I'm Free--Free Falling!

I was out from sun up to sun down today, and awake for longer at each extreme. Without going into detail, I'll say that there is at least one condor out there whose life I fear for. Please please PLEASE securely cover any potentially toxic and or harmful materials that you plan on leaving outside: antifreeze, motor oil, broken glass, rusty nails, exposed wires. You never know what might stumble across it : household pet; small child; endangered species. 

Please be ok. Please please please.

Arts and Crafts

"So, I'm going to assume that you've mastered the basics of using scissors, correct?" Blake asked me this morning in the office. 

I was enlisted to cut out new wing tags for the two hours prior to the Monday meeting. It was soothing, in a mindless kind of way, until the lower joint of my thumb began to protest, having been rubbed raw by the handle of the scissors.

I am most excited about the purple ones. 

I drove to Bitter Creek in the afternoon. It was my first time taking the 33 to get there, a route far more scenic than the 5. Also more winding. Along the way, almost to Bitter Creek, I turned onto a side road off the highway as directed by the GPS hits of one of our newly released and very important birds. I say important because Hoi (that is his name) is kinda famous in the condor world. Also important for me to find him since Hoi has never been wild. Captive-hatched in the early 1990s, Hoi has only ever known flight pens. So needless to say, everyone was a little concerned for his well-being. He is kind of the baby of the program, despite his relative old age.

I didn't see Hoi but I signaled him as if he were above me. I did, however, see:

This jackrabbit

These quails

And this weird sign

So it wasn't entirely a wash.

Life is hard when you're a ground squirrel

Rearview Mirror

Not-So-Lazy Sunday

By the time I am up and out of the house, my way is blocked by none other than Ferdinand. Eventually, with some coaxing from my ATV, Ferdinand moseys onward and upward. 

After a nice big lunch courtesy of Mom, lil' South Potrero looks pretty full.

So full, in fact, that she inspired me to doodle in the logbook.

There's a WHAT in the front yard?!

Five-thirty a.m. phone calls are never a good thing. That's a bad news hour. So when my phone started ringing, too loudly, "Friendly Ghost"--the name of my ringtone--shattering the stillness of my room and waking me with a start, I was sure someone was dead. Or at least horribly maimed. I tried frantically to unzip my sleeping bag, but the zipper was caught on the fabric. The phone kept ringing. I threw my sleeping-bagged legs across the bed and down to the floor with a loud thunk, and potato sack race-style hopped over to the other side of the room. I missed the call. Looking at the caller ID, I saw that it was Katie, who (my brain was starting to wake up now) was out doing a.m. obs. Oh no. Did something happen to her? I am about to call her back when I hear footsteps pounding through the house. My pulse races. She knocks on the door and I open it, expecting that something is seriously wrong. 

" There's a buffalo down by the thaw box! "

" A what? " Oh I heard her. But...seriously?

" A buffalo! " She's a little out of breath.

" Are you serious?! "

Relieved and all at once excited, I don't even bother with real clothes. I throw on my hiking boots, and grab my camera, and dash out to the car with her. It's chilly outside, and she has the heat on in the car. A bowl of oatmeal sits on the seat, steaming. We drive, down the road from the house, toward the marshy stand of trees at the edge of the property. The little local bobcat slinks across the field in the dawn darkness. As we pull past the thick trees, around the thaw box--

There he is. Off the side of the road. A big bull. Munching on the grass. Unconcerned by our presence. We don't leave the car, but I roll down the window, snapping rapid-fire on my Canon SLR.  He's just so...huge. And woolly.  He simply stares at us. 

He becomes Ferdinand, to me at least :  named for the bull in the children's story who rejects a life of bullfighting and just wants to spend his days among the flowers.

 

Katie drops me off back on the road up to the house, and heads off for her somewhat delayed morning obs. I see the bobcat has curled up to nap in the grass. I get within six or seven feet of him before he opens his eyes, gives me a long and slightly annoyed look, and saunters off for the woods. 

I may have been planning on sleeping in this morning, but if you're going to get woken up at 5:30 a.m., it better be for a bison in your front yard.

