To Chile...

A: Isla Chiloé, B: Santiago / Valle del Yeso, C: Arica / Lauca NP

Tomorrow I leave for two weeks in Chile, and that falls into the "holy dear God this is not real" category of fun facts, despite the nearly 24 hours in planes and airports standing between me and the great Bird Continent.  I will be travelling with Hope Batcheller and Nathan Senner, spending the first few days on Isla Chiloé, resighting the Hudsonian Godwits Nate banded in Alaska (unfortunately, this won't include any of the birds we banded in Churchill– but we'll cope).

The view down the Valley

    Afterwards, we'll be heading back to Santiago, giving a quick presentation...in Spanish (i.e. the foreign language that none of us really knows...it's good for stories though, and as you can see, I'm preemptively milking it for all its worth).  We'll then be camping a few nights in the El Yeso Valley, at about 9,000 feet.  Here we officially embark on a video/audio expedition for the Lab of Ornithology's Macaulay Library, where we'll be joining a field crew studying Diademed Sandpiper-plovers to intimately document this species' breeding biology and spectacular bofedal habitat (high elevation cushion bogs).

    From there, we'll grab a 1:00AM flight a little over 1,000 miles north to Arica, near the Peruvian border.  We'll be driving east from there, toward Lauca National Park, abutting Bolivia.  The snowy cone of the Parinacota Volcano dominates this barren landscape, jutting almost 20,000 feet above sea level,  but we'll be after the flamingoes, sierra-finches, and ground-tyrants populating the foreground.

Volcán Parinacota and Lago Chungará, the highest lake in the world.

After a quick jaunt back to Santiago for another long series of flights back to the Not-so-birdy Continent, we'll get a chance to sleep before classes start again!  So stay tuned for updates from the field and hopefully many photos and videos to show for it.

Revisiting the 1000 Islands

Camelot Island

Camping and sea kayaking over a long weekend in the midst of busy classes is no doubt a welcome escape. I took a sea kayaking class last fall break in the 1000 Islands of southeast Ontario, where the St. Lawrence meets Lake Ontario, and enjoyed it so much I decided to train to help teach the course this fall. On our fall break, from October 8-11, I finally got the chance to return and repeat the trip. The 1000 Islands region is beautiful in the fall, a place not surprisingly rampant with small islands of mixed deciduous and coniferous woodland and rugged, rocky outcrops. The trip also coincides with the tail end of the fall warbler migration, and the beginning of some of the bigger, open water birds' passage, so when the weather's nice, it's a great time to be paddling. And the weather couldn't have been better.

1000 Islands region where we paddled, with the east end of
Lake Ontario just visible in the SW corner

After a few evening classes in preceding weeks, we were finally loading up the van and trailer on Friday afternoon, and driving north to spend the night at our put-in, Misty Isles, near Gananoque, ON. The next four days would have temperatures hovering around 60 and blue, cloudless skies. Saturday morning gave the first indication that the forecast might be true, and Sunday, Monday and Tuesday soon proved it. But I don't want to write a day by day trip report, and most people wouldn't want to read that either, so I'll just recall some highlights.

1. The weather. We're coming from Ithaca, let's remember, a place where I recently experienced one of the most beautiful, clear, cool mornings in recent memory, only to watch a single white cloud appear on the horizon, indicating 100% chance of precipitation. The precipitation, needless to say, didn't fail to come in the next hour or so, and it was soon "Ithacating" (most accurately, a combination of precipitation and defecation from the skies of Ithaca) all over what could have, and frankly, should have been a truly gorgeous day. So to see a 4-day streak of forecasted bliss actually come true!? That was heavenly. And of course, weather that makes you giddy to be alive and breathing undoubtedly sets the stage for a weekend full of greatness (like, when you get to sleep outside under the stars every night).

