Morning Mudpie

I’ve planted okra
[dead fish my father said]
and corn and squash
in dung
[my nails are black]
and my friends are bracing
for the onslaught
of curcubitaceae
[he hated those too]
to come and
as I dipped a pointed pen
into walnut ink
this morning
a Swainson’s thrush
exhausted from a night of dodging
cellphone towers
slammed into the
[unwashed] window
and bounced into
the leeks
I wrapped it in
[I hoped] a premature
shroud and
hoped and
yes

!

it rose up
after a time
into the mulberry
where the Wilson’s warbler
and Bullock’s oriole
and black-headed grosbeak
wove a trio of
Spring
in the
Central
Valley.

Postscript, 1:48 pm, Thursday: a Swainson’s thrush just flew into my window at work. It seems fine, flew into the locust tree… I wish I knew a good way to stop them from doing this. I never wash the windows, so that’s not really the problem.

Going To The Horses

Embedded in many sidewalks around Portland, Oregon are rings for tying up horses. The equine species no longer figuring much in Portland’s transportation plan, these rings were mostly forgotten until artist Scott Wayne Indiana tied a toy pony to a ring in the Pearl District. Thus was born the horse project — dozens of toy horses may now be found hitched up all over Portland.

Putah Creek Bioblitz

At the end of Blogger Bioblitz Week, I finally got out to my spot and did a bioblitz survey on my own. This is an exercise in humility: I do well at identifying birds, passably with vascular plants, reasonably well at reptiles and amphibians, but fail when it comes to identify insects or any other invertebrates. A proper bioblitz involves a team of skilled naturalists, but the main aim for the blogger version was to have fun, and so I did.

My spot was a bank of Putah Creek not far from home, located at N 38.5177° W 121.7616°. The upland portion was dominated by non-native grasses and weeds, primarily wild ryegrass Lolium perenne. Near the stream itself was a stand of narrowleaf willow (Salix exigua) with occasional Oregon ash (Fraxinus latifolia). I surveyed plants and birds, the latter anything within about 50 meters of my spot, including overhead and across the creek. I kept my eye out for dragonflies and butterflies, but only saw two of the latter and one of the former, and wasn’t able to get close enough to have a go at looking them up. My favorite identification was wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota), which I figured out after a browse through the photo library at CalFlora. My species lists follow:

Birds:

• Swainson’s hawk
• Western kingbird
• Snowy egret
• American crow
• Tree swallow
• Red-shouldered hawk
• Ash-throated flycatcher
• California towhee
• Turkey vulture
• Scrub jay
• White-faced ibis
• Bushtit
• Northern oriole
• Mallard
• Black-headed grosbeak

Vascular plants:

• Salix exigua (narrowleaf willow)
• Fraxinus latifolia (Oregon ash)
• Convolvulus arvensis (bindweed)
• Brassica nigra (black mustard)
• Lolium perenne (ryegrass)
• Centaurea solstitialis (yellow starthistle)
• Avena fatua (wild oats)
• Medicago polymorpha (California burclover)
• Eucalyptus sp.
• Vicia sp. (vetch)
• Plantago lanceolata (plaintain)
• Geranium dissectum
• Silybium marianum (milk thistle)
• Rumex conglomeratus (dock)
• Glycyrrhiza lepidota (wild licorice)

Sketching Our Way Through Colorado

This trip had always been billed as one where you freeze. You have to get to the leks about an hour before the birds do, then sit there, quietly, while the weather does whatever it’s going to do. (I quickly learned to snag the motel bedspreads to wrap up in for this long wait, the famous Heure Bleue, the time of day when most deaths happen, when the edge of day and night is as sharp as the frost on the windshield, inside.)

And then you hear them, long before you can see anything. In the case of the greater prairie-chicken, here on the right, what you hear is a three-interval boom, not unlike the golden-crown sparrow’s in pitch, but very different in timbre. (Think descant recorder duo versus cello.)

The trick now is to get your hands to work well enough to wield a pen. I made a huge number of sketches in the dark, trying just to capture the essence of these birds. I’d try to work the sketches up quickly at breakfast before we had to saddle up again. You have to work fast and there’s no time for detail…

It was easiest for the greater sage-grouse, since they were so close to the car. We could hear their feet on the ground outside the window. We could hear the intake of air as they filled their sacs, knocking them together in an audible Dolly Parton parody. And as the sun grew closer to rising, we could see the filoplumes on each male’s head, rising and falling with the dance.

Our tripmates mostly had small digital cameras, which they wielded to greater or lesser success through scopes or binoculars. (Our ptarmigan victory salute, for instance, can be seen here ). Paul had a good digital SLR; I’ll look forward to seeing some of his shots. But to learn the bird, learn its lines, its feathers, its stance, its essence, I’d rather sketch: these birds are now etched into my head.

Grouse Grand Slam

We’re back from our birding expedition to Colorado — a 10-day, nearly 2000-mile tour of the state focusing on the 7 species of grouse native to the state. The annotated itinerary:

Day 1 — We arrive in Colorado Springs and meet our carmates. It starts to snow.

Day 2 — We meet the rest of the group (16 people total, plus leader) and head off towards Elkhart, Kansas driving the last leg through a blizzard. In the evening we see the first of our target grouse, the lesser prairie chicken, visiting the lek site in preparation for the following morning.

