ethno-ornithology Sunday: family tradition

So, I did an incredible amount of birdwatching, well compared to normal, in the last week. I headed to the Willamette Valley, a la Eugene, Oregon, for a four day bird adventure. Saturday I bird watched for several hours at a place called Delta Ponds, a wetlands restoration area not far off of Delta Hwy. The birding was fabulous, including a great-blue heron rookery. This only surprised me because I've never seen such an urban rookery location. Quite exciting (if not a tad disturbing because on a scientific level this can have so many reasons). There were a good 30 species of songbirds and waterfowl at this location (maybe not the most impressive number but I was quite happy with it). One of my two serious interests in regards to birds and research are urbanization and birds and recreation and birds. I am always delighted to see birds in areas as urban as Delta Ponds, but in the back of my mind I have to remember that these birds often represent the bottlenecking of species diversity. These birds could some day be the reminder of what once was.

March 20th was a bit less urban birding at Meadowlark Prairie, one of my favorite places to run/bike/etc when I lived in Eugene as the bike path from the apartment I lived in lead(s) right to/through the prairie. True to its name there were many western meadowlarks singing. There were several more species of birds than at Delta Ponds and hundreds more individuals (of course the migrating flocks of cacklers helped boost that number!). The flock of long-billed dowitchers made that expedition for me, along with the diversity of waterfowl. Here in the Rogue Basin we have waterfowl, but NOTHING as spectacular as the Klamath Basin or the Willamette Valley.

March 21st was a split day of birding at Alton Baker Park and Lane Community College. Alton Baker was the site of a most unusual sighting. A greater-white fronted snow goose hanging out with a snow goose-ish bird of some kind. It was a snow goose but with grayish primaries and a dark beak. It looked like a juvenile snow goose (which apparently keep their darkish feathers until January) but it is the wrong time of year to see a snow goose. My birding compatriot and I decided to call it a snow goose, with the understanding that it could be a mutt of some sort, I mean it was hanging out with a greater-white front. Maybe its parents were a snow goose/greater-white front coupling. Lane Community College is listed by ebird as a birding hotspot so it was a natural choice for an outing. While it didn't host the greatest number of species it did host a great number of individuals. It was also raining and as we all know rain can greatly alter the diversity of species encountered.

Speaking of ebird...I learned that Winter Wrens in the west have been split into a separate species, now known as the Pacific Wren. I guess I'm a bit out of the loop as this happened in August and I had no idea. Now is a good time to be getting back into graduate school and, hopefully, the bird world.

I also hiked Lower Table Rock on March 25th. It rained off and on so birding was not great, but I did see a random mixed flock of yellow-rumped warblers and golden-crowned kinglets. I also saw a flock of pine siskins. While the birding wasn't that great I did get plenty of time to ponder humans and our habit of loving things to the point of destroying them. I can't count the number of times I've seen people with their dogs on the Table Rocks, despite the numerous signs telling them dogs are not allowed. I saw teenagers tossing a football in the meadow atop Lower Table Rock once. On this trip I saw mountain bike tracks. I try so very hard to not dislike groups of people based on the behavior of a few, but my experience with mountain bikers actually extends to a variety of places and experiences. I understand that people feel they should be allowed anywhere they want. I also understand that they feel their sport is low impact. But, I have never seen a place that mountain bikers frequent (other than on-trail biking) that isn't being impacted, and often seriously. In Orange County they trespassed on property managed by The Nature Conservancy, despite the dangers it posed to the birds caught in our nets (and our prolific protests) and despite TNC personnel trying to educate the bikers about a sensitive species of lichen that grew on the rocks that they often biked on. So, I was surprised (but not really) to find tracks on the trail leading up Lower Table Rock. When I got to the top and saw the tracks riding off-trail randomly across the plateau I was once again struck by how selfish people are. Upper and Lower Table Rock vernal pools are the northern most range for the vernal pool fairy shrimp (the only place in Oregon they are found), a rare species of fairy shrimp also found in California. They are also home to an endemic (meaning found only in this place) species of flower, the dwarf woolly meadowfoam. These flowers are endangered, in big part to individuals going off trail and trampling them. I'm not sure how we can educate people about the importance of respecting nature. How can we teach them that just because people hiked off trail around the plateaus fifty years ago doesn't mean we can do it today. There are many, many more people using a space that can't grow to accommodate them. In order to not completely destroy these amazing places we have to use them carefully.

All of this brings me to my final bit. On March 26th I took my almost-three-year-old niece birdwatching. She and I first discussed it around the time of my trip to the Klamath Basin. We didn't see much, the rain and her storytelling (which I was happy for) likely had something to do with that, but the trip is one I am not likely to forget. I adore my nieces and nephews. I try to not force my interests on them but birds are an integral part of me, so...it filters into our interactions too. Anyway, I took my niece birdwatching. She told me all about these amazing flowers that bloom in the park and about the many species of purple birds that she saw and all about the species that I tried to see but they flew away too fast. She chattered on and on about her favorite bird (currently the American robin) and I sat, or piggy-backed, adoringly. She even brought her own binoculars (which she talked about for quite some time too). We sat in the rain, looked for birds and talked for well over an hour. My eight-month-old nephew also loves birds and I am quite certain that he and I will make a birdwatching excursion when he is old enough. So...to fit with the title theme...THIS is a family tradition that I can handle handing down. Loving and appreciating nature, life and things greater than ourselves witnessed through these amazing feathered beings.

