This week, a legendary battle was waged between birds and men. The ultimate quest to bring down mighty Condor mysterious black swift. The most difficult stage of this quest was convincing my boss to give me three days. The quest sat on the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and all would fail. However, using my training from mom, I laboured to convince Mary to give me 3 days. It was NOT easy. But in the end, she graciously gave me leave, God bless her.
With the most difficult victory in the bag and various never-ending work tasks cleared, the two companions set off on their great journey with high spirits. Within the first mile of a thousand, we spotted a medium slim raptor on a powerpole. Hark, a prairie falcon! An early omen for things to come. We forged on, through the deep kern canyon toward the city of Bakersfield. On the way, we snatched two dippers in the river, which Neil is obsessed with. We were halted by a party of police and fire trucks, since they appeared to have just put out a fire up the hill. While were stopped, I all of a sudden heard the unmistakeable tooting of a pygmy owl. Unfortunately, at that point it was our turn to go. It would have been tough call to turn around, I wanted too but Neil though it a bad idea with all the lined up cars, and what with the fire and all. So, we made a painful concensus to forge on.
While driving through Bakersfield, I just remembered a post I had read about some burrowing owls, and just by luck happened to have memorized the street names. We had no idea where the intersection was, so we went with our instincts and took an exit. After consulting some local Jehovah's witnesses, we arrived shortly to the scene. At first there was just one poking head out of a hole, but then it was a frenzy! 2 adults and 5 babies, all flying around and calling and stuff.
Onward! Only 4 more hours to Big Sur.
Luckily I fell asleep for the boring central valleyish part of the drive, and woke up in some random campground that expert campground-finder Neil had spotted. When I woke up, a cool breeze infused my nostrils with freshness that only could mean the sea. We made an early retreat, just as the gate attendant rolled in for work. As usual, stuffing the tent in the tiny bag is like a St. Bernard trying to mate with a Chihuahua. The highway that follows the coast passes through some amazingly beautiful coastline, which we didn't stray far from the entire time. The first spot we encountered was a lot with a sign that said "elephant seal colony". WOW! The fattest living things I've ever seen in the wild, but just wait until you read on...
We snagged grasshopper sparrow at this spot as well.
The great thing about this road is the speed limit is 25 and there are pulloffs everywhere. As usual, we followed our instincts, stopping all of the promissing-looking pulloffs. A new pineapple of victory was ready for slaughter, in anticipation of the upcoming lifers.
It did not take long, for as I was scanning hundreds of Sooty Shearwaters on the distant horizon, I spotted something. It was huge. Neil was taking a piss at the time. NEIL NEIL NEIL, I THINK I'VE GOT...AN ALBATROSS. He ran over and as it flew closer, it was clear: Black footed albatross!!! To complement, there were bottle-nosed dolphins and some sea otters frolicking. We forged on. A couple of peregrines screamed by.
As we approached a bend, I wanted to re-read the birder's guide to check a couple of things. I saw a dark bird soaring for a second but it disapeared behind the bend. I was going to look at it as soon as we rounded the bend but then I forgot about it since the reading on black swifts was intriguing. Then Neil started yelling like a crazy man: CONDOR CONDOR CONDOR! Praise Jesus, there it was in all its glory. I have to say, I've been birding for 9 years and I've seen alot of crazy shit but this was incredible. As I struggled to not crap myself from this bowel-loosening view, we pulled over and stood in awe as it soared illegaly close to us. It wandered down the coast, so we decided to follow it in the car. As we approached, it was joined by 1, 2, 3, 4!! other condors! We pulled over and stood beneath these beheamoths as they emitted their rays of awesomeness onto our eyes. Eventually they flew off, and we did the same because our quest was not yet complete. There were still black swifts out there, and we were going to find some, but where?
We interrogated a local birding lady on black swifts.
After a productive day of coast (but still no swifts), we decided to camp up Palo Colorado road. It was the most beautifull campground I've ever been in. This photo describes it best, but in reality does not do it justice.
Our free camping streak came to an inevitable end, as a campground host approached us and requested the 12 bucks. Well, I suppose it is 12 bucks well spent.
We wanted this to be our owling night, so we decided to go for spotted. At dusk we walked a couple miles down a road into the valley that descends into some big redwood groves. We heard a couple of screech owls, but couldn't get coax them in. The spotted owls here are the endangered northwestern illegal variety. On the walk back up the road, we had pretty much given up, and this was starting to resemble our last owling trips. However, as we were walking, I thought I heard something, so I stopped and gave my best impression of a spotted owl. There it was! We listened in awe as it broadcasted back to us in the night. It was pretty far and wouldn't come in, but somehow just hearing it was satisfying enough.
