The Hiccup trip of 2009 - Overview

On May 6 2009 I set out on a proposed long western loop planning to finish my goal of 100 species per state in that direction. About the second or third day I had a meal that set off some hiccups, no big deal. The next day they continued sporadicly, and the next. They gradually got worse, but not enough to keep me from birding. Finally near Valentine NE I called my regular physician. Comedy of errors, but not funny. The next day I headed home hoping to access some prescription meds. Another screw-up. Kept driving home while the hiccups turned to esophageal spasms that made breathing impossible for 1-2 minute spells, happened several times. Finally got home, and the problem abated in about three days. Wasn't a very successful birding trip, but the account follows nevertheless.

Missouri Driving, May 6, Wednesday

The plan was to travel north with stops in Missouri, into Iowa, then along the upper Mississippi River on the Wisconsin side, Cross back southward into Minnesota hoping for eastern woodland species, clip South Dakota, cross Nebraska, and then Wyoming and Colorado. There was more, but it was moot as it developed. I started in the usual way, unloading tools and loading gear, always forgetting at least one useful thing. My start was late enough that I headed straight for Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area, which gets a lot of coverage from the Columbia birders. It's a big chunk of habitat, but didn't have the shorebirds I had hoped for. I went into Jeff City to the Runge Nature Center, but didn't have enough time to stay long. I needed to get to Thomas Hill Res for camping. The primitive camp I'd stayed in before was closed so I slept in the primary campground near the bridge that crosses the north end of the lake. I wasn't able to find any new species in Missouri.

Into Iowa

May 7, Thursday

Things started looking up in Iowa. My first stop was a spur of the moment turn around when I passed Pioneer Ridge County Nature Center. Really nice place for a county park, with a beautiful visitor's center, and a lot of good habitat with water features. I found several warblers as well as other woodland birds, some new tics. Stayed well over an hour and regretted it wasn't longer, but I needed to get to Neal Smith NWR. It was very good for sparrows, but a continuous drizzle made it less enjoyable than my hopes. I walked the whole prairie loop from the VC. Note that this is a place with an excellent bookstore for prairie information, especially detailed botanical publications. I had downloaded a pdf of sites, called "The Makoke Trail", around Des Moines, and started methodically checking them out with the Neal Smith stop. I was particularly interested in Saylorville Lake, which has consistently produced sightings of vagrant and desirable gulls, but also had shorebird and woodland habitat around the area. I wanted to get a feel for the area, and what kinds of camping was available.

I stopped at the Visitor's Center, grazed the information, then started up the east side stopping at most of the sites in the pdf. The shorebirds were absent, bad timing on my part, a south wind had swept everything further along an their migration, and no new birds had accumulated behind a wind shift. At the north end the trail blended easily into Ledges State Park, a very interesting piece of geology with several well preserved CCC structures. I got a campsite there, $11, good deal with showers, and made the first of three drives through the park and vicinity. When it got on toward evening, I headed into Ames assuming a college town would have some fast food joints and wifi hotspots. KFC was the wrong choice that day, even though it's usually a favorite. Something about the food set off some hiccups, which were still going the next day, but not really a problem. I got a shower, which I've noted was challenging, something about the plumbing or stall geography. No trouble stopping the hics when lying down by briefly holding my breath.

May 8, Friday

Made another loop of the park, took some pictures of the CCC buildings, poked my nose in brushy edges and played the owl tape inside some woods, then headed off to find some other sites. Harrier Marsh wasn't too birdy, but did have a Harrier. By Far the best site that day was Hendrickson Marsh, which had a fair selection of waterfowl and somee miscellenious woodland birds in cottonwoods along small drainages. I didn't check the urban parks, but probably will when I make another visit to the area when I get another chance to work on the Iowa list. From there I drove on to Belleview State Park with its great view of the Mississippi River and a lot of good warblers hanging in the trees on the bluff. It started raining around 6pm, and I ended up sleeping 12 hours while it continued. The hiccups continued as well. I picked up 15 Iowa tics by days end, very satisfying, even with few shorebirds.

Wisconsin and Minnesota

May 9, Saturday

It had cleared off to partly cloudy and windy and cool, stayed in the fifties all day. I crossed the river and went just north into Wisconsin which is blessed with a big thick and pretty good bird-finder book. I basically stayed along the east bank of the river, and made a lot of stops from the book. There were a lot of good sites, and just stopping on the sides of two lane blacktops worked well. One site was a dirt road under the riverside railroad that extended most of a mile into the river, marshy with Cottonwoods along the road, several good birds including a Bittern.

The main reason I had taken that route was to check out Trempeleau NWR. Well worth the trip, spent three hours there, very good habitat variety with tall grass remnants, and riverside mature woodlands. I found some good sparrows including Grasshoppers that came flying low to the tape. In the one day I added 23 tics for Wisconsin and made it to 30% of the species on their list. I would stay more in WI, but their state parks are expensive, with a substantial penalty for those from out-of-state, and a yearly charge as well that makes the first night something like $30+, so I never spend the first night, just make forays from the more reasonable surrounding states.

