Great Gray Owl Road Trip – Part 1

“Tomorrow, I want to be in Ontario,” Dave said. “What? No way,” I adamantly responded. I knew what he wanted.  He wanted to get up at the crack of dawn and drive up to Ontario, Canada to see the Great Gray Owl that had been spotted just outside of Point Pelee.  If we saw it, it would be a Life Bird for both of us.  “Absolutely, no way.”

I mean, really.  We just completed our annual “Big Day” of birding on News Years Day to kick off the Chili Challenge Birding Competition in SW Ohio.  Granted, it had been a slow day, and we only saw 65 species, when our goal (set by Sister Marty) was 89 species.  But, still, I can only take so many days of birding in one month! 

Since Thanksgiving, we’ve done quite a bit of birding: Black Friday we drove 700 miles to get the Black-tailed & Black-headed Gulls outside of Cleveland; in early December we flew to the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas and got the Black-vented Oriole, Hook-billed Kite, Golden-crowned Warbler, and Rose-throated Becard; in mid-December we did both the Oxford and Whitewater Christmas Bird Counts; last week we drove to southern Tennessee to see the Hooded Crane; and yesterday was our Big Day. Being the work-a-holic that I am, taking this many days off to go birding was beginning to put pressure on me.  Granted, I AM on break, and I don’t have to work – it’s not like I’m getting paid.  But, I had planned to use my time during Winter Break to finish a manuscript, write the draft of our NSF proposal, work on the next edition of The Ohio Cardinal, get my syllabi and lectures written for next semester and post notes to Blackboard.  I was starting to feel that pressure you feel when work starts piling up.  So, I said no way, we can’t go to Ontario tomorrow. 

We drove Manda to the airport to go back to school in South Carolina.  It had been great having her home for the holidays.  For the first time in at least 5 years, 4 of our 5 kids were home for Christmas, and I was a happy mama. The house had been full of chaos and laughter for 3 weeks now.  Dylan will leave on Friday, and then it will be just Dad and I and the pets in the farmhouse, and we’ll go back to the daily grind of academia. 

We left the airport  and drove over to visit mom at the nursing home.  She’s so sweet now.  She doesn’t know who I am now and that’s alright, I happily tell her that I am Jill, her daughter, and that I love her.  Sometimes she reacts with recognition, but most often she smiles and says, “Really?”  Yep, I tell her and I go on to tell her about myself.  I trimmed her fingernails, lotioned the parchment like skin on her arms and talked to her about our Christmas.  She tried to talk to me, but her words don’t make sense.  I can see in her eyes that she is frustrated that she can’t say what she means, and I tell her that it’s ok, she’s fine and I’ll take care of her. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for her to be trapped in her own mind.  I sat with my arm around her and she described the colors of all of the Christmas decorations hanging in the room.  She got confused with the colors blue and yellow, but she was proud that she could identify the snowflakes and round ball ornaments.  For the first time, tears welled up in her eyes when I told her I had to go.  She wanted me to stay, and I wanted to stay.  I wish I could keep her at home with me, but I know that she is better off here, where her life is structured and familiar.   It won’t be long before her mind will move into the scared and panicky stage.  God, I wish she didn’t have to go through that.  I wish I was smart enough to figure out how to stop the slow degradation of neurons in her brain…  She was such a vibrant woman who had raised a family and built a successful career as a real estate broker. 

We were a little late leaving the nursing home and headed over to dinner at Steve’s house.  We were meeting his folks for the first time.  We’ve known Steve for years, since he was a freshman in Dave’s BMZ class at Miami, and he’d impressed us with birding skills.  He’s spent years working with us at our banding stations, travelling to both Mexico and Alaska with us to  study birds in El Cielo Biosphere Reserve and in the White Mountains.  But, we had never met his family. 

As we sat at dinner, telling tall tales of our birding adventures, the subject of the Great Gray came up.  Suddenly, I blurted out, “You know, if I bring my laptop along, I can work on my manuscript, etc., while we’re driving up to Ontario. I could get quite a bit done.   Why don’t we go for it?  Steve, do you want to go?”  WHERE DID THAT COME FROM??!!  Did I just say that? 

Dave looked at me with stunned elation in his eyes.  Not one to miss an opportunity, he immediately took my suggestion and began brainstorming how we could leave first thing in the morning, drive the 5 hrs up to get the bird, snap a couple of pictures and turn around and be home that evening. A quick trip. I was caught up in the excitement of the moment, and enthusiastically added that Dylan could take care of the dogs while we were done.  We both looked at Steve and said at almost the same time, “You in?”  Steve was already grinning from ear to ear.  “You got a passport?”  Steve had just come back from conducting the hawk count at Pelee this Fall, so he knew exactly where the owl was.  As I looked from Dave to Steve while we discussed the details of the trip, I realized that the rest of Steve’s family was staring at us, open mouthed, over their cherry cheesecake.  We’d totally forgotten everyone else in the room and gotten caught up in the rush of planning our spur-of-the-moment road trip.  Um, oops.  Steve, sheepishly glanced over at his folks who were smiling at these three crazy birders.  Within minutes, Steve was packed and tossing his bedroom trying to find his missing passport. 

