The Black Mesa OK CBC Jan 1 06

(Officially listed as Kenton, OK)

I spent the day mostly with John Sterling, who is listed as the number one Oklahoma birder in the ABA list report. He knew every nook and cranny of our territory, and the names of most of the folks living there. And a lot of the local history, some of which he pointed out as we wandered around. Including the two versions of the Kansas/Texas/Oklahoma state line corner marker. No GPS in those days. The habitat was mostly dry canyon country, but at one point we got up pretty high, serious back-of-beyond barely passable ranch road climbing. You'd have to call the whole circle blacktop remote, certainly no cell phone, but switching on a radio got nothing but spinning numbers as it searched the whole dial over and over. It was unforgettable, some of the most enchanting birding I've ever done. Started the morning by calling up a Western Screech Owl with a CD playing in the dark. First bird of the year, and a good one. My nemesis bird was the Junper Titmouse, John's was Lewis's Woodpecker. Couldn't find them. We met up for the count summary in a motel room way far east of the circle, after chowing down at the Pizza Hut, only place open. Don't let the short list fool you, this was a great day birding in the middle of nowhere, and I had stopped two days earlier and found a Northern Shrike and a Townsend's Solitaire at Black Mesa State Park.

Western Screech-Owl
Great Horned Owl
Western Scrub-Jay
Mallard
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Northern Flicker
Mountain Bluebird gazillions
European Starling
American Robin
Eastern Bluebird
Canyon Wren
Red-winged Blackbird
American Goldfinch
Sage Thrasher best bird, in the high lonesome place
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Say's Phoebe
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Common Raven
Chihuahuan Raven
Spotted Towhee
Canyon Towhee
Bald Eagle flying with
Golden Eagle
Black-billed Magpie

It seems like there were others but for some reason they're not coming out on the report.
Some things John caught and I didn't. He's a master birder and really familiar with the habitat and the critters. Something to strive for. Nevertheless, many of these were new tics for OK.

The Elkhart Kansas CBC Dec 31 05

I rode around the area north and east of Elkhart with Kevin ??, his wife Laura, and Henry ??. The area was mostly flat farm fields, but we did stop at Middle Spring, a historic waterhole on the Santa Fe Trail, also Point-of-Rocks, another landmark. There were a few downcut arroyo type places, and we pushed the envelop slightly to get a river crossing on the Cimmeron. The sighting list isn't the order we found things. I searched all day for a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, nemesis bird.

Great Horned Owl
Mallard
Turkey Vulture
Bald Eagle
Northern Harrier
Red-tailed Hawk
Ferruginous Hawk
Rough-legged Hawk
Golden Eagle
American Kestrel
Prairie Falcon
Scaled Quail
Ring-necked Pheasant
Eurasian Collared-Dove
Mourning Dove
Barn Owl Flying around a Quonset style barn
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Horned Lark
Marsh Wren Called out with a tape
Northern Mockingbird
Loggerhead Shrike
Black-billed Magpie
European Starling
American Tree Sparrow
Song Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
McCown's Longspur
Lapland Longspur
Red-winged Blackbird
Western Meadowlark
Common Grackle
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow

Kansas and Oklahoma CBC Trip Day 4

It was cold and windy and dark when I got up. I was hoping that daylight would bring some warmth, but it was canceled out by the wind. It was a morning when your hands hurt from the cold, even with decent gloves, which make using the binocs difficult. So I'd take them off if something interesting showed up, but not for long. I walked north from the main part of the campground, called Thompson Grove, to another patch of tall old cottonwoods. The two groves must have been the remains of a ranch-site, fences and corrals remained since they were useful to the grazers on the Grassland, but the only building was the new pit toilet, much better than the one that was there on the first visit several years ago.

I found Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Loggerhead Shrike, two kinds of Raven, requiring careful study of tail shapes. Turned out to be easy since they both kept flying around taking turns harassing a Great Horned Owl. The owl could only fly from one grove to the other; besides them there was zero cover and few perches. I was surprised to find the woodpecker that far north, I'd always associated them with the Rio Grande Valley. I looked for them hard on the CBCs, other folks found them,but not me. The best bird was an American Tree Sparrow found along the roads driving toward Oklahoma. I thought it might be there and was watching the fences and brush. Another new TX species.