Day 3 — The first day of our typical routine: up at 4:30 AM or something like that for a trip out to the lek site in the dark to watch the birds displaying before dawn. Lots of snow on the ground — it is very cold sitting in the car with open windows. We see 8 lesser prairie chickens displaying. We then head back to the motel for breakfast followed by a day of general birding.

Day 4 — A second try at the lesser prairie chickens, this time at a different site, followed by a drive to Wray, Colorado to see greater prairie chickens. Their lek interestingly is in the middle of an alfalfa field on a cattle ranch.

Day 5 — Before dawn we watch the greater prairie chickens display, about 35 birds total, at quite close distances. We head east through the Pawnee National Grasslands where after much effort we see McCown’s longspurs, a pair of chestnut-collared longspurs in breeding plumage, and a pair of mountain plovers. We spend the night at Greeley just east of the Rockies.

Day 6 — We travel through the Front Range to reach the small town of Walden in preparation to see greater sage grouse on their lek, and check out the lek site in the evening, the sage grouse cooperating with a partial display then.

Day 7 — Pica and I nearly oversleep and miss the 4:15 AM departure to see the sage grouse, but we get our warmest clothes on in record time and join the trek. We are thankful the grouse have no interest in hijacking our vehicles because they outnumber us and are certainly testosterone-laden enough to succeed at doing so. Off to Hayden via a lunchtime stop in Steamboat Springs, but we have little time for shopping, heading to the hills north of Hayden for a fruitless search for the dusky grouse. After this I sneak off to the local public library and look up some of the mammals we’ve seen already, including the thirteen-lined ground squirrel and the yellow-bellied marmot.

Day 8 — It snows overnight. With the help of a local guide we see a dusky grouse on his favorite spot in the hills, and a few sharp-tailed grouse on their lek spot, but they are mostly hunkering against the cold and we don’t see their display. Off to the mountain passes to look for white-tailed ptarmigan, but in two separate tries we fail to see any, the second time not reaching the site on account of too much snow.

Day 9 — Our third and final try at the white-tailed ptarmigan. We go to Loveland Pass, elevation 11,990 feet, and search the ridges on both sides. Two of our party ascend just high enough to spot a couple of birds, and we hurry up to their position despite the altitude. It is the literal high point of my birding career, looking at these white snow-footballs of birds at 12,280 feet in elevation.
We then travel east in preparation for our final grouse species, the Gunnison sage grouse.

Day 10 — Up at 4 AM for a 4:25 departure to the Gunnison sage grouse spot. Along with the lesser prairie chicken, the Gunnison sage grouse is the rarest species we see on the trip, and there is precisely one spot in the world from where this sage grouse can be viewed. Our preparations go well, and we are treated to a display that lasts well over an hour. After breakfast back in town, we start start wending our way back to Colorado Springs.

Day 11 — We fly back home, leaving the motel at 5 AM. The kitties are happy to see us upon our return!

Budburst

Project Budburst is a new citizen science effort to monitor plant phenology — that is, the timing of biotic events such as leafing or flowering. In an era of climate change, tracking phenology is an important part of ecological monitoring.

This spring is the pilot for this project, and next year they will kick it off in full. They have a list of 59 species across the continental United States they are monitoring. It’s a bit of an eclectic list. I’d like to see them add my local phenological favorite: western redbud (Cercis occidentalis).

Botanic Garden

We met Ron and Joe at the Botanic Garden in Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley on a drizzly morning today. The Botanic Garden is exclusively devoted to California native plants. I realized as we went through the collections that I don’t think I’ve been there since I took my classes on California plants in 1992 back in grad school at UC Santa Barbara. The plant species seem to be a lot more familiar than when I was there last.

Ron and Joe related that this garden led to the origin of the California Native Plant Society, which is the most important organization for the conservation of the California flora. The garden dates to 1940; in the early 1960s there was a plan to expand the 9-hole golf course across the road over the garden. Local citizens objected, and the organization that grew out of this eventually became the CNPS.

Above is a sketch of Trillium angustipetalum, a plant collected from Humboldt County. It is in the lily family, but as Chris Clarke relates , who knows what that means any more.

Blogger Bioblitz

Jeremy Bruno of The Voltage Gate has come up with an excellent way to participate in the National Wildlife Federation’s National Wildlife Week. He has announced the First Annual Blogger Bioblitz, “where bloggers from across the world will choose a wild or not-so-wild area and find how many of each different species – plant, animal, fungi and anything in between – live in a certain area within a certain time.”

This is not meant as a hard scientific project, rather it’s a fun way to “highlight little pockets of biodiversity across the world.” This event runs from April 21 – April 29. For the first couple days of that period we’ll be on a birding trip far too fast-paced to serve as a bioblitz, but after that I should be able to find some nearby nook to survey.

Kingbirds Are Back

Today was a holiday and I had lots of pottering opportunities. I went into town for a bit and then late in the afternoon I was out near the garden tinkering with the radio setup. I heard in flight and then later confirmed by sight two western kingbirds, the first I’ve seen this spring. They are very cheery sorts — always singing ‘dah-DEE-didi-dah’.

Three Year Oaks

This evening I walked down to the creek to check on a few of the valley oaks my neighbor Jim planted as part of a restoration effort. Some are doing well, like the one at left; others didn’t make it.

Meanwhile, some wasps have taken up residence in one of the planting tubes. The oak here hasn’t flourished but is still hanging in there.