Kitchen Creek Road

This last weekend Libby and I went camping! We left Friday night and drove down to Cibbets Flat Campground in the Laguna Mountains east of San Diego. The goal, of course, was to see some birds. We hoped, especially, to see Black-chinned Sparrows and Gray Vireos. Other birds that lived in the area we'd never seen before included Mountain Quail and Western Screech-Owl. We tentatively planned a trip to a park in Oceanside on the way home to see if we could see Red Crossbills. We ended up missing out on all but the two priority species. If you want to skip the reading and go straight to the pictures, I've put up a small set on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157604814391344/.

We left our house around 6:00 pm and got to the campground around 8:30. It was already dark, and we'd planned on that, so we didn't even bring a tent. We did a little futile owling until around 9:30 and went to bed. Libby slept alright (and got one mosquito bite), but I didn't sleep very well at all. It was occasionally very windy, and it felt funny on the parts of my face sticking out of my mummy bag. I got to hear Common Poorwill calling in the hills around the camp, though. We've seen a Poorwill before but never heard one, so that was cool. It called the most and for the last time right as the first diurnal birds were just barely starting their dawn song.

Libby alongside Kitchen Creek below the PCT.
http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2448138408/in/set-72157604814391344/

We were back in the car before 6:00 am to get a jump on the morning birding. We started out by walking a short distance of the Pacific Crest Trail where it crosses Kitchen Creek Road until a little after the sun hit it. This was definitely the birdiest part of the day. California Quail were everywhere - we kept hoping they'd be Mountain Quail. We had a pretty pair of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers harassing a Scrub Jay, our first Lazuli Buntings of the spring, a Brewer's Sparrow - pretty much the plainest looking North American sparrow, but actually kind of rare in the Laguna Mountains as far as I can tell, a male Calliope Hummingbird among the many Costa's Hummingbirds, a Hermit Warbler atop a big clump of scrub, and our first ever Black-chinned Sparrow just a little below the trail right by Kitchen Creek. We were pretty far away, but we could see the Black-chinned Sparrow was a gray bird with a black chin and brown wings. Our first lifer since our trip to Sacramento in February!

After getting back to our car and applying some sunscreen - chamise chaparral doesn't offer much shade - we started looking for Gray Vireo. We had a couple of spots to check pulled from the San Diego County birding listserve, but the first one came up empty - except for a couple of Rock Wrens. So, we decided to head on to the next likely spot. We parked a little above mile marker three to walk the creek up to mile marker four, which was one of the landmarks where they'd been seen. As we walked and watched for interesting birds along the creek and hillsides, some birders from Ohio pulled up next to us and asked how we were, etc. They were looking for Gray Vireos, too, so, I passed on what I'd read about mile marker four. A few minutes later the car came zipping back down. They'd found a singing Gray Vireo right across the creek from the mile marker, and wondered if we wanted a lift. Sure thing! So, we got a lift from a nice guy from Ohio who then pointed out where they were seeing the bird. And that's how we saw our very first Gray Vireo. It was a little far away to see very well, though we could hear it quite clearly, and the sun was in our eyes. We came back later and found it right in the same place, but it wouldn't perch for us to use our spotting scope on it. Oh well, not the looks I wanted to get, but not terrible, either. It seemed larger and heavier bodied than I had expected, but it was overall gray, and lighter below, flipping its tail from side to side as it hopped about in the bushes.

The Gray Vireo is a scarce bird in California. It used to be fairly common in appropriate habitat - miserably hot dry chaparral and juniper-pinyon woodlands - so it was relatively common around placed like Cajon Pass, the east side of the San Bernadino Mtns, the dry parts of the Santa Rosas and San Jacinto Mtns, and even Joshua Tree NP, but it's mostly disappeared from those places now. There are probably fewer than 100 breeding pairs in California every year, and the densest concentration (maybe a dozen pairs or so) is in the Kitchen Creek Road area. So this isn't a common bird by a long shot, and we were happy to see it. Gray Vireos are still quite common in the heart of their range, fortunately, and you can find them in out of the way parts of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.

