You Were Not As Good As Bad Religion

A Thick-billed Murre ponders the meaning of cliffs.

Tremble at the eye of the auklet (crested). 

North Bight Beach, next to our field camp. Vagrant magnet.

 

I never thought I'd get the chance to say this, but its time to go!  Here are a few shots to hold you over while I migrate south.  I can't believe I'm about to come out the other side of this thing, relatively in one piece.  Best of all, I'll be liberated from the workforce for a couple of month, so I'll have more time devoted to YOU, devoted BB&B reader.  I've got a momentous backlog of photos that will fall upon you like a landslide of Awesome.  You will be crushed with glee.

Puffins do an impressive amount of Nothing.  It essentially looks like this.

Buldir Island is thick with Pacific Wrens.  Behold the long bill of the Aleutian subspecies.

Parakeet Auklet rafts.

Northern Fulmar.

I've Got Some News For You: Nothing Is Fair.

Oh snap!  Big news in Steller's Sea-Eagle World (Steller's Sea-Eagle World is like Sea World except with kids getting fed to giant birds of prey).  Read all about it here.  Photo courtesy of the internets.

You Rambling Boys Of Pleasure, You Easy Girls Of Leisure

Ouch though.  Running amok in Homer can be exhausting.  One of the bars here doesnt close until 5 in the morning.  Five.  In the morning.  As I stated earlier....ouch though.  These nights are unrelenting.  Last night we were watching a crappy cover band and out of nowhere they did 6 Misfits songs in a row.  The bartender introduced me to the Homer Stage Dive, which consists of throwing yourself on the floor in front of the band.  Awesome.  HOMER PUNK ROCK.

In bird-related news, I've really taken a liking to Northwestern Crows.

Don't you love the Pogues?  Gotta love the Pogues.  One of the few bands that I still need to see. Too bad you have to be a millionaire to afford a ticket, and people are constantly claiming that Shane MacGowan is about to die.  I did see Spider Stacy play with Filthy Thieving Bastards once, which was great.  Half the set was FTB songs, half Pogues.

Without the Pogues, you would not have Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, The Tossers and the dozens of other Celtic punk rock bands out there....but you knew that, right?

Here's an excerpt from an interview frontman Shane MacGowan did a few years ago, who is the consummate professional.  Hope you had a good weekend!

Livewire: I caught your show with The Popes in Chicago a couple of years ago, which was incredible. I did, however, think it was strange that at one point you somewhat matter of factly turned away from the audience and vomited onstage. Was this a first time for you, or just another night?

Shane: Well, I mean, that happens every now and then, you know what I mean? The excitement and you have a few drinks before you go onstage, you know? You try getting up there and jumping around in front of thousands of people!!

Livewire: Its just that it seemed so natural. 

Shane: Well, it was. It was. It wasn't unpleasant, you know? I just did it and carried on, you know? In the early days with The Pogues a lot of us used to puke onstage, because we used to drink a helluva lot before we went on. We used to practice puking at the right time, you know, 'where's the stop?'.  Between words, you know what I mean? Or in-between a chorus and a verse.

Livewire: So you've pretty much got this puking thing down to a science then? 

Shane: Yeah. I try not to miss a word, you know?

Shifty Friends Of Mine

Another look at Buldir's first Slaty-back of 2010. String of pearls, baby.

Right off, I have to set some things straight. My toiling minions at BB&B HQ, under the steady and terrible crack of the whip, rarely make mistakes……but they do happen, from time to time. It seems I have gotten the history of the Slatygate story a bit mixed up…the og SBGU that graced Ventura Harbor with its presence so many years ago was actually accepted by the bird committee…12 years after the fact. Hey, its not fast, but its…its….well, its not fast. The controversial Salton City Slaty-backed Gull was not accepted either, and my source told me, rather ominously….never will be. So thanks to Don and Brady for clearing that up for everyone.

