Good morning!

I'm sure most of you just got to work and are only beginning a nice long day. Well, I have managed to complete my day of work, and it's only 9.30. Granted, I did have to get up at 3.45 a.m., be coherent enough to drive 45 minutes, and then be awake enough to hike and ID birds by sight and sound. On the way to the meadow, our lead car pulled over; I stopped too and got out to discover what was wrong. Apparently, a bat had hit their windshield and fallen down into the engine. Easy to understand as I imagine that more than knocked the wind out of the poor little thing. We couldn't get him out, so we finished our drive. When we finished our training, we checked again and he wasn't there. I like to think he made it.
At the meadow we practiced what we would do in a survey situation. This placed is jammed with Lazuli Bunting, a very beautiful bird who has a song that is very difficult to remember. I also saw a Yellow Warbler, a MacGillivray's Warbler, a Black-headed Grosbeak and many others I won't bore you with. No Willow Flycatcher. This is where we saw the WIFL before, so we were hopeful, but no dice.
We all split up to search. I loved to be out there with no one else around. There was a light mist that hung over the meadow. It slowly burned off as the sun rose. It was just me and scores of birds. I had to cross 2 barbed-wire fences and 1 stream, several times. I got these great waterproof boots that go over my hiking boots and I wore my rain pants so that my regular pants wouldn't get soaking wet from the dew on all the tall grass. The bummer is that the waterproof overboots seem to have sprung a leak already. My feet were completely dry and I was comfortable the whole time, but when I took them off I noticed water in the bottom. Then, I noticed light shining through a small hole in the boot. It's quite possible I caught them on the barbed wire as I was going over it. I tried my best, but it's hard when there's no one around to hold the wire for you. I should check my rain pants for holes, too. Nothing a little duct tape won't fix. I also found some Red-winged Blackbird feathers. I don't think the blackbird made it, if you know what I mean.
The plan was to all meet up towards the back of the meadow. When only 6 of us showed up, we had to split up and find the other two. They had gone way into a back corner, and had missed all of us. I managed to drop all of my food. I went to have a snack and found no food in my pack. I had just finished my tasks, so decided it would be prudent to walk back to my car and find it. I figured I had left the food in there, and didn't want a bear to rip off my trunk to get at it. You cannot leave any food or anything smelly (facial tissue, sunscreen, lip balm, etc.) in your car in Yosemite or you are asking for a new paint job. I walked the whole way back to find no food, so then had to hike the whole way back in to rendevouz with the others. Whew. Kind of tiring. And, all without any nourishment. When I met up with everyone, Chris said, "Did anyone lose any food?" He had left it where it was because it was so neatly laid out, he thought someone was using it as a marker. I guess maybe I took it out and didn't remember -? I don't know. I think waking up that early makes me a little loopy.
I have to study backpacking first aid and my birds. Bird test is tomorrow. Then, off to Sonora to do laundry. There is no laundromat in Groveland.