We kept birding after our Gray Vireo, of course, and after walking back to our car, we did some birding in creekside habitat. Between a couple of stops and a short walk, we found a few fun birds like Lesser Goldfinches, House Wrens, Steller's Jays and Oak Titmice, more Western Tanagers (one of the more common birds of the day), Wilson's Warblers, a Townsend's Warbler, and an uncooperative MacGillivray's Warbler. By the time we were done, we were ready to eat lunch and make for home.

We decided we had time to bird Buddy Todd Park in Oceanside because it was only around noon when we left. We missed the Red Crossbills there, but we still saw some neat birds and padded our trip list a little. Highlights were more Western Tanagers, a Mountain Chickadee - in a very urban park - and a bunch of Hermit Warblers. Hermit Warblers are just about my favorite warbler. They're beautiful, and they're a West Coast specialty. You can only find them in the wetter forests of the western mountains - from the Pacific Northwest south through the Sierras. They migrate through every spring, but I'd never before see more than one at a time, and usually only once or twice a year. So three in one spot was great, and they were fairly cooperative, so I got a few pictures. See below:

Hermit Warbler at Buddy Todd Park in Oceanside.
http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2447324239/in/set-72157604814391344/

Finally, here's the trip list for posterity:

Kitchen Creek Road Birding Trip
April 24th/25th Bird List:

Drive:

1. Black Skimmer (off the 5)
2. Rock Pigeon

Kitchen Creek:

3. Mallard
4. Turkey Vulture
5. Red-tailed Hawk
6. California Quail
7. Mourning Dove
8. Costa's Hummingbird
9. Anna's Hummingbird
10. Calliope Hummingbird (a single migrating male)
11. Acorn Woodpecker
12. Downy Woodpecker -
This is a little mysterious because it appears to be out of range. It seemed awfully small to be a Hairy Woodpecker, and that would also be out of range (though geographically much closer). Libby's pretty sure it was a Downy, and she got a better look than I.

13. Pacific-slope Flycatcher
14. Dusky or Hammond's Flycatcher
I don't know which is more likely, and we weren't really close to the bird. It was a drab, mostly brown non-tail flicking Empid. It didn't look like a Pacific-slope and it didn't act like a Gray Flycatcher, but we don't enjoy Empidonax flycatchers very much. Maybe one day.

15. Ash-throated Flycatcher
16. Western Kingbird
17. Gray Vireo (Lifer)
18. Warbling Vireo
19. Steller's Jay
20. Western Scrub Jay
21. Common Raven
22. Cliff Swallow
23. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
24. Wrentit
25. Oak Titmouse
26. House Wren
27. Rock Wren
28. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
29. Townsend's Warbler
30. Hermit Warbler (FOS)
31. MacGillivray's Warbler (FOS)
32. Wilson's Warbler
33. Western Tanager
34. California Towhee
35. Spotted Towhee
36. Brewer's Sparrow
37. Black-chinned Sparrow (Lifer)
38. Black-headed Grosbeak
39. Lazuli Bunting
40. Bullock's Oriole
41. House Finch
42. Lesser Goldfinch

Buddy Todd Park:

43. Black Phoebe
44. Cassin's Kingbird
45. American Crow
46. Mountain Chickadee
47. Bushtit
48. Western Bluebird
49. Northern Mockingbird
50. European Starling
51. Yellow-rumped Warbler
52. House Sparrow

Selasphorous female

Heard only (all but Waxwings at Kitchen Creek):

Mountain Quail
(this would have been a lifer if we'd seen it) calling along Kitchen Creek Road between MM 3 and 4.
Common Poorwill
Nuttall's Woodpecker
Cedar Waxwing

Park Birding

My favorite part of migration is the way that anything can show up right in your backyard . Throughout the winter you have a pretty static bird population, and same with the summer, but the periods in between will vary from one day to the next. For example, on Tuesday this week I walked to work through Creek Park and found three Ash-throated Flycatchers (one below). On Thursday, when I walked the park again, I found none. However, the number of Western Tanagers had jumped from two to at least ten! Some of these birds (especially the Tanagers, it seems to me) will stick around a day or two to feed, but many migrating individuals feed through the day and catch the midnight train northward - as the Ash-throated Flycatchers apparently did. You can check out recent pictures of birds from right here in La Mirada parks here: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/. I even have an album of pictures I've taken in La Mirada Creek Park (the park I go through to get to work every morning) here: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157604454374702/. All these birds could show up in any Southern California back yard (though a Dusky-capped Flycatcher probably won't).

