A Quick Study of Hillary Clinton

No, not the politician. The Island Scrub Jay, of course!

This is Hillary. I absolutely adore her.

As I mentioned in this post from 2011, we have a study plot whose territorial pairs are named after political figures (loosely translated--we have a Dennis Rodman, and a Ghengis Kahn, among others). Our cabins are located in the center of the Field Station plot, on the convergence of three territories: Castro and Dahlia, Tony and Cherie Blair, and Bart Stupak (who we call Pug) and Hillary Clinton. These birds get quite a bit more attention than the other birds in the neighboring territories because we hang out on our porch and they come beg for peanuts. It's pretty hard to resist.

Their boldness allows for close views of these phenomenal birds, so I present to you a simple study of Hillary Clinton.

Her colorband combination is GBG/AR.

This is what Hillary looks like underneath her feathers.

Island Scrub Jays have blue undertail coverts, one of the many features that distinguishes it from the Western Scrub Jay.

A close up of Hillary's feet. A bird's feet are the equivalent of our toes. Her bands are on her tarsus, which is like our foot. Her "backwards knee" is her ankle, and her knee and hip are hidden inside fluffy body feathers (see naked Hillary above to try to figure it out!).

The Primaries and Secondaries (main flight feathers of the wing) are capped by Primary and Secondary Coverts, the small rectangular feathers in the top left of the photo. Also note the gray body feathers--they are wispy and loose, unlike the sturdy flight feathers that need to be able to withstand the force of air when they fly. Body feathers provide insulation (like your down jacket!).

PUG up close. All ISSJs have chocolate eyes. Here he shows us the white "eyebrow", called a supercilium. All the feathers around the eyes are stiff and thin to protect the eyes from getting gunk in them. The long black thin "feathers" coming from his "chin" are called rictal bristles. They can help the bird sense things that are below their range of sight.

PUG/AR showing us his nictitating membrane, a third eyelid used to clean the eyeball and keep it moist. They blink with this most of the time, rather than their normal eyelids.

 Do you have questions about the Island Scrub Jay? There is so much to learn! Ask me in the comments and I will try to answer as best I can with photos, anecdotes, and some good ole' scientific exploration.

Taxidea taxus

During my last point count on Thursday, I had a chance meeting with an elusive and beautiful mammal: an American Badger, Taxidea taxus. I have only ever seen two badgers in real life: once, at dusk, when I was seven or eight, I saw one scuttling away into the tall grass in an open field; and once I had one run across the road in front of my car at night, just on the edge of the headlights. Needless to say, I have really only seen their butts. But this time, it was broad daylight, about 7:30am, and I was hiking to my 6th point of the day in the Jeffrey Pine forest south of Mono Lake. There had been a burn here a while back and I was weaving through bitterbrush and  downed trees that were in the beginning stages of returning to the earth as mulch. I saw movement along a fallen log and stopped to investigate.

It trundled along, low to the ground, it's wide and flat body seeming to rock and glide at the same time. When it saw me and looked up, I realized what it was. My jaw dropped. It stared at me and I stared right back (through my binoculars). I was only 25 meters away, but it stayed calm (calmer than me, I suppose, because I was shocked and thrilled at the beauty of this animal) and eyed me curiously for about a minute before it turned as if to leave, turned back as if it might still be interested, and then trundled off again and into it's burrow beneath a giant decomposing Jeffrey pine.

I stood there for a second and then said out loud, to no one in particular "That was a badger! I just saw a badger! Whoa!". I had never expected to get that great a look at one out here, or ever really! I often forget that badgers exist because they are nocturnal and are rarely seen even though they live in the western two thirds of the U.S. They are no feisty raccoon or bold opossum--badgers tend to be shy though fierce when provoked. The eat small mammals and occasionally reptiles and birds, using their long sharp claws to dig other small burrowing animals out of their dens or hiding places. Badgers are in the Mustelid family, which means they are related to weasels, martens, otters, and wolverines, among others.

I feel very lucky to have encountered this phantom creature in the wild. As a child, I loved the book "Bread and Jam for Frances" by Russel Hoban about a young badger who does not want to eat soft-boiled eggs for breakfast like everyone else; she prefers bread and jam. She sings cute little songs to her eggs or about her bread and jam. I highly recommend the book, or any of the books about Frances the badger and her family.

A Song From the Nest

One of my favorite local breeding birds is the Warbling Vireo, Vireo gilvus. A lot of people describe these little songbirds as drab because they are all gray and have few distinct markings. I, on the other hand, have had many close looks at Warbling Vireos and feel that they are in no way drab. Their gray body feathers are often highlighted by a yellowish cream-colored belly and sometimes even a hint of jade green. They have a light streak across their face that gives them a bit of personality, and once you hear their spunky nasal "eeayah" call you wont be able to call them drab again. These birds have sass.

This is the only photograph I have of a non-blurry Warbling Vireo, but at least it is artsy!

