The 5MR (Bourbon) Challenge and The Quicksilver Cat

Acorn Woodpecker is one of the signature species in my 5MR - most of what hasn't been paved over is oak woodland. This one was at Guadalupe Oak Grove Park, which is brimming with confiding ACWOs.

The 5MR reigns supreme. So much of my birding this year is done within my 5MR...who could have seen this coming? Not I.

I have embraced it.

Have you?

Many birders enjoy the competitive aspect of birding...while I can understand that, I don't watch birds as a result of some misplaced sense of competitiveness, or need to measure the length of my list against that of others in order to wrench pleasure out of birdwatching...how embarrassing is that? Most of the birding competition I engage in these days is with myself...I'm not going to go chase a freaking Mandarin Duck or a European Goldfinch just to pad my eBird top 100 numbers. Don't people have better things to do? 5MR birding is pretty much the antithesis of rabid competitive county birding or large-scale big year horseshit, and I think that is one of the many reasons a lot of people have gotten on board with 5MR in the past few months.

That said, the real question for 2019 is...how many species can I see in my 5MR this year? Much of my birding has turned into a sustained campaign of seeing how much avian goodness I can wring out of my radius before December 31, though what I'm really looking for is new 5MR birds more than just year birds. I've missed some uncommon/rare stuff that will definitely be challenging to find later in the year (Solitary Sandpiper, Cassin's Kingbird, Yellow-breasted Chat, Swamp Sparrow, etc.) and some stuff I will absolutely have another shot at later (any non-Canadian goose, any teal, American Wigeon). The most gut-wrenching miss involved a bird I actually saw...Officer Stahl aided me in some intense 5MR birding back in March, and he found a Varied Thrush while standing next to me...but I only caught a glimpse of an orange flash as the bird flew away, never to be seen again.

Life is pain.

Right. I've described my radius here before, so am going to give that a break...I'll just say I'm not going to get 200 species here in a year, I don't think it is feasible without being unemployed/retired/completely socially isolated/obsessive-compulsive to a degree that even most birders would consider alarming. I can live with that...not everyone can live next to a major birding destination or momentous migrant trap...in fact, most of us don't. Heck, I still haven't seen 200 in my radius, period, and it is still very rewarding to bird.

That said, I'm checking in at 161 for 2019. On this date last year, I was at 143. Seventeen species were completely new for the 5MR.

While Horned Grebe are not rare in my county, they definitely are for my 5MR. I successfully chased this bird at Los Gatos Creek County Park, and went on to find Eared Grebe (new), Long-billed Dowitcher (new) and Greater Yellowlegs (new for the year) at the same site. It was a glorious time in 5MR birding...never have I been so chuffed to see a drab Long-billed Dowitcher.

One morning I went out to my Grasshopper Sparrow spot on the outer rim of my 5MR and was amazed to see a Swainson's Hawk fly by. This is a rarity in the county away from their one known nest site, which is not in my 5MR. For some reason this immature had been in the general area for a couple weeks, but I was still shocked to see it. Definitely one of the best birds this spring. Photographed at Santa Teresa County Park.

Not that it's news to any of you, but winter is long gone and spring, at least here, isn't long for this world either. There are still one or two lingering Buffleheads in the ponds behind my house (where this photo was taken) but I expect them to be outta here any day now. 

So, in other words, I'm kicking ass. It's encouraging, and it only makes me want more.

So why not give myself some extra motivation? A little reward if I continue to flog the shrubbery with such success?

What about...heroin?

Ahhhh, heroin. That's the stuff. Talk about giving yourself a well deserved prize, know what I'm saying?

A couple of you probably do, but most of you probably don't...and I don't either. Never tried it, don't know where to get it. Well, I have some street corners in mind (the Tenderloin hasn't changed that much recently, has it?), but it's not something that runs in my friend circles these days. Like, say if I did have to go out and try to "score" (do users really say that? or just on tv?), what the hell would I call it? I don't know the street slang. Would someone who sells heroin actually sell heroin to some random who says they are looking for "heroin"? I doubt it.

But I digress. I am not only a pillar of the birding community (pillar #7), I am a parent, after all. I have to set an example, and this isn't the way to do it. No...so I will promote something that surely has never killed anybody or ruined anyone's lives...alcohol.

What did you expect? Have you seen the title of this blog? It's time to put my liver where my mouth is.

