Summer Thunder at Mono Lake

There is nothing like a summer thunderstorm to slow your afternoon down and remind you to take the time to just breathe and feel the air change and charge around you. The sky growls purple and the clouds build until they heavily drop bottom-first to the heat swollen earth. The rain rarely makes it to the desert soil, though you can see it coming down in sheets. The wind surges, pushing the storm quickly over your head and away to light someone else's afternoon with clashes of exciting lightning, and the sky returns to crystal blue and gilded sunlight.

I'm back in the Eastern Sierra after a whirlwind three weeks (has it been that long?) of post-island life. I departed Santa Cruz Island in good spirits after jumping off the pier with my crew, and saw Humpback Whales, Common Dolphins, and thousands of Sooty Shearwaters feeding with them on the ride back. Upon arriving at the mainland, still salty and damp from the ocean, I hopped in my truck and drove three and a half hours to Fossil Falls, a crazy beautiful volcanic rock formation south of Lone Pine, CA. It was quite late and quite warm when I set up my camp in the deserted BLM campground and the wind was beginning to pick up with incredibly forceful gusts. It felt amazing to be alone yet content on that balmy desert night, just me, basalt, a cinder cone, the wind, and the sky.

Fossil Falls in 2008. Solid basalt smoothed and carved by water and wind.

I made it home to Lee Vining the next day, where the Mono Basin Bird Chautauqua was soon to begin. Summertime on the Eastside was in full swing. I lead two fantastic field trips for the birding festival and reunited with my Eastside gang around the campfire.

INTERRUPTIVE NOTE: It just started pouring! The thunder is directly above me. Epic! I am outside, safely huddled under a big (wooden) umbrella at the Latte Da coffee shop.

After the festival, I drove home to Marin for my cousin Robin's wedding to the lovely Shelton and her awesome son Shiloh. It was a beautiful ceremony and a fun village event with many of Robin's friends playing live music until the summer sun was long gone. Next up was my friend Bailey's wedding in Walla Walla, WA, so I drove up with a two day pit-stop in Ashland, OR to pick pie cherries off the neighbor's tree and play board games with my dear friends Morgan and Forrest. Walla Walla was a joyous reunion of my dorm-mates from my freshman year of college and a sweet celebration of Bailey and his bride Kaity's love.

UPDATE: It is now a monumental downpour. Lightning just struck literally 100 feet from where I am sitting (now inside) and the thunderclap shook the building. I love this.

This sure doesn't do the rain justice.

So, now I am back in Lee Vining, camping (my bed must be soaked right now, despite the tarp) for the week, then out to the Mono Lake islets to band California Gull chicks. The rest of my summer consists of playing (aka birding and hiking) around here as well as in Oregon, harmonizing with Ooolation! Singers in the aspens above Lee Vining, and enjoying funemployment while I can.

Mid-August will bring me back to Southeast Farallon Island for 5-6 weeks, and then back to Santa Cruz Island I go! I'll try to blog about some fun summer natural history tidbits in between. Until then, get out and enjoy wherever you are, I know I am!

These Birds

For someone who studies birds for work and watches birds for passion, I haven't written much about them in this blog. I'm not sure why this is. I live and breathe birds everyday and I observe things that awe me regularly, but I rarely think "remember to blog about that later!". I guess that is something I'll have to work into my thoughts if I am going to try to preserve these experiences outside of my mind.

Tree Pose.

At the beginning of the season, I watched a male Island Scrub Jay foraging in his territory. Hubble, color combination UWB/AY (blue over white over black on the left leg, aluminum over yellow on the right), was landing on the thin, flexible branches of an Island Ceanothus, Ceanothus arboreus, and picking at the insects on the seedpods. The weight of his body caused the whole branch to bow almost to the ground so he dangled upside-down, swinging like a little monkey while he gulped down bugs. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Quick sketch of Hubble's acrobatics.

Hubble, UWB/AY. What a stud.

