enough that I saw that the window marks on the upper wing are actually crescent shaped. A nice detail for a god to hide in.

I ended up seeing 114 species in MN in less than three days and two nights, Brought the overall total to 174, 40% of the list, and made lots of motivation to go back. Especially when I realized that I had very few common eastern woodland birds since I'd spent no time in the southeastern corner where it's most like, say, Arkansas or Pennsylvania.

It's about an hour drive to North Dakota from Agassiz, not long even studying puddles for d-o-d. About the first bird in ND, seen at the first crossroad stop sign, was a prairie Falcon lifting off. It took a little while to puzzle out the ID, and I wasn't fully certain until I saw another the next day. My first main goal was Sully's Hill NWR, and was really pleased when I got there to find they were having a birding festival the next day and through the weekend. As mentioned before, ND was the worst challenge for the trip, needing 91 species to break 100. The thought of going around some good habitat with local birders was a breath of luck. Sully's is kind of like Waubay further south with extensive woodlands and wetlands in a mostly grassland area, and probably as far west as they can be found in any amount in ND. So I signed up for two trips/hikes, birded around the grounds near the VC, not so good, late afternoon and warm, then back into town which was Devil's Lake (a bastard English translation of the native name "Spirit Lake") for some food and Wifi in a WalMart parking lot. Then west to Graham Island SP, where the birding was OK, new tics, but not much variety, the campground was too groomed, and the wind didn't help. Did I mention that it had stayed relentlessly windy all day. Good showers and good sleep.

Friday - Up really early and back through town, grab a muffin, and make the early festival bird walk. It was everything I'd hoped for, many tics, some I would have never figured out without local help, like Northern Waterthrush (who knew?) a roosting Common Nighthawk, learned how to tell it and the two Wills apart while they hunkered, Limited Warbler variety, but good sparrows. Some ducks. Lots of good birds on the feeders at the VC, including House Finches, Clay-colored Sparrows, and Pine Siskins. Then I had to decide whether to stick around for the bus trip the next day, or try to find the wetlands it targeted on my own. I managed to find a local expert and quizzed him hard just before he had to give a talk, which might explain why the map he drew me had part of it with north and south reversed. That cost most of an hour before I finally found the right roads, such things used to be trivial aggravations, but the new world petroleum order made them expensive aggravations. Anyway I got some very good birds on small mudflats, Willets and Phalaropes, a couple of herons, the beginning of gazillions of Eared Grebes, and a LeConte's Sparrow. Made it worth it after all.

Then about three hours driving into a much more thinly inhabited biome, serious Short Grass Prairie, high and flat and still windy. There are four big refuges spread north of Minot ND, and the first I hit from the east was Salyer NWR. I spent three hors on their tour route, filled in lots of ducks and other wetland critters, got lots of practice on Marsh and Sedge wrens. Salyer is on the west side of the east/west Marsh Wren divide, unofficial, but eventually it'll turn into a countable split. From there it was west through Minot, supper, skip Upper Souris, I'd been there before, and on to Kenmare in blinding but localized rain. Just as I was coming out of the rain edge, I had a Raven over the truck chased by blackbirds, they seemed tiny. In Kenmare I stopped for gas, was invited to park behind the station when I asked about camping, it was a 24/7 truck stop, but not too noisy or floodlit, so pretty comfortable. Did an exploratory drive through town to the DesLacs NWR headquarters, got brochures, checked out a road along the eastern edge of the southern wetland, found it way muddy from the recent rain, so headed back to the station. I sat on the tailgate and watched the sunset at almost 10pm, a wonder of the northern latitude and the west edge of the time zone.