Once in Oklahoma I drove directly for Black Mesa State Park, figuring on scouting it out before the count. The official count for OK was Jan 1, so officially new species that day wouldn't count toward my 2005 list. It's a game we play. It turned out to be a good move, since my CBC area didn't include the park. On that Friday I found a Townsend's Solitaire, a Northern Shrike, a Loggerhead Shrike while driving, and some other critters I'd seen before in OK. The Northern Shrike was an immature,and a species I'd only seen briefly on the owl trip to Minnesota the previous winter. What caught my attention was that the hook on the bill was visible, which it isn't in a Loggerhead. Then field guide work matched some other features. I felt very good about getting that ID, and thought it might be a great bird for the count (it was count week), but Sebastian said they were seen many years, and on count day folks found two of them.

I drove into Kenton, talked to the folks in the mercantile for awhile, bought some very expensive gas with my last folding money, and followed the road west into a brief piece of Colorado, then off on a north-bound, more or less, dirt road called Sheep Pen, over forty miles of curvy climbing and diving sometimes bone rattling ecstasy. Serious back country. Passed maybe four ranch compounds, very little fencing, and thousands and thousands of Mountain Bluebirds. The Mountain Bluebird capital of the world. On the count Sunday we were the highest in the country for that species, something that had happened before once or twice. Why? Maybe lots of Cedar berries. Or ???

Several other species were new for Colorado, including Rough-legged Hawk. It's always good for state listing to get to the extreme corners during extreme seasons, which accounts mostly for the excellent results I got for the trip. But by the time I reached another paved Hiway, to take back east to Elkhart, KS I was getting the low fuel panic again. When I had lived in the west for several years I always carried an extra 5 gallons of gas, and would end up resorting to it two or three times a year. I had lost that precautionary thinking after years in the over-inhabited east. the pavement takes a turn somewhere in there, and then you're on the widest flattest straightest dirt road imaginable. 50 mph dirt roads where the oncoming vehicle's dust cloud is visible 3 miles away. Intoxicating, until you touch the brakes and realize that your basically driving on marbles. Not much stopping power, and less control.

Over the Kansas border I found pavement again, there was still a little daylight, and a right turn took me south into Elkhart. There was a motel there that the birders were meeting up at, with a pretty good restaurant. I finally met Sebastian and a dozen other folks, some familiar from meetings I'd attended in OK. We ate and lied and planned the strategy and teams for the next day, then I headed off for the campground ten miles north in Cimmeron National Grassland. One of those mixed blessing/curses of age is the growing prostate. The blessing comes when you get outside several times in the depths of the night, with totally dark adapted eyes, and look up at every star in the universe, or so it seems.

Kansas and Oklahoma CBC trip Day 3

I got up the next morning around 5, needing time to drive back to the refuge and get breakfast along the way. Also tried to log the Screech Owl into the computer, but it wasn't on the New Mexico list. Bells went off. I found a motel with wifi and harvested my email, and found the NM Bird Records Committee site. Got a phone number to call. Later in the day, when I got through, found that there was one previous record, but that bird had the good manners to show up at a birder meeting so that lots of NM birders had managed to check it off. Nevertheless the woman was excited about the report and urged me to get a written version submitted. She even knew the exact brushy area in the rest stop that I was referring to.

Also the evening before I had a call from Sebastian Patti, who is an elected Judge in Chicago, a master birder with more records in Kansas than anybody else, and an engaging character in person. He was checking in with my plans, he being the CBC organizer, and gave me info on where to meet up. I said I was on course and would be there.

Somewhere in reading the descriptions of possible birding sites there was a mention of Rosy-finches, the Colorado bird I had had to abandon. Sometimes seen in New Mexico. I looked at the detailed species accounts, and it said they were sometimes seen at Taos Ski Valley. I looked at that description, and they were actually seen there fairly often, and gave some details. It was only about a hundred miles, in the more or less right direction, to Taos, a place that's both quaint, for it's core look, and repulsive, for the culture that's crystallized around it's attractiveness. I wouldn't go there without a really good reason. Two lifers was a great reason.

But first the NWR where I already was. I got there at first light, watching a thin blood red line at the edge between the clouds and the horizon, parked in the refuge entryway. I wanted to start there since they had a fence area that could be walked with some little wet ditches, brush and small trees. Good for wintering sparrows. I waited impatiently for enough light to see movement, reading and playing on the computer. When it was barely possible I walked the perimeter of the office area, but it was still so cold that I didn't see much. Figured I might as well go look at ducks, I was still missing some obvious ones. What I got was a raptor bonanza. They were sitting in tree-tops waiting more patiently than I for the rising sun to warm them and the ground. Get some thermals going so they could soar. In the next hour I found a Golden Eagle, a Rough-legged Hawk, a Feruginous Hawk, and a Sharp-shinned, as well as more of species I'd seen the previous day.