In the morning we woke up at a record late time, 7:30. Refreshed from this extra-long sleep, we headed back to the coast with a new optimism. The legendary Matt Brady instructed us to pay a visit to nearby Rocky Point to have a rare chance of seeing a black swift. We sat for a while on a huge jagged rock sticking into the sea, with a cove to our left, and the open ocean to our right. It was the kind of commanding view perfect for spotting black swifts.
If you're not familiar with black swifts, I will say a bit about them. They are a bird about the size of a large swallow, with long sharp wings. They fly high in the sky in search of insects (mostly winged ants) all day since they can't perch, except on the sides of cliffs. They only nest behind or adjacent to waterfalls, or on seacliffs, where they also sleep. A pair raises one young per year, which each parent feeds once per day, at dusk. So as you can tell, seeing one of these is no easy task. Neil asked how much longer I wanted to hang out here. I think I said something ridiculous like 3 hours, and he said soon, so for some reason we agreed on half an hour. There were hundreds of common murres feeding offshore, and the only pacific loon of the trip flew by. Other than that though, it was turning into a boring seawatch. As I gazed out along the coast, I started to see something flying head to us, that deffinately did not look like a swallow. As it bombed toward us, it was immediately obvious. All I remember is that we both started yelling like freaks, as not one but three black swifts came in, and flew around right above us for at least a minute. It was a super moment as we realized just how brilliant birding with a great friend can be. After so many hours spend searching for this elusive bird, we finally got to bask in its awesomeness. Matt Brady deserves some major credit for recommending this spot. A bold statement but I think this is the best bird I've seen this year.
With the major weight of two super-birds off our shoulders, we were free to roam the rest of the day and the next in a leasurely fashion. We headed south down the coast, toward Morro Bay where our next quarry would be snowy plover, elegant tern and Allen's hummingbird.
We hung out at Grime's point again in hopes of seeing the Condors again. The waters off Big Sur are DEEP. We were on a giant cliff, the biggest I've ever seen, looking down at a deep underwater canyon. While admiring this view, I happened to see a cetacean swimming below us. Neil said its probably a dolphin, which I thought too, until I considered how high we were. I binned it, and realized: man, its a humpback whale!! We got the scope out just in time to see it roll sideways and waive a fin in the air, before it disapeared out to sea. INCREDIBLE.
Then, the 5 condors retured, except this time they were below us, riding the slope.
After a few stops, we found another BF albatross that was a little closer, really cool how they fly. We birded our way down toward morro bay and got there in time to see hundreds of godwits, curlews and willets, plus other stuff. The best part about morro bay, which is a mega tourist town, was not the birds but in fact a huge pizza that we hoovered, since as usual all we had eaten aside from a ceremonial pineapple was peanut butter and jam sandwiches. Neil got 3rd degree burns in his mouth so we had to get some icecream.
We camped in the parking lot at Oso Flaco Lake since all the campgrounds were packed with thousands of tourists and RVs. I did not realize some people got up at 3 am to go fishing. We walked through some willows and a marsh to the ocean, where they have a whole bunch of dunes fenced off for snowy plovers and least terns, real interesting place. We figured we'd just walk down the beach for a while until we run into a plover. Luckily we did, in fact we found 3, and it was awesome.
We also saw just one least tern on the way back. A bunch of pishing in the willows got us a female Allen's hummingbird too!
With a long drive ahead, and work the next day, we left, but the birding was far from over. On the way back we poned Yellow-billed magpie. With plenty time left to spare, we headed back via the greenhorns to score some mountain birds.
We spent most of the time hicking up to Sunday peak which is at 8300 feet. Our mission here was to find a Sooty Grouse. This is the southernmost known location for them, and Neil had never seen one. Up at the summit, we heard two down a huge slope. We bushwacked down there, but they proved to be too elusive even for us. Everytime we got close, they'd be further away. In the end Neil got a glimpse of one flushing, and it was getting dark so we had to head back. A bittersweet victory for this one. When we got back it was dark, and I had to work at 4:30 the next morning. But what the heck, why not go owling? We decided to cut if off at 11 at the lastest which ended up being a good idea. It ended up being just barely too windy to hear well, but on our final stop (sound familiar?) we heard a flammulated owl decently, the final species of the trip, and were back before midnight.
An incredible weekend, gratefull I got to go and I could have no better companion to bird with than Neil. Seeing as work isn't going super wizer at the moment, it was a real blessing which I will not forget. For our next mission, Neil and I plan to join forces one last time to plunder the offshore waters of San Diego on a double pelagic voyage. Hope it works out.