Finish North Dakota, into Montana

Saturday June 14, 2008

It was slow and mellow waking up, used the truck-stop facilities for head maintenance, you know, teeth and shaving, drank coffee, ate a muffin, then went off hoping the roads had drained enough to be passable. I got down there about 6am, on a route I'd scouted out the evening before, and the rods, though muddy, weren't the kind of sloppy slippery I'd learned to associate with hazard. The birding was fairly good, I managed some new species, including a small group of Cacling Geese hanging near some Canadians. I have trouble making the distinction at a distance if there's no comparison. There were also a few shoebirds, not ad many as I'd hoped since mud was scarce, and the seasonal timing was bad, only the latest stragglers would be around, or birds that had chosen to not go north at all. One piece of good fortune was meeting a top-notch local birder, who's name I can only guess now since like an idiot I didn't write it out fully in my notes. I need to start being more careful about the memory compromises that I'm getting as I reluctantly age. I rthink it was Riles, but it's not in the ABA directory. Maybe I can find it online. Anyway, we talked for most of half an hour about weather patterns (it had been a wet late spring there) the state of the lakes, they were much fuller than they'd been for several years, and my nemesis. I told him I thought that Gray Partridges really didn't exist, feeling defeated and cynical/ironic. He said he sometimes saw several in a morning. I guess that was encouraging. He did add one clue to my search profile, that they often hung out in tree-lines along roads near old farmsteads which in that country usually had windbreaks planted around. I guess I could have hired him for the next morning, but I'm stubborn about finding birds for myself, partially thrift, and partially knowing that it's the way to really "earn" the tic.

I got all the way to the south end of the south lake, then headed back into town, crossed to the west side, and followed the tour road along the north lake. It was surprisingly good for passerines in the low woods and brush which grew up in the shelter between the bordering hills and the lakeshore. The end of the road connected via dirt with a two-lane heading for Lostwood NWR, which only took about a half hour to get to. I love Lostwood, no sooner had I stopped for a scan of the pond behind the HQ building than a Prairie Falcon landed about twenty feet from the truck, apparently intent on some priarie dogs. Great look, finally saw the fine subtle banding on the upper-side of the tail. Not much fartehr and a Baird's Sparrow sat still for almost two minutes while I checked off every distinctive field mark. I needed that since it didn't sing. I'd been listening to the tape for a day or more, embedding the song in my mind, along with what seemed the similar Savannah Sparrow song, so I'd be pretty sure when I heard one, and there were lots of SASP.

Towards the end of the tour road, which doesn't loop, theres a lake with sand spits that have a very few Piping Plovers. It seemed like there were far fewer than I'd seen several years earlier, and I could only find two nest protection pens, one with a tiny but visible bird. In the same area there was the only Upland Sandpiper of the trip, another species that I would have expected in greater numbers. Best thrill was while I was walking around with the scope trying to get the right angle on the PIPL and suddenly a pretty fair sized bird was circling around screaming its head off. Marbled Godwit doing its in-you-face territory protection routine, maybe chicks were close by. Several times farteher west during the trip I got this personal attention, always very Marlin Perkins. Then off to Montana, just an hour or so to Medicine Lake NWR.

North Dakota ended up being a great success for the trip, not only got 100+ tics, but made 30%. I saw 118 species in two days, 112 were new to the list, since I hadn't kept detailed records on the previous trip.

Medicine Lake was so-so, again hampered by overfilled water features and no mud. I did start adding some ducks and sparrows. I had 45 tics from previous trips, but they were mostly from the western part of the state, especially Red Rock Lakes NWR, surrounded by the Madison and Centenniel Mtns, where I'd camped a couple of time while in the Yellowstone area. This was totally different habitat, lower, flatter and dryer. I had a brochure of Northwestern Montana birding sites, which is available online also, and I'd tagged most of those in the GPS software. Several of those places were excellent. From there to Ft Peck Dam is quite a ways. MT is one of those states that doesn't seem so big in the road atlas until you see the scale is 25 miles to the inch spread across two big pages. I never got off the right page. Ft Peck Lake is huge, 100 plus miles of the Missouri River backed up in high semi-desert. I stayed at the campground at the dam site, in view of the Museum dedicated mostly to Lewis and Clark, but had arrived too late to check it out. The campground below the dam is an oasis, lots of trees, gazillions of Yellow Warblers, a pretty fair selection of other passerines, and it has a long nature trail that loops around the wooded area, then around a nice piece of grassland also. Spent a couple of hours checking it out as the day ended.