I was starting to feel lucky, in fact it was one of the most satisfying mornings I'd had in ages, the clouds were breaking, the sun was shining like bugles across the yellow and orange nearly treeless landscape and on the mountains to the west. The whirtlings of Sandhill Cranes (play the sound) drifted on the wind. It was seeing great birds in perfect light. I found some more ducks I'd been hoping for, Cackling geese and a Common Merganser amongst others, and at the nearly last stop, hoping for a Goldeneye, after stopping and setting up the scope and just loosely pointing it at a likely raft, I looked through the lens and instantly saw a perfect Goldeneye. I'm not a gambler, I have no sense that I'm lucky in that way, I won't put a nickel in a slot machine driving across Nevada. But that morning I had the conviction that it was a lucky day. Drove back to the office, explained to the woman of the previous day that I would pass on hiking the trail, but thanks for the help, serviced my head (brush teeth and shave) in their restroom, and headed for the traffic of Taos. It was about 10am.

I got to the Ski Valley about 1:30. An absolute circus and emporium of SUVs, plastic, and conspicuous consumption, decorated with lots of beautiful women, not one of whom seemed comfortably happy. Yet again I digress. The parking lot was so big that I couldn't even figure out where anything was, so I just stopped randomly when it looked like I was near some buildings and lifts. The book said to check out the bases of the buildings for finches foraging on the ground, so I walked around feeling acutely out of place in the ski crowd, glassing the creek bottoms and firewood piles, places where sand had accumulated, and anything else that might attract a bird. No luck, nothing feathered. The book mentioned a condo, Kandahar, that had feeders. I asked questions, and finally got usable answers from people who were obviously unused to being addressed by strangers.

It was a fair walk to the road leading to the condo, then up a steep snowy single track with my sea-level lungs at 11000 feet. That called for some heavy breathing. When I got close there were some birds flying around, which proved to be Mountain Chickadees, a great bird that I'd only rarely seen. They were using a couple of feeders, and perching in brush on the ground. I watched the feeders for twenty minutes, no Rosies, and was feeling defeated. Noticed that I was standing by some steps leading to the condo office, and figured - What the Hell? So I stuck my head in and asked if anybody knew what a Rosy-finch was.

Yes she says, they were here just a few minutes ago, a few on the roof next door. I looked across the counter out big windows at the empty roof. She says do you want to come over here where you can see better? Sure. A wall of floor to ceiling windows. Then a few birds landed on the roof, and they were Rosies. I don't carry the field guides with me any more, I've lost too many birds by looking at the book when I should have been studying the critter. So I had to puzzle out their differences by just looking. I knew about black, gray, and brown, which was a start. I'd seen one Gray-crowned once before at Crater Lake, not real well since it showed up while I was trying not to slide down the mountain standing in the brush answering a call. Can't guide the binocs well with one hand, and balance fades quickly with your eyes covered.

But this was a perfect situation. Picked out the Blacks quickly, that's one lifer. Then they flew to a pine tree far enough to be a problem. Heart sink. Then they flew back, more of them, up to maybe twenty. Another flock came in, back to the pines, more incoming and back to the roof. After about fifteen minutes there were over a hundred birds, and I'd puzzled out the differences, and was sure I had all three species. Two lifers, the Brown-capped being the other never-seen-before. I was floating and grinning, and the office folk found my bliss quite entertaining. After about a half hour, as it was getting a little darker, I left with many thanks.

Driving back down the mountain, I tried some back roads to avoid going back into Taos. Even with the computer GPS setup I managed to get lost twice, but found a Juniper Titmouse in the process, so I wasn't so upset. Finally got on the main road north, and then headed east through Eagle Pass for Oklahoma. By dark I'd made it to Springer NM, gas low, no station but found a hotel restaurant open and had a decent burger. Started driving for Clayton in the dark and after awhile started worrying about fuel. It looked dicey. It would have been very dicey, but I was saved by the flatness and straightness of the road. Had there been much curving and even mild hilliness I probably would have run dry. But it was my lucky day, and one station was open late in Clayton. Bingo. From there it was fairly easy to get into the Eastern Panhandle of Texas, and Rita Blanca National Grassland which just happens to have a sweet free campground with good birding. I'd do that in the morning. First I had to run off the drunken Christmas vacation no-school-tomorrow teenagers who showed up a half hour after I bedded down, and they just had to shine their flashlights into the camper to see, well, whatever.