http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2437422159/

Ash-throated Flycatcher in Creek Park. This is right across Imperial from where the Dusky-capped Flycatcher spent the winter. The birds are very similar, but this picture shows that the Ash-throated Flycatcher's belly is very pale. Also, the tail shows stronger rufous on its central tail feathers and the rufous does not extend all the way to the tail's tip - there's a dark line that cuts it off. That's a typical Ash-throated feature. The Ash-throated Flycatchers never vocalized, very different from the noisy Dusky-capped, and they were much more cooperative - as you can tell by the picture quality!

You can actually observe the nocturnal migration of birds via radar on the internet! This is pretty cool, and complicated, but here's a simple and fairly reliable way to do it. It's also bandwith intensive - just FYI. I'm following recommendations I saw on the Texas Birding Forum (TEXBIRDS), but there are other websites out there, too, and some offer some different methods. Here's the link: http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/radar/. If you want to watch the nocturnal flight of birds, here's the easy way to do it: first: set the "product" to "regional reflectivity" (".5 degree reflectivity" works, too, but is more restricted in scope). That sets it so you'll be getting data from the correct altitudes. I just leave the "background" at default. Second: you need to set the time frame so that you're looking at night (since that's when birds migrate). The time zone is UTC. Right now it's 2:30 pm (1430) PDT and 2130 UTC (GMT) - so we're 7 hours behind out here. If I want to watch the night flight I can set it for the morning - 0600 PDT is 1500 their time and set the loop duration for 6 or 8 hours. There you go! Now, click on your area of the map. I aim for SOX in Southern California.

The blue color is mostly birds moving northward. The reason that it's not uniform is mainly due to the fact that the radar will find birds best at certain distances away according to the birds' elevation and the radar's effectiveness at different angles. Other factors, like humidity and such, also contribute to the reliability, but in general them be birds.

Another fun thing to watch is the birds all take off. I just set mine for April 21st (full moon = many birds migrating), 0500 UTC end time (10:00 pm PDT), and just set it for 2 hours. Starts out with nothing much showing. Maybe some dust in the air or something, and then everything goes blue! It's incredible how many birds are in motion every night during the spring (some nights more than others). Bird migration is truly one of the awe inspiring enormous natural phenomena of the world.

More on nocturnal bird migration here: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/migratio/when.htm

More on NEXRAD monitoring of bird migration here: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/news/RadarTracking.html

A Google search on nexrad bird migration will show up more, too.

Irvine Park Birding

So, Libby and I went birding together on Saturday at Irvine Park. We had a pretty good time. We started by exploring the Villa Park Flood Basin - somewhere we hadn't ever really heard about until there was a recent Audubon field trip there we missed. The flood basin contains Santiago Creek just in case it gets out of control, and has developed some riparian scrub habitat - dense thickets of willows, a few sycamores and some rushes where there are some little ponds of standing water. This kind of habitat has been seriously reduced or degraded in southern California, and supports a good diversity of breeding species like Yellow Warblers, Blue Grosbeaks, Least Bell's Vireos, Yellow-breasted Chats and other desirable species (in some places Willow Flycatchers, though not in Orange County).

It was overcast, and the sun was behind most of the willows, so we didn't find all the possible species, but we did have fun there. The highlight was that there were a lot of Yellow-breasted Chats out and singing conspicuously. Yellow-breasted Chats are a pretty shy species, and we'd only seen them previously in Arizona, though we'd heard them plenty at the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine. April, for our local population, is apparently the time to find them. They were singing from exposed perches in trees that form the canopies around the area. That's fun, since their songs consist of barking and whistling. We have a special place in our hearts for Chats because they're on the cover page of Libby's National Geographic Guide.

http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2425531137/

Yellow-breasted Chat

After we'd done the loop through the flood control plain, we wandered off to take in some of Irvine Park's sights. This was Libby's first time there! We ended up visiting the OC Zoo and finding a cool statue of James Irvine II - the man himself! The zoo was pretty fun. It's small, but only $2.00. They have a Golden Eagle, a Bald Eagle, a Red-tailed Hawk, an Ocelot, a couple of Mountain Lions, and a couple of bears. Cool.