Slept well, woken by Least Flycatchers and YEWA

Northeast Montana to the Big Horns

Sunday and Monday, June 15&16, 2008

Set out to see the sites north of Ft Peck Lake that were listed on the Northeast Montana Birding Trail map. The town of Ft Peck was hard to find my way out of, even with GPS, but I finally got headed north, and in Glasgow was able to find some breakfast, a remote McDonald's, run by a single woman early on Sunday morning. Didn't really seem like a world conquering global corpse. The first place didn't really seem too promising, a wilderness study area on BLM ground, and twenty-plus miles each way from the highway. Within the first quarter mile there was a Short-eared Owl on a fencepost. At first I thought Barn, the facial disk was pronounced, but the range maps said think again, and it turns out that SEOW has a facial disk. This bird was pretty light also, maybe first year, I can't find an illustration. I never made it to the WSA, the road after maybe twelve miles wasn't maintained beyond the last ranch, and it looked a rutted muddy mess from that last gate. Didn't matter. I saw another pair of Godwits, Long-billed Curlew twice, two pairs of Sprague's Pipits, a McCown's Longspur doing its flight song, and the ordinary sparrow variety pack, as well as a Willet on a little pond. It was actually some of the best birding of the trip. After getting back to the highway, I realized I hadn't seen any Lark Buntings the whole trip, and I think of them as ordinary western grassland birds. So the fence-line monitor was turned up, and just before getting to Bowdoin NWR the first one appeared.

Here's a heads-up. If coming from the east don't get tempted to cut over from the highway to the perimeter road of the refuge, the old federal highway. Stay with the main road until you can come in from the west to the HQ/VC. That way you don't have to spend a half hour on one of those broken pavement car whipping miseries. Not much birding either. Once inside the refuge things were much better. There are a lot of alkali playas, and some fresher feed channels, maybe its irrigation water, and in places good numbers of ducks and some Herring Gulls, Phalaropes, and an occasional other shorebird even in the mid-season lull. I suspect it shines brighter when fall migration staging is happening and for shorebirds in the spring. For once there was a decent amount of wading and poking habitat.

Farther southwest from there the main road edges the Little Rocky Mountains, a high elevation outlier from the cordillera, high enough for a well developed conifer forest. The bird guide highlights a BLM campground in there, Camp Creek. I caught the host trimming the horse area, she told me of some birders just previously who had stayed for three days the birding was so good in the area. I believe it. In the campground itself I was treated to the sight of a multi-vehicle family leaving with their four 4WD trailbusters. Then it was quiet. And the birds were great, lots of warblers, including a surprise MacGillivray's. I never expect them, since it was a nemesis for several years. Also Redstart and Ovenbird., as well as Veery. And a Raven flying and calling from higher up the mountain. I should have stayed there, it was nice and not expensive, but I'd somehow become irrationally driven. From there it's a long straight downhill dirt road to another BLM area on the south side of the highway that looked like it had a road down to the MO River. The Falcon Montana birding guide described a Prairie Dog town on a wide bench down there, and I'd yet to see Burrowing Owl or Ferruginous Hawk, and the GPS maps seemed to show continuity of roads. It's actually dicey to trust them, since many are deeply outdated, containing false positives and negatives. There can be roads shown that haven't been used for years, or are locked farm/ranch roads. There can be very good, even paved roads on public lands, like National Forests, that aren't in the database. That would be telling before the day was over.

