Half Moon Bay & the Hunt for Braden’s 1,000th Bird

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After almost two months in the Sierras, Braden and his co-worker San Darmstadt headed to the coast for a much-anticipated chance to go on a pelagic birding cruise out of Half Moon Bay—familiar territory for his dad (yours truly) during his college years at Cal. While Braden had suffered from seasickness on previous pelagic cruises, he hoped that today would be different—especially because he was within three species of reaching the coveted 1,000 mark for his Life List. Would he make it? Would he lose his lunch—and breakfast? Read on to find out—and, as always, please feel free to share this post.

Photography note: as you will read below, Braden was not able to take photos of this trip, so I (Sneed) have taken the liberty of including photos from our first pelagic trip, out of Monterey with Debi Shearwater, during our Big Year of 2016. Photos of the actual Half Moon Bay cruise graciously provided by Sam Darmstadt! (Photo captions by Sneed.)

As far as I could count, I had taken not one, not two, but at least five precautions to counteract seasickness. As our boat, the Captain Pete, pulled out of Pillar Point Harbor, I stood on the ship’s port side, staring at the foggy seaside communities of Half Moon Bay, confident that this would be the time I finally avoided turning green out on the ocean. I could not have been more horribly wrong.

The leader of the Institute for Bird Populations Spotted Owl crew, Ramiro Aragon, had told us about this Half Moon Bay pelagic trip back in early June, and Sam Darmstadt and I had quickly signed up. That had given us close to two months of growing anticipation for the trip, and both of us were thrilled as we stepped aboard the boat at seven in the morning, backpacks loaded with saltines and minds filled with possible lifers we could see. I had taken a “Less Drowsy” Dramamine tablet half an hour earlier, and wore two acupressure bands on my wrists that supposedly helped to prevent motion sickness. The night before, I’d gone to bed early rather than socializing so that I would feel well-rested for the ten-hour pelagic the next morning. I even left my camera in the cabin, swearing to only use my binoculars if absolutely necessary as I grasped the railing with one hand and tucked the other in my pocket for warmth. 

The birds began rolling in as soon as the boat cleared the harbor. Thousands of pelicans and cormorants roosted on the breakers, waiting for the heavy fog to lift. Alvaro Jamarillo, one of the United States’ best birders and a leading expert on all water-related birds (especially gulls), called out a Wandering Tattler feeding just above the water line on some of the rocks, providing everyone onboard with stellar looks at this species that I’ve only seen twice before. Behind Debi Shearwater’s famous pelagic boat tours that ended a few years prior, Alvaro’s Adventures were the most famous West Coast pelagic tours, in part thanks to Alvaro’s skill and experience, along with the rarities he’d encountered over the years. In 2014, this exact trip out of Half Moon Bay had run into the first ABA record of Salvin’s Albatross!

Hearts flutter with anticipation whenever a pelagic birding cruise leaves the harbor. Unfortunately, for those prone to seasickness, it will soon be a different part of the anatomy that flutters . . . and lurches and heaves!

Besides taking measures against seasickness, I’d compiled a slideshow to identify many of the species that were possible on this trip, and spent a good few hours staring at jaeger plumages, identification of winter alcids, and tubenose flight styles. I had a good idea of which birds were likely or possible on this trip, and had several targets in mind. Two of those were the birds I’d missed on the trip my dad and I had taken out of Monterey Bay six years earlier, Buller’s Shearwater and Ashy Storm-petrel. I’d been in the cabin, trying not to throw up, as these birds had flown by the boat. I intended for a different story this time.

Leaving the harbor, Alvaro called out a lifer almost immediately: Marbled Murrelet. I quickly saw smaller, browner alcids sitting in pairs between the groups of Common Murres, and allowed myself a few looks in my binoculars at these birds with such interesting ecology. Marbled Murrelet is a bird that has been on my dad’s and my minds for some time now, in part because, despite being seabirds, they breed dozens of miles inland in old growth forests. I learned later that in this area, while land was still in view, we had the highest count of this species ever recorded on any of Alvaro’s pelagic trips!

Even though they are some of the most common birds on pelagic trips, Common Murres are also some of the most remarkable. Before the chicks can even fly, the male parents goad them into leaping off of their cliff-face birthplaces into the sea, and raise them on the ocean surface. I’m thinking I should have tried that with Braden!

We began to move north and away from shore, and the water began to grow choppy. As I waited for birds to begin appearing, I talked with a friendly British birder standing next to me, and learned about all of the rare birds he’d been seeing in Britain in the last few years, including an American Robin that thousands of birders had gone to look for. The fog did not show any signs of disappearing, but we soon began to see birds streaking by in the distance: our first Sooty Shearwaters of the trip. Soon, we were amongst them, and by the end of the trip we had tallied thousands of the species. Pink-footed Shearwaters began to join them in low numbers, and I glimpsed a Northern Fulmar sitting in the water, a bird that I’d never seen in the United States.

