Skiing!

Dad and I took a weekend trip to Mammoth for some cross-country skiing this weekend. Unfortunately, Libby couldn't take the time off, so I had to go without her. While, it was hard being away from her, it was refreshing to get into the mountains with Dad.

We left really early in the morning on Saturday - Dad picked me up at 4:00. With only a single gas stop, we were skiing up to the cabin before 10:00.

After digging out the cabin and having lunch, we headed up to the meadows below Emerald, then up to Emerald Lake itself. The sun was bright, and the day was quite warm, so the dense packed snow was easy to ski on, and we did quite a lot of skiing for our first day in altitude without getting sick.

Rock pile below Emerald Lake

Dad's friend Joe had come up from Bishop with us for the first day, and we saw him out in the late afternoon. Since we were down the hill, anyway, we took the opportunity to call home before taking a short trip around the lake in the evening. Daylight saving's time late nights were quite nice, and very different from what one expects in a wintry landscape.

Sunday we went to Skelton Lake. This was an exciting expedition, as it was a fairly long backcountry ski that we hadn't done before. It did end up being fairly difficult. The snow never thawed all day, and in places we were traversing very steep hills with very little purchase because our skis weren't sinking in. None the less, we made it!

Looking up Skelton Lake toward Duck Pass.

Of course, we still had to go back down the icy slopes to get back to the cabin. We explored new routes to get down, and finally made it in one piece, if a little sore from the bruising the icy crust offered.

Monday was our day to go home, and we weren't in a big hurry to start skiing first thing. It was warmer, though, and much less windy, so the snow softened a bit. We packed everything up and cleaned up the cabin before heading out for a tour of the lakes. We traversed Lake Mary first, where we found a mound of ice and snow was being pushed up by the sunken island near the outlet. We also found some Clark's Nutcrackers eating a dead fish near the outlet!

We headed over to Lake Mamie next, where we found a pair of Black-backed Woodpeckers drumming on a snag on the shore. These are unusual birds for the eastern Sierra, and the first I've seen in the basin. While we were watching them, a beautiful adult Bald Eagle glided overhead on its way west over the pass.

We decided on Horseshoe Lake as our final destination, where the incredibly low level of the ice made for a nice bowl to ski into. After fooling around for a bit, we skiied for home, stopping to listen to a Great Horned Owl that was calling from near the outlet of Maime in the middle of the day!

All in all, it was a good trip. The conditions were less than ideal, but we still enjoyed the skiing and Skelton was beautiful. Next winter, we'll head for Barney!

Pictures on Flickr.

Birding Year in Review

I just finished compiling a list of the number of birds that Libby and I saw in the last year, and it turns out it was a pretty productive year birding for us. A lot of birders keep "year lists" - some compete to compile the largest - in North America and the whole world. We weren't competing (we didn't even seek out birds solely for the sake of the year list), but I thought that with all the traveling we did around the country in 2009, it might be interesting to put one together.

So, the results are as follows:

We saw 402 different species of "countable" birds this past year. We also heard, without seeing, a further eight. We also saw three species that aren't countable, but exist in self-sustaining breeding populations, so they're not included in that total (Nutmeg Mannikin, Orange Bishop, and Aplomado Falcon in south Texas).

402 is larger than our life lists were at the end of 2008. Our lists at the moment are around 470, including lifers from so far in 2010.

Looking over the list, it serves as a kind of journal of the past year's travels and experiences. We birded in five states: California, Arizona, New Mexico (just the morning of the January First!), Texas and New York. We saw birds in southwestern pine forests, sub-tropical thorn scrub, the Sonoran desert, eastern deciduous forests, and at the edge of the Pacific Ocean; naming only a few habitats. We birded from over 10,000' above sea level to 226' below it.

We saw over 100 new birds last year. Our first new birds of the year were Black and Brown-capped Rosy Finches at Sandia Crest in New Mexico on January 1st, and our last new bird of the year was a Black-capped Gnatcatcher at Patagonia Lake in Arizona on December 31. In between, the bulk of our new birds were from Texas.

From the birds not on the list, one can tell where we in North America we did not go. We didn't go north during the winter, to the Atlantic coast, to the southeast, Alaska or Florida. We didn't go to sea (no Pelagic birds) or birding in the dark (few owls).

It's also interesting the birds we just missed. We went to the Central Valley area, but we never saw Yellow-billed Magpies. We birded in southern California and Arizona, but we missed Rufous-crowned Sparrows (but saw them on Dec 29, 2008!). We visited the Sierras and the local mountains, but we missed a few mountain species - most conspicuously White-headed Woodpecker.

My favorite bird of the year was probably the Crimson-collared Grosbeak in Texas. Other personal highlights would include Painted Buntings in Texas, the male Blackburnian Warbler and pair of Scarlet Tanagers in New York, finding the southeast Arizona warblers and Sinaloa Wren, and the Prothonotary Warbler that showed up in Creek Park.

Speaking of Creek Park, local birding was pretty good for us this fall, too. Creek Park hosted Lucy's Warbler, American Redstart, Vesper's Sparrow, and Summer Tanager in addition to the Prothonotary Warbler and Dusky-capped Flycatcher. A Black-and-White Warbler was at Neff Park, and Libby found a Tropical Kingbird when we went looking for the Wood Stork at the Whittier Narrows which many people have seen since!