I got way back in there, way beyond where the roads were dozed or graded even every two or three years, and where they never bothered with any gravel. The wet spring had made it all various stages of muddy, from just soft to multi-rutted to gooshy to standing water to wheel sucking, heart-stopping-if-momentum-fails mud pits. Every few vehicles would try a new route around, just making the whole mess wider. There were places where the ruts were so deep that if I fell off the high sides, my wheels wouldn't have touched bottom. Just another day of birding. I passed one big western pickup, with a cowboy and his girl, and asked about the prairie dogs. She was helpful and said yes they were there, he was drunk and grudgingly diffident. Just enough to keep me going. I did finally give up when I got to places where the GPS showed nothing and several road traces split in several directions, none seeming right. There were a few dog mounds, but nothing I'd call a town. And I got gradually more aware that I had to re-cross each mud obstacle on the way back. Long story short, no tow-truck, no helicopter.

It's about fifteen miles further south to the turn off for the CM Russell NWR tour route. Russell is a huge refuge with parcels all around Fort Peck Lake. The tour route is at least a hundred miles from the VC, fancy that. But it was great. It starts high and dry across grazing land, then descends through a belt of Ponderosa forest, then back out to grasslands along the Missouri River, and back up into the forest before reaching the highway again after around forty miles. Good birds too, Mountain Bluebirds and Lazuli Buntings, Orioles along the river and Indigos there, A clearly and repeatedly singing Baird's Sparrow, and several Green-tailed Towhees. Once back at the pavement, it's just a little way across the river on a high bridge to a big BLM campground and boat launch. The river was really high, no banks showing, but that was a good place for vireos and flycatchers. It seemed overpriced, and there was enough daylight left to get in some significant miles, however it would be a good place for a base camp to work over that area for a couple of days. Between it and Camp Creek a person could have a serious three day pause with very good birding, maybe around early or mid May would be ideal to catch more migrants.

The road Atlas, National Geo that I favor for all the obscure campgrounds it plots, showed such a thing in Lewis and Clark NF south of Lewiston, about a hundred miles further. The Montana guide praised it as well. Got to Lewiston, got gas and more dismal fast food, the KFC had closed, even the gas station kid said it was a bad thing. Now here's one of those false negatives I mentioned. The GPS database did not show a road into the NF to Crystal Lake, and I followed a road it did show to the edge of the NF that ended up being a fishing access. It said no camping. I slept in the truck. The next morning with more persistence and breakfast, I found the road to Crystal Lake, well marked and well maintained, even paved inside the forest boundary, and not a trace in the GPS. But what a beautiful place. I was birding the campground when the host greeted me, said go ahead, not many people, the road had been impassable two days earlier, still snowed in. Again the creeks were raging snowmelt, and there remained a lot of patches in the campground. Good birds though, Ruby-crowned Kinglets doing their mating/territorial song, which seems different than the winter song I hear in Arkansas. Yellow-rumped Warblers, Pine Siskins, Golden-crowned Kinglets, Hermit Thrush, Mountain Chickadees and Juncos. That's a change of birds from the grasslands. I stayed for three hours including lots of stops along the road on the way down.

So the Montana summary goes like this: Started with 45 tics and added 68, making a total of 113 for the state. I actually saw 105 in two days, which seems real good. For one thing it means I feel no need to go back there again until the state changes its policies regarding the Yellowstone Buffalo. They kill them relentlessly if they wander outside the park, over an irrational fear of Brucellosis infecting the tiny local cattle population. I had considered not going this time, a real boycott, but it would have been my nose and my face. At least I bought no T-shirts and tourist gee-gaws, and hope I didn't do much for their economy, especially comforted that the profits of Wally come back to Arkansas, where I tile bathrooms for their employees.

