Fairweather Zealot

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to write anything, mostly due to work but in part due to simply being to tired. But this weekend I had a chance to recover a bit, do some fun stuff and be lazy without the guilt.

Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be for finishing up the bathroom: put in the tile, seal it, install the chair rail and do all of the other finishing work. Unfortunately, the drywall guy we hired did a piss-poor job and the walls were so uneven that we have to tear them out and redo them. At least he was smart enough to give us some money back.

But the good news was that it gave us some more time to get other stuff done: we got a new stock pot for making turkey soup, we made another turkey for turkey sammiches, we went to BJ’s for some bulk supplies, etc.

But the majority of my fun was from getting out to do something I have not done nearly lately: bird. Monday took me all the way down to Cape May in search of the four rarities there – IVORY GULL, SWAINSON’S HAWK, EURASIAN WIGEON and RUFOUS HUMMINGBIRD. I ended up getting 2 of 4, so not a bad day. I followed it up by seeing another eastern rarity – a SPOTTED TOWHEE – at Palmyra Cove the next day.

Cape May

I got up early – really early – in order to make the trek down to the birding mecca of Cape May, only this time the mecca had some extra rarities to enjoy. My first stop was the Bree-Zee-Lee Marina where the IVORY GULL – a rarity normally restricted to the arctic – had made a lengthy appearance and was giving people a lot of chances to see it. I got to Cape May very quickly and had no problem finding the place, and I was treated by the fact that the bird was already there waiting. I wasn’t there more than 5 minutes when the bird decided to give us all a flyby and I got great looks at the beautiful white feathers that were starkly different from almost all of the gulls that normally habitate this area. After about 45 minutes, it disappeared and I decided to move on, but I had my first lifer of the day.

Reports on the hummingbird had been nil because of the cold weather, so I decided to give the hawk a try. Unfortunately, it – as hawks are wont to do – was flying to other places, so I missed that one. From there, it was a trip over the Cape May Lighthouse with some other birders that I met, where we went looking for whatever might be around, but most especially the EURASIAN WIGEONS, which I had missed a few times before. 3 drakes and a single hen had been seen there earlier, but there was only a single, young drake hanging out when I visited – but it was a enough. My second lifer of the day!

To follow up, I went back to the marina to see if I could get another look at the Ivory Gull — and although it took a bit for me to find him, when I did I was treated to some closer up views, such as the picture below. And then, it was time to drive back. Without even looking too hard, I was able to see quite a few species, including two lifebirds – all by about noon.

Palmyra Cove

The next day wasn’t as nice weather-wise – in fact, it was pretty cold – but the destination was literally right up the road, and Shari could join me. We wandered up to the area by the Little Pit where the SPOTTED TOWHEE had been seen, hoping we would make it’s 9:00 a.m. itinerary (the bird seemed to disappear about 9 a.m. every morning). Lo and behold, my luck held from the previous day and it was in it’s accustomed spot almost as soon as we got there. However, getting good looks at the little lady was a little tougher as towhees often enjoy the thickets of brush. But I was able to get a few shots. This wasn’t a lifebird for me – I’d seen them in Vancouver a few years back, but it was a first-of-state bird for NJ for me, and a lifer for Shari (not that she really keeps track). Still, 3 rarities in 2 days was a nice departure from all of the recent work.

Now I just have to look forward to my wife’s annual trip to Barnegat and Forsythe for my wife’s birthday.

On Monday, one of Shari and my Flickr friends, PhotoPatty, was in town with her husband Al, and we decided to get together so that I could show them around the birding hot spots in NJ. Or rather, some of the coastal hot spots (such as they are in the middle of summer). Continue reading

I was guiding PhotoPatty and Al around Forsythe NWR when she suddenly points down into the water and says, "I think that’s a shark!". If I hadn’t seen it, I would never have thought I would see a shark (let alone 2, maybe 3) in the east pool of Forsythe NWR.