2. Our class of excellent paddlers. Like the weather, this blessing of a condition allowed for its own slew of subsequent highlights. Because the students were so quickly adept at slicing through the St. Lawrence, we had oodles (doesn't that work just...make you feel a little uncomfortable?) of free time that we normally wouldn't have. For example, working with an itinerary based on many prior trips to the same set of islands, we took about two hours to drift half of our last full day's route, while singing and basically napping on the open water, which still got us to our destination around 1:00, with many hours to spare before needing to cook and set up camp in earnest. This allowed for plenty of extra, more advanced paddling practice, like working with rolls, and the unusual opportunity to just explore the islands extensively ("birding").

3. Pacific Loon. According to eBird, the last Pacific Loon to be seen on the eastern half of Lake Ontario was 1991. Now, that's presumably a history full of holes in that region-- there's no way they're that rare on such a body of water-- but, nonetheless, I was excited to see that when I got back. This map summarizes the bird's reported distribution around Lake Ontario, with each purple block representing one or two individuals in this case. I spotted this handsome bird from a ways off, and with binoculars and camera stowed in the hatch, assumed it was a Common. But then it surfaced within 50 feet of our pod of kayaks, and stayed calmly at the surface for a while, allowing good views of its comparatively diminutive bill, and the sharp, vertical separation of its clean gray nape and white throat and face.

This map shows the Pacific Loon's distribution over Lake Ontario, with each purple block, in this case, representing only one or two individuals, from 1991 to 2011.

Heimlich

4. Ruffed Grouse.  We had a lot of time on Gordon Island, our last campsite of the trip.  I used it to bird.  There was a fair amount of activity on this small island, and lots of fallen logs.  Each time I passed one of said logs, a frighteningly frightened grouse (or two) exploded into whirring flight, like I imagine the caterpillar, Heimlich, from A Bugs' Life would fly if he were capable of breaking the sound barrier.  Not as unexpected as the loon by distribution, but far more startling, every time.  The other really cool part about birding several of these contained islands during a small window of fall migration, was seeing how consistent the relative abundances of warbler species was at each locale.  Gordon was actually one of the larger islands, at about 0.4 miles long and less than 0.1 across, and had 73 Yellow-rumped Warbler, 10 Blackpolls, and 5 Pines.  While most Islands were smaller and had somewhat fewer individuals and species, the ratios were similar throughout, which just gave a neat glimpse into exactly what was passing through on that window of dates-- a clean little cross section of migratory space-time!  It seems that if I had as much time on the other islands as I did on Gordon, the data on the other warbler species would be more representative.

Relative Warbler Abundance

5. Eastern Screech-owls.  On Camelot Island, I also had the chance to take a slow loop around the island, and came across a good bunch of birds, including a Northern Parula, some Swainson's Thrushes, several Blue-headed Vireos, and a Pileated Woodpecker (which surprisingly had a presence on all of the small islands we stayed at).  That afternoon, while imitating a screech-owl to check out these massive flocks of mostly yellow-rumped warblers, an owl called back.  So, after finding the tree that it was roosting in, I offered to take some people that evening if they were interested in seeing an owl (which none of them had ever done).  Our entourage left camp after dark and trekked across the island, under the light of a very full moon (and some creepy floating lights flying slowly about a hundred feet above the water...maybe some sort of flying lanterns? No, probably aliens). We finally made it to the spot, and after several minutes of whistling, nothing happened.  We were standing under a low hanging bough of a white pine at a dead end in the trail, about to give up, when something uncharacteristically clumsy came literally crashing through the branches to alight just in front of our waiting eyes, staring at us from barely more than an arm's length.  Someone put a headlamp on it, and it stayed there calmly, and called back.  In awe, we started to realize that there were at least four more owls calling back from all around us, all within fifty feet and coming to check us out.  We backed up the trail to a small clearing and watched as several screech-owls literally came out of the woodwork to see what was going on, and each of them allowed everyone in our group of six or more to get binocular views under the light.  It was really something else, and certainly quite an experience for your first owl.

