Black-backed Woodpecker Surveys 2009. Part 02

Cut to the lovely Lee Vining Creek campground a week later. Rodney, the Executive Director of IBP, and I finally had a pleasant, sunny evening. I had flown to Oakland two days before and we embarked on a long drive to the Eastern Sierra Nevada. I realized after we got to our destination – French Camp in the Inyo National Forest - that I probably could have driven there in less time than it took me to fly + drive. Oh, well. We needed to only have one car, and, as things turned out, leaving one on the Eastside would not have worked out. Field work involves a lot of changing your plans based on what you find on the ground. And, we had lots of changed plans.

My tent at French Camp.

Birch
First off was the Birch Fire.
The fire habitat was all burned Pinyon Pine. Normally we have Jeffrey or Ponderosa or Sugar or Lodgepole Pine. Also Incense-Cedar and White or Red Fir. Pinyons are small, scrappy trees that grow in the arid Eastside climate. All the trees you see here are Pinyon in the Birch Fire.Different bird species prefer the arid Eastside’s sagebrush/desert, so lots of new birds came into play. Confusing at first until I sorted it all out.

There are also great flowers, like this Desert Evening-Primrose. My field guide says each white flower blooms only one night and then withers in the light of the next day (the pink things). It says they smell amazing. I forgot to smell. I didn't realize what a special flower I had.
I ended up walking cross country back to the campsite (my points were relatively close) right as it was starting to warm up. Rodney and I completed our data forms and then broke camp and jumped in the car to drive to Nevada.

Sagehen
Our next fire – Sagehen – was in the Toiyabe National Forest across the stateline. Again, this was a very long drive. Storm clouds continually built over and around the White Mountains as we made our way toward the state line.
Approaching the White Mountains, it just got worse.
Once through Benton Hot Springs and into Nevada we had to drive up a state highway and find a dirt road to drive, about 12k until the fire. Rodney was worried about the condition of said dirt road; he does NOT have a four-wheel drive nor high clearance. He was right to be worried. We got close and then were stopped by large rocks in the road. They don't look like much here, but they were undercarriage-scrapers.
We were close enough that we could see the beginning of the habitat, and decided to discard the fire as a survey site. It looked even more sparse than the Pinyon Pine we had surveyed at Birch and we hadn’t had any luck there. In addition, no one is sure that BBWO even use Pinyon Pine as habitat. On top of that, this was coming for us.

Dexter
After a 3+ hour drive we turned around and headed back the way we had just come. We had passed a turn for another of our fires – Dexter - on the way out to Sagehen, so we went back to the Dexter turnoff. This was a much kinder dirt road. We drove through lots of interesting habitats on the way out. There was one whole hillside that was covered in Aspen. On the map we saw there were several springs in the area, so that’s what was watering them in the middle of the arid landscape. After that we went through a stand of Lodgepole Pine and then we got to a stand of Jeffrey Pine, some of which was burned. This was Dexter. We scouted the fire as the clouds increasingly threatened rain. As we finished eating dinner it started, so we dove in our tents at 6:00 p.m. Here's my tent at Dexter.
It rained off and on all night long. We were at 8200 feet, so it was chilly and damp. At 4:30 a.m. the rain was still going and Rodney and I had a cross-tent chat about what to do. We decided to hold off getting up until it stopped raining. (Most birds stay hunkered down during such weather, so surveying would have been fruitless.) At 5:00 a.m. it stopped and we got up to start our day. I volunteered to do the cross country portion of the fire. This involved heading down a hill into a valley with a spring and then climbing back up the other side.
When I hit the top of the opposite ridge it looked like it was going to pour again, so Rodney and I talked on our walkie-talkies and decided to call it a day. We both had found birds, so felt we had accomplished what we set out to do. When I returned to camp, I discovered my tent was still wet, so packing up was messy.

Mono Lake
We then drove to Mono Lake to do some sightseeing. At Rush Creek I actually got a great look at a Willow Flycatcher (WIFL), which was very gratifying. Many of you may remember I worked on a field crew looking for WIFL several years ago. There is an outlier population near Mono Lake, which live in wild rose bushes (as opposed to the usual willows).
Rodney and I then took a long leisurely birding stroll down Rush Creek towards Mono Lake. We saw one Yellow-headed Blackbird amidst all the Red-winged ones. The sky was moody, the birds plentiful.

Sierra Nevada from Rush Creek
We were able to be tourists for an afternoon because the fire the next day – Azusa – was just off Highway 120 near the gas station. It was steep yet easy to scout because it was small. This is when we set up at Lee Vining Creek Campground and were able to stay there for two nights. This is Lee Vining Creek - the view from our picnic table.
What a relief to not have to break down camp every day!