It was vehicle maintenance time. I'd noticed some uneven tread wear, so figured I could find a Wally in Billings and get the tires rotated. That worked pretty much according to plan, also got an oil change, and was pleased at having some details under control. Lasted all the way to the next day. Then rather than get involved in the mountains, I headed southeast to Sheridan, WY. I had the ABA Wyoming bird-finder, it's getting pretty dated and is idiosyncratic from lack of a wide base of folks with input for most of the state. Most birding in Wyoming is around Yellowstone and the Tetons, period. The rest of the state is off the radar. Like most folks I had spent a fair time in the NW corner and had a decent WY list, but was missing some common birds; like Grackles and Red-wings, House Sparrows and Rock Pigeons. I had been up in the Big Horns once before, had been enamored, even when I woke up to several inches of snow, and was determined to stay another night. There were campgrounds southwest of Sheridan, that part I hadn't been in, so I ground my way a long drive up a really steep county road until I found a place that looked good, undeveloped wide shoulder, ate food, wandered in the forest, logged sightings in the computer and generally gave myself some mellow time. The plan was try for Gray Partridge in the morning way early. The unplanned was an owl in the night, soft hoots, figured it was a Saw-whet, went back to sleep, woke again to a different call, more drawn out, but that bird had to be sitting on a branch right over the truck. Loud and clear. A little study in the morning and some tape listening gave Northern Pygmy Owl. A real gift.

Trials and Tribs in Wyoming

Tuesday to Thursday, June 17-19, 2008

Up well before first light, and then back down the mountain to a road that was supposed to be good for GRPA, at least it was sixteen years ago. That was all I had to go on. And I didn't get on quite the right road at first, since it made an unannounced right turn at an intersection, but the names in the GPS didn't reflect that, and the book used street names rather than county route numbers. I did drive the road both ways before and at sunrise, but the force of Nemesis prevailed. But my concentration was being distracted by the grinding in the front brakes; I had fried the right side coming back down the mountain. Didn't really know how bad it was till later, couldn't see any real damage to the disk since it was on the hidden back side. Drove back into Sheridan for breakfast and Wifi, House Sparrows and Rock Pigeons, both surprisingly hard to find. Here's a total ticker trick: If you need a House Sparrow try three places, horse barn lots, fast food joint parking lots (hence the name McDonald's Finch), and last resort, the inside of big box stores with garden centers, like Lowe's or Wally.

The birdfinder had a lot of sites around Sheridan and further south, and I checked out quite a few of them, and tic by tic came up with a pretty decent list for the day. Best birds were Calliope and Broad-tailed Hummers, Belted Kingfisher, Lazuli Bunting, and Cassin's Finch. I made a couple of tries for Dipper, but the snowmelt flush made the creeks a little too challenging for them, at least at the places I could access. When I'd worn that out I still needed to do some laundry, being on the second day of the last pair of UPs (he blushes to admit). Driving south to Casper, I saw one single Lark Bunting, it flew across the Interstate in front of the truck. When I got there I managed to find a laundry cum yogurt joint in a strip mall on the edge of town, and was able to renew my wardrobe and service my head. Refreshed, I drove on to Rawlins where there were some sites noted in the book. The brakes were now making nasty sounds at every stop, but I somehow convinced myself that I didn't have to respond yet. That changed in Rawlins when I went to buy gas. After I'd paid when I restarted the truck let out a mighty scream. Opened the hood and it seemed to be coming from the fan belt tensioner, something that would occasionally complain in cold weather. I hoped it was that, and not water pump or power steering or other pricey parts-and-labor. I was having a personal melt-down, worried and heat stressed in a strange town where I knew absolutely no-one. Did I mention that the "check engine" light had come on, never a good sign.

That's when a small miracle occurred, Some man, an ordinary guy, no wings or anything, offered to help. He got me inside with the phone book and took me through the mechanics, OKayed two from personal experience, and rejected two, showed me where they were located, and just helped me get some center. Bless him every day forever. I called one and they were booked up, and the other said bring it in in the morning. More luck. I drove over there, stopping for food and coffee and AC, and that helped. I still needed to get a place to sleep, but that was a problem too. Every room in town had been booked up for a week, oil boom in Rawlins since it was worth going after fields that had been laid aside at cheaper barrel prices. Back to the garage, and I just figured I'd sleep in the truck and hope the cops didn't harass me. After watching it turn dark, complete with a Nighthawk tic, I walked over to a diner and had a big French Toast breakfast. I was the only vehicle parked by the garage at first, but then a tow truck arrived with a wreck, got some local orientation from the driver who was cool, and some others showed up while I was sleeping. Actually slept well.