Braden and Sam were delighted to see thousands of Sooty Shearwaters streak through the fog and alight on the ocean. (Photo courtesy of Sam Darmstadt)

Alas, the seas were not cooperating with my stomach. I later spoke to a birder who had been on upwards of twenty pelagic trips out of California who told me that he had never been on seas this rough. The wave heights reached seven or more feet at some points, and I stood there with my eyes on the horizon, refusing to glance at any birds that flew by. Please, I prayed, No seasickness today. It’s dampened enough of my pelagics already.

It was wishful thinking. After about an hour and a half of holding out, I made my way to the back of the boat and released my breakfast. This began a day of the most physical pain I have ever been in while birding. I had to visit the back of the boat eight times, in-between lying flat on my back on a seat in the cabin. I felt frustrated. I’d tried so hard, and done everything right, yet still, I was almost the only person on the boat stricken with seasickness and by far the worst case. And what’s more, I missed birds because of it.

As I lay in the cabin, trying to ignore the dizziness in my head, I heard one of the spotters out on the deck call out “Buller’s Shearwater!” I jumped up and rushed outside, but couldn’t spot the bird as it flew away from us. I could barely stand up, and had no intention of standing out there if the bird wasn’t there. There will be others, I thought, but there weren’t. It was the only Buller’s spotted on the whole trip, and as I learned later, the rarest bird seen that day. Sigh. I had really wanted to see that bird, a tubenose with such a detailed, beautiful wing pattern, yet something beyond my control had taken it from me for a second time. Adding to my frustration, I had no idea when I would be able to take another pelagic out of coastal California, but it would surely be years.

But as I lay in bed, I had to remind myself that a birding trip is not just defined by what birds you miss. Circumstance, not skill, had been the reason I’d missed the bird, and I’d see another one someday. And the birds (and other wildlife) I had seen had made the trip very worth it.

I missed one other lifer due to seasickness, one that was considerably less impressive than Buller’s Shearwater: Cassin’s Auklet, what I still believe to be not only the most lackluster alcid but one of the more boring birds in the United States. When several were called out, I sat up from my bench in the cabin and looked through the window in vain, straining to see a shape, but with no luck. However, when Ashy Storm-Petrel was announced over the intercom, I did the same thing, with success. I briefly spotted several dark, swallow-like birds flapping over the open ocean before collapsing back onto my seat. I lay there thinking, well, the looks weren’t great, but at least I saw the bird. And then it hit me. Marbled Murrelet had been my life bird #998. Ashy Storm-Petrel was #999. I’d just missed the Buller’s, but could not miss the next lifer that was called out, no matter how much physical pain it caused me. 

The next bird called out was not a lifer, but it was a bird I hadn’t seen in six years and one I had been looking forward to seeing again. “Black-footed Albatross at nine o clock, flying towards the boat!”. I lifted myself up to stare out the window, and sure enough, there it was. A huge, dark seabird with a light-colored face cruised by at close range, causing me to smile as I fell back into my seat. 

Black-footed Albatrosses are a special treat for any birder, and often give great looks, as Braden and I found on our 2016 Monterey pelagic cruise.

And then it happened. “There’s a flock of Sabine’s Gulls at nine o clock, and a Long-tailed Jaeger’s chasing them!” I again leapt out of my seat, stomach doing flips, and grabbed my binoculars from the table before stumbling out onto the deck. “Where is the jaeger?” I said, half-asleep (the “Less Drowsy” Dramamine had not been what it claimed to be). “There, behind the gulls!”

I stared out at a large flock of Sooty Shearwaters floating in the water. There were no gulls here. And then, the water dipped, revealing twenty-or-so Sabine’s Gulls in full breeding plumage, something I’d never seen before. I spent very little time admiring them, however—I was about to throw up again and I needed to get on this lifer. Then I saw it: a cream-colored bird with a dark cap and brown wings sitting in the water, its two long tail streamers waving in the wind. The whole flock suddenly flushed, scattering everywhere. The shearwaters went away from the boat, while the gulls flew off towards the front. The jaeger, however, decided to fly right over us. I stared up in astonishment as this beautifully-patterned, rare seabird floated right overhead, giving me the best views I’d ever had of any of the three jaeger species. It even had its tail feathers completely intact, making the identification much easier than anything I’d prepared for! Then, in celebration of my 1000th world life bird, I emptied the contents of my stomach over the back of the boat.

Braden could not have asked for a better 1,000th Life Bird than this cooperative Long-tailed Jaeger! (Photo courtesy Sam Darmstadt)

I forced myself to get up and peer through the cabin window for one more animal: Killer Whales. When they were called out, I ignored the thoughts in my head about how I’d seen them before in Iceland and should try to sleep instead, again peering out the foggy window. Sure enough, a young male Orca surfaced right next to the boat, showing off its white eye-spot and gray, saddle-like patch located behind its fin. That was all I could do before laying back down. The cetaceans then proceeded to put on a show for the rest of the boat, and turned out to be significantly rarer than anything else we saw that day, having only been seen on trips like this a handful of times. Other mammals that I got glimpses of were Humpback Whale, California Sea Lion and Harbor Seal.