After conducting an Area Search today (another PRBO project monitoring BLM treatments of Aspen/mixed conifer groves), I spent some time with a pair of vireos who seemed to have a nest nearby. They zipped back and forth between a few small Aspens, vigorously chasing off other birds and gleaning insects from the chalky white bark of the trees. They stuck together mostly and kept in touch by calling. I didn't find their nest, if they made it yet, but I found another Warbling Vireo nest on a different plot. I found that nest when I followed the male's quick, accented song until he stopped singing. I looked up and there he was, singing from the nest. Most birds sing from the tops of nearby trees or shrubs to claim their territory edge. Singing while sitting on the nest seems a little silly and dangerous, but Warbling Vireo males do it often.

Here is a video I took of a Warbling Vireo singing from the nest last year.

A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of watching a male build his nest in a tiny Aspen up Bohler Canyon. Usually they build their nests high in trees (most nests that I have found have been over three and a half meters high, or more than twice my height), but this guy was building a mere four feet off the ground in the tiniest of Aspens. I watched him hover a few inches off the ground while he plucked dry sedges from a colorless tuft of vegetation. He flew with long strands of grasses and thin aspen bark back to the nest and artfully tucked them into the structure of his almost complete nest. It was woven together with tent caterpillar web strands twisted together to make strong threads and lined with softer cheat grass and feathers. Their nest building skills amaze me. They build these intricate little woven cups every year, year after year. No one teaches them how, they just know.

The unfinished nest, with fibers still dangling before he tucked them in.

The tent caterpillar webs (or tents) hold it together pretty nicely!

Part 1: “Seagulls” and Politics

I write today to dispel the myth of the “seagull”, whose brethren have been dubbed the “rats of the skies” and whose reputation for stealing hotdogs from the sandy hands of mustard-crusted sunburned children has deeply overshadowed its simple beauty and charm.

Behold, a California Gull, Larus californicus. 2012.

When envisioning a “seagull”, most people think of a swarm of big gray-and-white birds mobbing a snack bar at a crowded ocean beach or pillaging the dumpster in the beach’s parking lot. What many people fail to realize is that the mob of seemingly identical birds usually consists of multiple species of birds. Calling them all “seagulls” strips them of their individuality, lumps them into a mass of sameness, and perpetuates ignorance (no offense to Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who is a genuine badass). There are over a hundred species of gulls worldwide and each of them is different. You wouldn’t casually say, “Hey mom, there are some dogs in the yard” and leave it at that when there are wolves, jackals, and domestic dogs on the lawn, would you? All three of those animals share a genus. The diversity of gulls expands beyond just the genus Larus, so when you call a Sabine’s Gull, Xema sabini, a “seagull”, it is like saying a Chimpanzee is just another human (who are in the same family, Hominidae, but not the same genus). Some folks would be pretty pissed about that. Needless to say, it is best to drop the “sea” and just go with “gull”; at least bird nerds will like you a lot better if you do.

A beautiful and unique Heerman's Gull, Larus heermanni, in a parking lot in San Francisco. Red bill and black feet!

Some gulls like civilization because we leave so much edible waste around and many gulls have become accustomed to the easy snag of a PB&J left on a picnic table or a recently dumped rack of ribs that may have hit the floor in the kitchen and couldn’t be served to the waiting customer. Gulls are adaptable. Their opportunistic behavior is often portrayed as lazy or greedy, but really it is just intelligent. Without our handouts or garbage dumps, these birds would survive just fine. They would forage like any other species of bird. Not all gulls live around or near the sea. They also live near freshwater swamps, estuaries, open tundra, lakes, and bays, among other places. Since we call them “seagulls” based on where they live, wouldn’t we call a gull that lived near Tomales Bay a bagel (baygull)? Sorry, bad joke.

For the past four summers, I have been extraordinarily fortunate to participate in a long-term study of the California Gull, Larus californicus, at Mono Lake. Learning about this particular species of gull in their natural habitat has opened my eyes to the remarkable and chaotic life of colony-nesting species. This particular colony of California Gulls has a rich history that intertwines with the human political history of this region. The story starts in Los Angeles, over three hundred miles south of Mono Lake.

Gulls on Pancake Islet, 2009.

At the turn of the century, the city of Los Angeles, looking to grow, wanted more water. They began searching far and wide to find it. Find it they did. They cunningly began to buy up water rights throughout the Owens Valley and up into the Mono Basin (how they went about doing this is a story for another day). In April 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began diverting water from Mono Lake’s tributary streams. Not just some water; almost all of it. Rush Creek dried up below LADWP’s Grant Lake Reservoir. The Mono Lake, already a saline terminal desert lake, began to evaporate. The lake level dropped over 40 feet, which doubled the salinity of the lake, causing the simple ecosystem to spiral to the brink of collapse.