Bird committees. Huh. Now there’s a topic for a blog. It won’t be this one….but the basic concept of being part of an undemocratically elected patriarchy of power-birders who decide who has seen what...well, is a novel concept. Not that they don’t have their purpose…and not they are composed of complete birdtards….I know a lot of good people who have/do sit on those committees.

Least Auklets.  Behold their majesty.

Bird committees were one of Roger Higson’s favorite things to rail on, and his tirades will be missed. Roger was a Brit who spent the last several decades in California, primarily in bleak, arid, unpopulated and underbirded regions, finding all manner of rare birds and diligently (and perhaps more importantly, wittily) reporting his findings to rare bird reports, email lists, and finally his blog, which you can still find here. His sharp tongue, distinctly British humor, love of liquor and well-honed birding skills made him one of the more interesting figures of the California birding community. He passed away last spring, and we are all poorer without him.

While over the summer I was bummed to hear Roger making his Great Migration, I was completely stunned to hear that Mike San Miguel had done the same. Others have written much more eloquently of him that I could, but I think it should be said that Mike was not only an outstanding birder (and committee member), but a genuinely heart-of-gold kind of guy who was one of the few people to make a young Steve think, “shit, maybe birdwatchers aren’t so fucking crazy after all.” I haven’t gotten to see him in a long time, but I’ll miss him just the same.

Owl Knob and Round Mountain, as seen from the floor of Gentle Valley in Buldir's interior.

It Seems Like I'm Complaining About Something I've Lost Interest In

It's time to do some serious pandering here folks.  This one is for the nerds.  No one else could possibly be interested in gull identification (although I once somehow got Pinko to go with me to look for a Slaty-back once....hmm...).

Our dark-backed friend here is an adult Slaty-backed Gull, with a Glaucous-winged Gull on the right.  I have had a long history of not seeing Slaty-backed Gulls.  All the way back when I was roaming around Ventura County as an awkward teenager (as opposed to an awkward twentysomething), Slaty-backs were on the brain.  Don DesJardin found a first-winter bird, which at the time would have been the first documented record of one in California.  This was a really big deal.  This species is much more at home on the coast of Japan than at the Ventura Harbor.  However, the California Bird Records Committee (aka The Bird Police) denied this identification for some vacuous and asinine reasons.  This became quite the hot topic among nerd circles.  I looked for this bird of course, but never saw it...and as far as I know its still been officially denied, although most anyone who is anyone would say that this bird was, in fact, a Slaty-backed Gull.

Shortly afterward, a certain CBRC member found one at the Salton Sea, which of course was accepted by the committee...this was also a hot topic among gull connoisseurs.  I also looked for this bird and failed to see it.  In the following years, Slaty-backs were found regularly in California, most often at Half Moon Bay.  When I moved to San Francisco back in 2007, I thought to myself, "Half Moon Bay is thirty minutes away.  I will see hella Slaty-backed Gulls."  But do you know how many I saw?  None.

On the boat ride out to Buldir, I managed to be below deck for not one, but two Slaty-backed Gulls that cruised by the boat.  This was getting absurd.  I was determined to find one now, lest this bird become another unfortunate entry onto my "nemesis bird" list.  Fortunately, my worries were unwarranted.  This Slaty-backed Gull even looks like a Slaty-backed Gull. 

Now, me and Slaty-backed Gulls are like old friends.  And you know what?  Its good to have friends.

You Should Have Seen Your Face

Kittiwakes do it diagonally.  Find the Red-legged.

Just to reiterate.  BB&B is here for YOU.  It’s a resource.  A look into a self-loathing people, a cannabilistic race.  A culture of nerds and geeks, dweebs and douches, dorkiness and deception.  A discussion of a people that celebrity birder (yes they have those) Bill Oddy accurately described as being fueled only by envy.  It’s embedded journalism.  And I guess its kind of about birds too.