Pelagic birding cruises might just as well be called pelagic cetacean cruises as, more often than not, various whales and dolphins put in an appearance—to wit, these Risso’s Dolphins from our 2016 trip.

Once we were about an hour from shore, on our way back, I got up and walked back out on the deck, feeling significantly better after sleeping for a few hours. Both the sky and the ocean had cleared up, and I stared at the Sooty Shearwaters that flew by, hoping another Buller’s would make an appearance. Besides those two lifers, I’d missed two other species: a Tufted Puffin that had flown by while I was in the bathroom, and several Pomarine Jaegers. As we drew closer to shore, however, I noticed a strange-looking gull flying in front of the boat. I raised my binoculars, and shouted out an identification before my brain could even decide if that identification was right or not. “Pomarine Jaeger!”

The Loch Ness Seabird??? No, a Tufted Puffin peaking over a wave!

Sure enough, all of the experts agreed—it was a clean-looking light morph jaeger with a dark breast band and a barrel-chested look. Despite the fact that the spotters had been calling out jaegers all day, I’d never spotted and identified one by myself, and a feeling of pride washed over me as everyone else got on the bird. This bird also helped me knock down my list of missed species to only three.

I basically kissed the ground once we got back to shore. Me and Sam’s birding for the day was not yet done, but that will have to make another blog. Despite the fact that my entire body was sore, and I was frustrated about missing one of the birds I’d most wanted to see, I had also had a great time. Getting great looks at Pomarine and Long-tailed Jaeger alone had made the trip worth it, besides all of the year birds and other lifers I’d seen. I’d gotten to one thousand species—roughly one-tenth of all of the bird species on the planet, and well on my way to seeing the other nine thousand. I was also firmly hooked on seabirds. One of the first things I said to my dad when he called me the next morning was this, “If I had to go through everything I went through all over again today, it would be worth it. I would get back on that boat.”

Braden’s Tales from the High Sierras, Episode 7: The Yosemite Bighorn Sheep Survey

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As Braden’s sensational Sierran summer begins to wind down, he has continued to have remarkable experiences, both avian and mammalian. In Episode 7, he recounts his hardest hike ever in an attempt to locate some of Yosemite’s most interesting and elusive mammals.

Despite being the nearest gas station, restaurant and convenience store to the eastern entrance of Yosemite National Park, the Mobil station was fairly empty when our red Nissan pulled into the parking lot at seven in the morning. We gathered around a table, breakfast burritos in hand, as we waited for the Bighorn Sheep biologists to arrive from their various lodgings. As we would learn later, sheep biologists sleep in because the sheep sleep in, which differs quite a bit from us bird biologists. At 7:30, we noticed a crowd gathering outside, and donned our identical Institute for Bird Populations baseball caps, heading out to meet them.

Among the scientists we met outside were Dr. Lacey Greene and Dr. John Wehausen, the latter of whom had worked with sheep his entire life and had apparently drafted most of the recovery plan for the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep. As Wehausen joined the group, he struck up a conversation with Greene.

“537 had a lamb yesterday when we went out. 522, didn’t though. I’ve only seen a few lambs so far this year.”

Apparently, every single Bighorn Sheep in Yosemite National Park has a number assigned to it, and as I would learn, a radio collar frequency. The reason these surveys were being conducted in the first place was because the Sierra Nevada subspecies of Bighorn Sheep was not doing well. Due to threats that included diseases spread by domestic sheep, the entire population of Bighorn Sheep in the Sierra had declined to around 100 individuals in the 1990s, spurring the federal government to list them under the Endangered Species Act. Thanks in part to Wehausen’s recovery plan, as well as the hard work of dozens of other sheep scientists, the herd had now increased to roughly 600 sheep, both inside and outside of the park. 

Dr. Greene introduced all of the biologists that would be hiking various parts of eastern Yosemite to look for sheep, and we approached her, asking which biologist we should go with for a medium-level route since we had work tomorrow and did not want to exert ourselves too much. We also requested a route that maximized our chances of seeing White-tailed Ptarmigan, a bird Sam needed for his life list. Interestingly, ptarmigan are not native to the Sierras and were introduced to the area in the 1970s, although we still hoped to run into some in the alpine zone we would be hiking. Dr. Greene pointed towards Seth, a graduate student from the University of Wyoming studying the carrying capacity of the Sierras for sheep, who would be doing a route called “Mt. Gibbs”. 

“Should be a medium route with good chances of ptarmigan,” Dr. Greene said, and we took her word for it. Perhaps we shouldn’t have.

Our “medium route” began pleasantly enough—but we had no idea what awaited us.