This is where the gulls come in: Mono Lake hosts the second largest California Gull nesting colony known in the world. The largest colony is at the Great Salt Lake in Utah, which has upwards of 100,000 nesting California Gulls each summer (see, not all gulls live by the sea!). Mono Lake’s colony fluctuates but has averaged around 47,000 adults in the last 30 years. Historically, the gulls nested on Negit Island, a large rocky volcanic island where greasewood shrubs provided the gulls with shade. When the lake level dropped dramatically as a result of the water diversions, Negit became connected to the mainland, allowing predators like coyotes to saunter out and feast on the nesting gulls and their newborn chicks. Concerned scientists and conservation groups rallied to do something, anything, to prevent this destruction from happening, and in the spring of 1978 the National Guard tried to make a moat in the land bridge with dynamite. The resulting channel was ragged and thin, but it had to do. In the spring of 1979, they tried again, only this time the mud flew up into the air and fell back down exactly where it came from; a complete failure. According to John Hart, who wrote the now out-of-print environmental saga of Mono Lake called Storm Over Mono, “On May 27, researchers starting their annual gull census found coyote tracks, empty nests, and scattered shells…three-quarters of the gulls at Mono failed to nest at all that year” (88). That spring, many of the gulls scattered from Negit Island and found a newly emerged rocky archipelago east of Negit, now called the Negit Islets, and another few islets west of Paoha Island. These islets became the new home of Mono Lake’s California Gull colony.

Negit Island, where the gulls used to nest.

In 1983, the Point Reyes Bird Observatory, now PRBO Conservation Science, started a long-term study of the Mono Lake California Gull colony in conjunction with the Mono Lake Committee. Each year, researchers make three trips to the island during the summer. The first visit, in May, is a colony-wide Nest Count. Four to six researchers and/or volunteers count every nest on every islet in 3-4 days in sweep lines, marking the side of each nest with a dab of water soluble paint to avoid double counting and keeping track of numbers with handheld tally counters, casually called clickers. In July, researchers band a subset of chicks that were born within small chicken wire and PVC pipe plots with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services aluminum bands, each with its own unique 8-digit number, and a plastic color band. In late August or early September, researchers go back out to the now vacated islets and scour the rocky ground for dead banded chicks. This helps figure out how many of the banded chicks fledged and this number can be extrapolated to estimate the overall fledge-rate of the population, also known as the reproductive success of the population.

A researcher (Justin) bands a California Gull chick with a USFWS aluminum band. 2009.

This year is the beginning of the 30^th field season for the PRBO California Gull Project at Mono Lake. This length of a dataset is rare in the science world; many projects only go on for a few seasons, and all are funding dependent, which is becoming increasingly scarce as the government and state budgets are slashed and reprioritized (badly). This ongoing project has been monumental in gathering important ecological data as it pertains to the fluctuations in the lake level, brine shrimp productivity, and weather patterns. This data will be useful for years to come, in both scientific endeavors and political ones—it is, after all, one of the reasons Mono Lake was saved. The gull story is only one part of a long and complex process to help save Mono Lake from water diversions. To make a very long story short, a group of concerned citizens formed a non-profit called the Mono Lake Committee (MLC), who eventually gained enough support and momentum to sue the city of Los Angeles for damaging the lake’s ecosystem. After a 16-year court battle, the MLC won the lawsuit and LADWP was ordered to divert less water to allow the lake to rise just over 20 feet from the historic low. The MLC now focuses on education, restoration, and research to keep the lake ecosystem healthy and cared for.

The next blog post will detail my most recent adventure with the gull project: Nest Count!

Work Cited

Hart, John. Storm Over Mono: The Mono Lake Battle and the California Water Future. Berkeley: University of California, 1996. Print.

inspiration |ˌinspəˈrāSHən|

noun

1 the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative

2 the drawing in of breath; inhalation.

I am lucky to have come into the world surrounded by inspiring people, organizations, and landscapes. I have often found myself in exciting situations in which I felt driven by a force outside of myself to create something new or work towards a collective goal, to experience the pleasure of being a part of something bigger than myself with a positive impact on the planet. Perhaps it is inherent for humans to seek this type of community out but often I wonder—the times of non-stimulation, of the lack of inspiration, are the hardest to pull yourself out of sometimes—is this inspiration what drives the world? Where would we be without it? Is the lack of inspiration what is leading so many people and communities to stray from our rootedness in the earth, to deny our very relation to it?

I find that taking a deep breath brings my focus back to my body. Inspiration. It leads me to my roots: my cellular biology, the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide within my lungs, my heart beating. Inspiration. Will external inspiration bring us back to our roots like breath? Will it help us find the awareness, the compassion, and the movement we need to change the state of our home, the earth, which we have so obliviously degraded?

I ask each of you to take a deep breath, inspire. With this breath, think about what inspires you. Exhale.

With your next deep inspiration, think about how you can inspire others to reconnect with the earth, with the soil, with the sunlight, with the birds, with the animals, with the plants, whose web of life we are very much interlaced with, whose existence we could not live without.

If we each inspire one another to deepen our knowledge of and connection to the earth, we can build a livable future one breath at a time.

This is the future of Natural History for humans.

Bloomin' Spring

It definitely feels like springtime here in the Mono Basin—the days are warming up and the cloudless sky is electric blue; the birds are starting to croon their overtures, preparing for their unabridged performances; the trees are bursting with minute glittering gems of new leaves that dance ecstatically in the breeze; and the blooming Desert Peach is glazing the hillsides pink. When I breathe in, I feel the spring absorbing into my lungs; my skin, my nerves, my blood are rich with it. It is nice to be reminded each spring that regeneration is cyclical, so that we always have something to look forward to even when the winter trees seem lifeless without leaves or if the air is pregnant with silence, lacking birdsong.

