All The Brutal Tactics That You Always Employ

The Aleutian subspecies of Pacific Wren (juvenile) and Song Sparrow (adult), whom I asked to pose together for your convenience. You're welcome. Photographed on Buldir Island, Alaska.

There's been a lot of bird-blog-buzz lately about the Ivory Gull down in Arroyo Grande, and inevitably the larger discussion has been brought up about how there have been so many records (comparatively) of them in the lower 48 in the last decade, which may be indicative of some foul shit going down in their normal haunts.

Rather than play Devil's Advocate and discuss how dubious it is to draw any conclusions from this tiny sample size (14 south of Canada...much more interesting would be looking at numbers recorded in someplace like Newfoundland, where they are more prone to occur), lets accept the theory that they are having a more difficult time finding food and are putting more time and energy going to faroff places in search of delicious dead things. This, of course, is almost completely attributable to global warming, as Ivory Gulls are one of the few lucky birds who have never been threatened by direct habitat loss or overhunting.

The question is......what are you going to do about it?

The view from the Fish And Wildlife Service bunkhouse in Homer, AK. The fog is concealing Kachemak Bay, which is probably brimming with Stellar's and King Eiders at the moment.

The excuses people often use in situations like this (where it is obviously impossible for a single person to solve everything) is that there is nothing they can do, that the odds are too stacked against us, that people don't care, or that only elected officials will be able to do anything to make any difference. This, my friends, is lazy, self-serving, defeatist bullshit. There are few things that irk me more than my otherwise bright (and vivid!) friends being resigned to not even attempting to make a dent in the world they live in.

Need an example? Ok, let's take the United States. First of all, we are not a colony of England. That was pretty big. We are also not a Confederacy. Also huge. Slavery has been abolished. We have fundamental legal rights. We defeated the Japanese, then the Nazis in WWII. Women can vote. Women can have abortions. We live in an unsegregated society, with equal rights. Its OK to be gay. You can adhere to any religion you want, or none at all. We have a black president who actually took office in a legitimate fashion. Do you get where I'm going with this?

This one-footed Northern Fulmar frequently flew by my murre/kittiwake plots on Buldir Island. If you are ever down in the dumps and want to cash in your chips....remember.....somewhere out there, against all odds, is a one-footed fulmar kicking a whole lot of ass.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no patriot and am all-too-aware of all the other things we have to be ashamed of as Americans (really, painfully so), but these are not events and freedoms to be taken for granted, especially when you look at how the majority of the people in the world are living. Lots of sacrifice here. Lost lives. You get the picture.

My point? Do something, regardless of the size and scope. It's not all hopeless. Jesus...start a garden, get some solar panels, ride a bike, buy local, watch where your food comes from, consume less, get involved with one of the many great organizations that are trying to make the world a better place for Ivory Gulls and your kids. If everyone walked around with the same hopeless, cynical attitude, saying remarkably dumb shit like "Only the politicians can do anything about that", that would be a world none of us would want to live in. Nazi Germany anyone? Yeah.

Stay posi ya'll!

Fear And Loathing In Arroyo Grande

Oh, Sweet Jesus....what have I done to deserve this?  I feel like my soul has just been buried under a mountain of rancid guano, with no higher purpose than a slow and disgusting decay into infinity.  I do not number among the lucky few who belong to that higher state of mortals, those who have gazed upon the Ivory Gull.  After being seen on and off throughout the day Saturday, Handsome ("kind of a dick") Dan and myself made our way down to Arroyo Grande on Sunday with high hopes to see this heart-stoppingly rare and good-looking bird.  Its presence was only announced a couple days previously, and Saturday was the first day where it had been seen by anybody other than the lucky bastard who found the bird earlier in the week.
      Arriving shortly after noon, we were cheerily informed that it had been seen as recently as 10:30 in the morning.  And so we sat by that stinking sea lion carcass (the only dependable spot to find the bird).  And we sat.  And then....we sat. One o'clock came and went.....then two...then three....and by four we walked north to the pier, hoping to find it on the beach.  But alas, there was no Ivory Gull.  Typically, the sky broke as we were the furthest from the car that we could be, and so we had to trudge back, defeated, with out heads hung low in a rainstorm.
      After some surprisingly good Thai food (props to Thai Dheva on Grande Ave), we went up to San Luis Obispo to have a couple drinks while waiting for some of Dan's relatives let us crash for the night, because we knew we had to look for the bird again in the morning. But his cousin denied us, then his uncle denied us, and my friend who lived there was out of town......so it was back to Arroyo Grande.  Upon pulling into a motel parking lot, we watched some cops tase someone.  In a rainstorm.  The guy was screaming bloody murder, which seemed to stem from a mix of searing pain and being strung out on some shitty drugs.  It took almost 30 minutes for the cops, then the paramedics, to even touch the guy.  He just laid in a puddle screaming obscenities at all of them while they stood a few feet away and watched.
     And so we went to another motel. After checking in, we rolled to a liquor store and witnessed a strange middle-aged man get extremely heated with the cashier for charging him too much for the towering pile of porn that he was buying.  It was.....bizarre.
     Arroyo Grande, it seems, is not for the faint of heart.
     A little background on this. Ivory Gulls are small and completely white as adults.  As pure as the driven snow.  Angelic, even.  There is no readily accessible place in North America where you can reliably see one, and it is safe to say that even most dedicated birders will never get to see one.  They spend most of their time in the high Canadian Arctic, amongst the pack ice and polar bears. The Arroyo Grande bird was only the second ever to be found in California. On top of all this, like their brethren the polar bear, Ivory Gulls are extremely dependent on the existence of an icy world to do what they do, and with a rapidly warming climate....well, they aren't really expected to be thriving in the near future.
      We got back to the beach before 7 the next morning, and had another fruitless wait.  It seems the bird is gone.  It was a crushing blow.  We went and birded Avila Beach and Morro Bay to console ourselves, which was fun (Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow, Thayer's Gull, Merlin, Red Knot, California Thrasher, etc.), but we could not shake the horrible feeling of wasting a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see this, the birdiest of birds. Dan wept openly for the entire car ride back to San Francisco.
      For you nonbirders, perhaps the meaning of all this hasn't set in for you. Let me explain, let me attempt to relate this experience to something more "normal" people could understand. If you're running a marathon, it would be like leading the entire race only to have someone dash out of the crowd and break your legs 50 yards short of the finish line, a la Nancy Kerrigan.  It is like climbing Everest, only to run out of oxygen just below the summit....and then suffocating up there.  Like having your team up 3-0 in the World Series, only to lose it all in 12 innings in Game 7...and I'm talking about being a player, not a fan.  Like losing the Superbowl 0-49.  Like winning a presidential election, only to be swindled into having your evil half-wit competitor be handed it all on a silver platter (hello year 2000).  The complete demoralization, the tremendous sense of loss, the deep tragedy of it all is hard to put into mere words.
      But life goes on, doesn't it? You win some, you lose some. But believe me when I tell you, things will never be the same.