I have breeding Lark Sparrows in my radius, how sick is that? I don't know about you but most birders I meet love these things, and I am no different. Is this one of the best sparrows? Top 3? Seems like it would be a Top 5 for almost everyone. Photographed at the secret-not-secret spot in my radius.

This bobcat was also at the secret-not-secret spot. Bobcats are one of my fav mammals and it's great to have them so close by. I also added another kind of cat to my radius list the other night...and it was not Felis catus.

I went out after sunset to get my 5MR Common Poorwill for the year (great success), on a trail I had never been on before. Walking in, I passed signs about mountain lions being present, which wasn't a surprise considering the good habitat for them and the amount of use this trail gets; I had also previously found a lion-killed deer just a couple miles away, next to a different trail. While waiting for the poorwills to start calling, I was surrounded by three different groups of deer, which made me think about lions again a few more times. After listening to the poorwills for a while I headed back to the car, using my awesome mega-torch to check for any interesting wildlife on the trail...I had strongly considered not bringing it and just using my shitty headlamp instead, but opted to take it at the last minute. 

I passed some more deer close to the trail and was cruising along when I suddenly came up on some big, bright eyeshine about 50 feet away...quite possibly less. It was definitely not another deer, but it was so close and the "eyes" were so large that my first thought was that it cannot possibly be a large animal, because it was certainly not a deer and nothing else could possibly just be sitting there, a few feet off the trail...maybe it was just a couple pieces of reflector tape? But then then it blinked, and then it moved. It was a fucking adult mountain lion! The lion unhurriedly turned around and slinked up the little streambed it had been sitting in, then stopped at a comfortable distance away (for me, anyways) while I passed it.

I have no doubt it was waiting to ambush a deer on the trail I was on. It didn't do anything I considered threatening (I considered yelling at it to encourage it to back the fuck off, which is what you are supposed to do, but it didn't seem necessary), but it was extremely close. Pretty sure it is accustomed to seeing people and I doubt it would have moved if I had not lit it up with my light...it certainly knew I was there before I was aware of it, and it was definitely not in the process of moving away when I spotted it. Some guy was 4 or 5 minutes ahead of me on the trail, and I suspect he may have walked right past the waiting lion...within 10 feet of him...without knowing it. I think I would have done the same if I had been pointing my flashlight in a different direction at that moment.

I'm 99% sure nothing would have happened had I walked right up to the lion, but in theory I could have been killed by a mountain lion solely because of 5MR birding (how embarrassing!) and Flycatcher Jen would have to live with that.

Chaetura does not exactly trigger the same blast of adrenaline as Puma, but that's ok. Vaux's Swift is another signature 5MR species here. We have swifts galore, which is pretty unique for the region. Photographed at Guadalupe Oak Grove Park.

In 2018 I recorded 163 species in my 5MR...not a remarkable total by any account, but solid. With 161 species so far in 2019, I am guaranteed to surpass 2018's total by a comfortable margin....but by how much?

I'm no longer so poor that I have to buy Beam all the time, but I don't have a trust fund lying around to take my love of whiskey to the top shelf...it's not common that I get a rye or bourbon over $40. That said, what I am shooting for here calls for a nicer bottle than usual. So if I reach 185 species for the year, or manage to reach 200 for my radius (lifetime) by December 31, I will buy a celebratory bottle of Black Skimmer Bourbon, the perfect marriage of a good bird and a good liquor. I have been eyeing Cutwater's Black Skimmer Bourbon for some time now, and I thought their Black Skimmer Rye was great! If I can achieve both milestones before the end of the year, well then I will have to buy another celebratory bottle....but of what? Any suggestions? That would level my radius to a new caliber, so I'd like to try something else new.

So there you have it...my 5MR birding this year will have additional fuel behind it, in the form of some #treatyoself whiskey. Happy to hear what your favorite not-super-popular ryes or bourbons are in case I have to go for a new bottle!

Anyways, as I sit here polishing off a bottle of Black Feather bourbon (recommended!), here are some more radius birds til next time...

Black-throated Gray Warbler is an underrated bird and one that I'm happy is an expected migrant in my 5MR. Yes their attire was put together in the spirit of the Economy of Style, but they are sharper and more distinct looking than many other warblers, and there is practically nothing you can confuse one with if you see it well. And the yellow supraloral spot...what a great touch. Just think, in a parallel universe somewhere the only difference in all of existence is that spot is white instead of yellow....what a trip. Photographed at Guadalupe Oak Grove Park.