Brand new Aspen leaves.

Due to this unusually dry winter and warm spring, the Quaking Aspen groves, Populus tremuloides, in the Basin are already dazzling patches of brilliant green among the more subdued grey-green of sagebrush hillsides. Last year, the winter season extended into the first few weeks of June, and the leaves weren’t out until then in most high groves. Leaf out is a full month earlier this year and it feels a little bizarre. The aspen exploding into green is matched wonderfully with the blooming Desert Peach and Bitterbrush, which add soft blushing pink and mellow buttery yellow to the landscape. Apple trees all over town are bursting with white blossoms as well. It is quite a sight to behold.

Desert Peach with Bitterbrush in the background.

Desert Peach, Prunus andersonii, has smooth shiny silver branches with inch-long woody spines at each cluster of flower buds. The leaves unfurl in April or early May, depending on the year, and the pink flowers follow shortly after. Once bloomed, the two-meter high shrubs are impossible not to notice on the roadsides and hillsides. Their flowers range from deep rosy pink to almost white (and sometimes, though rare, all white). I have found freshly uncurled petals that have a darker magenta pink perimeter that bleed to baby pink. The flower usually has five-petals and has a firework-like cluster of bright yellow stamens bursting out of the center. Desert Peach blooming coincides with the hatching of no-see-ums, miniscule poppy seed-sized biting midges that inflict a nasty welt, so stopping to look at the flowers for too long can be an exciting endeavor filled with lots of swatting. I think it’s worth it. In a few weeks, after the flowers have withered and dropped off, the shrubs will grow small fuzzy dime-sized fruits reminiscent of tiny peaches. Sadly, the pit makes up most of the size and there is only a thin, inedible layer of actual fruit flesh. Apparently the native Pauite boiled just the leaves and twigs to make a tea used to cure rheumatism and common colds (Mozingo 168).

An uncommon six-petaled flower

Perhaps the most widespread shrub in the Basin is Bitterbrush, Purshia tridentata. It fills the sagebrush steppe with stiff dense woody bushes with small three-toothed leaves (hence the latin name tri-, or three, -dentata, or toothed) sprouting from the shreddy older bark. This shrub is another early spring bloomer which has pale yellow-green flowers with robust lemon yellow stamens. In full bloom, the flowers cover the entire bush, hiding the grey-green leaves under a blanket of soft yellow. The plants live long but typically stay between one and two meters high, although three-meter high plants have been found. In the 1950s, an ecologist named Eamor C. Nord found the oldest known individual here in the Mono Basin at Panum Crater during a succession study—is was at least 162 years old (Mozingo 177)! I wonder if it is still alive today.

Buttery Bitterbrush hillside.

Thick with flowers.

The birding is getting quite good as well with spring migration well underway. Hammond’s and Gray Flycatchers are streaming through, and Black-headed Grosbeaks and Bullock’s Orioles are here for the summer. A House Wren is building a nest in a box in the Siberian Elm outside my kitchen window and he sings his bubbly bell-like song from the top of the small aspen by my front porch. I've been running most mornings on a dirt road that winds through the sagebrush above Lee Vining while the sun rises; up until ten days ago, I had heard the zipper-zip-zip calls of Brewer’s Sparrows flying between bushes but it wasn't until the 4th, in the cold blinding sunrise haze that you know signifies it will be a hot day, that I heard them belt out their car alarm ballad in full force. Their trilly, metallic, buzzy song switches octaves and jumps notes repetitively in the most beautiful way. They are a relatively non-descript little brown and tan bird but their simple beauty and complex song makes me respect them in a way I can’t fully articulate. Oh to be a bird who’s song would say it all.

Work Cited

Mozingo, Hugh Nelson. Shrubs of the Great Basin: a natural history. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1987. Print.

A Rekindling of Wings

It is time to start this blog up again, and what better place to start it up again than where I first started it last year: Santa Cruz Island. I spent last week volunteering on the Island Scrub-jay project, trekking up and down familiar hills and under familiar oaks looking for jay nests. I got to experience almost the entire spectrum of a spring season on the island: rain, fog, heat, wind, illuminating sunsets, goofy crew members, jeep rides to the beach, quality time with the jays, deep love for the physical space and the people I get to share it with. I find it hard to articulate the feeling of being there, of fitting in, of feeling grounded—happy without even thinking about it. The ocean breeze mixes with essences of lupine, oak pollen, drying grass, and spicy eucalyptus. Spring migrants zip through the trees, singing new/old songs that are tucked into our auditory memories from somewhere else but we can't quite bring up their name out of the context of our last meeting. I both love and feel guilty about ignoring the rest of the world for a while; feeling free in the isolation from consumerism, capitalism, and corporate greed, focusing on the now and here and allowing myself to fully absorb into just being. It's nice, but we can't do it all the time. We have to (and should!) participate in making this world a better place.