After introducing ourselves to Seth, we all piled into the Nissan (which has adopted the name “the company car”) and joined the caravan of biologists and volunteers headed towards Tioga Pass. I quickly learned from Miles that we likely wouldn’t see many of the National Park’s main attractions, including Yosemite Valley and Half Dome, but soon realized that this did not mean we would be short on scenery. The road soon led us out of the sagebrush and juniper dominating the hills of the eastern Sierra and into subalpine forest. Carved peaks and ridges topped with snow rose around us, and in the distance I marveled at views rivaling Glacier National Park. After entering the park, we soon arrived at the Mono Pass Trailhead and set off through Lodgepole Pine forest with two dozen bighorn sheep biologists.

Several months ago, I’d had no idea what part of California held Yosemite, and now here I was, crossing another one of the United States’ most beautiful places off of my bucket list. The trail crossed wet meadows and creeks, filled with the songs of Lincoln’s and White-crowned Sparrows, and as we gained elevation, Miles pointed out the peaks around us. 

My co-worker, Miles Carlile, tromping through the some of the world’s most spectacular scenery.

“To our left is Mt. Dana, the second-tallest peak in the park at 13,000 feet,” he said excitedly, “And at some point we should be able to see the tallest, Mt. Lyell, to the right along with the Lyell Glacier below it.”

I’d had no idea that any glaciers existed in California, and later learned that the Lyell Glacier was one of only two left in the park. And despite the wilderness-feeling that Yosemite produced as we hiked through it, glaciers weren’t the only thing missing from this once-intact ecosystem. Every time my dad and I visited Glacier, we would try to see the Big Four, what we considered to be the largest (and most obvious) wildlife in the park. Bighorn Sheep were the only one of those species that existed here. Moose and Mountain Goats had never lived in the Sierras, and Grizzly Bears had been extirpated a century ago. So while Yosemite may have rivaled Glacier in terms of scenic vistas, it did not deliver in terms of wildlife.

After about a mile, the rest of the group bid us farewell as Seth led us off the trail…directly uphill. We hiked straight up a ridge, through the Lodgepole, for about five minutes before realizing that a sheep biologist’s definition of a “medium hike” differed quite a bit from our own. In fact, it was the hardest hiking I’ve ever done. Following Seth, we left the treeline behind as we realized what we were up against: Mt. Gibbs was only three hundred feet shorter than neighboring Mt. Dana, at 12,700 feet. That was something Yosemite could hold over Glacier—the mountains were taller. Granite Peak, Montana’s tallest, rose only to 12,800 feet. Thankfully, Seth allowed us to take as many breaks as we needed as we scrambled over boulders and scree, heading straight for the summit.

The life in the alpine zone is certainly some of the most magical on earth—and some of the most imperiled by climate change.

We did not see any ptarmigan. Nor did we spot any of the alpine raptors, like Prairie Falcon or Golden Eagle, that I’d hoped to glimpse. That isn’t to say that the alpine zone of Mt. Gibbs was devoid of life. Tufts of small grass, brilliant purple and white flowers, and splashes of lime green and blood orange lichen led us all the way to the summit. Insects, too, seemed to live here in abundance, and I spotted species of grasshoppers, spiders, ants and butterflies I’d never seen before. One bird seemed to thrive up here: Gray-crowned Rosy-finches, one of the most extreme bird species on the planet. Rosy-finches flitted past us over the scree, and one particularly cooperative flock picked seeds off of a lingering snowpack near the top of the mountain. These birds breed only in these alpine areas, beyond the reach of almost any other bird species and the trees themselves.

Not only did we see one of my favorite birds, Gray-crowned Rosy-Finches, atop Mt. Gibbs, they were some of the most approachable birds I’ve ever encountered.

On our ascent, we stopped about every five hundred meters so that Seth could remove a strange device from his backpack. On one end was a sort of radio which displayed primitive numbers and figures, and on the other was an H-shaped receiver. This revealed how the biologists expected to locate the sheep on these seemingly-endless ridges: radio telemetry. The third time we stopped, Seth let me try out the system, and explained to me how it worked. Apparently, every single collared sheep in the Sierras has their own frequency, like the frequency of a radio station. Thus, if you want to locate an individual, you punch its frequency into the radio. Turning a knob increases the volume, and then the H-shaped part of the device comes into play. I held the “H” above me, facing the sky, and slowly rotated it, searching for a signal. Once I began to hear a faint beep, I turned the “H” towards it, trying to locate exactly which direction that beep was coming from. The louder the beep, the more accurate the direction. And in this case, the beep corresponded to a single ram hiding just beyond a ridge in front of us.

A Bearded Big Horn Sheep? No, that’s me sporting my new “field biologist look” while using telemetry for the first time! Note Mono Lake a couple of inches to the left of my head!

Eventually we struggled to the top of Mt. Gibbs, having climbed more than three thousand vertical feet in less than two hours, with no trace of a trail to follow. At the top, we huddled in a small rock shelter someone had constructed, and I signed my name in the “Mountain Registry”, a small notebook housed in a worn, metal box. While I’d like to say that we spent the next hour scanning for sheep, the four of us IBP employees just lounged on the rocks, recovering while Seth did most of the work. Apparently, this was an “easy” day for him—sheep biologists spend most of the summer on five- to ten-day backpacking trips trying to find herds. After recovering a bit and having some snacks, I spent a good amount of time photographing the rosy-finches feeding on the snow around us.