I still had to get back across the river into SE Minnesota, crossed at Winona, and stayed at Beaver Creek Valley State Park. That was a great place, pretty isolated at the end of the highway, a narrow wooded valley with steep hillsides all around. It had some of the species I'd targeted for possible Eastern wood-landers, like Louisiana Waterthrush and other warblers, but not as many as I'd hoped since at that latitude it was still early spring. I had time to bird briefly in the evening before falling out. Hiccups persisted and were more troublesome. At first it had been just "hiccup", but now I was getting aftershocks, so "hiccup, hic" or even "hiccup, hic, hic, hic" Also harder to suppress with breath-holding, and with a new startup any time I awoke for urination. My ageing prostate makes that a common occurrence. Not a great night's sleep.

May 10, Sunday

Dawn was cool, about 45F, but the dawn chorus was whole hearted, since it was the front edge of breeding season. I hiked several of the park trails, climbed one of the ridges for a view of the valley, and found five new MN birds there. But... My notes say, "Pain and discomfort all day, allergies, hiccups, bloated." The hics were wearing me down, using up the gumption that usually gets used dealing with the hassles of travel. I drove over to the town of Albert Lea, probably on the chance of seeing a Gray Partridge, my super nemesis. Well, I missed it again, maybe the tenth time at least. From there back into Iowa for a stop at Union Slough NWR. The tour route was closed. Across the road there's one pool that can be scoped from the highway, and it had the most beautiful, perfect breeding plumage pair of Red-necked Grebes I've ever seen, photo or otherwise. Just stared and stared. Somewhere down the road I found a motel with wifi and posted a notice to the Iowa list-serv.

Farther west on the way to Sioux City I found a county park by a lake. Habitat was not good, way too manicured, but I poked around in brushy patches and scoped the lake. Went to bed early, beat and "moderately miserable".

Finish Iowa, into Nebraska

May 11, Monday

I was awakened by Willets flying down the lake, and found some other birds as well, gulls and a late duck or two. The hiccups were gone until I ate something, then vengeance. I went to Picalt Nature Center on the northwest edge of Sioux City, nice place with good trails through good habitat even though the building was closed. It's in a state park, but I've not timed it yet to camp there and catch the dawn action. I ended up Iowa with 25 new species for the state, which put me at 36%. Pleased.

Into Nebraska, first stop at Ponca State Park. That is a must see for birding, on the Missouri River, good woods and grassland habitat beside the flyway action. The park has a conservation area attached, managed by the same guy who told me wondrous tales of shorebirds on the Migratory Bird Day count the weekend 2 days past. I went to the places he showed me on a photo map, but there was hardly any critter to be seen. The cold weather I'd been through had parked the migration for a couple of days, but the wind had shifted to the south so everybody had headed north. I headed further west to Niobrara. The hiccups had become relentless and it was about then that I figured out that the stirring of upper GI by poor bumpy jumpy two lane roads was a real problem. The hic,hic,hic was relentless.

I was trying to figure out some way of reducing the aggravation to the sensitive spot at the esophagus/stomach junction, called cardia, which seemed to be the trigger point. I tried anti-gas OTC antacid meds, to relieve pressure, and aspirin to reduce pain-receptor sensitivity as well as maybe getting blood pH more acid, which is what breath holding does. Nothing worked very much. I was also trying to find food that wasn't greasy and aggravating, but the ranching heartland is not a place for fruits and vegetables. Maybe if you're a cow and grass is considered a veggie. I ended up with a Buffalo burger, at least the meat is really lean and it didn't make it any worse. Niobrara State Park is just outside town so I retreated there after driving the road along the river as far as it went in both directions and the park roads.

May 12, Tuesday

Sleep was lousy with every pee setting the hics off again, and stopping them becoming a two minute breath hold until I thought I'd pass out. Trick was that when you started breathing again, it had to be very gently. A big gulping breath meant relapse, and then the whole drill again. The morning started beautifully, but turned gray and windy and decidedly cooler. I headed west on route 12, another roller-coaster, and made a stop at The Niobrara Valley Preserve, a Nature Conservancy place a long drive back a dirt road, but well worth it. Wish I'd felt better. I did get some sympathy fro the woman, wish I'd got her name to say a personal thanks, who was taking care of the little office and VC. She offered water and bananas, and books and stories. Some human contact and comfort. The birding was good but nothing new except Pine Siskins. They have a policy of no bird feeders, but still the open space around the office attracted sparrows and finches.