A species I didn't realize I needed for 5MR until after I saw them here was Wild Turkey. They were purposefully introduced to California as game birds and have become fairly common around the bay area, but I didn't see them in 5MR (or at least, never eBirded them) until this year. I'm not that into introduced birds (obvi) but turkeys are much more bizarre and fascinating than most. What their impacts are on the grasslands and woodlands where they are found are relatively unknown...not all introduced species have the same impacts (I don't think the Spotted Doves introduced to California caused any ecosystems to collapse), but turkeys are big, eat many different things, and there are a lot of them. Photographed on the Calero Creek Trail.

I think most birders have a few species that make them really appreciate the area where they live...for me, Golden Eagle is one of these. Golden Eagles are common enough in the greater bay area that seeing one in the right habitat is more of an expectation than a surprise, which is a luxury most birders do not have. I have seen them at a number of places in my 5MR this year. Photographed on Hicks Road.

Boy Scout Woods: Facemelt, A Lifer, The Faint Scent of The F-Word

On the first morning of sweet sweet UTC birding, This Machine Nate, Officer Shaw and I headed straight to Boy Scout Woods on High Island. Upon getting out of the car, it was obvious there were a lot of birds around; it was happening. The first (and last) Yellow-throated Warbler of the trip was out along the road as soon as we left the parking lot.

The crowds of birders that I expected did not disappoint...there were so many birders....or, in festival parlance, so. many. birders. It was ghastly. But the birding....ohhhhhhhh the birding was off the chain. The cold front that just blew through left hordes of migrants in its wake...there were birds everywhere. It was everything I had hoped for and more. I even managed to find my lifer Swainson's Warbler there that first morning (no photos), which was a huge relief...in part because I didn't want to owe someone an hj. Meeting the big brown ground warbler with the long bill and rusty cap was a very pleasant experience, and like the multiple others we would see later in the week, it was within a few feet of a Wood Thrush. You show me a Wood Thrush and I will show you a Swainson's Warbler. I'm already working on the paper, don't steal my idea. We also found our first Cerulean Warblers of the trip, which we would go on to see somewhere almost every day we were there.

Boy Scout is probably the best known Audubon sanctuary/birding site on High Island, though arguably not the best to bird - the habitat there undoubtedly has huge value as a stopover site, but much of it is fairly homogeneous and doesn't have a whole lot of openings/edge habitat, which can make viewing canopy species difficult. The ponds/drips are nice though, for sure, if you can cut through the Geri to see them (we never bothered trying to get into the photography blind). So much of the sanctuary is great for Catharus and ground-loving warblers, but due to the closed canopy one has to work a bit harder for many of the other warblers that prefer to be above eye level. I went three times, so that makes me an expert, right? I also highly recommend birding the road/across the street from the entrance.

Another afternoon Dipper Dan and I spent some time at the "grandstands" near the entrance, a target of much scorn from some birders but placed in a good spot to see birds. A Scarlet Tanager was coming down ridiculously low to feed on precious mulberries, repeatedly within 10 feet of me...what a crippler. It dropped a mulberry on my head so I crushed it.

We saw lots of Indigo Buntings every day, including some pretty big flocks. Stunners.

I know, I know, this isn't a good picture, but bear with me. On the first morning, this Painted Bunting dropped into the trees across from the sanctuary entrance (I believe this is known as "the barnyard", and demands to be birded) and immediately started passing out - it clearly had just finished its Gulf crossing and needed to recuperate - too tired to feed. I don't think I've seen anything quite like that before. We then went around the corner to go after a Cerulean Warbler that This Machine had seen, and was greeted by this bird instead...

A Prothonotary Warbler falling asleep on the ground! Keep in mind this is all happening at about 8:00 AM in the morning, these aren't birds taking mid-day naps in unusually visible places. I would not dare say the F-word here, but with the numbers of birds present we would see at High Island that day and birds doing crazy stuff like this, the smell of F-word was certainly in the air.

Prothonotary eventually woke up to do some preening and light foraging, glad we didn't watch it expire on the ground. We would find no more Prothonotaries after the first day.

This is no ordinary Little Blue Heron, this is a Little Blue Heron (present in this same pond for days) that Geri proclaimed to be a Reddish Egret, the first ever seen in Boy Scout Woods! Hooray!