A view of Santa Cruz Island's Central Valley looking East from Islay Ridge.

One way that I hope to contribute to at least a small bit of the world is in the field of natural history. It is hard to pin down a definition of “natural history” because the field spans many scientific and social disciplines. It asks the question: which plants, animals, weather patterns, and ecological processes surround us and how do we humans fit in? It is almost less of a field of study and more of a practice—of looking, listening, and feeling, of loving the non-human as well as the human. It connects people to place and to the earth on which we all live, and it gives us a sense of community with the non-human instead of ownership of the non-human. Aldo Leopold said it best in the foreword to A Sand County Almanac, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” (Leopold viii). Where then, do we start fostering this feeling of community? On the outskirts of towns and cities, or in the heart of them? How to we teach nature when there is so little left? I recently flew across the country from L.A. to New York (and yes, I feel guilty about airplane travel) and soaked up the expected horrors of urban sprawl. I imagined a time when the Los Angeles area used to be rolling oak savannahs, chaparral, and coastal scrub, with scattered home sites here and there. Now rows and rows of houses and miles and miles of asphalt and glass dominate this landscape. Not even just dominate—it is entirely covered. The air is never clear. The water comes from far away. We all know this is happening, we all know it is speeding up, and I can’t speak for everyone else, but I am terrified. I know I must start small, take baby steps, and perhaps it will feel like I am making a difference.

This blog will be teaching tidbits of natural history as I learn about them or perhaps even long after the fact. I have, after all, lived in these places before and considered myself a naturalist for a while, but I am always learning new things and eager to share them. I will warn you: sometimes the posts will be ecologically scattered, especially if I am jumping around from place to place like this last week, but most of them will be about the Mono Basin, which is home base for now.

Looking down at chaparral habitat from the top of Los Torres ridge

To start though, back to Santa Cruz Island. The island has a wide variety of habitats including grassland, coastal sage scrub, oak woodland, chaparral, riparian, bishop pine forest, and of course the intertidal zones that line the perimeter. I spent most of my time on Santa Cruz in chaparral and oak woodland, as this is where the jays spend most of their nesting energy. Chaparral consists of mainly drought-tolerant woody shrubs and small trees like oaks, Ceanothus, Manzanita, sumac species, buckwheat, and sage. On Santa Cruz, the Island Scrub Oak, Quercus pacifica, is a dominant chaparral species in which Scrub-jays nest. This small, flaky barked tree often looks like a contortionist from cirque du soliel. These twists and turns might make for a difficult time for predators on their way to a jay nest, but sometimes the branch will bend right back down onto the ground. In the more open woodland habitats, jays often nest in larger Coast Live Oak, Quercus agrifolia. Both oak species drop their acorns and birds like Scrub-jays and Acorn Woodpeckers snatch them up to cache them for the fall. Sometimes the Scrub-jays forget where they bury them and a new oak will germinate. The Acorn Woodpeckers stash their booty in “granaries” made from other trees. One tree can have literally thousands of acorns wedged into holes for the woodpeckers to eat later.

Scrub Oak

Lemonade Berry, Rhus integrifolia. Fruits and flowers absent.

One of two sumac species on Santa Cruz Island is Lemonade Berry, Rhus integrifolia. It has thick leathery green leaves with distinct veins that attach to a pinkish petiole (the little stalk that connects the blade of the leaf to the stem, which most people confuse with the stem). The clusters of fuzzy, reddish-whitish-pink berries stick out from the tips of the branches, and when you walk past a fruiting bush, you will most likely get the sticky juice all over your clothes. According to Edward K. Balls, in his book The Early Uses of California Plants, Lemonade Berry got its name from American Indians who made a sour-sweet summery drink when they stirred the ripe berries into water (Balls 43).

Sometimes, trying to identify a plant is like a treasure hunt. You have clues (your memory, a photograph, etc.) and resources like a field guide but you have to put them together to make sense but sometimes they don’t make sense even then! One of the Island Scrub-jay Project crewmembers had a photo of a jay nest in a mystery plant and a very basic description: shaggy bark, white flowers, with green-toothed leaves. We searched through the island flora field guide (A Flora of Santa Cruz Island by Steve Junak) but the descriptions were so scientific and convoluted that we needed to look at the glossary every five words to figure out what each one meant. At first, we flipped through the book to look for drawings of similar leaves. Then we tried to narrow it down by relating it to other plants or eliminating plants that we knew it wasn’t. Then we searched our memories for bits and pieces of conversations we’d had about plants with other biologists on the island or the knowledgeable island caretaker. Maybe it was something rare with only a few individuals on the island? Maybe we found something new! We finally settled on Summer Holly, Comarostaphylis diversifolia. It was an “aha!” moment. The flowers matched, the leaves matched, the bark matched, and the book said it was only found in a few places on the island, in coastal chaparral. One of the clues that helped was the similarity of Summer Holly’s flowers to Manzanita, which is closely related. Both are in the heath family. Manzanita covers a good portion of a few of the study plots, so the crewmembers and I were quite familiar with their characteristics (flowers, leaves, bark) which helped us eliminate actual Manzanita and find the plant's true species name.

