Spring in Western Europe

When we were invited to our dear friend David Maizlish's wedding in Geneva, it was a good excuse to add on some time in the area for some hiking, birding, and butterflying.
Having done very little exploring of higher altitudes in Europe, I saw that the French alpine area of Haute-Savoie was very close to Geneva, so I arranged 3 nights rather blindly in a small lodge called "La Bournerie" just up the hill from the small ski resort of Grand Bornand. It turned out to be a great choice. It was a very old (1805) and small lodge, and the room was small, but the setting was magnificent and the proprietors were very kind and helpful. Sylvie Vadon is a wonderful cook and we were treated by hearty dishes of the area (sausages, potatoes, and the heavenly local cheese Reblochon). Once a week Grand Bornand hosts a small farmer's market which was perfect for our lunch needs.
The beautifully maintained trails led everywhere from our lodge. The most common singers were the Black Redstarts, the White Wagtails, Goldfinches, and as always, the Chaffinches. The slopes were full of vibrant wildflowers and butterflies:



Small Heath (Coenonympha pamphilus), the same genus as our abundant Common Ringlet



The first morning there was an unknown thrush singing around our lodge, a bit of stalking turned up a Fieldfare, in the same genus as our American Robin. They were quite common in this area, but we did not see any others the entire trip. After a morning hike, we took on a very steep trail up from the nearby Col de la Colombière (a famed climb from the tour of France) and were rewarded with outstanding views, close encounters with ibex, 3 new life birds, and some quite interesting butterflies, including the diminutive Little Blue.

We had a brief but distinctive view of the Lammergeier, a very rare and huge vulture that has been re-introduced into this area. Flocks of Yellow-billed (or Alpine) Choughs were amazing for their swooping flight and buzzy whistling calls. Along with wheatears and Black Redstarts we were fortunate in finding a singing male Rufous-tailed Rock Thrush that we had missed last fall in Spain.
A later steep hike in the area was notable for views of marmot and chamois.
In Geneva we enjoyed walking in the Botanic Gardens, although the birds were all common. Everywhere you see Black Kites overhead, even over urban areas. Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) was notable for its many Yellow-legged Gulls and a breeding pair of Red-crested Pochards with young.