Kentucky Warblers were common all week long at many sites. I haven't seen hella before this trip, but now I can say I have seen hella and I had a great time doing it.

I just know you were waiting to see some Geri...here they are! I think they were looking at a Blackburnian Warbler.

As This Machine pointed out, how about getting Swainson's Warbler, Swainson's Thrush and Swainson's Hawk all at the same spot? We enjoyed triple Swainson's at Boy Scout our first morning there. Overall we did not fare well with raptors on the trip, but that is not something I am about to whinge about.

The number of birds on the ground at times was staggering. Thrushes, catbirds, Brown Thrashers, Ovenbirds, Hooded and Kentucky Warblers, etc., were ceaselessly thrashing and sifting through the leaf litter or parading around on lawns and paths. On several occasions over the week, at Boy Scout and other spots, there were simply too many birds to look at, which is a phenomenon I generally reserve only for birding in the Neotropics. Wood Thrushes were abundant throughout the week, rivaling Swainson's Thrushes in numbers.

The crowds here are no joke.

Another Scarlet Tanager shot, just because.

All photos were taken at Boy Scout Woods, or across the street from it. Much more Texas material coming up!

In The Absence of Hawks

Drive out in the darkness and turn the dial until you find the preacher. The one who spits fire. Turn him down to a low flame. Take only the fire and leave the fuel for others.

Head east until the exit where the bloated bovine lies between the off-ramp and the interstate. A sandy road winds north from the large pullout at the end of the ramp. A popular spot for long haulers to spend the night, as evidenced by the dozens of plastic bottles filled with piss strewn about. Trucker bombs, the colloquial term. They begin to peter out as you move further from the pavement. A final cluster of them at about the distance a grown man could throw a quart bottle filled with liquid. Head north.

Now it is just the sand and the preacher. An occasional nighthawk erupting from beside the path and twisting in the headlights.

Bump out along the creosote as the mountains around you begin to take form.  Change the station. Find the cantina horns that stumble woozily out of the speakers, swaying with the truck. Attempt a sip of coffee. Scan the area for your mark. There, the stake and the flag. The chair in the dirt. Cut the engine but let the horns sway some more.

It is early May in the Little Colorado Desert, and somehow someone is paying me to watch hawks from this particular point on the earth. There has been a proposed energy project for this area. Two large towers, 300 feet tall and topped with bulbs full of oil, with mirrors surrounding the towers and aimed at the the bulbs. The concentrated heat of the mirrors boil the oil and turbines are spun and energy is generated, stored, sold and distributed. This is the plan. But first the land and sky must be studied.

The authorities that grant permission for this type of commerce require data. There is concern that this area is within a migration corridor, that great rivers of hawks and songbirds use it on their movements to and from breeding grounds. There is concern that golden eagles, a bird not endangered but still heavily fortified by law, nest in the nearby mountains and hunt this patch of desert. There is concern that the mirrors and the boiling bulbs will interfere with these movements, this hunting. There are disconcerting rumors of raptors perching on the bulbs and their talons fusing to the glass.

Rumors that the overhead travellers mistake the mirrors for water and descend into the superheated air mass and are baked to exhaustion or death and plummet into their reflections...

Have another sip.

All is calm at this primordial hour. Indistinct forms coalescing into Something. Speciation. The articulation that light brings. Hear the kit foxes yipping, the den we found earlier in the month only a few hundred feet away. Jeez, look at all these holes. A conspiracy of burrows. And then two big ears and eyes staring from out of an opening. You’ve watched this family come and go, heart aching at the sounds of their calls, the magic trick of their disappearing into the earth. The wish to do the same as the sun climbs up and looks at you with all its might. The Grand Inquisitor in the sky, forcing confessions as it tracks westward. Eventually, you will tell it everything.

Exit the truck and start the hawk sit. Eight hours to go.

Every couple minutes scan the sky, interrogate the horizon. Repeat for the rest of the day. This is the elemental core of the job. To be a pair of eyes looking through a pair of eyes. The basic tool and assumption of scientific inquiry. To be eyes cut away from the heart. To be the eyes beyond your eyes. An eye distilled.