All in all, it was a pretty remarkable year. This year will involve less travelling and fewer birds, and that's OK. For us, it's not about the numbers so much as it is about the experiences. After all, the numbers are only a reflection of all things we'll have to remember: the places we went, the birds that were there, and the people we saw them with.

Here's to more rich experiences in 2010!

Christmas Memories

Well, Christmas is officially over, now. It has been for a couple of days, but the holy day itself is almost a full two weeks gone.

Laggard that I am, I have now posted Christmas photos on Flickr. There are images commemorating the day before Christmas - which day we feasted most merrily with the Rowley family, and images from the day itself - celebrated with scrumptious brunching and jolly gift exchanges.

You can access them by clicking here - Christmas Eve and Christmas.

Birding with Bill, Becca, Mom and Dad

We spent some time birding with our family over Christmas time, which was fun. We saw lots of neat birds.

On Tuesday the 22nd, I took the day off work and we went down to Crystal Cove State Park together to look for some of the cismontane southern California specialties in the sage scrub there. It was blowing up a gale, but we persevered and did manage to eventually find a California Gnatcatcher, though we only saw it briefly.

Most remarkable, though, was the sad case of an Eared Grebe we found cast ashore. It was obviously in bad shape - its feathers were wet all through, it was emaciated, and was completely helpless to move itself at all. It just rocked in the surf's wash. We took it out of the water to see if we could find help, but in a couple of minutes its neck arched, legs extended, and then it relaxed completely. It died, right in front of us.

That wasn't pleasant to watch, but it served as a plain reminder of our own mortality, and the inherent thinness of the cord tying us to this world.

I have put up pictures from the day. One is of the Grebe.

There are also pictures from the Balboa Pier, where we had lunch as a family.

I don't have any other pictures from the birding trips we took, but we hit a lot of great places. We visited the Whittier Hills and found Hutton's Vireo and Phainopepla, Creek Park for the Dusky-capped Flycatcher, which cooperated swimmingly, Nutmeg Mannikins at Biola, and a Townsend's Warbler and Red-breasted Sapsucker from a stake-out at La Mirada Park.

One day we headed out toward Riverside, so we made a short stop at a very chilly Prado Regional Park for Vermilion Flycatchers and even a tame Ross's Goose that made me wish I had my camera (which was forgotten in our own car in Santa Ana at the time), and Oak Canyon Nature Center where we found Cactus Wrens and had smashing looks at California Thrasher. Bill and Becca got to pick up a lot of new birds, and we had fun doing one of the things we like to do with them!

Teacher Christmas

Today was only a half-day at school, which included about an hour for our Christmas party. We read the Christmas story from Luke, had an ornament exchange, ate some treats, and visited with each other. And I was very blessed by the generosity of my 5th graders (and their parents!). There were many thoughtful and special (and some yummy) gifts for me to open, but one stood out in particular. It was from "K", and he couldn't wait for me to open it.

I unwrapped a beautiful, warm, fuzzy, fleece jacket and tried it on right away. I said something like, "Wow, K, it's fits perfectly! Thank you so much; I love it!"

K replied: "I thought you might like to wear it when you go birding early in the morning and it's cold."

Okay. How adorable is that?

Twilight

Last weekend I spent some sick time reading Twilight and New Moon. A parent from Libby's class gave them to her, and we only have those two. Anyway, the point is that I read them and now I intend to say something about them.

Both books are entertaining. They're fun to read, have interesting stories to tell, and paint a believable world in which unusual creatures live. It's a well-spun fantasy romance set in modern time, and I was really able to buy into it.

I think Twilight was the better novel of the two. It's the purer romance - overcoming obstacles to achieve some kind of relationship is the very essence of any English language romance since Shakespeare, and best typified by Austen. What really makes this one different, though, is that it's a relationship between a self-conscious teenage girl and a god. Add vampires battling it out over the life of this girl, and you have a book well calculated to be awsome; all you need is werewolves! Wait! Sequel! Yes!

In Twilight, the vampires are not sub-humans, as they normally are (and should be) in myths, but beyond human. They have flaws and foibles, so they're nothing like God, but they're very much like something from the Olympian pantheon, and I think Edward and Bella's relationship is something like a Mormon retelling of a story from Ovid. (Isn't that the Mormon take on Mary, anyway?) The woman really is as unworthy of him as she senses herself to be, but in a post-Incarnational twist, he loves - not just lusts after her like the Romans or Greeks who have had him do - her anyway. In a demented way, though, this love is tied to her culinary attractiveness to him.

Actually, it's not just demented. It's very much part of the book's mythos. In New Moon, we learn that the connection forged between Edward and Bella is overpoweringly unbreakable. Like Romeo and Juliet (not paradigmatic human beings, themselves) or Catherine and Heathcliff, they're soul-mates. This has a physical element - Bella's tasty smell is uniquely consuming to Edward - but it also has a spiritual element exhibited via the psychic torment caused them by separation.