We flew to Berlin and immediately got on a train northwards to the small town of Lychen near the border of the states of Brandenberg and Mecklenberg, or about half the way to the Baltic Sea. It was an attractive area of grain fields, scrubby pine woods, and small lakes. We stayed in a comfortable inn with a good restaurant (important in this small of a town!), the Waldesruh. The room once again was small and basic, in a lovely setting. The included breakfast was a varied buffet with wonderful dark bread, cheeses, meats, cereal, etc., which allowed us to also take some out for lunch.
The reason we chose this town was quite nearby there lives a good naturalist/guide named Rolf Nessing. He took us out our first two days in Lychen, and drove us first to the western portion of Brandenberg, and then to the east and southeast, close to the Polish border. We finally started getting some variety of raptors, starting with the close relative of our Bald Eagle the White-tailed Eagle, which was common in our area. We were lucky to catch a good flight look at the Eurasian Hobby, which is similar to a Merlin.
Common Cranes were new for us, and although we were too late for any displaying, we saw many family groups, usually of two parents and one chick.
Shorebirds other than lapwings were not anywhere unfortunately, but we did catch one Common Redshank in a display flight and making its loud song. Gulls were all the expected breeding Black-headeds, except for 3 Little Gulls that were on the shore of the Gulper See in western Brandenberg.
Other highlights were the nesting White Storks, Golden Oriole, and a cooperative Nightingale singing and showing itself in the road. Both Wood and Icterine Warblers were new for us, the latter doing some remarkable imitative singing at Lake Sabrina, near the town of Willmine. Linnet, Serin, and Bullfinch we only were able to see one individual of each. In the woods the most common singer was the Blackcap (along with the inevitable Chaffinch and European Robin).
After our time with Rolf, we spent a couple of days on our own, but without a vehicle we were limited to local walks. The best was a dawn walk right out of our inn (locking myself out in the process, which meant on my return that I could not easily get back in until breakfast was served) up the road, where I saw the amazing Black Woodpecker, a large Dryocopus similar to our Pileated. I had really wanted this one, and was disappointed not to have found it with Rolf, and here it was not 100 yards from our room, calling and showing itself very close by! Out in the fields there were numerous song flights of Skylarks and passing cranes.
We did feel a bit restricted from our lack of any German, and almost no one spoke English. Complex bus trips and trying to order a decongestant were a challenge. It's tough to mime blowing your nose to a stranger, especially when you really need to blow your nose, and you also need to buy kleenex! But people were friendly enough, one man allowed me the use of his cell phone to call Berlin.
Speaking of which...we ended up with nine nights back in Berlin. We had a fortunate rental of a small one room apartment with a kitchen in a central enough location and close to the Moritzplatz Ubahn stop. They are called the IMA loft apts, on Ritterstrasse, and they are on the top floor of six mostly devoted to dance and music studios, graphic design firms, architects, etc, which made for an interesting courtyard at times. We would hear occasionally the singers at their lessons, and see the dance students working out across the courtyard. The kitchen allowed us to have our breakfasts in, once we figured out how to make coffee without any real coffeemaker. Before we left we got to enjoy the so-called Turkish market in the area which was fun (we ate much too much pistachio baklava). We found a decent Vietnamese and a quite good Turkish and Bavarian restaurant within walking distance and went to them each two times.
We gloried in the art and were absorbed by the history of this most diverse city. I was fascinated by the presence of remains of the Wall, and of the documentation center and open field exhibits on the Bernauer Strasse. Close to our apartment was a section of remaining wall, along with a museum called the 'Topographies of Terror', which was on the very site where much of the bureaucracy of Nazi-state terror was conducted. Amazing stuff, very well presented in all of its horror.
Other than the Gemaldegalerie with its magnificent Vermeers, Rembrandts, and early Flemish and German works, we found the Berggruen collection the most interesting. Heinz Berggruen was a friend and early collector of Picasso and Matisse and had a remarkable eye.
We did several long park walks, in Sans Souci, the Tiergarten, and Tegel Forest, enjoying what birds there were but not finding anything new. It wasn't until our walk over to the monastery of Chorin, a small town about an hour by rail from central Berlin, that we found two new woodpeckers, the Middle Spotted and the Gray-faced. In the half-ruined monastery, we enjoyed Beethoven's Pastoral symphony and a concert performance of the first act of Wagner's Die Walkure.

Monastery at Chorin, site of an annual summer music festival 

We encountered 118 bird species in all during the 3 weeks of our trip, 21 of which were new to us and were seen. Other than on and off colds that we both had, and a truly anemic dollar, the trip was magnificent.

Spring Birding in the Cuyama Valley

Following some reports from other birders concerning some unusual arid country birds in north county, Kathleen and I took a day to journey to the Cuyama valley area and found 3 new county birds. Ballinger Canyon Rd is only within our county for a few miles, but it is the closest to sage habitat that is readily accessible. We found 3 or 4 Black-chinned Sparrows, and one teed up in a juniper to sing (I also recorded its song from this perch):

This portion of a longer recording has only two phrases. This singer would shift from one phrase type to the other each time but not invariably, occasionally repeating one type twice.
Lawrence's Goldfinch were everywhere, with a lot of singing and calling.

Later, near New Cuyama, we found 3 subadult Swainson's Hawks in the air. These are unusual in our county as they migrate through northward. Here is a light morph:

Note the long pointed wings and the dark flight feathers. The hawks were flying over a large tilled field that may have made displaced prey more visible. There were many Common Ravens and a few Red-tailed Hawks around as well, along with quite vocal Western Kingbirds in the nearby trees.
It was a quite beautiful day in the valley, temperatures in the 60s with a light wind.
We also had for the day Brewer's Sparrow, a single Lark Bunting female (rare in the county), Lark Sparrow, Horned Lark, Sage Sparrow, Ash-throated Flycatcher. Spring is a great time anywhere in the world for birds and their song!