No hawks yet, as is normal for this hour.  A short walk to stretch the legs, achy from the time in the truck. An irregularity in the sand right below the next foot fall. On my knees and a fringe-toed lizard is blanketed under the sand, sister witness to the dawn, her eyes and mouth exposed periscope-like. This was another magic trick I saw the other day. A lizard darted across the sand and I gave chase. It crested a small dune, I did the same...and it suddenly wasn’t there. No bushes nearby to hide in. Bolts of sand rolled out in all directions. You simply saw it and then you didn’t. There are its tracks and there they are not. Scoop up the sand at the end of its trail and there it is. Rabbit in the hat.

Scan the sky. Trace the ridge with your binoculars. Dopplered sound of shifting rocks, maybe borregos picking their way through the skyline. Search the mountains face. A fissure of small cobbles, pebbles cascading down a steep ravine and terminating in a rubble pile. Lazy column of dust climbing out of the pile. The top becomes the bottom.

You feel it, the first rays of sun. The verdins voice, wilted laser, is this suntouch put to sound.

The soft, disembodied call of the LeConte’s thrasher, mimid of the sand barrens, starts up. Slight breeze and the sound of dunes moving against themselves, grating their grains into even smaller pieces. My shadow is thrown behind me long and skeletal. Spindly alien, marooned and starving, reduced to bones.

The sun is welcome and warming at this hour. A sip of coffee as the palo verde trees burn pink.

The first vultures of the day begin to move. They are floating off their night roosts and heading towards the carcass near the freeway. It’s been a project of theirs for days now, this roadside windfall. A favored breakfast stop before the real heat begins and rising thermals make flying easier.

A train of Swainson’s hawks is spotted about 300 hundred meters away to the southeast. Count them, gauge their height, scribble down the numbers, their direction of movement. Soak up their company, their beauty as they drift north. Impossible to sever the eyes completely from the the heart. Who would want to? I know many who have. A dark bird leads them, light morphs follow and another dark bird brings up the rear. Much melanin in these bookends. Intrepid travellers nearing the end of their northward migration. Perhaps the pampas of Argentina lie at the other end of this eternal loop as this species follows the bloom of grasshoppers across the hemispheres.

Pour another cup of coffee as you consider another traveller that passed through this desert, Juan Bautista de Anza and his band of friars, families and cattle. Road signs commemorate this hero and his historic trail throughout this area. A freeway now runs where he once rode. A car ride of a few hours takes you from Nogales to San Francisco, a journey that took him and his crew three and a half months to complete. On his trek, occasionally a bovine falters and is left behind, expired and bloating in the sun. Vultures wobbling above the carcass, learning that food sometimes follows in the wake of these strange, helmeted men on horseback. The party continues through the desert, encounters a tortoise lumbering amongst the wiry shrubs. In an attempt to lift the spirits of the expedition, Juan Bautista halts the party and has them surround the animal. The captain removes his helmet and places it on top of the ancient reptile. The sight of this slow moving beast capped with the high-ranking officers military hat brings delight to the party, the women giggling and the children bright-eyed and renewed. Juan Bautista makes a comparison between the devotion of their chore, to bring true religion and superior meats to San Francisco, and the nature of this unfaltering and consistent beast. The armor on its back that protects it from predators akin to the Faith that each person in the party holds close to their hearts that helps them thwart the temptations of the Devil in all its forms. Bautista ends this weighty moment by removing the helmet from the tortoise and placing it on the head of a small boy. The crowd erupts in laughter and grows hysterical as the explorer picks up the boy and puts him atop the tortoise. Vayan subiendo! Bautista cries and a great release ripples through the crowd as the difficulty of their task, the solemnity with which they are executing it, is leavened with humor. Later, another tortoise is encountered and promptly slaughtered by the soldier at the rear of the guard, it’s meat served to the people in its own shell.

A low flying falcon shakes me from the time travel. She veers off her course and loops high in the air, peeling off south. Down the data goes. A quick scan and the vultures are moving in all directions now. Some go north, bound for Oregon Territory, unwavering in their course, others move in groups floating over the washes and along the highway. Locals. At this distance they look like giant black butterflies tottering against the mountains.

The heat is real now. The sun well above the horizon and my shadow grows squat. Walk back to the truck for a drink of water, maybe a little snack. Can’t find either of my half gallon jugs. Small flame of panic as I tear through the truck. Not a drop. Only what is left in my thermos, another half cup of scalding coffee for the remaining 6 hours. Not a problem, really. I’ve got gas in the tank, I can always leave early, compromise the data, seek hydration. No problem to stick it out either. Juan Bautista and his company weathered much worse. Hell, they didn’t even have the coffee. I pour a cup and let it cool in the shade behind the tire of the truck.