I have been doing a poor job at dwelling on the general malaise of the birdwatcher lately…and for that, I’m truly sorry.  There’s a lot of shit happening, you know?  I just don’t have the time.  I’ve barely been birding this month.  IT’S SEPTEMBER.  If there is one month of the year to go birding, its this month.  But you know what?  I don’t care.  I really don’t.  Do you know how many crippling birds Ive been exposed to this year?  On the boat ride from Buldir to Adak Island alone we had everything from Least Auklet to Short-tailed Albatross.  Yeah, I know right?  Throw in a lifer Mottled Petrel, a bunch of Sperm Whales…..you get the picture.  Oh yeah and I was being paid the whole time too. 

Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch buddy.  One of the few songbird species that nest on Buldir.  They frolic mercilessly.

Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I don’t want to look at birds (I did manage lifer Boreal Chickadees this month), as that would be going against my true nature, and lets face it….you come here to read true things.  And to continue in that vein, I’m not exactly sure what I’m talking about anymore.

Right.  You are here to learn about birdwatchers, and what makes them tick.  You wish to understand them.  And if you are reading this fellow birdwatcher, perhaps you are trying to understand yourself, no?  Regrettably, of late the BB&B team has been unable to continue with your lessons with much regularity, as they are still hard at work for the Fish And Wildlife Service until the end of the month.  Don’t think I’ve forgotten our goal here….the mission statement has not changed.  Come October, I’ll have more than enough time to sing you the sad song of the birdwatcher.

Dinner.  J/k.  Glaucous-winged Gulls have learned how to turn birds inside out, which this Crested Auklet demonstrates pretty well.

But as long as I have your attention, I hope you enjoy a few more pictures from Buldir.  If you haven’t figured it out already, they look a lot better if you blow them up.

Black-legged Kittiwakes and Thick-billed Murres at our Spike Camp.

Mortal Combat Puffin.  

This Chapter We've Been Writing Is Getting Awful Hard To Read

Crested Auklets over Buldir's Main Talus.

So I finally got to go out in Homer for a couple of nights.  It was a lot like Arcata, except there are no street kids heckling you.  There’s even a bar called The Alibi.  One night there was a hipster 80’s cover band playing at the bar we were at, featuring a gifted keyboard player, a standup bass player who sang most of the songs and a striking Samantha Fay-esque banjo player.  The similarities were uncanny.  My camp leader from Buldir kept heckling everyone and at one point was offered $500 to go home with an old woman from Texas.  Unfortunately for everyone, she did not follow through with this.  Good times.

As you can see, we’ve made a few changes to BB&B at great effort and expense, but the rave reviews and frenzied feedback have made it all worth it.  As its been well over a year since I’ve been to Midway, its probably time to do something about our masthead….but with such an ambitious agenda on our cracked and calloused hands, its going to be difficult.  But make no mistake, we are up to the task at hand.

Many great pictures have been taken of the Tiglax over the years.  This is not one of them.  The Tiglax is the primary ship that ferries refuge personnel around the Aleutians, and was how I made it to and from Buldir.

So, back to last spring.  On May 29 we finally arrived at Buldir.  The seas were still rough, so we had to land some distance from our camp.  With the skiff parting a big raft of Parakeet Auklets, we were finally ashore.  Under a puffin-filled sky, we trudged down a cobbly beach toward camp valley.  Wandering Tattlers and Eurasian Wigeon flushed from the water’s edge, while Harlequin Ducks and Common Eiders bobbed offshore amongst auklets and puffins.  The place was brimming with birds.  Distant flocks of thousands of Crested and Least Auklets snaked through the sky, constantly changing formation and direction in order to avoid some real or imagined predator.  It was going to be a good summer, at least as far as birding was concerned.

Northern Fulmars (FOULGULLS) are common in between the islands and nested on Buldir.

Arriving in camp was done with relatively little fanfare, but throughout the day rare birds kept appearing between trips to our distant pile of gear we had to hump over to camp.  Four Sandhill Cranes, which were to stay with us for the rest of the year.  An Eastern Yellow Wagtail.  A male Rustic Bunting.  A female Bar-tailed Godwit.  I was feeling a little melty-faced, I can’t lie.