The idea of soul mates is a dangerous one. Plato introduced the idea in a fairly humorous way as part of Symposium (roly-poly humans separated by the gods - not an idea he bought into), but the idea can be used to justify many kinds of wicked acts, and I found myself shying away from the main conflict in the second novel because of my revulsion for it. Bella's inability to get over Edward is therefore a metaphysical fact, and not a failing on her part. This makes her a lot more sympathetic since it excuses her insanity, but since that's not actually the way the world works I wouldn't let my pre-teen daughter read this book for anything!

Further reading on the Twilight series on the internet:

John Granger of Harry Potter interpretation fame is blogging about it at Forks High School Professor. He thinks it's sorely under appreciated by academia. I don't buy that, the prose is just too poor for it to be taken seriously, but he has a lot of interesting thoughts on its themes. I found the Mormon connections he makes especially enlightening - Meyers is a committed member of the LDS church, and born and raised in that culture. This post on his Harry Potter blog is fascinating: http://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/the-harry-potter-twilight-connection/.

Dr. Reynolds has a review of it on his Middlebrow blog which also has good thoughts. He has a lower opinion of the series than John Granger: Twilight's Flawed Faith.

Finally, this movie review of New Moon from Christianity Today made me chuckle. I haven't seen the movie, so I can't endorse it (some reviews I've read prefer the movies to the books): http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/reviews/2009/newmoon.html

Mammoth with the Mootharts

I just wanted to point out that pictures from our time in Mammoth with the Mootharts are up on Flickr. The trip over-all appeared to be a big success. We celebrated Dad, Phillip and Josiah's birthdays. There was good family time had by all, and people liked the cabin. Libby really enjoyed showing the cabin to her family, which warms my heart. This is an incredibly special place.

Some of the pictures are of our hike along Rock Creek with the family. That was fun. It was exhilarating to be out and about at high elevation in the early Fall - especially given the perfect weather we enjoyed. Last weekend it snowed, so that time of year really is a crap shoot (this is the same weekend Dad and I got snowed on a couple of years ago).

The only real drawback to the weekend was its incredibly short duration! Everybody left on Sunday morning to get home before it was too late, and Libby and I followed shortly after helping to stow food and water for the winter, gather kindling for winter fires, and put up the A-frame.

Back in Time

It may seem strange, peering through this on-line window into our lives, to find the Bristlecone Pine Forest re-enter the room. Perhaps the ancient forest has been in our parlor, out of sight the whole time we haven't been posting. That would be nice, if a little dirty and prickly. But it's not the case.

No, we had to drive the full six or so hours to revisit the Bristlecone Pine Forest again after our quick stop back in July, and, although we've only finished posting about that trip recently, it had in fact been more than a month between visits when we pulled into the moonlit campsite Labor Day weekend. In fact, the length of time it took us to tell you about that trip speaks more loudly about the tenor of our lives in August than any post could have. Suffice to say, life was full.

The truth is that our last trip there only wet our appetite for exploring the rest of the area. There are miles of Bristlecone forest in the high regions of the White Mountains, as well as many more miles of Pinyon-Juniper habitat. Add to that the region's mysterious-but-lovely remote character, and we just had to revisit.

Anyway, we had a good trip. The Guenthers came up on Saturday with their baby, and we spent some fun times with them. Unfortunately, Elijah didn't savor the altitude, and spent one unpleasant night in camp, and therefore a more pleasant second night in a motel in Bishop. Libby and I spent three nights in all at the campground. We got there really early Saturday morning (about 1:00) to find that the whole campground was full. We found a handy Pinyon Pine to throw up our tent under, and then moved into some vacancies created when our neighbors headed out in the morning (lucky day!).

We had brought some peanuts along, so we threw some of those out in hope of attracting some Pinyon Jays to our campsite. Then we went for a drive out to Deep Springs College, a famous migrant trap near the Nevada border. It's pretty dramatic - a giant dead-end valley with a salt pan and a single green patch of trees at the college. Unfortunately, it's private property with posted No Trespassing signs, so we came right back to camp. On the way, we spilled three gallons of water in our car! Yay! Mildew!

Libby and friend

We spent the rest of the first day hanging around camp with the car doors open and teaching the neighborhood Scrub-Jays and Chickadees to eat out of our hands. We were pretty excited to have our first Californian Juniper Titmouse come into a pan of water we put out, too. When the Guenthers arrived that afternoon, we all went for a walk in the Schulman Grove area that we had visited earlier. Elijah fussed a bit, so he didn't get to ride in the cool baby back-pack that the Guenthers had borrowed for hikes. He did get to see some cold old trees, though, but he may not have appreciated that. I'm not sure.

The next day we went all the way to Patriarch Grove. That's a long drive on a dirt road to the upper limits of a Bristlecone forest. The largest Bristlecone in the world is there, and we had fun wandering around in the alpine wonderland. The whole area is a brilliant white from the dolomite the trees grow in, and there are only stunted plants growing between the gnarled Bristlecone trunks. It's 11,000'! We saw a lot of people around. It turned out that the gate to the Bancroft Research Station on White Mountain (California's third highest mountain) was open, so a lot of people were making the visit to the summit. It cuts 4 miles off the round trip, and apparently those two miles are pretty steep. That explained the crowd at the campground.

Group picture with The Patriarch

That evening the Guenthers decided to make a trip to town, so Libby and I had dinner by ourselves, burned all the firewood, and helped Dustin pack up.