Our last day in the Cave Creek area we wanted to hit some of those places we had missed earlier and look for a couple of species that we really wanted to see: Juniper Titmice, Scaled and Montezuma Quail and Zone-tailed Hawks. We also wanted to make a trip up to the Chiricahua National Monument to see the amazing rock formations there. Continue reading

I’ve always been a sketcher during meetings, but unlike many other people where doodling is a sign of boredom or inattention, with my ADD, it actually keeps me focused. By keeping my hands and my right brain focused on the paper, it keeps my ears and mind on Wednesday is being said. Strange but true.

My doodles have cycles: a week or two of realism, a couple weeks of abstract line art, a period of typography, etc. Lately, I’ve been doing bird sketches from memory in the margins. I’m not sure if it’s because I still have birds in the brain from Arizona (probably), if I just have birds in my head right now (definitely) or if I am just enjoying doing some realistic drawings of something that I have a fairly decent picture of in my mind’s eye. Regardless, it’s been fun to try to draw a reasonable likeness of some birds from memory in my notebook. Some samples are below. I just wish I had a better scanner for them (the details didn’t come out very well).

I decided to spend the morning doing something I haven’t been able to do all spring – hike/bird locally. It’s hard to believe that I missed almost all of migration this year, but somehow between the weather and doing stuff around the house, I did. So, I decided to see what might be left around the area. Continue reading

For our fourth day, we decided to reverse our previous days’ path, except we still wanted to start the morning at the South Fork. We had heard that many people were hearing the Elegant Trogon* right near the bridge, so we started there. Initially, things were a little slow as the sun was just starting to peek into the canyon, but they quickly picked up as all of the birds started to wake up, producing a magical post-dawn chorus. Numerous Empidonax flycatchers were joined by warblers and orioles in song, while other, quieter birds like the Painted Redstart and several hummingbirds flew about in frantic activity. Vireos and a few warblers (including a few Townsend’s and Wilson’s) were flitting about in the tall sycamores by the creek, while Acorn Woodpeckers competed with Canyon Wrens for top song of the morning. Soon, it was almost impossible to keep up with all of the movement and chittering on the trees. Continue reading

 Now that we were finally at the first leg of our trip, it was time to start in earnest. Waking up at the Cave Creek Ranch was majestic – the magnificent peaks of the canyon walls reflecting the morning sunlight was beautiful, there were a multitude of birds hanging put at the feeders just outside the back door: curve-billed thrashers, canyon towhees, cardinals and several hummer species, along with cliff chipmunks and rock squirrels. Continue reading

 Day 2 started better than the first day although we had our little side trip to get a new card reader. It required a a trip to Wal-Mart to pick one up, but since we had to get groceries anyway it wasn’t a huge deal, if a but inconvenient.

The drive on the interstate was typical of the type of road, but at least the roadside scenery was different from what we were used to. At one point about halfway there was a short length of amazing rock features along both sides of the road, a kind of sandbox odd the gods. As we got closer, and off the interstate, the scenery got more interesting. We crossed into New Mexico for a brief while (the road seemed to ignore state lines), before heading into the desert ecosystem, mostly unfettered by man save for the sparse barbwire fencing that was ubiquitous throughout Arizona. Continue reading

To say I was excited for this trip would be a great understatement. But there was a bit to do last night before we could leave: mow the lawn, clean the house for the pet sitter, and of course, pack. By the time 10 o’ clock rolled around, we were exhausted and still not done the ‘chores’. And the oppressive temperatures didn’t help, either. So, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. to get a jump on the remaining tasks before our 6am flight. Shari was already up and doing stuff, so we both pitched in so we could have plenty of time to park and get to the gate. It didn’t work – we were five minutes too late and missed our flight, but were lucky enough to get on another only 1.5 hours later, which messed up my plans a bit but was a minor set back in the grand scheme of things. Continue reading