The view looking east from Northwest Ridge on a nice day.  A glut of Whiskered Auklets nest on this hillside in rock crevices.

Over the next couple weeks camp was set up.  Temporary, canvas-covered weatherports were erected for food storage and for Hannah and Sarah, the Canadians doing auklet studies for much of the summer.  A shower stall was erected, an outhouse set up.  The main structures were the sleeping cabin and main cabin, which included a fully-functioning kitchen (sans refrigerator) and stored a lot of work-related gear.  The camp was solar-powered for basic electricity needs (computers, ipods, camera batteries, etc.).  Heating was with kerosene.  Cooking was with propane.  Considering where we were, it was a really sweet living situation.

Wow, that is one of the most boring paragraphs I’ve ever written…but I feel it was necessary.  After a couple days we started with actual fieldwork and thus began the slow blurry smear of hiking, shivering, sweating, falling, shitting, vomiting and crippling that in its sum total can be described as summer Y2K10.

One of the Forgotten Four Sandhill Cranes that summered on the island.  They were probably heading for the Kamchatka Peninsula off eastern Russia but were forced to spend the summer with us due to bad weather.  They were bummed.

Up The Birds! The World's Most Expensive Book Is...

Take a look for yourself!

BBC News - World's most expensive book goes up for sale

I Was Halfway Through The Best Years Of My Life

A male (cock?) Rock Ptarmigan on Adak.  Look at those eyecombs!  What a stud.

I’ll be the first one to admit that coming back to civilization (or as some call it, “reality”) is both a blessing and a curse.  It has the biggest perks and the deepest downfalls.  For those of you have never been swallowed by the wilderness and were reborne Victorious (or, shat out defeated) or I’ll give you the rundown of what you can expect:

Perks: Pretty girls and nice ladies, and sometimes, the chance to make some sweet, sweet’ lovin’ again.  Different faces than the same ugly mugs you’ve been forced to look at for the past 3+ months. The chance to obtain both new music and go to some real shows.  A kaleidoscope of different sorts of alcohol that all want to meet you.  Obviously friends, family, and the loved ones inbetween who have missed you of course play a huge factor in making life worth living.

Bummers: Life gets a whole lot more complicated.  Financial problems, bills and every fucking kind of wallet suck reappears.  Coming to terms with television is always a painful chore.  You are forced to interact with countless numbers of people you want nothing to do with.  You are surrounded by a thousand different things that just squash any kind of stoke you can muster…pollution, urban sprawl, news of any kind….perhaps most obviously your social skills seem retarded (in every sense of the word), as you have subconsciously adjusted to only interacting with a tiny group of people for months.

I’ve dealt with these issues time and time again (including now), and its just part of the price you pay for the privilidge of getting to go to these places.

Ashore on Attu Island.

Anyways.  After leaving Adak we island-hopped west along the chain, stopping at Kanaga, Kiska and Agattu to drop off field camps.  A couple of the skiff trips from the Tiglax were experiences I’d rather forget (because I was absolutely convinced that I was going to die)….which was possible, because of the face-melting seabirds that began to appear as we worked our way out west.  Ancient Murrelets, Tufted Puffins, Laysan Albatrosses and Short-tailed Shearwaters appeared first, then came Horned Puffins, Least, Crested and Parakeet Auklets, Thick-billed Murres, Red Phalaropes, Black-footed Albatrosses, Fork-tailed Storm-Petrels…..what I’m trying to say is that it was pretty sweet.  On top of all this avian goodness were Dahl’s Porpoises, Humpback, Minke and Sperm Whales, and Orcas!  Fucking Orcas!  Its rare that I get so giddy from a life mammal, but they’re a big deal I reckon.

Horned Puffin!

Sorry Franklin.  They do make better national birds than turkeys.