Big Green Day

Last Monday a good birding friend and I took the Big Green Day challenge, which is to see how many distinct species that we can find during one day without using any motorized transport, ie., human powered. Mostly we walked around good sites and then used our bikes to get to the next one, which of course limited our scope.We chose to stay centered in the Goleta valley and began with more riparian and lake species in the morning, and then went over to Devereux Slough and the ocean for the water and shore birds. It turned out to be quite enjoyable, we detected 114 species, which I was quite happy with considering that we were still a bit early in the migration season and that very high onshore winds at the beach limited the seawatch considerably. The challenge is not only to see or hear birds, but to get your team member to see or hear it as well (and agree on the proper ID!). This introduces yet another skillset of staying close and attuned to your teammate and describing what you are seeing as efficiently and accurately as possible. Our competitive total was 112, which means that only 2 birds were detected (in both cases, heard by one and not by the other), an excellent percentage.
Our best, most unusual birds were a pair of Yellow-headed Blackbirds at the corner of Los Carneros and Mesa Rd, and a beautiful breeding-plumaged Ruddy Turnstone at Goleta Point. At fading light getting a single satisfying look at a migrant Vaux's Swift was a nice last bird to get.
—I have to interrupt this post due to a Pacific-slope Flycatcher coming into the neighbor's apricot tree. This is only the second one we have ever had at our house during spring migration—
It will be interesting to see how other teams fare around the country and the world. We'll probably make it an annual event to compete with ourselves and to maximize planning as much as anything.

Trying to Rush Spring

I went out to inland Santa Barbara county on Happy Canyon and Sunset Valley Rds last week, hoping to find some early spring migrants, and some interesting butterflies. It was a gorgeous day, in the low 70s, with light breeze (this was 6 Apr). Other than pairs of expected Bullock's Orioles, I did not find the unexpected later spring migrants such as Western Tanager and Black-headed Grosbeak. I did hear one Cassin's Vireo up a steep oak slope, but it was nearly drowned out by the many Warbling Vireos. Every oak tree seemed to harbor a loudly singing House Wren, easily the dominant singer of the day:

 There were some butterflies about, the most dramatic being dozens of Pale Swallowtails, almost of them flying from one Blue Dick flower (or Wild Hyacinth, Brodeia) to another. This one was of particular interest due to its missing portion of hindwing, which may illustrate the strategy of the eyespots and tails on many butterflies at the hind end. The idea is to fool an attacking bird to mistake the rear for the head, leaving the butterfly with enough wing to continue to fly:

At the Nira campground, in a dry parallel river bed to the rushing creek, I found what I will tentatively ID as an Edith's Checkerspot. This is quite similar to the more common Chalcedon Checkerspot. Kathleen and I have signed up for a week's intensive "Butterflies of the Sierras" field course up at Yuba Pass along the Yuba River in early July. We will probably visit the challenges of checkerspot distribution and maybe I'll look at these differently. Stay tuned.


A spring change of pace (Butterflies)