The last month of our season has been focused on Brownhead Surveys. We search each territory for 10-30 minutes looking for fledged young. We call them Brownheads because they have a solid gray-brown head and back, unlike the adults who have blue feathers on their head. Brownheads are notoriously awkward and klumsy. They flutter their wings and beg with this high-pitched squeaking "feeeeeeee-eee-eeed meee-eeee-eeee-eee". They crash through vegetation in pursuit of their siblings and trip on their own little gray legs. They also are very good at sitting still and being quiet when their mama tells them to. Until they get bored and let out a whine or break a stick and fall a few inches. Goofballs.

Hopsecutioner Fledge. Look at his little awkward gape (the pink on the side of his bill).

The Hopsecutioner pair, AP/ORK and POG/AP, were pretty sneaky this year (their first year as a pair; the female used to be with BPG/AP, who probably died over the winter, and the male was born in 2010 and this is seemingly his first mating attempt). We didn't know for sure whether or not they had a nest for a long time and then we figured they had failed because we hadn't been seeing any signs of nest activity, so I went in to find and "veg" the nest (aka measure how far it is from the ground and identify the species of tree it is in) and was pleasantly surprised to find a freshly hopped out fledgling crashing around in the ceanothus. I took a GPS point and got out of there as quickly as I could so I didn't attract any predators. We detected one fledgling every three days for almost two weeks straight with no sign of more than one. Then one day, I saw one bird in a large willow in the creekbed and I thought I saw another dark shape bumbling klumsily through the branches. I crawled through the Baccharis (Coyote Bush) to get to the willow and there I found not one, not two, but FOUR fledglings bopping around in the tree. The parents both flew in to investigate me, but the babies were all big enough that they no longer needed to protect them from on the ground "predators" like me. I counted and re-counted and four it stayed. The four siblings were squabbling and squeaking at each other and begging to be fed. I stood in awe for a good five minutes, repeating out-loud to no one in particular "Four? Four? How did that happen? What? FOUR?" So congratulations AP/ORK, you sure are starting out strong! The four Brownheads are still out and about, getting bigger and a little less doofy every day.

Recently banded fledge, likely from Saranac.

The Most Beautiful Flower of All

Hidden in this fairy glade is the naked stalk of a shy beauty just waiting to bloom.

Humboldt Lily, Lilium humboldtii.

This California endemic (also a species of special environmental concern) likes the shaded oak woodlands on the dense north-facing slopes. It blooms from March to May and never fails to take my breath away. I eagerly awaited this particular plant's blooming day, checking the glade every three days until the maroon speckled, golden-orange blossoms burst forth into the light. My heart skipped a beat when I finally saw them in their full glory.

This plant is taller than me!

Even the leaves are soft and smooth and beautiful.

Wildflowers of Santa Cruz Island, Part II

Giant Coreopsis, Coreopsis gigantea, at Valley Anchorage. Dr. Seuss plants!

Up close Coreopsis flower.

Sticky Sand-verbena, Abronia maritima. Coches Beach.

Pink Sand-Verbena, Abronia umbellata. Near Fraser Pt.

White-lined Sphinx Moth, Hyles lineata.

Beach Evening-Primrose, Camissonia cheiranthifolia. Near Fraser Point.

Flowering Crystalline Iceplant, Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, Fraser Point.

 

Crystalline Iceplant sans flowers. An introduced species.

The next plant is very rare--it is only found on the far west end of Santa Cruz Island. No where else in the world! I took this photo on a recent visit to Fraser Point, the furthest west point on the island.

Santa Cruz Island Live-Forever, Dudleya nesiotica, with another SCI endemic (Santa Cruz Island Silver Lotus, Lotus argophyllus) in the background.

And now a few more wildflowers from the valley: 

Dwarf Brodiaea, Brodiaea jolonensis.

A new favorite, Fairy Lantern (or Globe Lily), Calochortus albus.

Yellow Mariposa, Calochortus luteus.

Indian Pink, Silene laciniata.

Creeping Snowberry, Symphoricarpos mollis.

Are You Chewing On My Boot?