They drove back up the next day and we all went for a hike to the Methuselah Grove, where some of the oldest non-clonal organisms in the world grow. They don't tell you which tree is Methuselah (4800 years old!), but we had fun guessing. We also debated the thorny issue of whether or not you can say you saw a specific tree (Methuselah) if you don't know that you saw that tree, but you have reasonable assurance you saw every tree that it could have been.

After the hike, Libby and I were in a fine hurry to get home before it got too late. Unfortunately, construction around Independence meant it took about two hours to get from the Bristlecones to Lone Pine! Yuck.

I took lots and lots and lots of picture on this trip, and put too many of them on Flickr. Still, if you like babies, birds, mountains, or trees (which you should, you know): take a look: Labor Day Weekend Camping.

Heading Home

Libby points out some growth rings on a Bristlecone Pine.

On the morning after our backpack trip we packed up the truck and got back on the road right after breakfast. We were going home, but on the way we wanted to make a couple of stops. Our first stop being in the wrong direction, we didn't want to waste too much time!

It didn't take too long to reach Mono Lake. We were hoping to see some of the birds that stop over there on their southward migration. We did, and then we got ourselves some ice cream at the Mono Cone. That ended up taking over an hour!

Anyway, our next stop was more exciting. We turned off of 395 at Big Pine, heading into the White Mountains toward Westgard Pass. This was our first visit to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. There are trees in this forest that are nearly 5,000 years old! It's a long way above Big Pine, though, with the Schulman Grove Visitor's Center (recently burned down and replaced by a temporary trailer) located at 10,000 feet.

In Schulman Grove, we went for a walk on the Discovery Trail, learning about Schulman's discovery of the first tree over 4,000 years old in that very grove. We had a good time ooh-ing and ahh-ing over each gnarled and wind-carved semi-snag for an hour or so, and then got going south again so we could say goodbye to Bill and Becca, who were flying out that night. We decided, though, that it would be nice to come back and visit the Bristlecones again when we had more time. A trip we just made over the Labor Day weekend!

Anyway, a mercifully small gallery of pictures is uploaded on Flickr: Homeward Bound Set.

The pictures from the entire trip to Mammoth have now been uploaded, and you can view all of them within the Peeler Lake to Snow Lake Loop Collection.

Backpack Notes, Day 5

Fading sunset over Lake Mary

As always, you can read about the day in more detail on Bill's blog. The notes that follow are my own brief observations.

Our final day of the backpack trip was characterized by one mood: haste. Bill and Becca felt a lot of stress about getting home before it was too late, and so we got along at a rapid pace. That was fine, but by the time we reached the bottom of the trail it had taken its toll on our feet.

In the morning, a group of marmots and a single American Pipit were foraging in the field by our camp. We were also visited by a Gray-crowned Rosy Finch. That was the first of that high altitude bird we got a good look at all trip - a fact in sharp contrast to the species' abundance on our higher altitude pack trip last year.

Some of us were able to avoid removing our boots for the water crossings on the way down due to Dad's efforts at finding a way across. This didn't result in saving time, though, because he ended up slipping and falling in as he helped Becca across. I still appreciated not having to take off my boots, and while Dad dried, Libby and I watched a Junco fly-catching in a shaft of sunlight along the creek. There were also a pretty male Yellow-rumped Warblers foraging in the trees in the area.

Libby and I stayed the next night at the cabin, eating a yummy dinner of burgers at Burger's in Mammoth with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Carol and Uncle John. During dinner, we laughed at stories about embarrassing moments they'd experienced all over the world. Afterward, we crossed the street to the Village - where a band was rocking out to '60s and '70s classics. Aunt Carol texted Sierra and tried to see if she could find us on the webcam showing the plaza, but the camera was off-line for the summer.

That evening there was a spectacular sunset, so Uncle John and I hurried down to Lake Mary as soon as we got back to the cabin to see if we could get a picture of its fading splendor. Unfortunately, it was mostly dead by the time we reached the shore, but I uploaded a picture hinting at its brilliance on Flickr, which you can see above.

Of course, you can see all of the pictures from the day on Flickr: Backpack Day 5 set.

Backpack Notes, Day 4

Rock Island Lake

Our fourth day of hiking took us from Arndt Lake to Snow Lake back via Kerrick Meadows. You can read about it in sparkling detail at Bill's blog.

Some notes:

This was a great hiking day for me. I felt great the whole day, the scenery was varied and interesting, and we got it all done before lunch. I always feel like hiking in the morning is easier and more enjoyable.

I'm uncomfortable hiking on snow, so the little climb that us guys took was stretching for me. Glissading back down helped me get a little more comfortable with the dynamic of the stuff. It wasn't exactly ice, so it's not difficult, but I still hope I'll feel a little easier on the medium in the future.

The views from the top were really superb. It was wonderful up there.

Fishing around Snow Lake wasn't very productive for fish, but it was great for birds! I think its location at a low point on the crest yielded a sort of migrant trap for latitudinal migrants, because there were more birds than anywhere else on the trip on the outlet side of Snow Lake. While bushwhacking through the area, I found Yellow-rumped Warblers, Orange-crowned Warblers, my first Wilson's Warblers of the trip, first Thick-billed Fox Sparrows of the trip, White-crowned Sparrows, and other birds I can't remember anymore. Unfortunately, I didn't have binoculars because it was a bit like stumbling into a vagrant trap, small birds were flitting all around me and I couldn't ID them all in the brief glimpses I could catch before they would drop into the willows and shrubby pines.

