Travel Update

Happy New Year!

We're currently in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Tomorrow we're off to the Grand Canyon, so we're definitely working our way home at this point.

The Carlsbad Caverns were amazing! We were really in awe. It was a totally new experience for both of us; the nearest thing like it we'd ever experienced is probably Disneyland.

Today we did Bosque del Apache. The definite highlight was the morning fly-out when the geese and cranes fly out to feed in the fields. The geese make an incredible racket and fill the sky. I took some videos and pictures that will be uploaded in due time (after we get home).

Here are a couple of pictures as illustration:

Big Room, Carlsbad Cavern
It's hard to take pictures in the caves. I brought a tripod and took very long exposures, but the pictures didn't come out wonderfully. Still, this is a good idea of what it looks like.

A Sandhill Crane comes in for a landing a few hours ago at Bosque del Apache. This is uncropped; the birds at the Bosque are incredibly used to people. This is one of a group of cranes coming in to roost for the night next to the main road in the area.

Hello! From New Mexico!

What the hexico? We're in New Mexico!

I'm writing this from our hotel room in no other place than Carlsbad, New Mexico. That's 960 miles east of our happy home in Whittier, but we've already gone over 1,000.

It's been a good trip so far, and I think we'll do more detailed posts later. Our weather's been nice. We just missed rain in Tucson and snow in Green Valley, but yesterday we spent most of the day in several inches of snow in the Santa Rita Mountains.

Yesterday was a great day of birding. We saw three Rufous-capped Warblers (!), and were with Arizona birder Mike Moore when he discovered a Kentucky Warbler. Along with a female Indigo Bunting, we've had quite a few lifers.

Well, tomorrow we'll be at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I'm gonna sign off, now.

Nice Weather

It's been an exciting last couple of days weather wise. Rain in southern California is almost always a treat, but rain that comes in the midst of a drought is the sweetest.

Libby and I have been enjoying the colder than normal weather, too. On Sunday, we stopped on top of a hill with a large view in the Coyote Hills and, before it had even rained, we could see all the way to the Santa Monica mountains - and beyond! You can often see downtown L.A. from there when it's clear, but it was pretty neat to have the skyscrapers in the foreground, so to speak. Such wide vistas on an invigoratingly cool winter morning help you feel the immensity of the world we live in.

This morning I walked to work in the rain, and it was neat to see Creek Park transformed into a soggy mess. The water got as high as its been in years, and the water was right at the base of the bridges. Near our apartment, the water filled all the dams and spilled over the tops and edges, forming a series of swirling terraced lakes. Where it passed under Imperial and La Mirada Blvd, the water was a muddy torrent - with four foot high waves in perpetual crests. Awesome!

The Bridge to Nowhere, and How We Arrived There

No, not that one in Alaska.

Libby's Dad has been wanting to do a hike with the Moothart guys for a long time, and when the opportunity to do one the day after Thanksgiving arose, they were gracious enough to include me in their plans.

Moothart guys pose at the entrance of the Sheep Mountain Wilderness.
Flickr

The idea was to go to the Bridge to Nowhere, an abandoned Depression era road project in the San Gabriel Mountains. Once upon a time, the idea was to build a road connecting Azusa with Wrightwood. To do so meant making a crossing in the San Gabriels, and they chose the canyon containing the East Fork of the San Gabriel River to do it in. But, before they were done, a large flood came down and washed away large parts of the road. The project was abandoned, stranding their recently completed concrete span in the middle of nowhere. It's now in the middle of the Sheep Mountain Wilderness. The bridge itself is located on private property - apparently owned by a bungee jumping company!

Anyway, Dad Moothart had done all his research, and we were anticipating a wet hike with many stream crossings, rugged terrain and a bit of a slog to reach the bridge. One source said it would take as many as four hours! That's just to go 4.5 miles. I was a little nervous.

A source of anxiety - the first water crossing was the most precarious.
Flickr

We got an early start, meeting up in Azusa at 7:00 am to carpool the rest of the way into the mountains to get to the trailhead. The parking lot was already crowded by the time we arrived, but there were only a few hikers on the trail ahead of us. The rest of the cars belonged to a couple of anglers and a lot of recreational gold panners. Beards and beers were well represented along the lower stretches of the river. I wonder how much you can find in a day?

The hike itself didn't live up to my anxiety. It was a moderately difficult hike, but we never got our feet wet. We only had to cross the full river twice, and had to cross a narrower arm of it two times later on. Much of the hike is over cobblestones and gravel, though, resulting in a very uneven surface and sore feet by the end of the day.

A friendly prospector gave us a good steer for getting to the river. After beginning on the east side of the river, you cross over fairly early where there's a sheer cliff on the east side of the river. Then you follow it along the west side for a stretch until you reach the second washed out bridge's remains. From there you want to find a crossing to reach the east side. Once you arrive on the east side, you just stay there and look for a somewhat inconsistent trail.

The only hiccup we faced was that the prospector said there would be a peninsula that we would have to cross and go down the other side of (so to look for ways to stay above the river on the right). Well, there are two places that fit this description, and the first one requires some hand-over-hand crawling to get down a 20' face of bedrock from the road to the river. If you skipped it, you'd probably have to cross the river a couple of times. In general, I think you can stay dry but you have to make decisions about how much exposure and scrambling you're comfortable with.