So, here we are, driving west on Interstate 70 toward Dayton at 7:30am.  It’s 27F and cloudy and the weather forecast for Ontario is for temps around 30F and gale force winds.  It’s going to be bone chillingly cold.  We’re off on another birding adventure!

Hooded Crane Adventure Day 2

Day 2

Instead of going back to the hotel off the interstate, we decided to give the Holiday Inn Express in Dayton, TN a try.  It was only about 15 minutes from the Refuge, and we had met a couple who had stayed there last night.  Glad we did, too, because our room was $30 cheaper tonight!  Plus, we got a King Size bed!  For those of you who know my husband, Dave, you know what I mean – he’s a giant.  In our queen size bed at home, he has to sleep diagonally, and I get this little triangle of the bed for me.  But, in the King Size bed, I got to spread out!  It was terrific!  We aet dinner at Alaya’s Mexican Restaurant and I was not impressed.  I think I can still taste the onions from my taco on my tongue today.

Up at 6:30am, in truck by 7:30am and its 35F.  Great!  10 degrees warmer than yesterday, and NO FOG! 

We got to the Refuge at about 8:10am and as we approached the observation deck, we asked “Anything?”  “Yep, it flew by at 7:55am.”  Shit!  We had missed it by 15 minutes!  We had stood on that observation platform, looking through our scopes, all day yesterday – and I mean all day.  I have never spent an entire day, just standing looking through a scope and scanning 1000’s of birds before, and I sure didn’t want to do it again today!  Crap!  The Hooded Crane had dropped in just behind a row of corn, down into what appeared to be a swell coming off the inlet. But, we couldn’t see it.

We all trained our scopes to that spot.  All 30+ of us.  Then Dave yelled, “It’s up!  Flying right to left”.  And, sure enough there it was for about 1 second and then it dropped behind the point of land sticking out into the inlet – it was gone.  A few of us were lucky enough to see it, but not many.  Ugh!  This is so frustrating.  We really want to watch the bird, see its behavior, and really SEE it.  So, again, we trained our scopes at the spot where it had dropped, hoping that it would walk up the rise on the point so that we could see it again.

The Whooper’s were there again, as well as a couple of Red-tails.  We saw a few of the folks that had been here yesterday too.  As I signed our names to the guest list that was circulating, I casually scanned the names on the list to see where everyone was from.  A guy had driven all the way down from New Jersey, and Vic Fazio was the name just above mine.  I recognized that name from the Ohio birding network.  So, I tapped him on the shoulder and introduced myself.  How cool is that?  Plus, Herman Mays from the Cincinnati Museum Center was there with his 6 yr old son, Cameron.  Small world, this birding community…

I rotated between looking through my scope at the spot where the crane had dropped, to scanning the weeds along the shoreline, to using my binocs to scan Sandhills that were continually taking off and landing along the back side of that point of land.  Nothing.  At least it was warmer today. 

Then I saw a white head raise up in the weeds on the back side of the point of land.  I whispered to Dave, “Hey, Dave, behind the 6 Sandhills that are eating behind the Whooper is a white head sticking up in the weeds. Do you see it?”  I noticed that Vic immediately rotated his scope over to that area too.  I could see a white neck and head that was much brighter than all of the Sandhills.  But, I wasn’t confident and the light could be playing tricks on me.  I waited, saying nothing.  

Then Dave said, “That’s it!”  I quickly shouted out directions to everyone on the observation deck.  Then the head went down.  Crap!  You could feel the excitement and tension among the observers on the deck.  Some had seen it, and some were still trying to figure out where to look.  Voices could be heard explaining which weeds to look at.  Everyone was focused on that spot.  We waited, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, then the head was back up!  Then gone.  This was torture!  We waited, increasing the zoom on our lenses to their maximum.  Watching every movement of the weeds, hoping the bird would resurface.

Then it was back!  Walking right up the bank and into full view!  Wow!  How cool was that!  The camera shutters were flying!  The Hooded Crane was beautiful!  Elegant black with a white neck and head.  Casually meandering in the weeds picking at food.  High fives went around the deck!  Sounds of celebration could be heard all along the boardwalk.  We lingered for a good 30 minutes taking photos and hoping that just one would turn out.  The bird was still a good 200 yards from us.  Wow!  What a great life bird!

It was 10am, and we could head home.

Man, I love Bonnie Rait.  I was finally able to enjoy some downtime after Christmas.  The grandkids were gone, and the other kids, home from college or the military were sleeping off their evening adventures.  I was sorting through the music my son had downloaded onto my computer from his ipod, named Pinky.  Other than the techno stuff that all sounds the same to me, he actually has good taste in music.  Lots of R&B, classic rock and some American standards.  It was fun to see Aerosmith and Perry Como mixed in with 50Cent and Sublime.  Anyway, I was happily listening and organizing my itunes, when my phone beeped and a text came in from Sammy.  “Hooded Crane in Tennessee”. 