Female Sonoran Blue

I've been bitten again lately, rediscovering the joy of watching and trying to ID butterflies. I have always been interested enough to notice them, but since starting Bob Pyle's Mariposa Highway, the story of his pursuit of butterflies across the US during the year 2008, I have gotten much more attuned to the joys and challenge of lepidoptery. As an example of my ignorance, I thought that one had to make a long or difficult journey to see the Sonoran Blue, a California and Baja specialty. But it turns out that a nearby hike in Alisos Canyon out of Sage Hill campground was just the ticket. Kathleen and I came up with at least four of these iridescent sky-blue beauties. We were quite taken by the numbers and kinds of butterflies that we found (it was a perfect day for it). Some of the pictures may be found at https://picasaweb.google.com/theairyway/AlisosCanyonTrail20110317
In addition to those shown, there were 3 types of splashy large swallowtails, the Western Tiger, Anise, and Pale; and a fine Mourning Cloak, seen all over the country as a harbinger of spring and a new butterfly season (and in Europe as well, where it is known by the English name Camberwell Beauty).
It is not that we did not bird as well, but the birding this time of year is a bit slow. We did note the many early year singers, notably several House Wrens, a lone Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Oak Titmice, Orange-crowned Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos, and one of the first Spotted Towhee songs of the year. There was a brief moment of a small number of migrating Violet-green Swallows right around us, and a high-flying Sharp-shinned Hawk.
So what I'm saying is, get a good guide like Brock & Kaufman's Butterflies of North America, a pair of preferably low-power binoculars (6x is best, with close focusing) and see what I mean. The thing is, that it is an incentive if you need one to learn about local habitat and plant identities, which helps to place butterflies, along with season and location. I am botanically challenged big-time, so seeing that the Sonoran blue female was actually on a Dudleya plant (at least I think it was!) was even more pleasure, as it is its host plant, meaning it is the plant where she will lay eggs that will become caterpillars feeding on the leaves.

Male Sonoran Blue on flowering Brodeia

Birding in Southern Texas Winter 2011

One of the big reasons that we chose to travel to southern Texas recently was to experience the only other crane species in our hemisphere, the Whooping Crane. The best way to see them is to get on a boat out of Rockport or Port Aransas which allows for close viewing, as in this picture of an adult going back to the water's edge to thrash and eat this Blue Crab. There are only a few hundred of these magnificent cranes left in the wild, having been rescued from the brink of extinction, just like the California Condors. Unlike the condors, these cranes do not need the same intensive level of intervention to survive. Still, they could be one natural or unnatural disaster away, as they nest in northern Alberta and only winter here in Aransas NWR, thus being reliant on safe breeding, migrating, and wintering areas. Luckily, after several bad years for crab, this one has been excellent, which allows the adults to fatten up sufficiently to have offspring later this year. It's a delicate web: there needs to be fresh water mixing in the right quantities with the salt water of the marsh to have the crabs in abundance.
Generally you don't see these cranes easily from coastal spots, but we lucked into a pond and meadow towards sunset that had not only Whooping but also a small group of Sandhill Cranes! Along with dozens of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks (yes, they do whistle) flying about.
The other reason we came to Texas in wintertime is for regional rarities and other new birds for us. In this we did quite well, seeing 12 life birds which puts us just shy of 600 species seen in the lower 48 states. Of these, 3 were 'mega-rare', having been found and reported at locations that were fairly easy to access. These 3 are Mexican birds that only occasionally stray across the Rio Grande, being the Crimson-collared Grosbeak, the White-throated Thrush, and the Black-vented Oriole. Four others of the 12 are present year-around but only in small numbers in limited habitat (especially in winter): Tropical Parula, Groove-billed Ani, Audubon's Oriole, and White-collared Seedeater. Then there were the two psittacids that have established themselves in the lower valley, the Green Parakeet and the Red-crowned Parrot, both of which we saw at our wonderful B&B in McAllen (more about that later). The subtly-plumaged Clay-colored Thrush used to be rare, but has over the years become much more numerous and easy to see (we saw 6 in all at 3 sites).
Some of these birds may be seen in my picasa album at https://picasaweb.google.com/theairyway.
The weather was generally quite good, temperatures in the 60s and 70s, except for 3 days in the lower valley with highs around 33 degrees. Only one of these cold days grounded us, when we hung out in the excellent McAllen library and a coffee house. The other two days we managed the Audubon's Oriole on oranges at the Roma birding center (along with Altamiras), and the Tropical Parula at Quinta Mazatlan, also feeding on oranges with the Orange-crowned Warblers. Even the Buff-bellied Hummingbird was out at Roma on the freezing morning, trying to get something from the frozen hummer feeder (it was quickly thawed by the personnel and replaced).
We were quite fortunate to find some other rare birds, at least for the season or locality. Birding around Corpus Christi on January 28 we located a first-year male Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and in a city park found a Tennessee Warbler. Both of these species are not expected at all in winter. I reported them to the appropriate people in Texas. Later, while out on a field trip with a group in the Laredo area, I helped to ID a distant Western Grebe which is quite rare east of the Pecos.
McAllen proved to be an excellent base for the entire lower Rio Grande Valley, being about 2 hours driving time from Roma in the west to Laguna Atascosa and Brownsville in the east. There are wonderful sites within a half-hour: Santa Ana NWR, Bentsen SP, Estero Llano SP, and many others. We greatly enjoyed our stay with the Gomez's at the Gypsy Birder's Retreat. They were very generous and gracious hosts, and we enjoyed our conversations together. They provided excellent breakfast and lunch goodies, with variety and home-baked treats. Check them out on Facebook at urbanbirder.mcallen or email Rhonda at Rhondagmz@gmail.com.
I'll probably have more to say about some of our days in southern Texas, but will end for now. We will remain indebted to the friendly folks there, birders and non-birders alike, for a great stay, despite some depressing reminders of our border woes, especially in Laredo.