Then it was time to descend. This proved just as difficult as the ascent, as we slowly slid down a scree field for almost an hour before hitting the first trees again. Although we still hadn’t spotted any sheep, we opted to return to the cars. We had work tomorrow and still needed to drive the two and a half hours back to Mi-wuk Village. eBird claimed we had logged nine and a half miles, which meant we had probably hiked closer to twelve, much of that up and down incredibly steep terrain. The survey as a whole, however, was quite productive. The other biologists found at least 32 sheep, including plenty of rams. 

While our crew failed to see any Bighorn Sheep, the other biologists located 32 of these dynamic wild “woolies”. Photo disclosure: these are sheep in Glacier National Park (I think).

Once we got back to the parking lot, legs aching, we thanked Seth for everything and hopped back in the company car. I said goodbye to Yosemite, unsure of when I would return, and after a quick stop at the Mobil station for tacos, we headed home.

Braden’s Tales from the High Sierras, Episode 6: Thrashing Through the Rain Shadow

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When he first learned about his job in the Sierras, Braden never expected that it would provide him with a great opportunity to observe hard-to-find sagebrush species—including some of our top Nemesis Birds! It also helped move him closer to his revised Big Year goal of 500 species and the coveted 1,000 species mark on his Life List!

A concept my dad and I have perfected over the years is that of putting in a certain number of hours to locate every bird species. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately), not every bird will just be sitting there in the parking lot when you arrive in a place to look for it, and it is not uncommon to completely miss a highly sought-after species. After a certain number of misses, in fact, that species becomes a nemesis bird. Every birder has or has had a nemesis bird, and that led me to think about the fact that for every single person, the number of hours “required” to see each species is unique. To get a Blue Jay, for example, a birder in the Western United States may have to search for more than ten hours, performing multiple searches at multiple locations to add this bird to his life list, while a beginning birder in Massachusetts may only have to put in five minutes or thirty seconds. Even in less extreme geographical situations, the number of hours people put in for a bird varies. My dad and I invested double-digit hours into finding an American Bittern, whereas other Montana birders just seemed to stumble onto them.

On June 25th, as my co-worker Sam Darmstadt and I crossed Sonora Pass, heading for the dry lands of the eastern side of the Sierras, we had many target birds in mind that I had already logged many hours trying to see. The first was one my dad and I had looked for at least four times, designating it as a nemesis bird, and apparently, I had finally put in enough hours for it, because as soon as we hopped out of the car on a dirt road near Mono Lake, there it was: a Sagebrush Sparrow, posing in perfect view for us on top of its namesake plant. 

One of our most handsome sparrows, Sagebrush Sparrow was a nemesis bird my dad and I had searched for multiple times in recent years.

“Was it too easy?” asked Sam, as I snapped photos of this lifer. The open sagebrush plains we stood in appeared to be perfect habitat for the species, and we spotted several more as we continued down the road. In fact, it was one of the only birds in this habitat, along with Sage Thrasher and Brewer’s Sparrow, which also gave us great looks. I glanced at the strange tufa columns (calcium precipitations) rising up from Mono Lake in the distance before getting back in the car on the way to our next target for the day. This was another sage bird, one I’d only seen once and Sam had never seen: Greater Sage-Grouse.

Again, my dad and I (sometimes with Nick in tow) had looked for this species multiple times across the various Eastern Montana locales it frequented, but with very limited success. It had been five years since we’d seen our lifers, a mother with two chicks on Bentonite Road, the same road where everyone in Montana goes to get their Mountain Plovers for the year. Where Sam and I were now, at Lake Crowley, was about as different a place from Bentonite Road as possible while still supporting expansive sagebrush habitat. Ponderosa (or Jeffrey’s) Pines rose in the distance, a symbol of our high elevation despite having left the Sierras. And speaking of the Sierras, there they towered in front of us, their craggy slopes rising towards sharpened peaks sprinkled with lingering snow patches.

The Sierras aren’t just stunning to behold, they have profoundly shaped Western ecosystems and bird species—including some of our top targets to search for.

We slowly drove the dusty road through the sagebrush towards the lake, flushing Horned Larks, Brewer’s Sparrows and yet more Sagebrush Sparrows off the road in front of us. Despite squinting as we scanned for grouse heads, we did not find any. Upon reaching the lake, we added a few water birds to our list, including American Avocet, Long-billed Curlew, Eared Grebe and Ruddy Duck. Then we slowly began making our way back.