After dropping off Rob (Willie Nelson lookalike and member of the All-Star Salton Sea Burrowing Owl crew of Y2K8) at Agattu, the weather didn’t look good for a Buldir landing…so we had no choice but to land on Attu Island to do some birding.  I was beside myself.  Had Douglas Adams been there, he would have said that I boggled.  I couldn’t believe I was going to Attu, one of the most inaccessible and inhospitable birding hotspots that is considered to be American soil.  At the very end of the Aleutian chain, Attu is notorious for its ridiculous vagrants that have been seen there every year for as long as its been birded….so it was a pretty sweet bonus to end up there.  Attu was also the site of a large, bloody WWII battle between Americans and Japanese occupation forces, which only adds an entirely new sense of gravity (Midwayesque) to the place.

Turns out we didn’t see a whole lot though.  The birding group that had been there before us apparently had some good birds (including the first North American record of Solitary Snipe), but they purposely refused to tell us for some reason, which is one of the capital crimes in the birding world.  One of guys at the Coast Guard station there (which is closing this month) mentioned that a White-tailed Eagle had been living there for some time, but again, no luck…..we were obliged by a couple flocks of Bramblings though, which I certainly couldn’t complain about.  Massacre Bay also harbored the only Aleutian Terns I saw the entire summer, so Attu was certainly a worthwhile stop….

Fishing off Attu Island, with accompanying gull-fulmar cloud.

You wouldn't think it, but Glaucous-winged Gulls are one of the top avian predators in the Aleutians.  The number of storm-petrels and auklets they eat must be staggering.

When the winds and the seas calmed a bit, we headed back to Buldir, the westernmost and most remote camp that the refuge was operating…and more importantly, my home for the summer.

In even more egotistical news, we have crested the 200 post here at BB&B, a momentous milestone.  Whiskey will be consumed tonight.

It's ok to do embarrassing things on Attu Island.  Behind me is the WWII runway and Massacre Bay.

Something So Offending As You

The (charming) old pet cemetary on Adak Island.

It makes sense, in the long run, to get some basic facts down on the table here…so here we go…

The Aleutians are a long chain of volcanic islands, stitched along the Pacific Rim’s famed Ring Of Fire.  They stretch from all the way from just off the tip of the Alaska Peninsula all the way out to Attu Island, a distance of about a thousand miles.  In previous ice ages, when the seas were lower, the Aleutians acted as a land bridge connecting Russia and Alaska.  It’s thought that the New World came to be inhabited by people through this link.

A male White-winged Crossbill in Homer.  He made my eyes bleed.

They islands lie considerably south of the Arctic Circle, so it can get damn windy and cold, but the weather was definitely bearable (this does not apply in winter though).  At least, it was not much worse than the weather on top of Mt. Wrightson or Carr Peak in southeast Arizona.  There are no bears or moose on any of them (or Aurora Borealis, for that matter).  Caribou have been introduced to a couple, as have foxes and rats.  Foxes and rats can take huge tolls on nesting birds, so the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge (my employer who I do not represent here in any way shape or form) have been actively attempting to remove them for a number of years now.  But the whole reason I’m up here at all are the millions of birds that use this area.  A vast array of seabirds nest here…..cormorants, gulls, kittiwakes, jaegers, auklets, murres, murrelets, puffins, storm-petrels…the list goes on and on.  The albatross and shearwaters that forage between the islands breed further south (Hawaii, New Zealand, etc.), and the many sandpipers and waterfowl that pass through during migration are on their way to/from Russia and Alaska.  Relatively few songbird species breed, but those that do (“Pacific” Wren, Song Sparrow, Lapland Longspur, Gray-crowned Rosy-finch, Snow Bunting) seem to do well, as their only native predators in much of the chain are Peregrine Falcons and Common Ravens, who usually seem to be preoccupied with larger things.

Of course, one of the huge draws of the western Aleutians to birders is its proximity to Russia.  Old World birds that are almost impossible to find in the rest of the United States can show up out here with regularity during migration.  So to a birder coming from the Lower 48, getting paid to live in the Western Aleutians is a dream come true  (scratch that….a birder’s wet dream come true…yeah, I went there) especially when you take into account that most of the birders who find their way to Attu pay an exorborant sum to do so.  Oh, and NO you cant see Russia from anywhere, goddamn it.