The Traveler's Prayer



Near the Tarifa town walls

 Kathleen spotted this resolution as we walked around the very old town walls of Tarifa, Spain, the southernmost point in western Europe, being just north of 36 degrees latitude (the same latitude as Nashville TN, Grand Canyon Village on the south rim, and Kettleman City CA, for all you I-5 junkies). Actually we did not have to repeat this mantra very often, driving independently around southern Spain proved to be, for the most part, quite easy and even relaxing. We were armed with a good atlas (1:300K), and also Hertz's 'NeverLost' (ha). The problem, of course, in the small towns is that it is difficult to find street signs, even on foot, much less while driving, there is rarely anywhere even to pull over safely or legally, and the pronunciation of neither "Jill", the american voice on our navigation, or "Emily", the English one, was easy to comprehend. We settled on Emily, because we were laughing too much listening to Jill mangle Spanish. (I know, I know, we should have kept with the Spanish voice, but that presented its own problems, and wasn't as entertaining). Emily was pretty good, and less obtrusive than Jill, but had a way of stretching out the road names to comical lengths, eg., Andalucia became "Ahhhn  dahhhh louuuuu  teeeee  ahhhhhhhhhhhh". And, naturally, these towns laid out a millenium ago were not about square corners. The castillo was first, built on the high or strategic point, and the roads nuzzled around this point as tightly as possible. Many are so narrow, that I am sure that there was less than an inch on either side of our Ford Focus, which does not look so large in the American landscape, but is just a bit too wide in Spain. It had a lot of room, and could take nearly all our luggage in the enclosed back section, and gave us good mileage. It had terrible traction, however, and off-road driving was more momentous than necessary. One near 'cracking' point was driving out of Tarifa, we had to go up a steep cobblestone street and start from a stopped position at the top. I could not get enough traction to make it up in a safe manner, so had to back down the hill, and go out of town from a different route. The other near cracking point was in a dastardly parking garage in Granada, where I lost all of my normally quite confident and skilled driving ability, and had to give the attendent 5 euros to do my maneuvering for me.  I was so proud to return that car with only the scratches on it that I started with (obviously the result of scraping parking garage white pillars!).
Mostly, though, the roads were good, the weather pleasurable, the people friendly, and the scenery excellent. No matter how very small the village, there would always be an open bar, which would serve a uniformly great cafe con leche for a euro. Giles Tremlett, in his wonderful book Ghosts of Spain, says that Spain has more than 138,000 bars, more than the rest of western Europe combined! These are frequently good for breakfast, lunch, and tapas dinners. There is always a cigarette smoke issue, either barely tolerable or impossible to live with. Apparently the laws are changing there as well, but it is hard to believe that such an entrenched habit could be realistically curtailed quickly.