Last but not least, there is the natural history of the humans. Santa Cruz Island used to be home to multiple Chumash villages. They called this land Limu (Kroeber 554), and many of the mainland tribes considered it the place where you go while you are waiting to be taken to the next life or to the heavens, a sort of limbo. The Limu Chumash traded with tribes on the other islands and with the mainland via long dugout canoes called tomols (Kroeber 558). *In the 1500s, the European expeditions began to “discover” the island, but it was not until 1769 that a Spanish explorer claimed the land for the King of Spain. The Chumash population dwindled due to European-spread disease and forced relocation to the missions on the mainland, and by 1814 most of them were gone. Mexico gained independence from Spain and the island was granted to a private owner who turned it into an esteemed sheep ranch. One hundred years after Spain had claimed the island, it was sold to a group of men who formed the Santa Cruz Island Company (SCIC) and sought to develop the sheep ranch. Of the ten shareholders, a Frenchman named Justinian Caire took control of the future of the ranch and designed “a great variety of agricultural and ranching endeavors suitable to the island's climate and terrain” ("History of Santa Cruz Island"). They continued to raise sheep for wool, meat, tallow, and hide, but also grew olives, almonds, alfalfa, figs, apples, oranges, avocados, and other vegetables, as well as a variety of wine grapes for the Santa Cruz Winery. Caire died in 1897, and the island was divided between his wife, children, and the SCIC. In 1937, Edwin Stanton bought the SCIC portion of the island and began ranching again, this time with cattle. Ownership of the ranch and land (some 9/10ths of the island) passed to his son Dr. Carey Stanton in 1963. Dr. Stanton ran the ranch until his death in 1987. Having no children of his own to inherit the ranch, he decided to pass the island on to The Nature Conservancy to protect this place that he so dearly loved. In 1997, the remaining 10^th of the island became part of the Channel Islands National Park . Currently, caretakers of the ranch and research station inhabit the island year-round, and scientists and school groups spend a significant amount of time visiting to do field work. On the National Park side of the island, many visitors from all over can hike or camp on the bluffs and explore the beaches to their heart’s content.

The Scrub-jay and Eagle Crew jumping in front of the sunset

It is a unique experience to be a field biologist on an isolated island like Santa Cruz. The Scrub-jay crew is a solid 5-person crew living in close quarters for 4 months in rustic cabins perched atop a hill overlooking a mostly dry creek bed meandering between two steep ridges. They buy food on the mainland once a month and have to make it last. They entertain themselves with games and laughter and conversation, with music and literature and adventures to beaches to toss a Frisbee around. Once in awhile they will venture over to other parts of the island to visit the Bald Eagle Crew for dinner or meet up with the student groups at the Field Station for a BBQ. It’s quite a life, that of a field biologist. In a few weeks time, this Scrub-jay field crew will disperse onto the mainland to different corners (and also to the middle) of the continent to start new adventures in a new season. Hopefully, all of our paths will cross again and we can reminisce about that amazing place that we once shared: Santa Cruz Island.

Works Cited:

Balls, Edward K.. Early uses of California plants. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Print.

"History of Santa Cruz Island." Santa Cruz Island Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2012. <http://www.scifoundation.org/sanhhisto.html>.

Kroeber, A. L.. Handbook of the Indians of California. New York: Dover Publications, 1976. Print.

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County almanac, and sketches here and there. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949. Print.

*The information about the human history of Santa Cruz Island from the 1500s until the present was derived from "History of Santa Cruz Island" from the Santa Cruz Island Foundation website.

Centinela, Willows, Christy - Extracurricular Exploring

My last few weeks on Santa Cruz Island passed by so quickly, I can hardly distinguish when I was where or who I was with. It was a blur flying across my vision, a bird whose form burned a memory into my brain but whom I couldn't quite identify with the memory alone. I will break the weeks down into highlights:

Mama Kerry and Rust, the crew's '77 Land Cruiser, atop the Ridge

My mom came to visit--a wonderful treat for both of us. We hiked to Pelican Bay from Prisoner's Harbor, and I was introduced to a whole other side of the island--an island so diverse it feels like it would take months of exploring, years even, to really get to know all the different micro-climates and unique habitats. Pelican Bay itself looks tropical with aqua waves lapping the black biotite swaths of rock covered with brick-and-spearmint colored lichens. We saw flashes of bright orange under the clear rippling liquid. Giant Goldfish? No, it was a Garibaldi, I found out later, which turns out to be the state fish of California. Once back to the field station, we took off exploring and drove to Centinela, where the relict population of Bishop Pines begins in scatters of lone straggly pines and becomes thicker and thicker until you see off in the distance that it becomes a forest that blankets the steep slopes and canyons.

Bishop Pines, looking West.

My dad also came to visit. I took a day off and we took the Land Cruiser up the ridge road, then down the Willows road until it ended, and hiked down the wash to Willows Beach. It is secluded and breathtakingly beautiful, like a lost cove no one had ventured to before. There are two rocky spires sticking out of the water just 50 meters or so offshore, one of which is called Ship Rock. We walked the soft beach and clamored on the rocky shore beneath cliffs with cool exposed geologic formations. The sea was clear and blue again, but this time we could touch it and it was COLD, so it seemed less tropical than Pelican Bay. It was great to have my dad around.