Ok.  Now you are all experts on the region.  

 Adak Island's Clam Lagoon.  Back in May, it was chock full of Kittlitz's Murrelets.

So all the way back in May, I got to spend a few days in Homer, which is advertised by a lot of people as being one of the best towns in Alaska (I can neither confirm or deny that). The refuge has its headquarters here though.  Some casual birding around town was productive.  Hello Trumpeter Swan.  It is nice to meet you.  Oh, hello there White-winged Crossbill.  It is nice to meet you too.  And hello to all you fabulous Northwestern Crows.

After leaving Homer in May, I flew out to Adak Island, in the central Aleutians.  This is where my Odyssey of nerd-dom really began.  Adak is an old Navy base which was abandoned by the military some time ago, after the Cold War had a chance to thaw out.  Bad puns aside, its now a bit of ghost town, although about 100 people live there and it gets a lot of visitors in the form of caribou hunters, birders and fisher-people.  

Harlequin Ducks are common in much of the Aleutians, although they do not breed here.  

When I first stepped foot out there, I walked around in a kind of giddy haze.  I didn’t really know what to expect.  As I stepped out of the airport terminal, a Rock Ptarmigan flew overhead.  Sick.  Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches and Lapland Longspurs sang from…everywhere.  So sick.  It was really hard to get any work done with all of these birds around.  A Hawfinch in town was my first Siberian vagrant of the trip, and also the only one I got to see.  I don’t quite know why it was bothering to eat birdseed….it’s bill looked fit to crush human skulls.

Rock Sandpiper territorial displays are hilarious.  They kinda just wave one wing around at other sandpipers around.  Its pretty great.

The birding was really good.  Other highlights included dozens of Marbled and Kittlitz’s Murrelets (which we could see from the road), Arctic Loons, Tufted Duck, Red-faced Cormorant, Bar-tailed Godwits, Arctic Terns, Common Redpoll, etc. etc.  All these birds were crippling me, and at times I was at an absolute and profound loss at taking in everything.  I just never really ever thought I’d have any business being in the Aleutians.  I’ve heard about Attu Island and its jaw-dropping roster of vagrants for as long as Ive been birding, so it was a pretty uncanny place to find myself.  After a few days the Buldir crew, the Kiska crew and the Agattu crew jumped onto the Tiglax with a bunch of fox trappers to be shipped out for the most bizarre summer I’ve ever had.

Look at this shit!  The Aleutians are incredible.

Sex Without Purity

Sending out the Agattu Island camp back in May.

So, I just bought tickets to a couple of punk shows...Bad Religion, Bouncing Souls, Off With Their Heads, Dead To Me, Cobra Skulls...it's been a long time coming.  I havent seen live music since...um...February.  Lets face it, February was a long time ago.  I would even go so far as to say that it boggles the mind.  Mind.  Boggling.  And what better way to start the fall on a positive note to go see one of the best punk rock bands of all time?  That band being, of course, Bad Religion...why, the very thought of it makes my heart go pitter-patter.

Man, its kind of a bummer to go months without getting to nerd out on bands with anybody.  Paul, who was on Buldir for two weeks, had a deep and intense love for The Clash, but other than some of our conversations most of my nerdness that Ive indulged in over the year has been firmly in the vein of birds.

Right.  I'm still kind of decompressing from the whirlwind of the last few months.  Jesus....I don't even know where to begin, really....so we'll just take it as it comes I suppose.  My underlings at the BB&B headquarters have not gotten back to their old form yet, and The Great Ornithologist Felonious Jive is always off drinking whiskey somewhere, so it will take a while.  But its great to be back!

Crested and Least Auklets loitering at Buldir Island's Main Talus, dreading the thought of being swallowed by a Glaucous-winged Gull.