The last thing we did was stroll over to the place where a Lewis's Woodpecker has been spending the winter. It's still there, though we were far away from it.

Here's a bird list, in no particular order at all:

1. Cooper's Hawk
2. Mallard
3. Cinnamon Teal
4. Wood Duck
5. American Coot
6. Red-tailed Hawk
7. Turkey Vulture
8. Mourning Dove
9. Rock Pigeon
10. Red-winged Blackbird
11. House Wren
12. Marsh Wren (Heard only)
13. Bushtit
14. Oak Titmouse
15. Wrentit
16. Green Heron
17. Great Egret
18. American Crow
19. Common Raven
20. N Rough-winged Swallow
21. Tree Swallow
22. Acorn Woodpecker
23. Northern Flicker
24. Nuttall's Woodpecker
25. Lewis Woodpecker
26. Hutton's Vireo
27. Yellow-breasted Chat
28. Yellow-rumped Warbler
29. Orange-crowned Warbler (Heard only)
30. Black-throated Gray Warbler
31. Yellow Warbler
32. Common Yellowthroat
33. American Robin
34. Western Bluebird
35. Black Phoebe
36. Pacific-slope Flycatcher
37. Black-headed Grosbeak
38. Lesser Goldfinch
39. House Finch
40. Song Sparrow
41. California Towhee
42. Spotted Towhee
43. Northern Mockingbird
44. European Starling
45. Cedar Waxwing
46. House Sparrow
47. Black-chinned Hummingbird
48. Anna's Hummingbird
49. Red-crowned Parrots
50. Western Tanager

A round 50! I didn't know that until I just numbered them. Cool. There are a lot more birds around that park and flood basin that we didn't see, some of them very easy - like Scrub Jays, but it's not about numbers, it's about having a good time out of doors. And we did.

Here's the link to the Flickr set: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157604679785851/

The Idiot

Late last night I finally finished Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel about a "positively good man." The Idiot is both an intimate novel, centered on one man - the "idiot" and the people he knows - and a sweeping one, covering not only the spectrum of humanity, but also faith, politics, and psychology. That's pretty typical for Dostoevsky, but this novel's weak plot arc accentuates the variety to a high degree.

The idiot is Prince Lev Nikolaeyevich Myshkin, introduced at the beginning of the work as a young man returning to his home country from Switzerland. There he successfully underwent treatment for "falling sickness" - epilepsy. He's introduced as a destitute and homeless traveler, coming to a country he hardly remembers. His benefactor has died, and he has no source of income. Nevertheless, he has hope to meet his only surviving family member and to make his way in Petersburg.

On the train he meets another young man, a passionate scoundrel named Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin (Russian names are the best). Rogozhin is also returning to Petersburg, but he has only been gone a few months. He fled in a fever after having stolen a great sum of money from his father in order to buy diamonds for a woman. The woman is Nastasya Filipovna, a prideful beauty that suffers under the cloud of having been raised as a kept woman by a lecherous rich man. Rogozhin's father has now died (his death hastened by his son's betrayal), and Rogozhin has come into an inheritance that he plans to use to buy out Nastasya Filipovna. Despite their contrasting natures, Rogozhin and the Prince hit it off. However, their friendship will eventually turn to rivalry.

I won't go into the rest of the plot here, simply because it's a long book and I wasn't sure where it was going until the very end. I was surprised to find that, though the book is about a "positively good man," and is thus in some ways of lighter tone than the Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, it is also more tragic. It is, in fact, a tragedy - in a very classical sense. However, the protagonist completely lacks hubris, and so the tragic paradigm is inverted. This is very curious. If the paradigmatic ancient Greek was Oedipus, and his destruction encapsulates the hopeless universe that Sophocles inhabited, what does the failure of Prince Myshkin represent in Dostoevsky's essentially Christian universe?

That's the kind of powerful question that the book leaves with its readers. I loved this book, and I love it more now than ever - indeed, my love for it is still growing as I consider it. But, I don't think I'd recommend it as an introduction to Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment is probably the most accessible (though very dark) of his works because of its focused nature and plot arc, and I might suggest someone start there. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to begin with The Brothers Karamazov, which everyone says is his master work, and certainly is one of the very best novels ever written.