The Sierras are an incredibly diverse ecosystem and help make California a biodiversity hotspot, and we experienced that for ourselves on our drive through the sagebrush. Over the mountains above us, dark gray clouds loomed, dumping rain on the rocky peaks. Sam and I both flinched as lightning bolts struck the highest points, the thunder echoing across the valley. However, while many of the clouds drifted over our heads, the rain barely reached us. The Western Sierra had a day full of rain, while over here, we got a few drops at most. This rain shadow, created by the tallest mountains in the Lower 48, allowed sagebrush to flourish here while oak savannah covered the western foothills only twenty miles away. And the mountains didn’t just block storms. They blocked birds, too. Many of California’s famous specialty birds, including Wrentit, California Thrasher and Yellow-billed Magpie, simply could not make it over these mountains. Without the Sierras blocking their paths, these endemic or near-endemic birds probably wouldn’t have evolved into their own species in the first place.

Meanwhile, here on the east side of the mountains, a familiar Black-billed Magpie flew over the car as we turned down one last road in an effort to find grouse. After about a mile, I turned to look over my shoulder just as three giant ground birds erupted from right next to the car, landing a short distance away.

“Grouse!” I shouted, “Get out! Get out!”

This was only the second time I’d ever seen a Greater Sage-Grouse—and was a lifer for Sam!

We soon spotted one of them: a female Greater Sage-Grouse wandering through brush rising up to its shoulders. We high-fived, relishing the moment as we watched the rare bird move away from us.

Farther south, we stopped briefly at a canyon for an unsuccessful try at Black Swift, and filled up at the least expensive gas station we could find in Bishop, California. Continuing down Hwy 395, the mountains grew yet higher, and we soon found ourselves almost under the shadow of Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the Lower 48. We couldn’t see Whitney, but could see many of the other 14,000-footers looming above us, their sides even more devoid of vegetation than the mountains we’d seen farther north. The sage quickly evaporated around us, giving way to desert brush as we left the Great Basin and entered the Mojave. Why had we come so far?

One reason: LeConte’s Thrasher.

This enigmatic thrasher makes its home in some of the most desolate habitats in North America, inspiring Sam’s non-honorific name for it, the Desolation Thrasher. It’s a species my dad and I had already put in several hours searching for, as we explored a barren salt desert on our way from Southeast Arizona to San Diego. This gorgeous, understated bird matches its habitat, its sandy feathers accented by a slightly peach-colored vent. It’s dark eye, a feature it does not share with the rest of the desert thrashers, matches the black color of its extremely curved bill. Almost nothing else lives in the sparse habitats this bird occupies, and needless to say, I had been obsessed with the species since missing it in Arizona a month before.

Our previous plan had been to camp in some nearby hills that night, then look for the thrasher in the morning. However, with time to spare, we decided to head towards a spot that had produced a few reports in previous years.

“Let’s start putting in the hours,” I said as we made the decision, trying to maximize our chances of seeing my number one target for the trip.

While the road wasn’t as desolate as the salt desert my dad and I had searched in Arizona, it certainly was barren. Dry, orange brush rose from the sandy ground, and as we piled out of the car to begin playing for the thrasher, it became clear that birds here were few and far between.

At every stop we made, I played the songs of both LeConte’s Thrasher and Black-chinned Sparrow, the latter another bird we hoped to find. I also pished vigorously at the brush, hoping that these enigmatic birds would respond. After one round of doing this, the situation looked bleak. The only birds we saw were distant ravens on a telephone pole, and temperatures pushed ninety degrees at 5 pm, a radical change from the seventies weather we’d been experiencing only an hour north in sagebrush country. It would have been hotter if not for the storm clouds dumping rain that would never reach us. Another point against us was that the thrashers, and all the desert birds, were significantly less active now that it was almost July. In the desert, spring starts early, and most of the reports on this road had been from March and April. 

At the second spot, we added Turkey Vulture to the list, though still couldn’t find any birds actively using the desert habitat. I switched up my playback strategy at the third spot, pishing first then playing the thrasher and sparrow songs. Just as the Black-chinned Sparrow recording stopped, I spotted a bird hop up on a fence to our right. Turning my head, I saw the sandy feathers and curved bill—and freaked out.

“Sam!” I whisper-shouted, “It’s there! It’s there! Do you see it??”

“Oh my god!” was the reply.

I slowly reached for my camera, never taking my eyes off the thrasher. The bird’s tail raised and lowered, and the bird looked around, trying to spot the enemy thrasher that had invaded its territory. After I snapped some surprisingly good photographs, it flew over to another bush. The smiles on our faces could not have been erased by anything, and they remained plastered to our faces for another half an hour. We’d just seen one of North America’s rarest breeding birds—after completely expecting to miss it!

As plain as it first appears, LeConte’s Thrasher was a bird I’d put many hours into finding, and it immediately rocketed into contention for Bird of the Year honors!

The thrasher, the grouse and the sparrow had all been birds I’d looked for before, and June 25th, 2022 had been the day to cash in my hours searching for all three species. Even as I write this now, I am still in shock at the looks this desert shadow provided us with, after only looking for it twice! I’d expected to return home without the thrasher and even more determination to see one, and instead, I’d been given an experience I’d never forget. Within a few minutes, LeConte’s Thrasher was already a contender for my Bird of the Year.