Ethno-ornithology Sunday: birdwatchers

I started this last Friday to have it posted Sunday. Then we had a HUGE storm (wind gusts at one hilltop weather station recorded at 70mph) come through and I was without power for a good 50+ hours.

Frog-o-rama

Image from the Northern Pacific Treefrog USGS fact sheet

I have never been much of a frog person. I mean, I like them, like what they do in the ecosystems they are found in, but they've never topped my "favorite animals"

chart. Being that it is almost spring and their circadian clocks are telling them it's time to make themselves known I've been giving them more notice than usual. Tonight, as I have for the last several nights, I listened to the chorus of frogs "singing" all around my home. Tonight they seem to have reached a more frantic, urgent rhythm. Their little croaks giving the night a different kind of pulse than it usually has. I drink in the sound, allow it to seep into my skin, my bones, my veins, until I can feel the rhythm playing out in my own being. If I were a frog I'm sure I'd be aroused by all of these boisterous males proclaiming their sexual prowess and genetic superiority. Sometimes, like the undulation of the ocean, their volume decreases until it is almost silent. Then their voices raise, in volume and in number until they are virtually shouting for attention and by force of sheer numbers their cacophony crashes around me, wave after wave of glorious little frogs "songs."

This, of course, makes me think of birds. Even males that procure a territory before they procure a mate sing of their own sexiness in order to attract a mate. In all honesty there are many, many ways that birds actually attract their mates but right now, be

cause of the frog song I'm thinking of male birds and their boisterous, glorious singing. One lonely marsh wren has the same affect on me as the scads of Northern Pacific treefrogs that are out singing right now. The wrens get to really singing and I feel like their song is all that matters, because in that moment it is all that matters. These little birds that sing, and sing, and sing, at risk of being discovered and consumed desperate to attract a mate. Marsh wrens, among many other species, create new songs in a constant effort to "one up" their neighbors. I rather enjoy walking along areas that have several wren territories in a row and listening to the increasing complexity of their songs. And that is just at the frequencies and decibles that I can hear, I'm sure that if I could hear like their intended audience I'd be even more exhilarated. Or I'd think they were unexciting and move on to find a more suitable male.

Bird songs, of course, make me think of birdwatchers. What self-respecting birder doesn't know at least a handful of songs with which to identify the birds they can hear but not see. More specifically, I am thinking about the waste we create in our continuing efforts to learn to identify birds or to add one (or 100) new birds to our life lists (which I don't keep and don't quite understand keeping). Books, cds, computer programs, binoculars, scopes, bird feeders and an ever expanding array of technological gadgets. I recently learned about applications, BirdJam being one of them that seems fairly popular (at least when I did my online search), for ipods and iphones that help identify birds. Mark at "Birds in Your Backyard" talks about tech-savvy birders and the inroads that technology is making into the birding world. While I understand the appeal of technology in birding (how many times would I have really appreciated a recording of a bird call when out birding) I just can't support increasing the amount of disposable, breakable and toxic material goods being produced, used and disposed of in this country every day. Now, that isn't to say that there aren't advantages to having technology in the field, home or office. And it isn't to say that there aren't ways of making technology less harmful (borrowing cds from the library or buying bird guides as mp3's to forgo shipping and packaging for example). I just think that it is our responsibility, as consumers of nature, as "collectors" of birds, to protect them and the land that they (and we) depend on. If the ultimate goal is to know more birds, by sight and by ear, than anyone else. If the goal of finding birds is to outcompete, out ID, out do every other birder/birding competitor how much better are we than the people that raced against each other and time to kill ivory-billed woodpeckers for their collections/collectors. We may not be directly killing them, but maybe slowly killing them through habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, nesting disturbance and by polluting their homes is worse. Maybe we too are loving birds to death. To extinction. To finality. Maybe it is time to get back to basics. To live, and bird, simply. To realize that if our presence in an area is threatening a species…maybe we don't need to add them to our life lists. I know for me, birding is best done with (at most) a pair of binoculars, a bird book and my own curiosity. Oh, and sometimes a little help from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology All About Birds guide when I have a bird song stuck in my head that I can't seem to identify.

*When you click on the All About Birds link you will be directed to their page about brown creepers. This is because these little guys have a delightfully melodious song that "plagued" me about two springs ago. I'd walk around singing the song in my head trying to pair it with the birds that I knew would be here. Then, one day when the song was filling the air around me, I saw a brown creeper in one of the ponderosa pines near my house. I immediately ran up to the house, logged onto All About Birds, looked up the brown creeper and discovered that this often shy and seemingly quiet nuthatch-like (the reason I had skimmed over them originally) birds, are really quite wonderful singers.

Acceptance!

I have been accepted to the M.S. Environmental Education program at Southern Oregon University. I have accepted an offer for a graduate assistantship position as the Educational Outreach assistant at the Siskiyou Environmental Eduction Center. This comes with a monthly stipend (in exchange for 10 hours of work/week) and an 80% tuition waiver. I already have thesis ideas...we'll see what they get narrowed down to!

Superfund Sites

For my geology class we are discussing the Love Canal. While doing research for my part of the group discussion (describing and defending the actions for the Niagara Falls Education Board once people started coming forward about the toxic puddles their kids were playing in) I came across a page that lists the top 100 companies and agencies, based on the number of sites they are attributed to, that are responsible for superfund sites. If you are interested in this stuff you should look at it. I was both disturbing and wicked interesting.