Next stop was Fort Niobrara NWR, with it's predictable Burrowing Owls. I forgot to look for Mountain Plovers; they were probably there. That's a measure of the disorientation I was getting into. I had exhausted my ideas for relief, so I called my doctor at home in Arkansas. His idea was Thorazine suppositories, which I was okay with, just a really deep sleep, but when he called the only pharmacy in Valentine NE, they didn't have it. His next idea was to rent a motel room, go to the hospital ER, and get a Thorazine shot and have a cab take me back to the motel. Somehow being the star of a fifties psycho thriller with the nurse hitting me with the needle and me dropping to the floor, well... Not to mention the truck with all the gear and optics unwatched, not to mention the ER charges, not to mention the trank hangover. I rejected my physicians advice and started driving toward bigger cities where I could get the meds as tablets. At that point driving south and east, I was having two hics per three breaths, with aftershocks, sometimes 8 or 10, until I wasn't sure when I'd get to just breath again. I'd end up shaking myself hard to get the spasms to stop, jumping in the truck seat at 50 mph.

I managed to make it to Nebraska National Forest, strange place, a CCC experiment in planting an evergreen forest in the Nebraska sand-hills. The trees survived, but the forest wouldn't spread naturally. The restrooms and showers were closed. It started raining. It rained all night, a great thunderous hailstorm with ice lumps that dented the camper-shell, which is like sleeping inside a drum being beaten randomly with a baseball bat. Did I mention the hundred car coal trains that run along the edge of the forest, complete with two mile horns at the crossing a hundred yards away. About every 20-30 minutes. I did get the hics to stop enough that they at least weren't a problem, but still there was little rest that night.

Retreat and home

May 13, Wednesday

No hiccups in the morning for a while. It was drippy but clearing, and I begged the use of the restroom at the Forest Service office, so the day was started okay except for grogginess. My first try for meds was in Great Bend, but the biggest pharmacy in town, a WalMart, didn't have what I needed. At least they didn't laugh at me while I hicced my way through the explanation. When I got near enough to Lincoln to get a local phone-book, I was able by calling around to find a place with the right stuff, but it was too late to get ahold of my Doc. Golf day. So I went to an Audubon sanctuary, Spring Creek Prairie, and found some shorebirds on a little pond there, but I mistook Semipalmated Sandpipers for Westerns, since I didn't have my bill lengths calibrated. Figured it out later while killing time before sleep. I went into Pioneers Park on the west edge of Lincoln, and then back out of town to Conestoga Rec Area. I was very tired, and it was a quiet place, so I ended up getting some decent sleep, with only minor hiccing interruptions.

May 14, Thursday

I went back to Spring Creek Prairie at dawn, but didn't turn up anything new. I was gone before they opened the VC, so never got to fix the sighting report from Wednesday. Back to Pioneers Park, but first a stop for a big grease-ball breakfast, hoping to get some rebound from food. The place had wifi too, a truck-stop with an interesting collection of twenties gas station memorabilia and some atmosphere, but they were about to move and re-build, no doubt something soul-less. At Pioneers Park I was in cel-phone range and started making calls. The Doc was in surgery for the morning, but i gave the info to the nurse, who promised to call me as soon as he had talked to the pharmacy. So I birded around the park which was pretty good when I was able to get away from the school groups. They had a little Nature Center where I talked with the attendant and watched the hummer feeders hoping to see a Ruby-throat, which I needed for the NE list. It never showed. Spent a lot of time sitting on benches breath holding and then sitting very still and breathing slowly for relief.

When it got to be noon I went and sat in the truck with the phone by my side waiting for the nurse's call. Five hours later there hadn't been one. I figured I'd offended the Doc, who isn't noted for bedside manner, and I just gave up and started driving for home. I set my route to Pass Indian Cave State Park, and was able to find a Barred Owl and a hummer in a flowering bush that I stopped to look over on an impulse as I drove by. Hiccups were bad, the aftershocks were turning into real lock-up spasms of glottis and esophagus. Three times before sleep I thought I might never get another breath, pretty scary. especially driving. A rational person would have considered me a fool to persist, but I wasn't rational anymore, the only thought was to get home. I got the last meal at the McDonald's in Mound City after my first choice was closed, and spent the night in an Interstate rest area south of there. More thunderstorms and hail and trafic and other noise including pine cones falling off some trees in the wind. They make a good thump too.

May 15, Friday

Off driving early, about five hours to Eureka Springs. Jim Fain the Naturpathic Doc showed me a real simple trick to stop the hiccups. Lean your head back and pour a packet of dry sugar as far back in your throat as possible and then swallow without water. Bingo. I t would last twenty or thirty minutes, but was easy to repeat. Got a decent meal at the Oasis, favorite local good food place, went home and slept until the next morning, when I seemed way better. I figured at the end, thinking back over what had been the worst parts, that road food didn't help, and jostling a tummy full of it on bad highways was a real problem too. Simply not getting any decent sleep threw me into a bad feedback loop. Anyway, they never came back, throat was a little irritated for a day or two, but that stopped too. It wasn't a stellar birding trip, but I did add 69 tics and got past forty percent in Nebraska, so there were some minor achievements. I had a chance to ask the nurse why she hadn't called; she said she just assumed I'd go to the pharmacy.