The rest of the trip, driving north the next day, went well and included birding an Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest! Ironically, we found none of our other target species. They were all birds I’d never looked for before: Virginia’s Warbler, Black-chinned Sparrow and Gray Vireo. I guess that means I haven’t yet put in the hours!

Braden’s Statistics Through This Report

ABA Species for 2022 (goal 500): 438 species

Life List Count: 996 species

All “Cooped” Up!

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Today, we take a break from Braden’s High Sierra adventures to explore how we all bird through the summer doldrums. Here I share a surprising discovery right in my own neighborhood. If you subscribe to FSB, please share your own similar story, and if you don’t subscribe—what are you waiting for? We only sell your information to people who will give us a LOT of money (just kidding; we do not share any of this information). So please fill out the box down to the right—and make sure you receive every “episode”.

How are you spending the summer birding doldrums? When we first started, Braden and I pretty much stopped birding during July and August—until we learned that there are still many birds to be had during the Dog Days! Even though it’s still summer, some shorebirds are already making their way south from their Arctic breeding grounds and can show up almost anywhere. Last summer, Braden and Nick Ramsey joined a bunch of other stellar birders for an epic day at Glacier National Park—and, of course, this summer Braden is birding the heck out of California. As for me, I am simply enjoying the ordinary birds around Missoula, trying to sharpen my skills so I can distinguish the call of a Lazuli Bunting from that of a Yellow Warbler! Experienced birders know, however, that even “ordinary birding” can produce extraordinary results.

Even during the Summer Blahs, an occasional bird will fly out for a photo-op! Thank you, Mr. Lazuli Bunting!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take our dog Lola on an early walk around Greenough Park to beat the heat. For those of you familiar with Greenough, Lola and I parked in the lot midway up the east side of the park, and crossed the two pedestrian bridges so that we could begin walking clockwise around the park—and better spot any caffeine-crazed bicyclists barreling down on us. Sure enough, after only a hundred yards on the main path, a large, crazed shape came right at us. But it wasn’t a bicycle. It was a bird—and it zoomed a mere ten feet above my head! On instinct, I spun around and chased after it, hoping for a solid ID before it disappeared. To my surprise, the bird swooped up into a tree only fifty meters away.

Even while not actively hanging with the chicks, at least one Cooper’s Hawk parent never perched far away.

By this time, I had 99% concluded that this was a Cooper’s Hawk—a kind of accipiter especially adapted for catching birds and flying through trees. According to Birds of the World, 47 species of accipiters live on the planet, but here in the U.S. we have only three: the smaller Sharp-shinned Hawk or “Sharpie”; the larger Cooper’s Hawk or “Coop”; and the Northern Goshawk, our largest accipiter and the bird Braden is chasing around the Sierras this summer. Braden and I don’t often get good looks at Coops so I hoped that this one would stay in the tree long enough for me to observe it. It did—and the reason startled me. In a pine next to the busy path, the Cooper’s Hawk couple had built a nest! Even better, the nest had babies!

During my second visit to the Coop nest, the babies generally kept their heads down—save for this guy. Want to bet s/he is first out of the nest?

I, of course, hadn’t brought my camera with me, but in a way that was better because it allowed me to observe the action without worrying about getting a good photo. Speaking of action, I forgot to mention that when the adult flew by me it had been carrying prey—something large and furry, maybe a rabbit. As I watched, the adult started butchering this critter and feeding it to the ravenous chicks. And speaking of chicks, I was amazed to see four of them—and all quite large. Later, I learned that this is not unusual, and a pair will sometimes raise even more, a testament to the hard-working parents. In fact, even though first-year mortality runs fairly high, Cooper’s Hawks seem to have an excellent survival rate as adults and have been known to breed up through twelve years of age.

Incoming! On my third visit, I just loved watching the young Coops testing out their flying abilities—even if they did occasionally land on each other!

Since discovering the nest, I’ve returned two more times, and each time the babies had made marked progress. My last visit, I watched them hopping in and out of the nest, testing their wings for a departure that couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks away. They also were quickly filling out their juvenile coloration, transforming from white fuzz balls to serious-looking predators before my eyes. At least one parent, though, was never far away.

Ready for launch? Pretty darned close. Observing the Coop nest made me realize that the young have blue eyes! How’s that for a blue-eyed baby?

It all just goes to show that even when we think birding is dead, there’s a lot going on. We just have to keep getting out there and paying attention. Who knows? You may have a Cooper’s nest in your backyard right now! Coops are famously adaptable and found in every region of the Lower 48, often in urban environments and often all year-round. In fact, their numbers have increased dramatically in the past half-century—a nice success story in a time when so many birds are in trouble.