Kansas and Oklahoma CBC trip, Day 2

Well before first light I was driving into Texas, angling Southwest toward Lake Meredith National Recreation Area. I had fond memories from a trip quite a few years ago. All National Park Service units call for a visit, preferably for at least one overnight, and I had found a rough campsite on a dirt road in a canyon leading to the lake. The next morning while making breakfast I started hearing a bird singing that I couldn't place. New to birding, that was a common description. So I headed up the side of the canyon, rough travel over boulders and cactus, but at each stop the bird seemed to have moved due to the strange acoustics of the place and the song. It might even have been moving, but at least kept singing steadily. After about twenty minutes it finally showed up on top of a stunted tree. It was the first Painted Bunting I'd ever seen, one of the very most colorful birds in the country, and not that easy to find. After the first, I found several more. Other birders have seconded my theory that finding a critter the first time seems to open a door, and some kind of karmic access is switched on. I've had the same experience with quite a few species, for instance the first Hooded Merganser and Hooded Warbler both took years to find, and now seem no trouble at all. Anyway.

But I found very little of interest there, and was more interested in getting to New Mexico where I knew I could find many new species. That's in spite of having lived two years there when I first started birding. I had no written records, and clear and certain memories didn't cover all the species I'd probably seen. The only notes I'd made were for lifers, which were also the most salient memories. Something about the first sighting really sticks; I can still see clearly that first Cinnamon teal in a borrow ditch glowing in the sunrise at Bosque del Apache. But I ramble.

Briefly, or so, since Texas is one of my most birded states, nearly 400 species, there wasn't a whole lot to try for. But the Panhandle sticks up into the Prairie habitat, and Brewer's Blackbird and Lapland Longspur were new. More than I hoped for when I noticed a flock coursing over a plowed bare dirt winter field, and stopped on the shoulder.

I passed on Palo Duro Canyon too, much as I'd like to spend more time there. It's always on the way to somewhere else, and it seems I'm always short of enough time to camp and kick back. Someday. Once I got into New Mexico I hit the jackpot, and by the next day's end had 24 new species for the state. I was using the new edition of the NM bird finding guide, Parmeter, Neville, & Emkalns. Very good and I stumbled on treasure in there, more about that later.

I headed pretty directly for Tucumcari, and from there northwest toward Las Vegas figuring on spending some time at the NWR there and staying at a state park just north of the town. First stop was a Lake on the outskirts of Tucumcari, with some obvious tics there, like a Pintail, but also Cackling Goose (what a rich trove of new tics that's proven to be). Lakes provided sitting ducks, which I had few records of in NM in spite of the time at Bosque del Apache. That was a place with lots of sightings lost to memory, so some of this stuff was recovery of the faded memory. Farther up the road at Conchas Lake it was different. A great Grebe sweep, four species, Pied-bill, Eared, Horned and Western. If it weren't so remote, I'd recommend it highly, there were nice hardwood groves and Riparian woods as well as the open water.

The real jackpot came at Las Vegas NWR. I stopped in the office to talk about a trail there with a good reputation, but the kind woman, who seemed to be running the place by herself said it was too late that day to go in, and he didn't think it was that good at that part of the year. I figured I'd try in the morning, it required waiting until some gates were unlocked. I went out and drove the loop, it was getting darker, caught a few ducks on the water, and my first definite Ross's now that I know how to pick them out of the thousands of Snow Geese. Drove back into town for another reliably-unsurprising-but-also-uninspiring-redeemed-by-cheap-and-fast McDonald's meal. One of those curse/blessing aspects of budget road trips. It was about 7pm, so I headed the few miles up to the state park. It was closed, many are in the dead of winter, but this one was closed and locked. Drat etc. Muttering imprecations at the government of NM, which is a study in unimaginative authoritarian policies coupled to mercantilist management (you can see that I've lived there), got back on the Interstate and drove quite a ways to a roadside rest area to crash in the camper-shell. This area was undeveloped, meaning mostly idling trucks and NO LIGHTS. That more than makes up for the rumbling background noise. Caught up the records in the computer and of to bed

In the middle of the night I woke to a Screech Owl outside the truck, there was some brush bordering a little dry wash. An Eastern Screech Owl. I had been hoping for the bouncing ball call of the Western, but this was just that familiar descending horse whinny. O well.