In the morning the two mechanics, father and son, taciturn and clean living types, were there by eight. I'd had another breakfast, comfort food, talking with an Inuit from Alaska who was down working the oil fields. He told me about Ptarmigan hunting by moonlight during the three month long night, walking snare lines in the squeaking snow. Back at the garage we started digging in. Right front brake rotor wrecked, but not terribly expensive. Idler did seem to be the source of the noise. Read the computer code and it said "Cam position sensor circuit" whatever that is, but when we wiped it it didn't come back. So far so good. Put the other rotor on the lathe for good measure. I hung in the office or tried to be interested but not aggravating, probably was, talked to folks who came by, read my Bernd Heinrich book about the Ravens mind, which I left finished on their magazine rack. Two deputies came by to talk about the wrecked truck, it was from a Sage Grouse group, the driver had gone off the road while distracted by the GPS (!) and it turned out one was the tow truck driver now disguised by a uniform and dark sun glasses. I said I needed to talk to them, I really wanted to find a Sage Grouse, and the deputy gave me directions to a place where he saw many while riding horses not too far north of town. Target lifer. The replacement idler pulley had been delivered, but it squealed too. Father mechanic patiently took it out, fiddled with it on a vice, said the bolt had been overtightened, thought it fixed, and explained that it was probably the only one in at least a hundred miles so fixing it was the only choice. I felt sorry for the extra time he was wasting, since he'd given me a fixed and reasonable price, no bullshit about the computer says it's this much time that nobody ever uses, pure rip-off garbage. You might detect some attitude there.

With all the extra trouble I was till out of there by noon, and drove up to the Sage Grouse place. Pretty easy to find, only about three miles back in the desert, a small valley with a dried up playa surrounded by waist high sage brush. I walked down in there knowing this was not the prime grouse finding time, overhead sun at least 90 degrees. Flushing was the only hope so I walked a half mile one end to the other and back, always keeping to the thickest part of the brush, waiting each second for the heart stopping blast almost under my feet. Didn't happen that way, didn't happen at all. After most of two fairly rigorous hours I still had no lifer. But it was really hot. Move to the next part of the plan. The bird finder had praised a camp-ground in the Medicine Bow mountains about fifty miles south, there were two paved routes and a more direct dirt route that the book encouraged. I took it, It climbed into snow fields and sage brush, some Ponderosa inside the National Forest boundary, mile long aspen groves, great country, not very birdy, but some ducks on hidden ponds of snowmelt, a Golden Eagle on a fence post, Sage and Brewer's Sparrows singing, and lots of Horned Larks. Battle Creek campground was down another steep rutted road, only a couple of miles, deserted but there was trailer there that looked identical to the picture in the book, so I wondered if it'd been sitting there through all those mountain winters for at least eighteen years. No bear damage. The creek was overfull and raging, it had broken it's banks and flooded the road just past the campground entrance, and I wasn't able to follow the banks very far. Still it was a great place for birding. Spotted Sandpiper, MacGillivray's, Green-tailed Towhee were notable, but the best was a big thick gray hawk, fairly high but close enough to study shape and patterns. I turned intuition to certainty when I got back to the field guide, Northern Goshawk, truly special.

I was sleeping around midnight when heavy rain started. no big deal until the vision of that steep road awash in mud sprung me awake. Stuck it in four-wheel, and climbed back up to the highway. The belt started squealing again, and the check engine light came on again. I was too tired to care, and not much I could do. In the morning I set off for Arapaho NWR in Colorado. The squealing calmed down and stopped, and later in the day the light went off. Made one last stop before CO at a restroom on a pass, and was found by a Mountain Bluebird, and then a close by Pine with a pair of Pine Grosbeaks. Got to watch them for a couple of minutes before they flew. I good way to finish the Wyoming statistics; added 41 species to the list, making 125, and just over 30%.