Nest searching requires a certain comfort with solitude. In the field, I'll spend hours just sitting and watching my birds without a glimpse of another human. I love it. Sometimes, though, I feel like someone is watching me. I feel that prickle up my spine and the eerie sensation that eyes are boring holes in the back of my head. I whip my head around to find out who is stalking me, and I see this:

Just sitting there, staring at me. No wonder I felt funny. The Santa Cruz Island Fox is an inquisitive little creature with a keen sense of smell and a penchant for marking their territory on just about everything, everywhere. Once you leave your stuff out at night or just too far away from your body in the field, you may be a walking fox-magnet. Once you have the scent of another fox on your daypack or your boots, foxes in other territories will gallop towards you, raise their pointy nose in the air and sniff with their little eyes squinted shut. They will pace back and forth a bit and, if they are bold, will approach you cautiously to get a better whiff.

The other day I had a fox jogging after me for over 200 meters as I walked up towards my territories in Coches. Knowing the dangers of this fox following me to a nest, I decided to sit down and wait until he decided that I wasn't quite as good smelling as he thought. I sat with my legs splayed out in front of me and he (or she) didn't hesitate for a second and ran right up to my feet. He paced a few times in front of my toes, sniffing. Then he proceeded to nibble on the bottom of my boot. Then the top. Then he took a taste of my gaiter stirrup. I let him work his way up my gaiter--he would bite the thick fabric or the velcro not to eat it but to pull at it as if he just wanted to run away with it. He made it all the way up to my knee strap until I decided to shoo him away when he pulled hard enough on the strap to undo the buckle that tightens the top of the gaiter below my knee. He scampered a few feet away, sat down, and stared at me. I'm not done chewing on your gaiters, he might have been thinking. I got up and walked away, hoping that he wouldn't follow me again. He did. It took me quite some time to shake him off and by the time I did, I was followed by two foxes. I sat down, and the whole experience repeated itself. I wish I had had my camera.

I would let this little guy chew on my boot any day.

Here is a video of a fox trying to steal my telemetry gear. I try not to talk to animals the way I do in this video because I respect them as fellow creatures, not cute stuffed animals, but it is really hard not to talk to foxes in a British accent. It just is.

Wildflowers of Santa Cruz Island, Part I

This season I have been particularly interested in identifying wildflowers. I feel like I hardly noticed them two years ago because I was so focused on the Jays--not that I am not as focused on them this year, but I started with a familiarity that I didn't have before, so I can take the extra moment to sit with a Shooting Star or photograph a Larkspur or take a deep breath in a field of Blue Dicks.

Upon returning to the cabins after a day of fieldwork, I often find myself reaching for A Flora of Santa Cruz Island, an intense but incredibly helpful guide to every single tree, flower, grass, and thistle on the island. The text is like trying to read another language (botany has an incredibly unique vocabulary), but the line drawings are simple and beautiful, so I use what knowledge I have of plant families to get me to the right section of the book and then I skim the pages for familiar petals or fruits.

Here are a few photos of what I have found so far.

Shooting Star, Dodecatheon clevelandii subsp. insulare.

Larkspur, Delphinium parryi subsp. maritimum.

 

Larkspur, fully flowering.

Blue Dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum.

In the first month of the field season, the open grassland vistas were glazed with purple Blue Dicks.

Johnny-Jump-Up, Viola pedunculata. This edible flower reminds me of my Grandmother, Kathy.

Wood Mint (or Hedge Nettle), Stachys bullata. The leaves make a delicious tea.

Fremont's Death Camas or Common Star-lily, Zigadenus fremontii. This plant is poisonous to humans and livestock!

One of my favorites: Goldenstar, Bloomeria crocea.

Such a vibrant back stripe on every petal!

Bush Monkey Flower, Mimulus longiflorus.

 

Island Monkey Flower, Mimulus flemingii, possibly a hybrid with M. longiflorus.

Catalina Mariposa Lily, Calochortus catalinae.

Climbing Penstemon, Keckiella cordifolia.

Stay tuned for beach/cliff flowers!