Gordon Island, after sunset.  A long exposure of waves lapping at the rocks

6. Sunrise Paddle.  On Tuesday morning, we awoke on Gordon Island well before 5:00 and started packing the boats and eating a hasty granola bar breakfast before sliding into the glassy still, moonlit water.  Again thanks to our extremely efficient group, we had a solid chunk of time to just soak in the silence and stillness of this predawn paddle, instead of our normal frantic paddle, trying to get around an island to glimpse the morning colors before the sun peeked out.  But on this cold morning, we just floated through the dark, bows and paddle blades piercing the liquid glass without a sound. And it was perfect.  As we watched the massive moon drop below the trees on the now shrinking Gordon Island, we could turn and see the purple beginnings of the approaching dawn.  

Reflections on a Landscape

I’m now at home in southern Michigan, roasting in 80-90˚F heat, and lamenting that I could not still be in the (slightly) cooler Churchill, Manitoba. Compared to the spindly spruces and ground-hugging shrubs of Churchill, the towering, green foliage of temperate broadleaf forests in the south is almost claustrophobic and oppressive. Every time I look out the window, the immense amount of green refracted through the glass makes me think I’m looking at the calm before a severe storm, but I always catch an obstructed glimpse of clear blue skies and a sweltering sun, and am left to reminisce about the openness I have become accustomed to over the last months.

The subarctic North is incomparable country. The land is flat to the horizon, and seemingly barren. The skies are vast and dynamic, with afternoon storms building under the soft light of prolonged twilight. The wildlife is keen and curious. Arctic Foxes and Polar Bears both come close to investigate a passerby (hopefully from the safety of a vehicle for the latter), and outlandishly large Arctic Hares feed calmly at an arm’s length, plucking the buds off Dryas flowers with outstretched lips and munching sublimely, but always watching with panoramic eyes; ptarmigan coolly (and rather stupidly) patrol the tundra nearby, with a slow gait and humorous clucking, and only seem alarmed when herding a new clutch of chicks.

Willow Ptarmigan

The plants are very different from those of the south as well. There are patches of dense and lush boreal forest, carpeted with a generous layer of soft lichens and mosses, creeping all the way up the craggy trunks of the predominant White Spruce, over an understory of Ledum groenlandicum and decumbens, Labrador Teas with strong, fresh scents. Then there are the sedge bogs and fens, where as you tread across a spongy substrate of moss and peat laid over permafrost, you can kneel to find more than half a dozen species of sedge in one square yard, among a plethora of other berries, wildflowers and insects. The composition and distribution of these plant communities, then, is foreign to a southerner, but even watching these plants blow in the wind gives one the impression of a remote and austere land. Instead of the therapeutic swaying of branches and rustling of leaves, the dwarf shrubs and short wildflowers twitch in these winds, yielding no such sign of warmth. Staring at the windswept tundra and the twitching of hardened plants, you feel as if you are watching a time lapse, as if all is passing in fast forward—maybe a fitting impression for the abbreviated passage of the fleeting arctic summer.

So much vibrant life is densely spread over the course of a few short summer months. The birds arrived en masse throughout May—huge flocks of snow geese filled the cold skies and shorebirds passed through the bogs and mudflats along the Churchill River, all in a frenzy to reach their breeding grounds. Throughout June, the fen was alive with the outlandish songs of shorebirds establishing territories, as nests were built and eggs were laid. With rising temperatures, plants and insects alike bloomed, and the multitude of eggs hatched in accordance, so as to take full advantage of the plethora. Likewise, the predators rose to face a similar plethora of young, flightless birds on gangly, weak legs.

Red Fox kits

Some birds survived their first month, however, and then it was time they left for the southern hemisphere. Come the end of July, the fen had cleared so thoroughly it was eerie. The sounds of so many birds we had grown accustomed to were already silenced; the birds which had arrived later than breeders in the south had also left sooner than those of more temperate climes. Many of them are now well on their way south to the wintering grounds, some (like the Godwits) travelling to the southernmost outposts of the western hemisphere, in Tierra del Fuego. There is no rest for these birds it seems; they are carried across the globe by the play of seasons, by the Earth’s orbit, as naturally and thoughtlessly as...wait for it...dust in the wind.