Canyon Camp-Out

I've been out at Hopper Canyon the past two days. A very quiet two days. Literally and figuratively. Not a whole lot going down at the nest. Stared at the "front porch"for hours, agonizing over whether that dark shape was a condor resting in the medium-tall grass, or a shadow on the wall behind. It was a shadow, I discovered, when one of the parents materialized to the far right of the cave, stretching his wings to reveal the two red wing tags. Had he been there the whole time? Or had he just flown up, taking advantage of that distractingly ambiguous dark blob's hold on my attention.

I only once saw the chick, for a good two minutes as it waddled out into the cave entrance, unfurled its flimsy wings to sun, then promptly tucked itself back behind the entrance wall. Well, at least I know it exists.

Gopher snake

The next morning when I awoke after a blissfully deep and bear-free sleep, an ocean of fog had already marooned the mountaintops and drowned the canyon. I pulled out the battered copy of "Jurassic Park" I had borrowed from the Hopper House collection and began to read. I couldn't have picked a more perfect setting to read it as the fog crept higher in the sky and unseen creatures rustled the leaves around me. It wasn't hard to immerse myself in the world, to the point where a quail bursting from the bushes behind me caused me to jump and glance around for at least a velociraptor.  

Several hours later, I finished the book, and still the fog had not cleared. It was after noon before I could make out the cave's outline. And before long it was back to the ranch for me. 

A pressed and ancient ant from between the yellowing pages of the book. 

Can you spot the horny toad? 

Bird-Watching at Koford's Ridge

Snack Time!

Look at how big South Potrero is getting! 

Molly got back from camping in Hopper Canyon and we spent the evening holed up in the ranch house watching Indiana Jones and sneaking surreptitious glances out at the pack of firemen who were now playing a game of horseshoe toss.

As it got dark, there appeared a shockingly huge, orange harvest moon that hung low in the sky. The man in the moon was never so clear. 

That night, I fell asleep to the sound of hushed male conversation interspersed with the crackle of fire and the clink of beer bottles that carried in through my open window--an odd counterpoint to the usual chorus of frogs and crickets.

You are welcome.

I was watching Pole Canyon today, when the sudden rumbling of the ground and growl of distant engines signaled the arrival of several truckloads of Ventura County firemen (roughly the equivalent of two years' worth of Hot Firemen calendars). As soon as they saw me, sitting in a broken chair on the road with one eye to a scope and the other squinting in what I'm sure was a most attractive way, they began to pour out of their vehicles, undoubtedly drawn like oppositely charged magnets to my sunburnt shoulders and the sheen of perspiration on my brow. Be still my beating heart!

They came out to see the condors, of course. And ended up getting quite a show. Of course, I missed writing down precise times for the switchout and probably a feeding session or two, but most of the guys seemed genuinely excited at the chance to see the birds in action and to learn some fun condor facts! (but probably mostly the former). For many, it was their first time.

Returning to the ranch house that evening, I caught glimpses of several of the firefighters working shirtless in the fields. I was too cowed to go outside after that, so I watched from the window as they packed up for the day, fired up the grill and played baseball in the yard. Eventually, I worked up the courage to go hang out on the porch with the less intimidating "old guys"--the rounder and mustachioed members of the team who were sitting out what they described as "a younger man's game." I'm cool like that. They seemed surprised to hear how us Fish and Wildlife girls routinely camp out alone on the job, since I'd mentioned that Molly was out at Hopper Canyon at the time. "All by yourselves?" They asked, incredulously? "Yup." "Do you have bear spray with you at all times??" "Nope." It was a highly reassuring conversation. (It was not).


*Image courtesy of getrealdenver.com

X Marks the Spot

Ahoy, firemen!

So apparently there is going to be a crew of firemen up at Hopper tomorrow and Wednesday doing brush-clearing and various other fire prevention things. While this is an exciting prospect, a) I will be nest-watching during prime firefighter viewing hours, and b) the thought of that many men (or more specifically, that many potentially / probably attractive men) is a little terrifying.

My New Office

Just kidding! 

