Fire!

Sorry, did I scare you? Hey, at least I didn't yell it in a crowded movie theater.

We got our Fire Training today, and to be perfectly honest, if anything I'm more terrified of fire than I was yesterday. Was that the point, firefighters? To make me feel as if no amount of preparation or supplies or strategy will ever make me ready to face a fire? If so, then you sirs succeeded. I was called on to demonstrate the use of the fire tents, which are essentially human-sized flame retardant shower caps that--in the worst case scenario--you climb into, flop down on the ground in, and then pray to a god you might not believe in while flames burn over and around you. I could barely hear anyone around me when I was inside, face pressed up against the grass, hoping that I hadn't left any gaps. It was pretend, and it was the stuff of nightmare.  Practicing with the hoses was pretty fun, although the first one we connected up and turned on sprang a number of leaks from where the mice had had a gnaw. Comforting.

This Branch Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us

Well, the good news is that we didn't lose any birds this week. I spent a whole day sick with worry, and the following day busy attempting to trap the birds who may or may not have ingested motor oil. Things are now, by comparison, a little quieter.

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.

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? 

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.

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.

Gone Campin'

On Thursday I set out for a two-night, three-day camping trip out at Hopper Canyon. My first solo mission.  The campsite out at Hopper Canyon is nice: set into low shrubs on a rocky outcropping, it's far from the nest, but close to the OP (yay, no 5 am hikes through rivers and up sheer rock faces!) Best we could do. Plus, we still get radio service, so it's not as daunting a stay as camping at Agua Blanca. I also happen to get amazing phone service at the OP which is awesome, although I was careful to conserve my phone battery. I needed it for Saturday.

My days out at Hopper Canyon were long and fairly uneventful. The hike in is all downhill (though I was dreading all along the hike back up). On Friday I did something stupid crazy like twelve-and-a-half hours of obs. At one point, I heard a noise which I thought was just a lizard cutting through my camp but which turned out to be a massive rattlesnake, coasting on past my chair, only maybe 3 or 4 feet away. I remained as calm as possible, moving slowly out of my chair to stand and observe the snake coming to a rest in the bush just behind my chair. Oh good. And then he went to sleep. And I went back to obs. And we peacefully coexisted until three hours later, after my lunch break, when I looked and he was gone.

I fell asleep at around 9:30, the calls of the common poor-wills drowning out any sounds of approaching bears, mountain lions or their ilk, but unfortunately not the sound of drilling from the 24-hour oil construction project going on on the other side of the mountain.

Sunrise on the second day.

A crazy caterpillar

Dad sunning himself in the cave's entrance

The morning of the third day, I awoke at dawn to see fog beginning to creep up the mountainsides. 

Ten minutes later, it looked as if I was adrift at sea. Half an hour later, the world went white.

The reason I had to conserve cell phone battery was that the morning of the third day also happened to be my birthday! I received calls from all my family and friends, which at least made me feel not quite so alone on this of all days.

How I spent my birthday. Got to say, though : easily 20 times better than my last one (some of you know to what I'm referring). 

On account of the fog, I couldn't see the nest most of the morning, so I stayed late until I could at least get a couple hours of obs in. Hiking back was not the most fun I've ever had, but I made it back to the ranch house in one piece, eager to relax and do a little celebrating on my own.

"Celebrating" amounted to making a delicious stir-fry, downing half a bottle of cheap white wine from Trader Joe's, and watching "Pulp Fiction" for the first time. So yeah, it was a pretty good birthday.

Just as I got up to Hopper Peak and settled into my chair for another day of signaling for 326, I overheard radio chatter between members of the search party. They had found the nest. Unfortunately the egg had never hatched, nor would it. But at least now we knew.

My job for the day thus nullified, I drove down to Pole Canyon to do obs on the new nest there. I was planning on staying through sunset, but at around 5:45, I got a radio call from one of the volunteers: he was stuck, his car backed up on the grass on the side of the road. I wasn't sure what I could do, but I nonetheless sprung into action, driving as quickly as was legal. I luckily had rope in the back of the truck, so, hitching his car to mine, I backed up and his car was pulled to safety. I felt pretty manly after that.