Before I could answer the text, my phone rang and it was my birder husband. Funny how that timing worked.  He’d gotten Sammy’s text too.  So, why beat around the bush.  “Are we going?”, I asked.  Hooded Cranes are from Japan, so hearing that one had dropped in only 7 hrs south of us, was a real score!  We were going to have to cancel bird banding tomorrow anyway, because of high winds, so we COULD get away. I don’t see a trip to Japan in our near future, and Dave has been obsessed with Vanderpool’s Big Year, so I already knew the answer to my question.  “I’m on my way home now”, he replied. “If we leave now, we can be back home tomorrow”.  He’d already reworked his schedule and called our sleeping 20-something year old children to make sure they would take care of the pets while we were gone.

By 4pm, we were on the road.  Then, we had to turn around and go back home because I forgot my phone on the charger!  So, at 4:30pm we were at the bank getting cash, filling the gas tank and running into Radio Shack to get an adaptor so we could listen to a book on the ipod through the truck speakers.  Man, I love Radio Shack.  I really like those new 4 G phones – maybe a HTC Resound or Thunder….  I guess I took too long in the store, because the next thing I knew, Dave was pacing next to me asking me if I was done yet.  Yep, done.  Adaptor in hand, and off we went to Tennessee. 

But, wait, where was Dave's phone?  He's ALWAYS on the phone - worse than a woman.  We scoured the truck and called home on my phone.  Nope, the kids couldn't find it at home, but the bank had called.  He'd left it there, and Amanda would pick it up tomorrow. LOL!  They say the mind is the first thing to go, sweetie!  :-)

We made it to Athens by 11pm and got a room at the Holiday Inn Express.  Very nice hotel with comfy beds and friendly staff.   6am wake up call, a quick shower and breakfast and we were on the road by 7:30am.  27F with frost on the truck, Thursday, December 29, 2011.  I‘m surprised that it’s already light outside! We soon hit fog as we meandered our way up Hwy 60 to Birchwood and the Hiwassi Wildlife Reserve. 

The fog was thick and visibility was only about 30 feet until about 9:15am.  Even so, there was an average of 30 people on the observation deck all day.  Apparently, John Vanderpool saw the bird yesterday morning by 9am, and no fog.  So our hopes of seeing the bird were high.  Dave and another guy saw a fly-by of the bird at about 3pm, but that was it.  

Two Whoopers were hanging around all day.  We were pretty far away, but Dave got this shot of the younger one.

We stayed until dark, but didn't see the Hooded Crane again.  I hate to come all this way and not see the bird, so we've decided to spend another night and try again in the morning.  I’m hoping for no fog in the morning.

Woops! That's a Life List of 650!!!

So, I just found out from my Birder husband that he doesn't have 600 species on his life list.  He's got 650!  That's 6-5-0!  Oops!  I just performed another birding fau pas when I mistakenly reported his life list 50 species short.   Sheesh!  LOL!!! Am I ever going to get this birding thing right?! *smile*.  
Congrats on 650, baby!  I'm proud of you, no matter how many species you have on your life list.

Four Life Birds in Four Days!

I realize that the title of this entry probably sounds funny to most of our family members as well as the general public.  But, in the world of the "elite" or should I say "freakishly obsessed" Birder, Life Birds become harder and harder to get.  With only 675 or so breeding species in North America, the Birder with over 500 species on his/her Life List has to really work to get those last 175 - as well as transient migrants and rarities that drop in.

Well I'm married to one of those maniacal Birders and while attending the Inland Bird Banding Association meetings in the lower Rio Grande Valley last week, he saw his 600th bird species for ABA North America.  Yep, that's right.  600 species!  Like Greg Miller, of The Big Year told me, "You've got to be lucky and good!"  Well, not to brag, but my husband is a damn good birder, and one of the luckiest SOBs I know!

Great job, Dave!

IBBA - Rio Grande Valley Dec 2010

What a beautiful area of the country, south Texas is... clear blue skies that go on forever, and 80F weather with a nice strong wing to keep you cool.  The dragonflies are in abundance, and I was able to snap this shot of a Roseate Skimmer at Alligator Pond in Estero Llano Grande in Weslaco, TX.

Also got great looks at Green Jays!

More photos to come!

Black Friday Extravaganza!

Great road trip to NE Ohio this weekend!  In honor of Black Friday, we picked up life birds Black-headed Gull (above) at Conneaut, Black-tailed Gull at Ashtabula as well as seeing an adult Black-crowned Night Heron at the Ashtabula marina.  Black Friday all around!  Sister Mary also picked up a 3rd life bird, Cackling Goose, in with a bunch of Canada's swimming around the marina.  Observers:  Sr Marty Dermody, Steve Kolbe, Dave and Jill Russell.

Just want to thank all of the birders who helped us all find the gulls this weekend. We had a great telephone tree system in Ashtabula that helped get the word out quickly. Met some terrific folks who had driven up from New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina, Michigan, and of course all over Ohio!

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Jill