This Monday, before the team meeting, I was given real work to do (instead of my usual awkward hanging-about) :  inputting data on previous condor work-ups into a computer. Geoff snapped this picture and sent it to me, with the subject "Angela's New Office." 

I wish.

Also, because it makes me think of this kitten from the "Kittens Inspired By Kittens" video:

"I'm at work!"

Thoughts on the Work-Up and Holding a Condor for the First Time

The whole process is oddly, yet necessarily, intimate. Here you are, clustered around this creature—this breathing heavily, whipping its head around, kicking its legs creature. Your fingers encircle its straining beak; your arm presses down against its back, your hand grips its wing. When you draw blood—for lead and West Nile testing—you put pressure on the pinprick after, this heart-racing, hot feet creature’s blood staining your fingers. Your coworkers’ faces are close to yours, so close. Hands touch where hands wouldn’t normally touch: put pressure here, here where my thumb is. Hold the wing here, slide your hand over mine. You lean over someone to tie off the dental floss that marries the transmitter to the shaft of the feather to which it is attached.  Someone puts a hand on your knee, sets tools in your lap. It is awkward, with so many people, so many things to do, everything centered on this one creature, who may or may not try to catch you off guard, too comfortable in your tenuous hold on the loose skin of its head, on the folded powerful wings that can carry a twenty-pound bird aloft in the sky.

In the parallel universe where things had gone just a butterfly's wingflap differently, there might not be a single condor left for me to hold. But here in this one, I can look her in the eye, and it is pretty magical.

Work-Up Day

There are no words.

Pip...Pip...Hooray!

The trouble with these nests being frequently so far away is that you can easily spend hours looking at a shape that you are just * positive * is a condor, only to discover--when the light changes--that it was just a rock, or just a plant, or just a niche in the wall. You wrack your brain trying to remember if that shape was there yesterday, or if it is something new, something alive. 

Well, that was sort of how this morning went: when I arrived at the OP to watch the nest, there was something in the back left corner. Something white. Was it the egg? Had the egg hatched? That could be two broken pieces of an egg, I suppose. Was it there yesterday? There is a white rock in the bottom right corner of the cave that I was convinced was the egg for a few hours a couple days ago. Did I just not notice that other rock in the back left before? But as the hours wore on, I succeeded in convincing myself that the white objects in the back had to be eggshells, they couldn't possibly have been there yesterday, or else I wouldn't have been so surprised by their presence today. Could I? 

And then, salvation arrived from above in the form of Mom, come to switch out with Dad. Dad stands up. Between his legs, behind the not-an-egg rock, there is something ever-so-slightly lighter than the wall in back of it. A fuzzy gray area. 

A little chick. *

*Note: if you click on the picture above, then click the picture again once it pops up in a new window, it will zoom in further. Then, you just might get a feel for how hard it can be to figure out what you're looking at.

P is for . . . .

Pipping (v.)

When a chick begins to break its way out of its shelly prison, this is referred to as "pipping."

On the trail of 512

One of mine and Katie's top priorities this week was keeping track of a newly-released young'un, 512. We spent all morning looking for where he might have roosted, to no avail.

Can you spot the rattlesnake in this picture?

Dramatic shadows

Rainbow!

I whiled away the afternoon watching the nest, waiting for the chick to hatch. No dice. I couldn't even make out the pipping hole.

"Farewell to Spring" is what these are called, apparently.

Nest Entry

This morning, I observed a nest entry at the Bitter Creek nest. Above, Joseph is switching out the pair's egg with a pipping one, while one parent looks on.

T is for . . . .

Titmouse

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is an oak titmouse (Baeolophus inornatus)

A Hard Day's Night

What a very long day. I was up before 4 am, in the blind for hours, went back to the house to help Katie with a solid block of frozen cows, then drove with Katie to our feeding site at Wind Wolves preserve. By the time we got back to the house, it was after 10:30.

Driving back along the dark and winding roads, it seemed there was a barn owl, glowing ghostly white in the Dakota's headlights, on every other fencepost. After a while, Katie and I started joking that it was just the same owl, following us home and messing with our minds.

On trap day, I had to arrive before sunrise

GPS wing unit.