Braden’s Tales from the High Sierras, Episode 5: The Swift and the Great

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Even though Braden’s job is to look for Northern Goshawks this summer, that threatens to be outshined by his remarkable experiences with owls. As if Northern Saw-whet, Western Screech, and Spotted owls weren’t enough, here he recounts an amazing encounter with yet another amazing owl—and one of the continent’s most elusive “other” birds.

The morning after seeing the Spotted Owl, our campsite was graced with a little rain. Apparently, rain is infrequent in the Sierra, and we welcomed the weather as both a boost for the forests and an opportunity to sleep in. I, however, could not sleep, and decided to go birding. While my job had me birding every day, I had only actually gone birding outside of work a few times so far, and figured this would be a good way to refresh myself before the rain ceased and we headed back to finish the same PAC we’d started yesterday.

Birding consisted of walking around Crandell Campground with my eyes on the skies. I had two rare targets in mind: Northern Pygmy-Owl and Black Swift. The former, my favorite owl species, had eluded us thus far on counts and I hoped to spot one posted on top of a dead snag during my walk. Black Swifts, meanwhile, came to mind because of the weather. These waterfall-nesters, which generally hunt hundreds of feet in the air, and up to dozens of miles from their nest sites, were known for being pushed to lower altitudes in overcast conditions, which just happened to be the conditions gracing Stanislaus National Forest today. Both birds were definitely long shots, but then again, why not shoot for the stars?

I did not find either of my targets on my walk, and headed back to the campground as the rain began to subside. My co-workers, who had all retreated to their tents, began to rise, and I started to load things into the truck when I heard twittering overhead. I looked up two see two large, slim birds race over the open sky above me. The looks were among the briefest I’ve ever had at birds, but they were enough.

“Holy Cow! Black Swifts!”

Here in Montana, we most often see Vaux’s Swifts like the pair above. The much rarer Black Swift is half-again as large and much darker than the birds you see here. Black Swifts only nest next to and behind waterfalls and on wet cliffs—a specialized habitat that helps explain their Vulnerable status.

Sam, the other big birder in the group, was out of his tent in a flash, and we ran down the road after the swifts. They disappeared within seconds, headed to some other foraging destination, but not before Sam spotted them. It was his lifer, and a bird I’d only seen once, in Glacier Park five years before.

That evening, after finishing our survey, we met Kevin, the crew lead for the Spotted Owl, at the Pinecrest Ranger Station. An hour and a half later, we pulled up in a mystery location in the oak foothills of the Western Sierra, somewhere near the town of Twain Harte. In the past week, the owl crew had found Great Gray Owls here several times, some of the only known individuals of the species to occur in the state of California outside Yosemite National Park. We’d already heard the stories of finding the Great Grays, and how everyone on the owl crew had completely freaked out over it, and hoped to do the same tonight. The owls had been recorded in three locations all somewhat near each other, and our job tonight was to figure out if they were the same family of owls or multiple families by searching two of the locations at the same time.

I went with Kevin and Sam, while Ivara and Miles tagged along with Grant, a ranger for Stanislaus National Forest. None of the habitat made sense for what I thought I knew about Great Gray Owl. The owls in Missoula frequented open pine forests, and in Canada, the species nested in boreal bogs. Here, though, we walked through dense oak foothill habitat, complete with our first look at and experience with Poison Oak.

After quickly searching a stand of trees, the three of us loitered in a small meadow waiting for the sun to set. The elevation was lower than where we conducted goshawk surveys, and because of that we noted different bird species, including Acorn Woodpecker, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and California Quail. Suddenly, Kevin heard something. Uphill, through the oaks, came the sound of strange yelps. Comparing the calls to Merlin revealed that these were indeed the begging calls of juvenile Great Gray Owls.

This obviously is not the same Great Gray Owl that Braden’s crew saw recently (note the snow), but you can see why this majestic creature is a favorite among birders.

“Let’s go get em.” said Kevin, and we started up the hill as the sky grew gray, then indigo. Stars blinked into existence above us as we dodged snags and particularly large patches of Poison Oak, although walking through the rash-inducing plant was inevitable in some places. Thank god for long pants. 

After twenty minutes of following the calls up the hill, Kevin held out a hand, then pointed upwards. There, on an oak tree up the hill from us perched the unmistakable silhouette of a Great Gray Owl, moving its head up and down as it called to its mother for food. After scanning the ground for Poison Oak, I sat down and lifted my binoculars to my eyes. Even with low light levels, I could make out the longer neck, facial disk and piercing eyes of the owl. The bird still lacked the clean look of an adult Great Gray, but it could already fly and thus was probably at least a month old. Soon, we spotted the shape of the second juvenile flush from a branch below the first. The experience was magical—sitting underneath the California night sky, amongst oaks, as one of the rarest and most famous creatures in the world called from a tree above us. We weren’t able to determine if this was the same owl family as before or a new one, but either way, these were owls I would never forget.

No, this is not an asteroid hurtling toward Earth—just a really, really distant phone photo of a Great Gray Owl we saw . . . or maybe some kind of sea slug? I can’t remember!