The big snow field, and green meadows watered by it near the lake, appeared ideal for White-tailed Ptarmigan, but we didn't find any. There was, however, a pair of American Pipits using the meadow and defending a territory half-way up the snow field. The Pipits were the first I've seen in the Sierras, though I've always been looking for them. I wonder if they're associated with late season snow pack in the Sierras like Ptarmigans are.

This was the evening I got to see the International Space Station (with the space shuttle attached!). I was sitting on the lake shore under the darkening purple and gold of the late evening sky, pumping water while bats and moths flitted around my head, when I noticed a brilliant star - Venus-like in its intensity - floating by to the north. I hollered for the rest of the family, but nobody heard me, so I just sat in wonder as it slipped behind the mountains' shoulders.

Since we were right near the pass, we all went up to it in the dark to watch the stars. That was fun. There wasn't any moon at the time, so you could see everything really clearly.

I have a cool panorama from the top of the hill I'd like to put up somehow in all of its glory (there's a very small version on Flickr), but I'm not sure how. Any suggestions?

Pictures are up at the normal place: Backpack Day 3.

Backpack Notes, Day 3

Overlooking Rock Island Lake on our day hike.

The third day of our backpack trip was a layover day at Arndt Lake. You can read about it at Bill's blog.

My observations:

1) Birding was pretty good that day. In the morning, there was a mixed flock of Orange-crowned Warblers, Yellow-rumped Warbles, nuthatches, and Chickadees feeding in the Hemlocks around our camp. In one small area during the hike, we saw Pine Grosbeaks, Pine Siskins, and a solo Black-backed Woodpecker. Ironic, as we'd made a special trip to find one earlier. We found another flock of Pine Grosbeaks, later, and a single Townsend's Solitaire in one of the meadows. Fun, especially the Grosbeaks, which are a very striking finch. We'd only seen one pair once before.

2) The hike to the top of the pass overlooking Rock Island Lake was great. When we reached the top, I felt like I was finally in the Sierras I knew and loved - tall toothy granite peaks emerged along the crest, and Rock Island Lake is cut out of the mold of Grinnell or Thousand Island. We never seem to manage to make it to any of this kind of large rock-studded lake, but it's fun to look at them.

3) When we got back, we followed Dad's lead by taking a bath in the lake and resting on the little rock island about 20 feet from the shore. There weren't many mosquitoes out that far into the lake, though one or two did find us, and the rock was pleasantly warm. Of course, the water was chillingly cold, but that's what you expect of a lake in the high Sierras.

You can find all the pictures from that day of hiking here: Backpack Day 3.

Backpack Notes, Day 2

Kerrick Meadows

Our second day took us from Peeler Lake to Arndt Lake via Kerrick Meadows. Bill's got an excellent post; you can read about it here.

My notes for posterity:

I got up as soon as I heard Dad stirring so that I could go fishing. Unfortunately, by the time I got my pole set up other people were also getting up, so I didn't get much of a chance to fish. I cast a mosquito out a few times, but all I got were a few bites. Too bad, since Peeler's fish were supposed to be pretty nice.

It's neat that Peeler drains down both sides of the crest. It's an interesting, large, and beautiful lake that would be nice to explore more thoroughly.

Juncos were singing all around the camp that morning, but the most interesting visitor was a female Black-headed Grosbeak. That had to be a wandering bird, as we were in pure coniferous forest at Peeler's elevation.

Kerrick Meadows were really neat - there were White-crowned Sparrows and Mountain Bluebirds around as well as the numerous Spotted Sandpipers and Dark-eyed Juncos that Bill mentioned. I really enjoyed seeing Spotted Sandpipers in meadows - there was one in a damp meadow near Arndt where there was no shore habitat at all; it gave a real arctic feel to the place.

Kerrick Meadows were also easy hiking - it's just straight for what seems like miles. It's really beautiful, but it does get a little monotonous because without any trees you can see exactly how slowly it takes to get from one end of the valley to the other.

Libby and I also found a young Hammond's Flycatcher in some firs along the bank of Arndt when we first walked in.

The mosquitoes in the meadowy portions of Ardnt were terrible. While we were waiting for Dad and Bill and Becca to get back from looking campsites, we were suffering!

After setting up camp, Dad, Becca, and Libby and I went for a little hike to the top of a promontory above our camp. From it, we could see down the canyon toward Benson Lake, and across to more of the granite domes in the area. We also found two baby flightless Mountain Bluebirds cowering under some tree trunks. They looked pretty pathetic! It was fun scrambling around on the granite.

It rained a little at Arndt, mostly over-night, but not enough to get the ground truly wet. It was enough to make noise on the rain fly, but that's about it.

More pictures are up on Flickr: Backpack Day 2.

Backpack Notes, Day 1

The group as it heads out.

Bill did a day-by-day replay of our July backpack trip, already, which you can read here. I'll just add a few notes of my own observations.