Great Gray Owl Extravaganza

We are settling into a schedule and are all figuring out our places at the house and in the group. There are 3 bedrooms - 2 guys in 1 room, 2 gals in another and 3 gals in the last. Our leader Bob sleeps in the office by himself. We get up early (~4.45 am), drive to a meadow (this usually takes about an hour), bird watch/listen for several hours and then return to the house by about noon. Eat some lunch, study in the afternoon, then group dinner (we each take turns cooking), group review and to bed around 9 p.m. I am up with the sun and to sleep when it sets. I kind of like it. The group seems to be roughly splitting along age lines - there are 4 people who are 19-20, and then we older ones who range from 28-38. We were laughing the other night because all the elders were out on the porch drinking beer. I said, "There's nothing an old person likes better than a porch." Everyone concurred.
Yesterday was a bit different as we did our first camp out. This past weekend was Memorial Day, so the park was packed. (We drove by a mile-long line of cars waiting to get in the gate on Sunday.) Monday we figured we could get a site, so we went birding in the morning and then went to the campground in Wawona. It is along the South Fork of the Merced, and it's very pretty. After dropping our camping gear there and carefully stowing all our food in the bear box, we decided to go looking for Great Gray Owls. Bob decided we should try to find the owl Lynn & I found last year. We were driving out Glacier Point Road and missed the turn off for the trailhead to the owls, so we had to turn around. When we did that, we missed the turn again, and then we realized that the second part of our group wasn't following us. As we drove around looking for them, we saw them stopped on the side of Glacier Point Road, not even completely pulled over, as there was no shoulder on which to do so. We drove to where we could find parking and Bob went to get the others. Five minutes later, Bob comes back saying, "They found an owl." It had flown right over their car! We ran down the highway and get the best look I have ever gotten of a GGOW. She was very impressive, perched on the tippy-top of a stick, peering down at the meadow looking for food. I meant to take a picture, but in my excitement, completely forgot to. She flew off after about 15 minutes. That satiated us, so we decided to head back to camp with the drinkers stopping by a market to buy some beer first. Myself and one of the other gals was in charge of dinner - it was burgers/veggie burgers. What started off as a potential disaster (just ask Mark about me & charcoal) turned out ok. I think we didn't have enough coals, until we decided to dump the whole bag on there. When in doubt, create a bonfire. We played a few camping games (which I haven't done since I can't remember), and we elders (who had been drinking) noticed that we were doing very poorly on the games that involved reaction time. Oh, well. I decided to give up and went to bed at 8.30 p.m.
This morning we did more training at Wawona Meadow, and we saw another Great Gray Owl. I was stunned as I spent my entire summer last year without seeing any (until the very end when I came to Yosemite) and now I see two in two days.
We are being tested Thursday morning on the 17 birds we have to know by sound and sight (males and females). If we don't pass, we can't survey. We have to keep studying until we pass. We'll see how I do. I have been studying a lot as I do not have the training that most/all of my co-workers. I think listening to a birdsong CD on the way to/from work for a couple of weeks before I arrived is paying off now.
Mark comes to visit Friday. I am going to take him camping and show him Yosemite. I think we are definitely going to have to take a trip to Rainbow Falls, a swimming hole with its own rock slide over the falls. It is going to be a whirlwind tour as he has to leave Sunday and I have to go out on Sunday for my first solid week of surveying. I am really excited - it's going to be difficult work, but it is such a privilege to daily be in this park. The weather is gorgeous, and it is a beautiful piece of earth.

Yosemite

Today we went to the Park. I drove 100 miles round trip, hiked several miles in the park (more birdwatching so we can learn all the birds we need to know) and I got up at 4.15 a.m.
I'm tired.
We probably won't be camping out until Monday. Because this is Memorial Day weekend and there is a music festival going on here (Strawberry), the campsites/park are mobbed. You beat the crowds by arriving in the park at 6 a.m. Believe it or not, it's worth it.
I saw one of my favorite birds today - the American Dipper, she who swims. I actually saw 2 of them in different locations.
We also saw a bear in a meadow. He looked like he was happily munching on grasses.
For you rock-climbing fans out there, we sat in El Capitan Meadow for awhile and watched all the crazy people going up that sheer wall of granite. You get a sense of the scale of it when you spy a person and they look like an insect.

Caught!

We saw a willow flycatcher today. I can't believe it. Not like that crafty owl. I was standing next to Bob, the group leader, and he said, "That's a willow flycatcher." I happened to have my binoculars pointed at the same bird. Then, s/he flew off. Bob said that it must be a recent arrival (they winter in the neotropics), or it would have stayed and defended its territory/nest. He said the meadow used to support many breeding pairs, but they had declined precipitously in past years.
We got up at 5:00 a.m. to get to this place - it's called Ackerson Meadow, which i just outside Yosemite in the Stanislaus National Forest. We saw more than forty species of birds in the 4 hours we were there. Many I hadn't seen before. We have to know 15 by sight and sound at the end of training, which is over in a week. These 15 are birds whose songs or looks can be confused with the willow flycatcher. At the end of training, we have a 3-day break, and then we actually start camping out in the field and doing the surveys.
On the way back, we were shown a great swimming hole where you can slide (or jump) into a deep pool. Fun! I'll save that for another day when I've had more than a few hours of sleep and am not in danger of drowning.
All eight of us are staying in a house and sleeping on hardwood floors on air mattresses (much to my relief). I don't think my thirty-eight-year-old bones could have withstood my camping pad on the wood floor. I am the oldest person. Bob - the IBP leader - is even a bit younger than I am. The house, which was recently remodeled and is quite nice, is surrounded by lots of trees. There are many birds that hang out in the yard.
I think I'm going to take a nap so I can keep up with all the 20-year-olds. Tomorrow we actually go into the park and I will get to see the valley again.