A long period of low activity follows. Mandate of the desert. The hours of siesta. The morning movements and dawn chorus give way to a hot baking silence that lasts until the late afternoon. An occasional murmur from the interstate. A harsh, hand-buzzer scold from the resident shrike, Lanius, the butcher, as it drifts past.  On the hunt, looking to build it’s larder. Macabre collection of small birds, rodents and insects impaled on the thorns of an ironwood tree or barbed wire fence. The conquistadors would’ve found a kindred spirit in this animal, its larder decorated with perforated victims. It’s inquisition era mode of meat curing. The gentle and welcome breeze begins to build, not yet a fury. Soon though, the plastic bags in the surrounding shrubs will fly sideways in the windwhip. Skeletal bushes will cartwheel past comically, just like tumbleweeds in an old western. Someone is mumbling, their voice distorted in the noon heat. It was you talking, to yourself.

I go to drink the cooled coffee. It is full of grit and still warm. I pour the last cup and put it in the truck to let it cool in there.

Four hours to go.

Take your mind off the water concerns and stretch the legs a bit. A vague path continues away east from the truck. There are parallel paths, spaced a few feet apart. In the more compact soil, the faintest suggestion of treadmarks. These are Patton’s tank trails, now some 70 years olds, the movements still readable on the land. This is where the great general trained his men for the desert battles in North Africa. For Rommel drives on deep into Egypt. A museum on the interstate nearby commemorates the training, a few retired and weathered tanks visible from the road. This is where Patton came to learn about the desert, to prepare for the heat, the light. To get his head ready for its shifting sands. His men stopped nearby here, where I am standing, in a wash, finding shade under the ironwood trees. Smoking with their backs against the tank. A man spots a tortoise trundling by, takes a long last drag and goes to the reptile. He picks it up and carries it back to the group, the animals face barely visible within its shell. The man holding the tortoise makes a crack about the shared resemblance of the reptile and Churchill. Someone puts a helmet on the tortoise and poses for the camera. The animal is offered a cigarette. Patton strolls up, the surprised men snapping to attention. The General orders that someone find enlistment papers for this new recruit and the men have a nervous laugh. A man offers up the Churchill connection to The General and Patton responds that he sees more likeness with the prime minister’s wife. The men howl, their love for this man and his gruff wisdom and surprising humor and humanity growing with each passing day. Patton comes over towards the tortoise, crouches beside it. He tells his men that their task isn’t too much different from this fella right here. Our duty is to survive in the desert, to persevere. To endure the elements and the enemy. Only we’re gonna have a helluva lot more firepower then our friend here. More howls, whoops. Now back to to it, men. We got a date with some Nazis. The men disperse, their wills steeled and spirits renewed.

Later in the week, during target practice, a tortoise is sighted and the tank turret swivels, the gun barrel leveling on the animal. The slow swinging of the head mirrors the arc of the turret. Laborious chewing of a low growing borage. The boom travels through the washes and up the ravines of the surrounding mountains and the pillar of dust climbs towards a group of vultures rocking quietly above the desert floor.

Occasionally I find tortoise scutes, pieces of the shell scattered in the sand. Old holes, cobwebbed and home now to other critters. Maybe there are tortoises here, underground. Buried timekeepers, made into examples of longevity and stalwart resolve over the centuries. Made into meals. Strange tradition of having metal helmets placed on them. Culinary tradition of being baked in their own carapace.

The last cup of coffee is long gone and my lips cracked from licking them, the wind wicking them. This wind keeps building out of the east. A river of trash floats above the freeway, plastic shopping bags moving erratically above the traffic, spiraling upward in the wakes of the semis. Dust devils build, wrapping up twigs, dirt and plastics in their helices. The sun has baked my head, cracked it as if were made of desiccated clay. Sudden, unshakable truths are allowed to flood into it. These dust devils, they are the departing souls of snakes. Recently dead, this is their spirits departing. But where do serpents go when they die?

And the rising sand itself, it is being deposited back on the top of the mountain. And by combined force of freeze/thaw, the hooves of sheep and The Hours, it will trickle down to the valley floor again. The mountain is turning upside down. The top becomes the bottom. Just as the dune moves, grain by grain, as a slow wave across the flats, the mountain rolls like a terrible cartwheel across the earth. I am looking at a giant hourglass, the seconds and the minutes flooding down all around me.