I did a checklist with notes but the computer froze and erased it, here is a less accurate on I re-did later:
BIG SUR trip list
1. Common loon
2. Pacific loon (1)
3. Red-throated loon (3)
4. Pied-billed grebe
5. Clark’s grebe
6. Western grebe
7. BLACK-FOOTED ALBATROSS (2)
8. Sooty shearwater (1000?)
9. Brandt’s cormorant
10. Pelagic cormorant
11. Double-crested cormorant
12. Brown pelican
13. White pelican
14. Snowy egret
15. Great egret
16. Great blue heron
17. Black-crowned night heron
18. Brant
19. Mallard
20. Northern shoveler (1)
21. Gadwall
22. Surf scoter
23. Ruddy duck
24. CALIFORNIA CONDOR (5)
25. Turkey vulture
26. GOLDEN EAGLE (1-3, maybe same one)
27. Red-tailed hawk
28. Red-shouldered hawk
29. American kestrel
30. Peregrine falcon (5)
31. PRAIRIE FALCON (1) – first mile of the trip!
32. Sooty grouse (2) – Neil got a glimpse of one, but heard only
33. Mountain quail
34. California quail
35. American coot
36. SNOWY PLOVER (3)
37. Killdeer
38. Black oystercatcher
39. Spotted sandpiper
40. Whimbrel
41. Long-billed curlew
42. Willet
43. Marbled godwit
44. Western sandpiper
45. Least sandpiper
46. Short-billed dowitcher
47. California gull
48. Heerman’s gull
49. Western gull
50. Caspian tern
51. LEAST TERN (1)
52. Common Murre (3000?)
53. Pigeon guillemot
54. Band-tailed pigeon
55. Mourning dove
56. Yellow-billed cuckoo (Neil post-trip solo)
57. Barn owl
58. Great-horned owl
59. FLAMMULATED OWL (heard only, in the Greenhorns)
60. Western screech-owl (3 – heard only up Palo Colorado road on the way to the boy’s camp)
61. NORTHERN SPOTTED OWL (1 – heard only up Palo Colorado road on the way to the boy’s camp)
62. Northern Pygmy owl - 1 possible heard in the Kern Canyon, while we couldn’t stop
63. Burrowing owl (8 ) in one field
64. White-throated swift
65. VAUX’S SWIFT (15) in one flock!
66. BLACK SWIFT (3) together at Rock Point
67. ALLEN’S HUMMINGBIRD (1) female at Oso Flaco Lake
68. Anna’s hummingbird
69. Acorn woodpecker
70. Nuttall’s woodpecker
71. Downy woodpecker
72. Hairy woodpecker
73. White-headed woodpecker
74. Red-breasted sapsucker
75. Northern flicker
76. Olive-sided flycatcher
77. Western wood-pewee
78. Willow flycatcher (Neil solo post-trip birding)
79. Dusky flycatcher
80. Pacific-slope flycatcher
81. Western kingbird
82. Ash-throated flycatcher
83. Black phoebe
84. Warbling vireo
85. Hutton’s vireo (1)
86. Steller’s jay
87. Western scrub-jay
88. YELLOW-BILLED MAGPIE (5 - together)
89. American crow
90. Common raven
91. Tree swallow
92. Rough-winged swallow
93. Cliff swallow
94. Barn swallow
95. Purple martin
96. Oak titmouse
97. Chestnut-backed chickadee
98. Mountain chickadee
99. Bushtit
100. Red-breasted nuthatch
101. White-breasted nuthatch
102. Brown creeper
103. Marsh wren
104. Rock wren
105. “PACIFIC” WINTER WREN (2) Palo Colorado road
106. Bewick’s wren
107. House wren
108. American dipper
109. Wrentit
110. Golden-crowned kinglet
111. Blue-gray gnatcatcher
112. Western bluebird
113. Townsend’s solitaire
114. American robin (a white one!)
115. Hermit thrush
116. Swainson’s thrush
117. Northern mockingbird
118. Phainopepla
119. Starling
120. Orange-crowned warbler
121. Nashville warbler
122. Yellow warbler
123. Yellow-rumped warbler
124. NORTHERN PARULA (1 male) – Neil post-trip solo birding, at the Preserve
125. McGillivray’s warbler
126. Common yellowthroat
127. Wilson’s warbler
128. Summer tanager (Neil post-trip solo birding on preserve)
129. Western tanager
130. Lazuli bunting
131. Blue grosbeak
132. Black-headed grosbeak
133. Spotted towhee
134. California towhee
135. Rufous-crowned sparrow
136. Chipping sparrow
137. Savannah sparrow
138. GRASSHOPPER SPARROW (3) at the elephant seal colony
139. Fox sparrow
140. Song sparrow
141. Dark-eyed junco
142. White-crowned sparrow (2 different looking subspecies)
143. Bullock’s oriole
144. Western meadowlark
145. Red-winged blackbird
146. Brewer’s blackbird
147. Brown-headed cowbird
148. House finch
149. Purple finch
150. Pine siskin
151. Lesser goldfinch
152. Lawrence’s goldfinch
153. American goldfinch
154. House sparrow
Mammals:
Steller’s sea lion
California sea lion
Harbour seal
Elephant seal
Humpback whale
Sea otter