The next fire - Azusa - provided a great wildlife encounter. More on that soon.

Black-backed Woodpecker Surveys 2009. Part 01

It’s hard to believe, but my birding field season is already over. I looked for Black-backed Woodpeckers in fire areas for the Institute for Bird Populations again. It seemed like a rough season with the variable weather, the long drives and, perhaps, my aging body. I am so happy to be home!

I flew up to Sacramento in the beginning of June and Bob picked me up to start our week of work. Peavine was the name of our first fire, and it was a difficult find. After lots of driving on dirt roads and turning around and checking the GPS, we finally found a reasonably close access point. We picked an overgrown dirt “road” we were going to hike up in the a.m. to actually get to the fire. To be clear - this used to be a road, but was no longer anywhere near passable what with all the seedlings growing on it. We made camp late, so we just plopped down, ate dinner and went to bed. We awoke before sunrise and hiked briskly up the steep road. We went about 15 minutes, didn’t see a fire and stopped to take a GPS reading. We realized that we were not in the right place. This hastened a speedy plummet back down the hill, a tricky stream crossing and then a hike up another road. We finally saw fire. Good.
My heart was pumping incredibly fast and I was dizzy with the early hour and the 0-to-60-in-2-seconds quality of the morning. And I was only getting started on the survey. The protocol was a bit different this year, so I had to make some decisions that my fuzzy mind felt ill-prepared to make. Combine that with some steep terrain and the number of birds that sing AT THE SAME TIME in the morning, and I was shell-shocked. I’m supposed to write down not only the birds I hear but those I see at every other point I do. This is in addition to doing the playback surveys for the Black-backed Woodpecker (play a recording, see if the bird responds, collect info if it does), and collecting vegetation data (what kind of trees, how big, how many, how many live, how many dead/burned, how much logging, how much slash, etc). It suddenly dawned me that this was hard. I muddled through with no Black-backed Woodpeckers (BBWO) to show for it. Bob didn't have any either, but but - this was a fire from 2008, so he stumbled upon a ton of Morel mushrooms, which are associated with recent forest fires.
Once we finished we completed our data sheets, ate and packed up to go scout the Government Fire. This was a massive fire along the American River last year that prevented us from getting to sites we needed to survey. A year later it was a survey site. Scouting this fire (and a lot of them) involved driving down perilous dirt roads. Bob has a four-wheel drive, so we’ve never gotten into too much trouble. This one road we went down for Government, though, abruptly became impassable, and there was nowhere to turn around. Bob did some impressive reverse driving while I clutched my water bottle in a death grip - out the passenger side was a steep drop down the mountainside. That ended our scouting for the afternoon. We settled on a few logging roads, plus, for me, the abandoned Iowa Ditch – an old canal - to follow.

Here is me with the Iowa Ditch trailing off in the distance.
And, no, that is not a weird outdoor fashion trend. My hat was pulled down low over my forehead to keep the mosquitoes off me. They were annoying that morning.

The ditch had steep sides from the time when it used to hold water.
Here's my surveying gear. The item with the handle is the Fox Pro playback device. It plays the BBWO call ... and they tend to come if they are in hearing distance.I had no BBWO, but Bob had one at the very last point. I did find some Juncos, though. They nest on the ground and I had set up my flagging/point right next to their home. I knew there was a Junco scolding me, but didn't realize how close I was until I went to collect my flagging.Again, back to camp to wrap up paperwork and eat a bite, then we are off in the car to scout the Power Fire. It was a long drive and the weather was unsettled the whole time.
A light-colored yearling bear ran across the road. This was the only bear I saw all summer. We scouted and decided to follow a few easy roads. We camped next to Cole Creek, underneath a bunch of Sugar Pines.
That night there was a thunderstorm and a little rain. It never really got to us; at one point it sounded very close and then it faded into the distance with a few sprinkles. We did have some precipitation in the morning when I was surveying the fire.
Lupine.
Evidence of some logging - a slash pile and cleanly cut logs.
Bob ended up with a BBWO here, also, and I did not. I saw a mule deer, which was my big excitement for the morning. After we packed up we drove to the Showers Fire, which was near Lake Tahoe. Bob knows someone who lives in Meyers, right outside of Tahoe, so we knew we had shelter for the night. (This ended up being a good thing as when we were driving out to the fire at 4:45 the next morning, the temperature was 36 degrees. It would have been a cold night camping).