Diamante Poems

Last week I had my students writing Diamante poems, which have seven lines and are shaped like diamonds. The basic structure is this:

Noun #1 (contrasting to Noun#2)
adjective, adjective (relating to Noun #1)
-ing verb, -ing verb, -ing verb (relating to Noun #1)
noun, noun, (relating to Noun #1) noun, noun (relating to Noun #2)
-ing verb, -ing verb, -ing verb (relating to Noun #2)
adjective, adjective (relating to Noun #2)
Noun #2 (contrasting to Noun#1)

They're pretty fun and easy to create (which my students like), and since there's a definite structure that they must follow, they're also easy to grade (which I like). Anyway, I told Jonathan about them, and I made one up yesterday when we were hiking in Irvine Park so he could hear an example:

Winter
dark, cold
skiing, cuddling, drinking
hot chocolate, sweaters, lemonade, flip-flops
swimming, fishing, camping
bright, warm
Summer

And then today when we were walking around Creek Park, I saw one of my favorite common birds: a Black Phoebe. It inspired me, so I suggested we make up a Diamante together. Here it is:

Phoebe
small, familiar
snapping, turning, catching
flies, park, eyes, talons
flapping, soaring, diving
large, imperious
Eagle

So there you go. It's our first attempt at writing poetry about birds...but perhaps not our last! Or maybe it is. We're not big on writing poetry.

Depressing

CNN had an article on its front page this morning about a blog the LA Times runs about every homicide in LA County. There are a lot. The reporter has covered 845 deaths (and counting) on her blog since she began in January of 2007. It's mind boggling to consider the rate at which our local cities are bleeding.

Lord, have mercy.

Weekend Wrap-up

OK, so, since the weekends are the most interesting part of our lives, and our lives are very interesting, I'm sure everybody's wondering what went down in Rowley town this weekend.

Well, let me tell you!

Friday evening we were going to have steak! There was a big sale at Stater Bros the other day, and we have been living high on the hog ever since. Unfortunately, none of our meat was thawed when we got home. Instead of violating our steak with the defrost setting on the microwave, we decided to go for a walk. We walked all the way to the Panera near Biola, had dinner, and walked back. That took two hours! OK, so that's pretty interesting, right? It gets better. On the way home, we stopped at Fresh & Easy and got some ice cream and root beer. So we had root beer floats while we watched the new episode of The Office! Nice!

Saturday it was really hot. We went birding at Oak Canyon Nature Center. We saw 35 or 36 species or something in bright sun, high heat, and strong wind. Not the greatest conditions. Highlights included our FOS Western Tanager (earliest I think we've ever seen one), Ash-throated Flycatcher, Pacific-sloped Flycatcher, and Nashville Warbler (for the fabulous Libs). Um.. I'll do a species list... as I remember them. Biggest disappointment was that we didn't see any Oak Titmice. We both got our lifer Oak Titmouse there, and it's bizarre to completely miss them. Also, no Black Phoebes and only one Yellow-rumped Warbler. Huh?

1. American Crow
2. Bewick's Wren
3. Song Sparrow
4. Golden-crowned Sparrow
5. Spotted Towhee (lots)
6. California Towhee (lots)
7. California Thrasher (2 - 1 singing, a neat opportunity to watch and listen to one)
8. Black-headed Grosbeak (lots! singing, and mostly heard)
9. Common Raven
10. Western Scrub Jay
11. Wrentit (singing in a little bush, Libby picked him out)
12. Bushtit
13. Pacific-slope Flycatcher
14. Ash-throated Flycatcher
15. European Starling
16. Anna's Hummingbird
17. Allen's Hummingbird
18. House Finch
19. Lesser Goldfinch
20. Nuttall's Woodpecker (quite a few)
21. Mallard
22. Wood Duck
23. Yellow-rumped Warbler
24. Black-throated Gray Warbler
25. Wilson's Warbler
26. Nashville Warbler
27. Cooper's Hawk
28. Osprey (quick fly by)
29. California Quail (2, right by the trail, so cute - a nice little kid pointed them out to us)
30. Western Tanager
31. Great Egret
32. Great Blue Heron
33. Acorn Woodpecker
34. Northern Mockingbird
35. Mourning Dove

OK, so 35. We saw a lot more when we went there during the last week of April with Biola's ornithology class last year. We're really getting into the main season for migration in So Cal, now, so it's very exciting.