It's pretty amazing it took us 5+ hours to get started hiking that first day. Starting later made the day quite a bit more difficult, because it was already warm when we started. The stretch of trail before Barney Lake would be nice to get done early because there isn't much shade as you hike through sage flats and the stunted willow/aspens forests on the switchbacks.

There were still some interesting birds the first day despite the late beginning. Our only Yellow-headed Blackbirds for the trip were in the meadows and cattle yards around Bridgeport. There were both Clark's Nutcrackers and Steller's Jays at the Twin Lakes campground, which is interesting since it's only about 7,000'. There were also a few Red-breasted Sapsuckers in the various aspen groves we encountered, and a pair of Williamson's Sapsuckers near the campground itself. Western Wood-Pewees were quite common that first day, but less so afterward.

A big highlight for me was flushing a covey of Mountain Quail right where we ate lunch along Barney Lake's outlet. There was an adult (I assume a female) and a group fo maybe 8 or so young birds that all took flight as I approached them, disappearing into dense growth next to the trail. It was funny to watch the precocious young, about half their parent's size, flutter strongly into the air. Those were the first Mountain Quail I've encountered in the Sierras.

A pair of Black-headed Grosbeaks was nice just past Barney Lake. I'm not sure if that's high for them or not, but they could very well have been post-breeding dispersers or southward migrants that late in July. Further up the trail we had quite a few Audubon's Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos and Cassin's Finches.

The trail from Barney to Peeler is a real grunt, as it's a consistent uphill climb. We were pretty tired when we got to camp, and we got there pretty late in the evening, so we basically just did camp chores, ate, and went to bed. Pumping water turned out to be an especially involving process with six people. I wish we could have gone fishing that evening, but we didn't have much energy or time.

The mosquitoes were bad!

I put up pictures from the day on our Flickr: Backpack Day 1.

Rare Air

Libby and I got to take a trip to Mammoth, back in late July. It's hard to believe we've already been home for more about a month!

The main event of our trip was a family backpack trip. Bill and Becca flew out from New York, so with Mom and Dad along, it was the whole nuclear bunch planning on hitting the trail together on a Tuesday. Still, Libby and I wanted to spend a little time up at the cabin itself, too, so we took off early on the Saturday morning beforehand.

We were looking forward to spending time with more of the family, there - Uncle John, Aunt Carol, Cousin Sydney and her boyfriend Jonathan were all planning on arriving that Saturday, also. I was hoping to get a little birding done before we arrived, so we actually left especially early that Saturday in order to arrive in the sage flats around Crowley Lake while the birds were still active. It worked - we got there around 11:00, turning right onto the road to Benton Crossing off Highway 395 at the Green Church, and then off we went toward the lake on a dirt road.

This is the closest spot we know to find birds of the Great Basin sage community. That means Sage Sparrows, Sage Thrashers, Brewer's Sparrows, Vesper's Sparrows, and Greater Sage-Grouse are common. We trundled down to the lake shore itself, where we found Phaloropes, Eared and Western Grebes, and American White Pelicans floating about in the water. In years past, we've seen Yellow-headed Blackbirds pretty easily here, and I was hoping to get some pictures, but there weren't any around. I'm not sure where they were.

A dead Sage-Grouse hangs from a wire near Crowley Lake.

After getting our fill of gray birds, we got back onto the pavement and headed north toward Mono Lake. Our object was a bird that would be new for us - the Black-backed Woodpecker. Black-backed Woodpeckers are a mostly boreal bird that has a disjunct population in the Sierras. It's a bit difficult to find, but is most common in areas that have recently burned. We'd been tipped off to a new colony when we met Jon Dunn in Arizona - there's a small burned area near June Lake that was hosting a few pairs. We got there - after a detour to check out the Aspen Grove where we got engaged four years ago, and ice cream at the Mono Cone - and saw a black woodpecker fly by as we drove in. Getting out of the car, it took a little more walking before we found one again. But we got great looks at at least three individuals. We even got pictures of one.

A Black-backed Woodpecker on a burned Jeffrey Pine.

By now it was getting to be mid-afternoon, so we made our way back to the Cabin. We were still ahead of the Hirts, so we took a trip down to the Lowe's cabin to stow our stuff with Grandma and Grandpa, and then settled down to relax a little back up at the cabin. A little bit of comfort makes me itchy when there's so much to see and do, so we popped back outside for a short walk along the old uranium mine road. Best sighting of that little walk was a real live Pine Marten! This cute weasel-like animal had golden fur and the cutest face you could hope for, bounding slinkily along the ground for a few yards, sitting, and then hopping on again. I was shocked, it's quite unusual to sight one. I'd never seen one before, and hadn't really ever hoped to have seen one.

Anyway, when we got back to the cabin, the Hirts had arrived, and we all had dinner together. That night Libby and I went fishing with Grandpa, and then we all sat around and talked until it was time for bed, and Libby and I drove back down the mountain to the Lowe's cabin.

The next morning, before church, we took a short walk around the Lowe's cabin area. We had a bit of an adventure finding our way through a dense aspen thicket along a creek, but we still saw some neat birds, including a MacGillivray's Warbler and even a Hermit Warbler just outside the cabin itself.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the cabin - fishing, games, family, etc. It was quite nice.