Typical trade off - scrambling versus water crossing.
Flickr

The worst exposure was actually relatively close to the bridge. You've got to go across a slide's chute with a hundred feet of exposure and only a narrow trail crossing it in soft sand that just looks like a temporary solution (the trail arches up high to stay in crossable material, and I'm guessing that it doesn't have much higher to go before it runs out of the sand). In all, this is a trail that probably changes a lot between rain storms, so I guess any description I write here will probably be out of date rather quickly.

We arrived in a little more than two hours at the bridge. From above, coming down the road, it looks pretty unimpressive and at first I didn't believe it could be the bridge. But, after you cross it and look back, it becomes a lot more impressive. Which is relieving, considering the time and effort one invests reaching it!

The bridge! To Nowhere!
Flickr

Since we got there earlier than we anticipated, we continued ahead to see if we could find the other end of the tunnel they bored through the mountain at the end of the bridge (its completely collapsed). We found something that may have been the tunnel, but it was so choked up with rocks we couldn't tell whether or not it was man made or artificial. Then we found a sunny rock by the river (it was chilly in the canyons all day) and had lunch before heading back. It seemed to take longer going back, and we finally arrived at the parking lot at 3 something, I think.

Overall, a great hike, and a fun time.

Oh! I almost forgot. Birds. I didn't see a whole lot of birds, but I saw some that I don't see very often, and one that was new. I finally saw my first Rufous-crowned Sparrow, a truly handsome bird which has been a bit of a nemesis for me. They live in the Whittier Hills, even, and I just haven't been able to find one (though I think we've heard them before). I saw a pair calling and flying from one bush to another before they disappeared, again. No pictures, though.

Other highlights were a Golden Eagle right above the bridge, a Townsend's Solitaire near the bridge, several groups of Canyon Wrens (easily our most beautifully colored North American wren), lots of Rock Wrens in the wide rocky river beds (first time I've seen them since the Sierras in July), a single Kingfisher, and lots of Black Phoebes.

Thanksgiving!

Further updates were promised, and I'm one to deliver.

Thanksgiving this year was at the Mootharts, and we had a grand old time. The morning began with preparing green bean casserole, followed by church, and then we drove out to Highland for the day.

When we arrived, the turkey was already in the deep fryer. We were pretty excited about deep-fried Turkey. The bird was submerged in an extremely hot cauldron of bubbling oil for about an hour. We had a great meal when everyone else finally arrived. Turkey, ham, stuffing, yams, green-bean casserole, home made rolls, gray, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and salad. Followed by pumpkin cheese cake for desert (with a sweet lemon bread/cake for those of us who are not pumpkin fans). Boy howdy it was great!

Little Thomas knows how to enjoy Thanksgiving!
Flickr link

After eating we all went down to the nearby middle school and flew Phillip's remote controlled airplane. Little Jonathan was very excited about this. Unfortunately, it took like an hour to build after we got down there, and then it only really flew four or five times before the tail broke and fell off. Still, fun was had by all who participated.

We left fairly early because the next morning I had to get up early to go hiking! A post regarding said adventure will be forthcoming. In the meantime, enjoy these pictures from Thanksgiving on Flickrr: Thanksgiving Set of pictures.

Dusky-capped Returns

There are a lot of things I'd normally consider blog-worthy going on around here, lately, but we've been so busy getting into the Christmas spirit that we haven't talked about them here, yet.

I'm sure you're very disappointed.

Nevertheless, I won't be cowed by your apparent indifference, and intend to make a stab at catching up. Let's go chronologically, shall we? Let's see...

Last week on Tuesday I went birding in Creek Park like I occasionally will do on a Tuesday, and was wandering about the eucalyptus grove there in search of birds of all sorts, when what to my wondering ears should I hear? The mournful weeping call of a Flycatcher! Here! I listened intently and heard it call several more times, but I couldn't really believe my ears. Was I really hearing what I thought I was hearing? So I started scrambling around, trying to trace the calls to their source, but they seemed to move all around me, and pretty soon I had to go to work.

You might remember how a Dusky-capped Flycatcher spent last winter in La Mirada near our apartment - I posted about it early last March. It was a pretty rare bird, then, but it's an even rarer bird, now. While many rare Arizona/Mexican birds will winter in California in subsequent years (Thick-billed Kingbirds and Painted Redstarts, especially), there is only one previous record of a Dusky-capped Flycatcher returning for a consecutive winter in California, ever. I was pretty sure it was very unlikely, before I knew that (I asked someone I thought would know) so I just had to check again. Libby and I visited the grove during lunch that day without luck, and a rain storm was coming in, so I was afraid I'd be unable to document it for awhile.

Thankfully, last Wednesday dawned partly cloudy and dry after a night of rain, so I took off early for work and slipped and waded around the grove in thick slimy muck for awhile before finally hearing the call, and subsequently, seeing the bird! It's definitely the same sort of bird as last year. Since it's much more likely it's the same bird exercising sight fidelity (like most migrants) than a totally new bird finding the exactly same 4 acres of marginal wintering habitat, it's gotta be the second record of a Dusky-capped Flycatcher wintering two years in a row. Cool!

I have to wonder what the bird's been through in between stays here. Where did it spend the summer? Did it make it back to its normal haunts? Its navigation system is obviously broken, so who knows?

It was too dark on Wednesday for photos, but I got two documentary videos that I've put up on Flickr. One is a really bad shaky one of the bird itself and one is just a video of the call (since I don't have a pure recording device). I believe the video of the call is a more helpful record for documentary purposes since the voice of this kind of flycatcher is very distinctive.

Tune in later this week for updates on Thanksgiving, and a neat hike! Adios!