After birding, Libby did homework and I took a nap. Then she made an awesome pie, and I did some reading in The Idiot by Dostoevsky. Very good book. Very good pie. Then we went over to Mom and Dad's to eat the pie with them, as well as some yummy food that Mom made. And we looked at their pictures from New York. Which were very nice. Good times.

Sunday was church, of course. It was also 100 degrees. No joke! It said so on the internet. Still, after church (steak for lunch!) Libby cut my hair. And she did a good job, and learned a lot, and I'm happy with the results. After that, we went down to the park and played catch (in the 100 degrees) before taking a stroll around Creek Park. We weren't birding, but we did notice a panting Nuttall's Woodpecker and a migrant Black-throated Gray Warbler. That was fun, very relaxing to play catch. We stuck to the shade, but were extremely thirsty when we got home. Result? Water, pie, milk. Beautiful combination.

Then we did some reading. Libby's just finished Captains Courageous by Kipling, and started a new book she picked up courtesy Father David at church yesterday called The Dangerous Dutchman. I'll let her share about that. I kept plugging away at The Idiot. Did I mention it's a good book?

After that, we went to Dustin and Katie's (thanks for hosting!) where we got to meet the little Hagelberg. He was very cute, and we got to poke him (me) and hold him (Libby) and play a game with a hopping dog with him. Then he went to sleep, and Lem played with the fire for awhile while Luke told us stories from Pathfinder and the Flight of the Conchords. And we got to have some awesome chili and stuff. Very good food. And then we went to bed.

Wasn't that very interesting, just like I said it would be? Well, you're welcome!

The Office is... back!

Ok, so Libby and I follow one, and only one, television show. And, because of the writer's strike, we have gone 4 months without it. Today, it's back. I hope we're not the only ones excited about that.

The Happiest Birds on Earth

Above is a picture taken at Disneyland of the happiest Wood Duck on Earth. Jonathan and I have a list of all the birds we've seen at the Magic Kingdom. It's not a very long list; we think they probably spray all kinds of stuff around that place to keep bugs away. Having no bugs means fewer birds. But here's what we've got so far:

1. Pied-billed Grebe
2. Double-crested Cormorant
3. Green Heron
4. Great Egret
5. Wood Duck
6. Mallard
7. Ring-necked Duck
8. Turkey Vulture
9. Cooper's Hawk
10. American Coot
11. Ring-billed Gull
12. Rock Pigeon
13. Mourning Dove
14. Anna's Hummingbird
15. Black Phoebe
16. American Crow
17. Yellow-rumped Warbler
18. Townsend's Warbler
19. House Finch
20. House Sparrow
21. Cedar Waxwing

We'll keep adding to it as needed.

Long Beach Birding

Spring is really flowing along here in Southern California. The flowers are blooming, the trees are approaching full leaf, and, of course, the birds are on the move. This is my favorite season for birding. Fall brings more rare birds, which is fun, but Spring brings back all the familiar species of the summer as well as through-passing migrants. Everything is new and bright and happy, and the birds are singing everywhere.

http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/2397597590/

We took advantage of Spring to go birding at El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach. We hadn't been there in a long time, not since our first spring birding (2005). Libby had gone there with her class, and then she brought me along later. We both remember ticking lifers there, too. Libby had her first Oriole ever there - a Bullock's, and she thinks she saw her first Common Yellowthroat there, too. And I remember ticking my first Black-throated Gray Warbler and my first Song Sparrow there. We both even remember the very spots where we saw them!

No lifers this time, of course, but we did see some new birds for the Spring, and we had a good time. It was actually fairly quiet in some spots there, and we came out with a very low species total - 36. That's a very low total for any spot in Southern California, but we had a slow day. It was overcast all morning, and that might have had something to do with it. We had our first of season Black-throated Gray Warbler in a big mixed flock with Townsend's Warblers and Yellow-rumped Warblers. We also had our FOS Wilson's Warbler and our first of season Black-headed Grosbeak - an attractive male. The highlight to me was a Cassin's Vireo that we saw on our way out. That's only the second time I've ever seen a Cassin's Vireo, and the other time I saw one it was in Madera Canyon last Spring in Arizona. Cassin's Vireos aren't rare in Southern California, but I always seem to miss them, somehow.