The crushing weight of time is sudden and visceral. A burden defined. And now that it is named, its tyranny is unbearable. In the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wilderness, a claustrophobic expanse is tightening around me. An eye boiled.

Beneath the sun, a Prairie Falcon cuts south through the middle of the mountain. Blood dribbles, tick tick, from a desert iguana in her talons. Its dangled body dripping, watering the sand below.

The Bra Collector, A Touch of Turd, The H-Word

When you see a bra strung up on a fence, that can only mean one thing...

...a Loggerhead Shrike has been very busy. Clearly mice and sparrows are not enough for this insatiable fiend.

This fearless, woman-eating shrike (which is pooping out woman in this very photo) was in the Robinson Road area near Rio Vista in Solano County, which is a fantastic area for grassland birds. I dipped on the reliable Mountain Plovers, but it was a very successful day otherwise.

Sometimes a combo just needs to be shown, despite the rubbish photo. This Ferruginous-Swainson's Hawk combo was unexpected, and very much appreciated. Swainson's overwinter in the state in low numbers, primarily in the Delta region. I would go on to see double-digit numbers of Ferruginous Hawks here that morning, as well as several Rough-legged Hawks, one of 2016's big dips. I don't think I've had all three [lovable/amazing/inspiring/thirst-quenching] of these Buteo species in one place before, stoked.

A few Burrowing Owls were holding it down as well. Note the turd in the bottom right...much like myself, the Burrowing Owl loves decorating the entrance of its home with turds.

After giving up on the plovers, I went north for a staked out Glaucous Gull on the side of Yolo Bypass. It was pretty amazing to see the bypass being fully utilized...to the west of the dike I was on it was dry, to the east it was an inland sea out to the horizon! Yolo Bypass exists to keep Sacramento and other cities from flooding; when there is a lot of precipitation in the northern half of the state, a series of weirs upstream divert water from the Sacramento River into the bypass, which is mostly farmland. The farmland floods, the cities don't. Anyways...I was able to haynor the Glaucous Gull from an excruciating distance, and eventually it flew in a bit closer to feed on a dead coot. Not only did this end my stupid stupid 5-year drought of not seeing Glaucous Gulls, this was my lifer adult. Siiiiiiiiick.

Other highlights that day were Surf and White-winged Scoters (the latter was another bird I somehow missed in 2016) from Sherman Island, and a huge Tricolored/Yellow-headed Blackbird flock in a feedlot on the way home. Good times in The Great Valley.

In between winter storms I went out to Richmond Marina to see if anything needed crushing. This Forster's Tern did.

As did this one. That's quite the glaucous upperwing.

This female Common Goldeneye threw its feet out to help brake for landing, which made for a quick tasty crush.

I think it is time to come clean...Aechmophorus make me uncomfortable sometimes, I will admit it. You know, they are totally entitled to do what they do, but when certain individuals are around me I just want to get the hell out of there...not that I'm a Aechmorphobe.

Take this bird for example. Bright yellow-orange bill, pale flanks...solid Clark's field marks. But the black cap is sitting right on top of the bird's eye, and the dark nape stripe has a lot of girth to it. I'm inclined to call this a Clark's x Western Grebe hybrid, and you know how I feel about dropping h-bombs. Both Aechmorphorus may look different in the winter than in summer, but I don't think Clark's broaden that nape stripe when temperatures drop.

Here is a typical winter Western, with paler lores and dusky cheeks.

Aesthetically this photo has nothing to offer, but it does give you a good comparison of the broad nape stripe of a Western Grebe (left) with the narrower stripe of a Clark's (right).

When I still lived in Albany, I tried a number of times to see the Burrowing Owl that lived next to the parking area for Albany Bulb. Who does not want to see a Burrowing Owl just down the road from their house? However, I failed repeatedly, and all I got was judgement from this Say's Phoebe.

Luckily, Say's Phoebe did not go home with the "bird of the day" award. Small numbers of crecca Green-winged Teal, presumably from Siberia, make their way to California every winter; they are easier to find than Tufted Ducks, but rarer than Eurasian Wigeon. This is no crecca though...this is crecca x carolinensis. Not something you see every day. Don't let your kids look at this image, as few photos have been taken of something so impure.