Colorado and Home

Thursday to Saturday, June 19-21, 2008

It was farther to Arapaho NWR than it looked like on the map, but once there I did very well. First I drove the short tour route. Extremely good ducks, 15 species by days end mostly at Arapaho, and a smattering of shorebirds and misc others, including a variety of blackbirds. There were Prairie Dog researchers there, sitting in raised platforms with canvas tops, spotting scopes aimed at their marked mounds. They said no Burrowing Owls, and in fact the range maps showed them starting on the east side of the Front Range. For the rest of the day I was running south through the connected series of valleys called North Park, Middle Park, and South Park. I went over to the HQ building, had a good talk with the biologist, and went back to the tour route again to try a couple of heads-ups she's shared. Also stopped at another boardwalk nature trail near the HQ, turned out it was a place where I'd encountered a moose when I had been there before. It had been my first up close and personal, hearing some strange sound in thick tall brush, M chewing it turned out. About twenty feet away, and it didn't give the impression of welcoming. It seemed a lot farther back to the truck than on the walk in, listening for galloping from behind, imagining ungulate eyes boring into my back. Nothing happened.

The road from Arapaho heads south to Granby where a nice viewing area had been built beside a lake, where there was a Pelican, and one Ring-billed Gull mixed with lots of Californias. Met two birders there from L.A., a couple, he was working on the last of his code 2 birds, needing Sage Grouses. I was impressed. Tried to save face by talking about 7000 total tics. Was allowed to drive off without a fine. Then came a lot of wasted time driving past the back side of Denver. First over the Berthoud Pass, where I found good birds up a hillside from a picnic area. Had I realized, there was a good road down a canyon with lots of small lakes that would have saved at least an hour, and maybe had better birding than dispersed suburban sprawl. Then there was a long crawl past a really bad accident. The car that was still by the road was destroyed totally to the back of the front doors. After that I was into South Park, which was pleasant, open, and fast driving. I crossed back into the mountains, where there were Forest campgrounds, and ended up finding on just south of the Salida junction. It seemed crowded and noisy, so I retreated back down the mountain to an un-developed informal space and set-up there. Turned out pretty good. Got Western Scrub-Jays, Plumbeous Vireo, and a prize for the day, Hammond's Flycatcher, singing and calling. It still took awhile to find the recording that nailed down the ID, there are Dusky's in the same area. Mellow evening, catch up on journals and data entry. Slept well.

Friday - I was back in Salida before any eatery was open, so harvested some email at a motel. Got word that a good friend from my early days settling in Arkansas had died suddenly, a guy just my age. I had taught him a song called "Arkansas Fliers" that I'd learned in Philadelphia, which had become his signature piece. These deaths are happening more often now, and I doubt it'll let up. I don't remember any focal sadness, but as the day wore on I got kinda depressed and hopeless, combination of being frustrated on Gunnison Sage-Grouse, too much heat, and a negative reaction to a sweet waitress at breakfast, strictly me, nothing about her. Jill, cute and blond and perky, probably a co-ed working a summer job, willing to chat some and say kind things about an old fart. At first it was elating, then it was a back-door entry to aging reality and cynicism. Guess it'd make a short story. She did say it was just an hour drive to Gunnison, I had drifted closer than I'd planned, so I went over there and followed the chapter in the old ABA Colorado guide. This was not the right time to try for grouse, they're dispersed and not making much noise. I stopped at the BLM office and the guy there was very helpful. I stopped at the CO Wildlife office and the folks there were obtuse and ignorant. I kept wishing I could somehow find the man who had written the Gunnison chapter, but had no idea how that could be done. Started checking out sites.