Willows Beach with Shiprock at left.

 

 

Christy Ranch, the old old house, with cypress trees.

During my last week on the island, we had a field trip day and the whole crew drove out to Christy Beach, on the west side of the island. There is an old ranch there with what could be the oldest building on the island, built by Justinian Caire in the mid-to-late 1800s. The beach was vast and smooth and covered with little tar balls that got all over my feet. The rocks geology was amazing--huge smooth ripples of sandstone with boulders and fossils lodged into them, capturing time. It was windy so we only stayed for an hour or two, but we had a picnic lunch by the old adobe, which is supposedly haunted by a woman who washed ashore on the beach after throwing herself from the ship she was on. It was creepy, but I would've loved to spend the night and see the Green Lady for myself.

Christy Beach, looking north as Sinead walks down the beach.

Small boulder sticking out of sandstone. 

As the days wound down, I said goodbye to my many Jay friends one by one. The Sirius pair in Coches, La Negra and her mate GUY/AP (the Negra Modelo pair) in Portezeula, and the charismatic Kennedys, Hillary Clinton, as well as Dalia and Castro at Field Station. Of course there were many others, but these ones stuck out in my mind as favorites. On my last day, Hillary took a peanut out of my hand. I was thrilled. I got to see Dalia and Castro's brown-headed baby in the creepy bird tree outside the Cabins--it looked almost grown but with a hint of a gape and a head full of brown baby feathers. I named it Fidelito, after Castro's real son, Fidelita if it turns out to be female.

Saying bye to the crew was just as hard. I feel privileged to have known these four humans in the three months on the Island. It is always sad to leave a group, sadder when you know your lives are taking you far away from each other, but happy because you know that you became close enough to visit and continue the friendship. It is really just "see ya later!". I had a great time learning everyone's quirks, habits, thoughts, and sometimes dreams, and I hope they felt the same about me.

Until next time, Santa Cruz Island, whenever that may be!

The Sirius female, YGO/AY, sitting on her nest.

Hillary Clinton, taking a peanut from the Cabin railing.

See more of my Santa Cruz Island photos at picasaweb.google.com/oreothlypiscelata

What are men compared to rocks and mountains?

 The shape of Santa Cruz Island is reminiscent of a wingless goose flying east with its tail pointing west and its fat body thinning into a gracefully curved neck topped with a bird head looking up. The island is approximately 26 miles from goose tail to beak and 6 miles wide at the fattest part of the goose’s belly, which totals around 96 square miles. This land mass was possibly once attached to the mainland way back when in the San Diego area. The Island has since “broken away” and rotated clockwise to its goose-flying-east position.  The geology of the island is, like all geology, complex. Now, I used to be a geology major at Whitman but it has been three years since then and geology can be like a foreign language sometimes, so I will try to break it down for you (and for my own sake, as well…I really need to brush up).

wikipedia.org

The Santa Cruz Island Fault trends east-west right through the middle of the island, causing the geology on the north side to be vastly different from the south side. The northern portion is comprised of “Miocene volcanic rocks overlain by the Monterey Formation” (Gordon et al. 2001). This means there are layers of marine sediments like shale and chert deposited on top of volcanic rocks that are between 23 and 5.3 million years old. They have been folded, warped, and pushed around for many millions on years since. The southern portion of the island mainly consists of schist—very old metamorphic rock—overlain by sandstone and other marine sediments and intruded by granitic plutons (magma that cooled underground into one big solid swath of rock that is then pushed up from below when faults move. A well-known example of an exposed pluton is Half-Dome in Yosemite). The granite on the Island is exposed in small chunks—every now and then you will stumble over a car-sized moss- or lichen-covered granite lump, or find a cool granite cave or waterfall.

One of my favorite geologic landmarks on the island is what we call the “Red-White Divide” (that has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?). On the drive to Coches, the dirt road is reddish-orange—volcanic. At one point, the color of the road turns white. Now you are driving on ocean sediments, mostly shale and calcareous rocks. It is literally a line that divides the two, as if a child actually followed a color-by-number drawing (that never really happens, right?). The road exposes a perfect fault, where the two different geologic formations have been pushing against or along side each other for centuries.

The Red-White Divide

It’s been awhile since I took a Geology class. I was registered to take Geology of the Southern Appalachians at Warren Wilson this spring, but then I was offered this job…I’ll have to learn about North Carolina geology another time, or in bits and pieces as I hike around in the upcoming fall. I like being able to look out over a landscape and have an inkling of an idea of what could have formed it millions of years ago. 

Note: I need to cite my source above, but the document is up and the cabins, so I will try to edit the post later with that in it.