The Search for 326

With a search party out in the Sespe looking for the motherless nest, James and I spent the day up top at Hopper, stationed at two different oil pads signaling for the father. That way, if we saw him flying west toward the search party, we could give them a head's up to start looking for a possible nest entry.

By the end of the day, we were no closer to finding the nest.

Blue Monday

Today's Monday meeting was bittersweet. We lost two of our birds over the weekend, one--who had been in treatment at the LA Zoo for lead poisoning, and the other of unknown causes. The latter situation was particularly dire because that condor was half of a nesting pair. Whose nest we hadn't found yet. Condor parents share incubating and brooding duties, switching out of the nest every few days to give the other parent leave to go foraging for food. This bird's mate had been sitting on his nest for a long time--too long without food, and without our knowing the location of the nest, we couldn't potentially retrieve the chick to then raise it in captivity. A hurried search would have to be mounted this week for the nest.

That was the sad news. However, the dark cloud that had shrouded most of the meeting began to disperse a little with the announcement of two new nests discovered, both unusually late in the nesting period, and therefore an unexpected surprise. The good news continued to tip the scale into the positive when, at lunch, we received a call from James up at Hopper telling us that 452, a bird who had been missing for over three months and was presumed dead, had shown up at the feeding site. One can only imagine where that bird has been (touring Wine Country perhaps? Checking out the Golden Gate Bridge? Cruising up to Yosemite? Hollywood Star Tour?)

With lunch finished, I was off to Hopper for this hitch.

***

Rest in peace, pretty lady.

While Bob the blackbird biologist left yesterday, today marked the arrival of two botanists who were to be surveying Bitter Creek's grasses for the weekend. They seemed nice enough. For botanists.

I've Got You, Babe

I was back in the blind before sunrise this morning. And what a crazy sunrise it was.

Apocalypse-esque

 At one point, I made the mistake of shining my flashlight into the dark corners of the blind :

The ravens were in rare form this morning :

Raven at the window

"HEY!"

This is such an amazing face :

This series of photos is my favorite :

"Oh, you think you're SO tall ..."

"We'll just see about that."

"I'm king of the world!"

Finally after hours of waiting, just as I was about to pack up to leave the blind and head home empty-handed (so to speak), 483, one of the birds I was supposed to trap, showed up.

So I sat back down, and resumed waiting. Waiting for the just right conditions. Waiting for the ravens to magically disappear, waiting for her condor companions to finish feeding. Then in a flash, there was one:  483 all alo -- no wait, 509 was hovering in the doorway, just beneath the trap door. "Come on, 509" I thought as loudly as I could. "You want to leave. You don't want to be in the trap. There's a perfectly good cow leg just outside." 509 made a move to enter further into the double-door trap, and I willed harder. Then she did an about-face and raced out the doorway. I leapt into action, pulled the trap door rope, and the door fell down. I nearly fist-pumped and did a happy dance before remembering to open the internal door that led to the flight pen. 483 flew on through. The song "I've Got You Babe" started playing in my head. 

Once I had left the flight pen, I drove down to meet Bob the tricolored blackbird biologist down at his trap site, where he let me assist in banding some birds. He also showed me this trick, where if you hold a female blackbird on her back, then slowly let go, she won't fly away. She'll just stay completely still, legs sticking up in the air, until you turn her over again. 

We walked down the hill a bit to scope out the potential great horned owl's nest. It turned out to be just that :

Such an eye for interior decorating.

Mom looking displeased. A big chick can be seen on the far right.

In a Blind

So, today I spent eleven hours in the flight pen blind, waiting in vain for even one of the three birds I was supposed to trap to show up.

I did, however, take a lot of pictures. Here are some of them:

A golden eagle stopped by to snack on the calf leg.

Ravens did too.

Hoi, a famous mentor bird in the program, chills out on the scale in the flight pen.

Sunning

Two birds sun themselves poolside.