First tried the airport, which had an excellent wetland, but it had been fenced and gated and secured beyond anything a birder could use. A little west of town there was a turnoff for a road the BLM guy had mentioned. Good birds at a river crossing there, and a little further there was a trail-head mentioned in the ABA guide. I started hiking, was finding god birds, Green-tailed Towhee, Violet-green Swallows, elusive flycatchers and such. Met an old guy walking the trail, no binocs, two walking poles. Started chatting some when I caught a flycatcher in some rocks close by. I slammed my glasses on it, and thought maybe it was Dusky, I was talking out loud to avoid being rude. He says, does it have an eye-ring, I said front and back, he says yep that's a Dusky. I commented that he was pretty knowledgeable about birds. He asked me how I'd come to be on that trail, so I said it was in this book I had. He says, "I wrote that chapter" His name is Ron Meyer, and he then told me where he was having the best birding these days after sharing a lament over how things had changed.

Following his advice I made several stops in Curecanti Recreation area, there are picnic grounds with trails along the Gunnison River, and those were excellent even with the mosquitoes. Best bird was a Black-headed Grosbeak, and there was rumor of a Least Flycatcher, but I would have had to do some wading. Ron had also mentioned a trailer park where GUSG came up to feed on the grass in the evening. I went looking for it, and it was way further than I'd suspected. When I got there and had driven around it trying to figure which of two possibilities he had meant, including a trip back to the Rec Area campground, I finally figured out that it was deserted, un-mowed, and not very promising. Now I could have stayed at the campground and tried evening and morning, but the depression was growing, it was treeless bare rock canyon hot, and my gumption failed. I started east for home. Took an alternate route over the mountains back to South Park, then south to Monte Vista NWR. It was desolate.

Fortunately I also tried Alamosa NWR, which was pretty birdless also, no flocks or even groups, just individual birds here and there. But four of them were new tics, Avocet and Stilt, Black-crowned Night-Heron, and Snowy Egret, all just as I was heading down the last leg of the tour loop. That helped. From there I drove to the Interstate at Walsenburg, then south to Trinidad. I had visited a woman there many years ago, and after I found her name in deep storage memory I checked the phone book. No luck, and gas in Trinidad was the most expensive of the trip. At least they had a KFC. It was almost true dark by the time I left, driving US160, an almost deserted two lane blacktop that goes to Kansas. I got to Kim, the only town for about a hundred miles, population less than 200, and went to sleep next to a general store. I saw 86 species in Colorado in two days, 21 were new tics, making a total of 190 species for the state. It'll probably be someplace I'll try to get to 50% in the next couple of years.

Friday - Not much to say except I stopped for breakfast at a run down truck-stop in Springfield, with a table full of Ranchers talking feed and beef prices and drought. Then across Kansas, with just one stop at Jacob's Well natural area. It was an historically notable spring in a mixed grass prairie remnant. Neat place. I found my first wild Horned Toad ever. From there it was just driving, but on a stretch of road I'd not traveled before, that passed along the north edge of an area called the Red Hills. I want to go back there. The old Kansas Birdfinder, Zimmernam and Patti, has a loop tour laid out in there that had caught my eye when I was setting up a GPS mapping file for the state. I got to my home town about 7pm, parked outside the library for some Wifi, and headed home. The anticipated spiders, mice, and grass were waiting. No unpacking, but did do my ritual trips-end pinning of the wall map before crashing.

For the whole trip I had 232 speciesin 17 days, pretty good since I'd been in a fair variety of habitats. 354 new tics making a total of 6906. I should be able to break 7000 by year's end.

Arkansas Elderhostel 08

Arkansas Elderhostel 08
Originally uploaded by Jettpakk1

Karen, Margaret, Gloria, J Pat, Kathy

Karen on Eagle Creek Rd

Arkansas 08_27
Originally uploaded by Jettpakk1

This was just after we had seen her long desired Bald Eagles.