A nice, clear-cut intergrade. The white lines on the face are pretty weak (carolinensis), but the bird possesses both a strong white vertical breast bar (carolinensis) and horizontal scapular bar (crecca). Cool bird. Albany Mudflats, Albany, CA.

A State Bird, Spring Shorebirds and a Requirement for Avosex

Early in the spring, I lurked into the Central Valley, where an Emperor Goose would have been a welcomed year bird. Those of you who enjoy their schadenfreude would like to know that the bird decided to leave the night before, but it was a good sunset with lots of Cackling and Greater White-fronted Geese to sort through.

Well, here we are. June. California's best spring in memory has come and gone, with May bolstering the Vague Runt roster with another White Wagtail, Kentucky Warblers, a Buff-breasted Flycatcher, an inner circle Pterodroma caught in a mist net (which is a Meguh) and another mainland appearance by the Kelp Gull. Don't worry, I did manage to at least get out and look for the Kelp Gull...which I dipped on. I also dipped on the Northern Gannet a couple times, which is so unsurprising that it doesn't even bum me out any more. Dip dip dip dip dip dip dip fucking dip.

That said, I did go birding this spring, and I did see some birds, including some good ones.

A friend of mine, "Fob Rowler", is one of the admins of a 5,000+ member birding group on Facebook. His members look up to him like a birding god...and who is to say that he isn't? It often looks like a thankless task, but one day Fob was looking at one of the bazillions of bird pictures that is posted to the group every day and noticed something strange in a flock of flying White-faced Ibis...there, in the corner, was a unmistakable Glossy Ibis. This is a rare bird in California...one that I hadn't seen in the state before. So a week after Fob's Facebook find, it was off to Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, and I have to thank Fob and Facebook for this sexy state bird.

Yolo Bypass has a healthy population of Swainson's Hawks, which I never tire of seeing. I also got my lifer mink that morning, which was a bird I was not thinking I would get that day. Some kind folks pointed it out to me as it swam out to a patch of reeds, but unhelpfully tried to convince me that it was a small river otter with a short furry tail. The nerve!

Every spring I spend some time shorebirding, partially because I am always hoping to find a spring vague runt plover or sandpiper (which rarely happens) and partially because spring shorebirds are really, really good looking birds. Dowitchers suddenly become exponentially more interesting...you don't have to sweat IDing them by sight, they make weird noises that go unuttered in fall and winter, and they actually are very appealing birds. This is a Long-billed Dowitcher, at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, Oakland.

Here is a Short-billed Dowitcher. Look at that short bill. It's like rosy Jack Snipe.

Another Short-billed. No one thinks of dowitchers as gaspers, but I will argue that they are worthy of the occasional gasp.

I want to be real with you nerds, so here we go...BB&B is one of the only trendsetters in birding. So with that in mind, let me ask you this...do people take pictures of Canada Geese anymore? No? Good...well I'm bringing them back. Soon everyone is going to be posting Canada Goose photos. Cardinals are going to be over, and the masses will instead glorify the majestic Canada Goose.

One morning Billy and I cruised to Bedwell Bayfront Park in San Mateo County to look at Pacific Golden-Plovers, a decent bird almost anywhere in the bay area and rarely encountered in alternate plumage. They had been roosting on a salt pond for some time, and we found them just hanging out and looking great. This species is a pain in the ass to photograph though, at least in this state...go to Hawaii if you want to crush them, as they are a lawn bird there. It's really trippy.

A rare (for me) spring visit to the Radio Road ponds in Redwood Shores was productive. Short (front) and Long-billed Dowitchers provided a great comparison when we showed up. If only it were always this easy to tell them apart.

There probably isn't a better place in the bay area to see breeding Forster's Terns, which nest on the small islands here relatively close to the edge of their favored pond. On this visit, there was a lot of courtship going on and a lot of birds on nests already.

As always, American Avocets were around, sporting the buffy heads required to convince each other that they should have avosex. The bay area has both long-legged shorebirds in abundance.

This is the other long-legged shorebird, obvi. Black-necked Stilt is another signature, sometimes-annoying shorebird species of many of California's marshes. Like the avocets, they are resident year round and are common breeders at many marshes around the bay. The debate continues over which nesting shorebird is more annoying to be around...Killdeer (dee dee dee dee), avocet (kleep kleep kleep) or stilt (yap yap yap yap yap yap yap).