Kansas and Oklahoma CBC trip, Day 1

In the week between Christmas and New Year's 2006 I managed a trip as far west as New Mexico, then back to western Oklahoma and Kansas to participate in two Christmas Bird Counts. I hoped to add some safety numbers to my OK bird list. I had been advised by Lief Anderson, who has over 8000 total tics, (that's the sum of all the species seen in each state, so he's averaging over 160 per state) that it was best to get some excess species on a state list, since new birds were being found regularly. Also to add some new tics to KS, which I aim to break threshold on in 2006 (that's to be listed in the ABA big year guide. It requires seeing more than half the species ever seen in a state, and requires some focused effort). I had hoped to get into Colorado and find some Rosy-finches wintering at low altitude feeders, but my time got squeezed by job entropy, and I had dropped that part of the plan by the time I escaped town.

I got away from home about 6:30 Tuesday morning, and was birding in Tulsa by 10;30. First stop was Lynn Lane Reservoir, a water supply impoundment on the east side of town. Both Black and White-winged Scoters had been seen there, and either would have been new for OK. I tried the first obvious parking place, across from the treatment plant, worrying about theft, and although the lake was covered with ducks, I couldn't make out any scoters. I started driving around going west but couldn't get reasonably close, and no parking either. Only when I got all the way back to the east side did I find another access. And another birder. He was scoping the birds in the shallow end, there were hundreds, and I thouhgt I had it made. I didn't get his name, but he was newly retired and looking forward to birding a lot. He hadn't found the Scoters, so we joined up and headed for the next parking place, and there we found the Black fairly quickly. It wasn't very black, more nondescript gray, a first year female apparently, but black enough to count. I never did find the White-winged.

I had picked the man's brain about some of my other target birds, particularly Widgeons, and he said to watch the farm ponds heading north. I was on my way to try for the Snowy Owl reported south of Bowring so that fit well. I'd slow a little to watch the ponds, and if one had some waterfowl, I'd stop to look more carefully. About the fifth or sixth stop I found a Widgeon, and a bonus small gaggle of Cackling Geese among the Canadas. That helped, and I followed the directions to the Snowy. Also managed to find American Tree Sparrows along the county road, which I had figured should appear without too much trouble.

I got to the area where the Owl was supposed to be and started driving the side roads slowly scanning the ground in all directions. I wasn't having any luck when I met some other birders, one of whom was Pat Velt, who I had met the previous spring in Oklahoma City at Lake Hefner. Also her friend Terri(?). I don't have an account of that trip on the blog. Maybe I'll try to reconstruct it sometime. We exchanged cell phone numbers in case either was successful, and split up. Half an hour later and some driving on more obscure dirt roads still hadn't paid off, and we were getting discouraged. I started north toward a couple of Lakes that had also reported WW scoters, and after about two miles found several cars parked along the road. And a big ol' female Snowy Owl sitting on the ground, not twenty feet off the road, amongst some grazing cattle. One older gentleman from Bartlesville was snapping away with a huge lens while his wife waited not-very-patiently in their car. He said the bird hadn't moved much, except to peck at a cow when it got too close and curious. There were quite a few fluffs of contour feathers around the bird in the grass, which didn't seem right.

I called Pat, and she was there in minutes, and very pleased. More big lenses. More cars arrived too and it got to be a hazard for the locals who only cared to get to point B. I stayed about a half hour, and Pat promised to send a pic. Two days later the owl was captured by a rehabber, since it was getting quite obviously sick. It had a wounded wing which was badly infected. I heard not a gunshot, tho that was the initial rumor. The bird died in the clinic, unable to cope with the infection and the antibiotics in its also weakened-from-starvation condition.

After leaving the owl and it's attendant cattle and birders, one worshipping grass, the other the feather quest (Pete Dunne's phrase), I looped north and back east to check another lake for the WW Scoter, also swans had been reported, but none showed for me. The wind was rising and cold, and presumably critters had hunkered down in the coves. The original trip plan had included a stop at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge (hereafter NWR) but the days lost before leaving meant something had to go. I figured on finding lots of nw OK birds at the Black Mesa CBC, so chose to skip that stop. I drove well west of there to where I'd found Boiling Springs State Park on the map, liked the name, and needed rest. It wasn't that easy to find, roads that seemed like they should go there died out at 5 strand barb-wire fences, and I had to loop around and back to finally get in. It was late, it was deserted, I was tired, I crashed in the camper-shell. Slept well, usually do on these marathon trips.