Otherwise, the birding was ordinary. Lots of egrets and herons - 5 species - and tons of Song Sparrows, House Wrens, hummingbirds, and Northern Rough-winged Swallows. Pictures are up here: http://flickr.com/photos/rowleypics/sets/72157604443642565/.

On the theme of new birds for the year: I saw my FOS Black-chinned Hummingbirds yesterday (a female at Biola followed by a male on my way home in Creek Park), and my FOS Warbling Vireo (finally!) at Creek Park this morning on my way to work. Right now the most common warblers are still Yellow-rumped, but there are a lot of Orange-crowned Warblers around, also, to complement a scattering of Townsend's. I'm trying to get pictures of them, but they're usually really high in Eucalyptus or Sycamore trees.

All American Yarn

Having finished Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I can say it is undoubtedly Mark Twain's best novel. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was one of my very favorite books growing up, for good reason, and it is a better book for children. However, it lacks the vivacity and breadth of its sequel and is a less mature book on the whole. In fact, Huckleberry Finn's most disappointing moments involve the re-emergence of Tom Sawyer as a major character near the end.

I couldn't help but notice that despite its famous cautionary introductory epitaph, ("Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.") the novel does weigh up to heavy moral considerations, and it is Huckleberry Finn's journey through these considerations that make the most fascinating reading. Tom Sawyer's appearance forces the submission of those considerations because Tom's personality so outweighs Huck's, changing the whole tone of the work. Further, Tom carries with him a secret that undermine Huck's entire resolution. When Huck decides to free Jim despite his cultural upbringing, it is a human victory. But when Tom reveals that Jim was already free, the objective tension evaporates. Apparently, many consider the ending of the novel the most disappointing part; reminding me of similar criticisms of The Odyssey.

In truth, I think that Huckleberry Finn could be seen as Mark Twain's The Odyssey recast as an American novel. Both are episodic travel narratives with heavy morals. Both feature a clever protagonist who relies on his ability to spin a quick lie to escape trouble. But Odysseus is trying to get somewhere, and Huck is trying to get nowhere. The whole tension of The Odyssey involves Odysseus's struggles to reach his wife. The episodes he struggles through carry both interior tension and the always pressing urgency of finishing the voyage. Meanwhile, the whole tension of Huckleberry Finn lies in the adventures he has on the way - for their own sake. The only over-riding tension in Huck Finn is Jim's quest for freedom, and he blows it up at the end! Homer's problem at the end of his epic was the Greek culture didn't have a redemptive solution to a cycle of violence. Twain's was that you can't get anywhere if you aren't going anywhere, and just maybe, that you can't be too serious in a satire.

So, I think, the question a curious reader will be left with is - why? Why does Twain avoid a plot arc? Why does he avoid the moral? Why does he require the epitaph? Is it by principle? Or is it a failure in his art, one of which perhaps he was very conscious?

If it's a principled rejection one wonders if it's a commentary on America. Maybe a country with an open frontier is a place with many futures but no destination. Or, maybe, he's purposely playing a giant joke on critical readers everywhere. Let's spin a beautiful yarn, fill it with interesting characters and wit, vivid images and a rich American backdrop, but then let's make it empty . No stuffing, just a balloon with which to bang on befuddled people's heads.

Mark Twain was a genius, no doubt, but I think he shirked his opportunity to write a great American novel. Instead, we just have a good book. I guess he only wanted us to enjoy it as such.

Books!

We were out at Peter's Canyon last Saturday, where we had a pretty good day birding. We had 57 species, I think. But this, this is not a birding post.

We found something else, just as exciting, a $1.00 bookstore. It's on the corner of Jamboree and Chapman in Orange, I think. I wasn't feeling all that well at the time, so it's kinda foggy. Anyway, it's a huge warehouse sort of store, about the size of a medium supermarket - like Stater Bros in La Mirada. It's got a bunch of aisles of books, all $1.00. Of course, it's terribly hard to find anything, but for $1.00, you'll take what you can get.