The next day the rest of the family had arrived, and we had to spend time getting ready for the backpack trip. We did find time to go for a little walk up behind the cabin, though, which was fun. There were a lot of beautiful flowers blooming, and everything was quite green.

I put up a set of pictures from the pre-backpack trip activities: Mammoth Trip.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

I spent all day yesterday with my nephews, because Emily had just finished helping a friend give birth (for 48 hours!) and needed to sleep. While I was there, I heard some funny things, and I wanted to document a few:

Jonathan (age 4): Aunt Libby, will you still be here when I wake up from my nap?
Me: Well, I don't know. It kind of depends on how long you sleep.
Jonathan: Well, you should decide and then call Uncle Jon and tell him.
Me: I think I'll probably still be here.
Jonathan: You should tell Uncle Jon.
Me: Uncle Jon knows that I'm here.
Jonathan: Ok, good. Because if he didn't, he would come home and say, "Where's Aunt Libby?"

I thought this was very conscientious of the little guy.

Thomas (age 2) has been doing a great job learning how to talk. I try to get him to say "Annyong" (from Arrested Development) whenever I have a chance, and it usually goes like this:

Me: Annyong, Thomas.
Thomas: Annyong, Ont Wibby!

But, because he's 2 and loves to say "no", sometimes it goes more like this:

Me: Annyong, Thomas.
Thomas: No annyong.

And that's just as good.

And, lastly, this treasure:

Jonathan (age 4): Did you know Daddy had a birthday party? Well, it wasn't his; it was for a friend. And his friend got some alcohol. {Pause} But he didn't drink it all at once. He drank it a little bit at a time. And that's what I would do, too...except no one will let me.

Priceless.

New York Trip List

Here's a list of the birds we saw in New York. It won't be in taxonomic order, or strictly in the order we saw the birds.

1. Pied-billed Grebe
2. Great-blue Heron
3. Great Egret
4. Green Heron
5. Canada Goose
6. Wood Duck
7. Mallard
8. Turkey Vulture
9. Osprey
10. Red-tailed Hawk
11. Bald Eagle
12. American Coot
13. Kildeer
14. Spotted Sandpiper
15. Ring-billed Gull
16. Black Tern
17. Rock Pigeon
18. Mourning Dove
19. Chimney Swift
20. Ruby-throated Hummingbird
21. Belted Kingfisher
22. Red-bellied Woodpecker
23. Downy Woodpecker
24. Northern (Yellow-shafted) Flicker
25. Eastern Wood-Pewee
26. Willow Flycatcher
27. Alder Flycatcher
28. Least Flycatcher
29. Eastern Phoebe
30. Eastern Kingbird
31. Warbling Vireo (our first Eastern birds)
32. Red-eyed Vireo
33. Yellow-throated Vireo
34. Blue Jay
35. American Crow
36. Barn Swallow
37. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
38. Tree Swallow
39. Purple Martin
40. Black-capped Chickadee
41. White-breasted Nuthatch
42. House Wren
43. Carolina Wren?
44. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
45. American Robin
46. Gray Catbird
47. Northern Mockingbird
48. Cedar Waxwing
49. European Starling
50. Yellow Warbler
51. Cerulean Warbler
52. Common Yellowthroat
53. Northern Cardinal
54. Indigo Bunting
55. Chipping Sparrow
56. Field Sparrow
57. Savannah Sparrow
58. Song Sparrow
59. Swamp Sparrow
60. Baltimore Oriole
61. Eastern Meadowlark
62. Bobolink
63. Red-winged Blackbird
64. Common Grackle
65. Brown-headed Cowbird
66. House Sparrow
67. American Goldfinch
68. House Finch
69. Yellow-billed Cuckoo
70. Eastern Screech-Owl
71. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
72. Great-crested Flycatcher
73. Blue-headed Vireo
74. Tufted Titmouse
75. Winter Wren (eastern - probably a lifer)
76. Hermit Thrush
77. Brown Thrasher
78. Blackburnian Warbler
79. Black-throated Green
80. Pine Warbler
81. Hooded Warbler
82. Scarlet Tanager
83. Eastern Towhee
84. Dark-eyed (Slate-colored) Junco
85. Double-crested Cormorant
86. Mute Swan
87. Cooper's Hawk
88. American Kestrel
89. Wild Turkey
90. Herring Gull
92. Caspian Tern
93. Hairy Woodpecker
94. Pileated Woodpecker (heard)
95. Bank Swallow
96. Brown Creeper
97. American Redstart
98. Black-crowned Night Heron
99. Common Tern
100. Marsh Wren (eastern)
101. Veery
102. Northern Waterthrush
103. Rose-breasted Grosbeak
104. Blue-winged Warbler

Not a bad trip list, I think. 21 lifers is pretty amazing.

New York, Last Day

When I scheduled our flight home from Rochester to LAX, I chose a flight leaving in the evening so that we could spend most of the day in New York. Unfortunately, it basically rained that whole day. It would come and go in intensity, but we were socked in and everything was sopping wet.

With nothing much to do that would be in doors in the Rochester area, we decided that, what the heck, we'd go birding anyway. So Bill, Libby and I all went to Mendon Ponds, a park on the edge of Rochester. We zipped up our rain shells, and wandered off down a squishy trail. At first, the birds were quiet and we just trundled along in the wet gazing around, but soon the rain slowed a little, and the birds came out.