Showers turned out to be a prophetic name for the fire. It was cool with rain and some hail. When we got to our trailhead in the morning, we had to hike in 35 minutes and then go off-trail. I had to go straight up a steep ridge that was littered with logs and mountain whitethorn. It was a small fire (I only did 5 points; I usually do 10), but I finally found some BBWO. I stayed with one pair for a bit to enjoy their company. They are such quirky, fun birds. Though the hiking was rough on this one, I really enjoyed being off-trail.

I had to go straight up.


Bob went down thataway.

The sun tried for a bit.
We quit Lake Tahoe and drove down Highway 50 to survey our last two fires. We decided to do a marathon day of surveying so that the following days would be relatively easy. These last two fires - Plum and Freds - had a lot of private property inholdings. As a result, what we thought looked like a feasible survey route would turn out not to be because we would run into a private property sign. We'd take a second look at our topographic maps and realize the private property lines had gotten lost in all the overlays. On top of this issue, when we drove up to Freds it was completely socked in with fog. We couldn't see farther than 50 feet off the dirt road we traveled.We still managed to come up with a survey game plan, and drove back to the comfort of Bob's house, where we would stay for the next two nights to avoid the wet, cold weather. The trade-off was we had to get up at 4:40 a.m. to get to the fire in time for sunrise.

It was windy and rainy again, with a bit of thunder during the survey of the Plum fire the next morning.


No BBWO (there were none last year when I surveyed it, either). It had some nice wildflowers, though.

We got back to Bob’s by 11.30 a.m. and had the rest of the day to ourselves. Only Freds fire to go before I could return home for a 1-week break.

Oaks at Bob's house.

Feral cat at Bob's.
And, look how the next day dawned for Freds fire ...
Blue sky! Unfortunately, I was in that shadow you see for most of the morning, so I was cold. My first bit of sun was near these lupine.

Here are some partially burned snags at the beginning of the Freds fire.
I did not find any BBWO at Freds, and I don't think Bob did either.

And that was it for my first session. Back to Los Angeles with me for a week-long break, and then I was going back out for two weeks.

Late May Bird Banding

We started late yesterday. Walt was out of town and forgot to leave the gate key with Jim, who was our leader for the day. We waited a few hours for an NPS Ranger to show up and unlock the gate.

I had two guests this time, Mark and his coworker Kaori. And it was a good thing for me. There were three of us banders, so we ran only 9 nets. That meant I had 3 nets to myself on every run. Mark and Kaoari were great support holding the nets back, handing me sticks I could use as tools, and, most importantly, running the hummers back to the station to be processed ASAP. Hummers tend to be fragile creatures and it was hot in the canyon starting around 10 a.m.. Best to take care of them quickly.

The highlight for me was this Costa's Hummingbird; I had never seen one before. This is me getting him out of the net. Notice how his iridescent feathers look black from this angle.

And here he is on Kaori's hand. They often don't fly away right off, so she is providing a platform for his launch, once he decides to get up and go, which he did a few minutes later. You get the full effect of his iridescence from this angle.
Another treat was this Juvenile Western Scrub Jay. Look at the soft downy feathers on this head and the remnants of his gape (the wide usually yellowish mouth that nestlings have).
Another intersting bird - a Song Sparrow with some kind of problem with its head feathers.
Orange-crowned Warbler. You can only see his orange crown in the hand. This picture doesn't demonstrate it, but he had one!
And, the biggest treat of the day for me was the following bird. I saw the male flying around and hoped he would get in the net. Lo and behold, on the last net run I got my wish. Well close enough - I got the female Phainopepla.
She made lots of very unusual sounds when I was trying to take her out of the net. Kaori said she sounded like a car alarm.

Early May Bird Banding

It was a foggy morning at Zuma Canyon. Start time was 5:57 a.m. and I had brought company with me. Mark decided to check it out, just this once, to see what I do with myself every other Saturday. There were only four of us (not counting Mark), but we ran all nets except for #7, which involves an out-of-the-way walk up a steep hill.

The Pacific-slope Flycatchers were out in full force singing, and we got several in the nets.Look at their lovely almond-shaped eye ring (and please ignore my grip on the bird; it's all wrong).
Mark managed to get a photo of one of the gophers; we see evidence of them all over -their holes - but rarely see them.
We got another Black-chinned Hummingbird and this time I actually got a photo of it. It's gorgeous.

We also got two Warbling Vireos. Another first for me at that station. They are so quietly elegant.

Cool bush. I think it's called Sugar Bush.
And, last but not least, the House Finch. He's a very common bird around our house (he sneaks food from the hummer feeder) and we see him in the canyon all the time. This is the first time I have banded one, though, and I was impressed by his red feathers and his culmen. My neighbor calls them flying lizards.