Our best find was made by Libby. She found Tolkien's Smith of Wooten Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. Neither of us had read those stories before. They're both sort of novelettes; really just children's books. I liked Farmer Giles of Ham better than Smith of Wooten Major, but Smith of Wooten Major was very typical of Tolkien. It's about a man's interactions with Faery, but it doesn't have much of a plot. Farmer Giles of Ham is about Farmer Giles, of course, and his adventures with a giant, a dragon, and a king. It's a fake English history about the area around the Thames. The Thames, it turns out, was named after Tame - which is what his dragon became. Very entertaining reading, and I'm glad Libby picked it up.

I got the Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain. Unfortunately, it's not at all funny. Rather bad, in fact. However, it's not nearly as bad as Tarzan of the Apes. I picked up the very first of Edgar Rice Burrough's silly series on a whim, but it's not really worth anything. It's all in terrible earnest, but the dialogue (why does Blogger want me to spell that without a "ue"?) and plot points are wretched. Tarzan wasn't even adopted by gorillas, but by some sort of great ape that Burrough's mostly just calls anthropoids. They are, of course, at perpetual and deadly war with gorillas, and everything else. Tarzan, of course, goes about magnificently killing everything. But he also learns to read English from his parents' effects. Of course, he can't speak English, as he's been raised by apes. He doesn't speak anything until a French officer teaches him to read English in French. So he pronounces "me" as "moi" and so forth. How confusing would that be? But it works well enough that he's fluent in about two weeks.

As you can see, I spent a lot of time reading when I was sick. I also finished Huckleberry Finn for the first time, so I'm caught up with the rest of America, now.

Mammoth Ski Trip

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This year's spring trip to Mammoth was great. There's nowhere so peaceful or soothing to spend a week, especially when it offers the complete sort of solitude it can in winter. While we would see others if we were skiing down on the trails below the cabin, we never saw a single other soul at the cabin. Nestled in the woods and snow, we had a refuge from everything. No TV, internet or running water - just books and family.

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Dad got us all ski passes for the Tamarack Lodge's groomed tracks. That was fun, and very helpful since the snow was crummy. Libby learned a lot about how to snow plow, and I tried to learn a bit about stopping. We covered a lot of miles around Lake Mary, Mamie, and Horseshoe, and took some other trails we'd never been on before. We went up Coldwater Creek campground's trail to the very end, took the Pine Creek trail, and some others.

Conditions were, as I mentioned above, far less than ideal. It was about 60 when we started skiing on Monday afternoon. So, of course, it froze overnight, and the next morning saw everything covered in thick ice. Fortunately, it was warm again, and thawed pretty quickly. But Wednesday and Thursday were colder, and it never thawed in the shadows. We got a dusting of snow on Tuesday night, but it didn't accumulate - all the storm brought was intense wind for Wednesday. In some places it was windy enough to push you right along on your skis without any work. That's sort of fun if its behind you, but less fun when it's a headwind.

Another bummer was that Dad came down with a cold part way through the trip. That's especially a bummer for me because I apparently caught it from him. Libby caught it from him or me, too, but I seem to have gotten it the worst. Not that I'm complaining (sorry, yes, I am complaining).

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On the way home we stopped at Fossil Falls (above) as we left Mammoth pretty early because of the icy conditions - there just wasn't much of a point to sticking around. That turned out to be a neat place; Libby and I hadn't stopped there before. It's just south of Coso Junction on HWY 395. Once upon a time, back during the last major glacial period, Owen's River actually came out of Owen's Lake and flowed down through the desert below Owen's Valley. There it flowed over an earthquake fault - a bit of an uplift that created a ridge of basaltic cliffs - creating a waterfall. This shaped the basalt into fantastic whorled shapes. When the glacial period ended, Owen's Lake became a salt lake without an outlet (like Mono Lake), and you can take the opportunity to walk around a waterfall's bed. Anyway, it was a neat stop, and there were some neat wildflowers and birds, as well as the neat rock formations. We were also treated to a flyover from an F-16. I've included pictures from there in our Flicker photo-album for the whole trip:

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