Coches

Coches Prietos Canyon, known as just Coches, is our plot on the south side of the Island and the furthest plot from the cabins. Usually, Coches is a 10-15 minute truck ride up and over the south ridge but since the big rain on the 20th we've had to hike it. It is intensely steep and strenuous, but exhilarating at the same time. Thirty-five minutes of hiking straight uphill to the top, then thirty minutes back down to the bottom of the canyon, and then you begin to nest search. I used my GPS to determine how far I hiked four days ago: approximately 12.6 kilometers, which equates to about 7.5 miles. The GPS track also plots the elevation on a graph and I wish I could have posted a picture of that on here. It zigzagged up and down like a polygraph printout. Coches is by far the most topographically challenging plot. There are many steep drainages, and ridges upon ridges to scramble over. My favorite part about Coches is that I can see the glittering blue Pacific (if I am high enough up). It instantly reminds me that I am living on an island and I have the coolest job ever.

From Los Torres, looking North over the Coches plot. The little windy white road in the center of the photo is the road we hike up. See if you can follow it to the top (it turns red). That is where we hike to get back to the Cabins after a long day of hiking to find nests. Thankfully, we do not have to hike over the ridge in the far background...that is on the North side of the Central Valley of the island, where the Cabins are.

One day at Coches, I hiked to the top of Los Torres, a rocky ridge south of the canyon, to take some photos. It looks like a Dr. Seuss book up there: weird rocky teeth and an assortment of odd succulents and Giant Coreopsis. The top gave a great view down over Coches to the north and of the ocean to the south. It felt amazing to be so high up and to not see a single man made thing around me other than a barge in the shimmering distance, which I pretended was a whale sunning itself on the warm ocean surface.

Looking up at Los Torres

The road to Coches has only recently dried, so on Saturday we will get to drive the windy, steep road instead of hike it. It is a relief but I also enjoyed the hike, and the fact that my body was fit enough to propel itself up with little argument. In other news, the Lagunitas pair's first nest did in fact fail, but I found them building a new nest today in a Scrub Oak some 50 meters from their old nest. Hopefully, they will have better luck with this nest.

The Thief

To the Island Fox who stole my sock,

It must have smelled quite nice, that ripe three-days-worn sock odor. Nice enough to entice you to run off with it in your little fox teeth, I guess. Now, dear fox, this means nothing to you but that was my last pair of new socks. I bought two pairs of SmartWool socks to come out to the island because my old socks are crusty and worn. The first new pair—the best pair—was separated by a bucket of hot coals. I kept the non-burnt one. And now, you have pilfered one of my other pair. This wouldn’t be an issue if they were the same socks, but no, they were quite different. One pair was thick, cushiony, and oh-so-soft. The other pair was thinner and coarser. Mixing-and-matching these socks does not feel good on my feet.

So, little fox, I shake my fist at you for your thievery, but you are just so darn cute and endangered I just can’t hold it against you for long.

Love,

Nora

P.S. Fox, Michelle does not appreciate the stinky mark you left on her nest pole. 

Santa Cruz Island Fox, about the size of a house cat.

The Santa Cruz Island Fox (Urocyon littoralis santacruzae) is a subspecies of Island Fox endemic to Santa Cruz Island, just like the Island Scrub-jay. This furry critter is the largest mammal native to SCI, though it is one-third smaller than its mainland counterpart, the Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). The Island Fox is thought to have become isolated on the Channel Islands over 10,000 years ago and has evolved into a unique species. There are six subspecies of Island Fox, each unique to a different island within the Channel Island chain.

In the 1990s, the Santa Cruz subspecies fell victim to a human-caused ecological unbalance brought on by non-native species introduced to the island during the ranching era and the decline of Bald Eagles due to DDT. Introduced feral pigs and ranched sheep attracted Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) who took over the niche of the native declining, DDT-affected, fish-eating population of Bald Eagles (Haliateetus leucocephalus). The Golden Eagles preyed on the foxes as well as the wild piglets that first attracted them. The population of foxes plunged from approximately 1,500 individuals to fewer than 100. This ~90% population decline greatly reduced the effective population size, and therefore the genetic variation, of the species. Recovery from such an event seems futile, but the foxes have made quite a comeback. The restoration plan removed and re-located the Golden Eagles, reintroduced a population of Bald Eagles, eradicated the feral pigs (which caused quite a stir that I will discuss in a further entry), and captive-bred foxes. Currently, there are somewhere around 800 foxes on SCI.

When I arrived on the Island, I saw an Island Fox within an hour. In fact, I saw two or three. I see multiple foxes every day. Ten years ago, I would have been lucky to see a fox a week. I feel fortunate to get to observe this unique species while it is on the upswing. My favorite observation so far has been in the early morning after a rainy night—all the earthworms were wriggling on the muddy road surface and I had to tiptoe carefully around them all. I turned a corner and there was a fox trundling down the road towards me, head down, it’s nose less than an inch from the ground. It was weaving back and forth eating as many worms as it could find. It was so preoccupied that it didn’t even notice me until we were only 10 meters apart. It finally looked up, pricked its ears up, sniffed, and scampered away like an excited puppy. 

NOTE:

It turns out my fox count was off--there are approximately 800-900 sexually mature adult foxes on the island and up to 1300 total (this means almost a third of the foxes are less than 10 months old--the age when they reach sexual maturity).