The biggest highlight of the walk was an opportunity to get very close looks at a pair of Blue-winged Warblers bringing food to their nest in the grass right off of the trail. This was a lifer that I had expected to see easily, and so it was a relief to finally get it on the last day of the trip. They were quite lovely, and we got to see both sexes quite well.

The other really big highlight was hand-feeding Black-capped Chickadees along the trail. Bill had brought food for the purpose, and they came right in, despite the fact that it was summer! The Chickadees in the Sierras will eat out of your hands in the winter when food is scarce, but these birds were so tame they'd eat from your hands any time. It's fun to have birds land on your hands - Chickadees are incredibly light, you can hardly feel their weight at all, just the light rasping of their tiny claws.

The rest of the walk was pretty quiet, with glimpses of Veeries, which were singing all around us, and Red-bellied Woodpeckers being the highlights. We had lunch at Wegmans, frozen custard at Abbott's, and then went home to shower and pack. The rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxing, and then when Becca got off work we went into the city to get dinner at a trendy little sandwich joint in South Wedge.

And then we were off! It wasn't easy to say goodbye, though it was nice knowing we'd see them again, soon. And it was a long trip back, via Washington D.C. Dulles, and we didn't sleep well on the flight to LAX, like we'd hoped. Compounding that, our carry-on luggage got packed, which made us wait half-an-hour to get it back (grr), and by the time we got our car out of the parking garage and everything else, it was quite late when we got home.

Pictures are up on Flickr - none from our walk at Mendon Ponds, I didn't want to get the camera wet, but Bill and Becca's pictures are there from in front of their apartment. You can view all of our pictures from the trip in the new "Visiting Bill and Becca" collection, too.

New York Day 5

Well, things have been pretty busy since our last post on the blog. We went backpacking, Libby got her wisdom teeth removed, and I worked a 50 hour week at work.

So, heading way back in time, let's talk about our last full day in New York visiting Bill and Becca way back in mid-June! This was the day we got to go to Niagara Falls, but before we did, we also checked out a wildlife refuge between Rochester and Buffalo called Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. Becca had to go to work that Wednesday, so we spent the day with Bill.

Iroquois is a neat area of woods, grasslands and wetlands that hosts a good variety of species. We got much closer looks at Black Terns than we'd had at Montezuma, and we also got really good looks at an eastern Marsh Wren. We spent quite a bit of time looking for a Prothonotary Warbler that was reported as consistent from a certain area, but we never saw it. I think I heard it once, but it was a bit too far from the road to be sure. I was really hoping to pick up this impressive species, but there's a lot of luck involved in birding.

After looking for the warbler, we took a couple of walks in the woods. One was a really delightful walk down a forest trail full of the sounds of Wood Thrushes, a couple of Veeries, a singing male Rose-breasted Grosbeak (our only one for the trip), and lots of American Redstarts. Tree Swallows were also very common throughout the refuge nesting in provided boxes.

We also went for a walk on the Swallow Hollow Trail, a neat loop that takes you through some mature riparian deciduous forest. Its verdant thickets held tantalizingly close calling Pileated Woodpeckers, a family of Brown Creepers, Yellow-billed Cuckoos that flew right over our heads, and we even got glimpses of singing Cerulean Warblers!

It was spitting and threatening to do more meteorologically by this time, so we got a bit of a hurry (and a bit lost) on our way toward Buffalo. We made a brief stop at a former landfill that was reported to host Henslow's Sparrows and Upland Sandpipers, but the incredibly thick clouds, strong winds and occasional drops of rain here made us think better of entering an empty and treeless field during the threat of lightening. By the time we'd returned to our car, it was raining quite strongly.

Next stop, though, was Niagara Falls, where a little more water can be seen falling than was coming out of the sky! Tons and tons of water pass over Niagara Falls by the minute. It's pretty impressive. We only checked it out from the American side, since we didn't have our passports or birth certificates, but it was still fun. The scale of the falls is its most impressive attribute. An entire enormous river of water dropping a hundred feet creates quite a spectacle.

By the time all of this was over, the day was winding down quickly. We were in a bit of a hurry to get home, but missed a turn-off toward Rochester as we crossed from Grand Island back into Buffalo. Unfortunately, this cost us time as we got off the freeway to re-trace our steps, but it also gained us a lifer! There, in the river, were a group of Common Terns. We made a quick stop to admire them, jumped back in the car, and headed on our way. I'd like to spend some time studying them alongside Forster's Terns some day - probably at Bolsa Chica, but we got decent looks all the same.

There are pictures of the day and the waterfalls on our Flickr account: New York Day 5.

Disneyland With Thomas

This past Tuesday was my birthday, and as you probably know, you can get into Disneyland for free on your birthday. It's pretty clever of them, right? Because nobody goes to Disneyland by themselves. So, sure, you get in free on your birthday, but unless you have friends born on the same day, they're going to pay the entrance fee. Or unless they're under the age of three, in which case they're free any day of the year. That's the route I took. I brought my two-year-old nephew, Thomas, to keep me company at Disneyland. We both got in for free, and we had a lot of fun! You can see all my pictures from the day here.