Servicing an Addiction

Normally I find my caffeine addiction a great joy. I look forward to my morning coffee every day - sometimes I even think about it the night before and a smile comes over my face. The zing I get from it never gets old. It's an addiction that just keeps on giving.
It becomes a problem when camping. There is no easy way to make decent coffee. I've tried all the substitutions (instant coffee, coffee bags, cowboy coffee) and none of them work for me. Bad coffee leaves me almost as irritable as no coffee.
It will be even more of a problem this season as I will be arising before dawn. (Songbirds put on their best shows right around dawn.) The idea of trying to boil water and measure out coffee grounds in some cold, predawn light makes me shudder. A reasonable person would probably just forgo the caffeine, but any true addict can understand why this is, well, ridiculous.
Last year I stumbled upon the perfect solution - chocolate-covered espresso beans. Imagine my dismay when I went to Trader Joe's this morning to get all my beans and I couldn't find any. There was a long moment of sheer terror - sweat breaking out on the brow, talking to myself in the store, and panicky moves of the shopping cart.
But, I emerged successful.
I present you with the fuel for my every step:

Rejoice.

An Explanation, and Preparations

This summer I go in quest of the Willow Flycatcher, a rather unassuming creature that likes to, you guessed it, sally forth and eat insects. This is a species of special concern in California, and is the second year that the study is being done by the Institute for Bird Populations. The trick is this - there are several other of these flycatchers (known as Empidonax) that can be in Yosemite National Park, and they are notoriously difficult to identify by sight. Let me show you why:

Willow Flycatcher Empidonax trailii
Hammond's Flycatcher Empidonax hammondii
Dusky Flycatcher Empidonax oberholseri
All small, drab, gray birds with light eye-rings and wing bars. It's best to use voice, habitat, and manner of nesting to ID them. To hear their songs, click on the bird names to connect to Cornell Lab. They have audio links on the right. Needless to say, I have been studying my birds songs diligently. I actually know all the bird songs for my Empidonax friends, as well as many many more that I have managed to cram into my tiny brain. I'm hoping this will serve me well over the seven weeks I spend in Yosemite looking for these critters.

Things are piling up in the second bedroom as I prepare to depart. I think I learned a lot from last year. My mantras this year are
1. lots of food (food is very expensive in small towns)
2. not a lot of clothing (You don't change your clothes when you backpack. You do a rinse in an ice cold stream if necessary and voilá, good as new. After all, do you really smell that bad if there is no one around to smell you? )

Wednesday I drive to Groveland, CA. That is where we will have a house that will be home base. We train for a week, and then start the search in Yosemite. I think it will be a lot like last year - play the song, listen for a response. The plus is that this is a small bird, so the sound won't have to cover quite the distance as last year's Great Gray Owl search. This means a much more portable playback device - not the behemoth boom box we had to lug around last year. I believe there will be eight people, and that we will work in groups of two. I have been told that we will be spending seven days out camping - either front country (pit toilets, bear lockers, park your car and set up your tent) or back country (umm ... none of the aforementioned, and you get the joy of carrying everything on your back). Bear canisters are a must in Yosemite, so I will have that additional weight. I will try not to complain too much this year. After all, I know what I'm getting myself into, right? Mosquitoes that won't quit, sore muscles, dirt that I haven't seen since being a toddler and the stench of the unwashed.

But, there is this
and this
and this

That's the closest I can come to explaining why this is kind of fun.