Between the Facts

Tim perks up immediately when he sees it.

Hey look there’s a bear!

I had noticed it already but registered it only as he said it. It was a huge dark shape lumbering along the road we were driving on.

Hurry, follow it!

And so I keep pace with it for a while as the bear continues to run along the road, his vast form rolling and shifting with an odd mixture of movement that was both crude and natural. He exuded power with every heavy step. He was austere in his beauty. And he was large.

Then he turned and shambled off into the woods, and we drove on, excited by the sighting. We see a lot of wildlife, driving around in these nighttime woods.

There is a reason we don’t work on Memorial Day, and it’s not because it’s a national holiday that we are required to take off. No. It’s simply because there are too many campers around to get any work done.

It is not Memorial Day, but alas, not all the Memorial Day campers have packed up and left just yet. They are here, still, a few of them. They are here, camped out for the week and making work difficult.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against campers. I am a camper after all. But this week, well…I could have done without them. This week, already crippled by the weather, was only worse because of them.

It started on Tuesday. It started with Glenn. There we were, Tim and I, driving out to our priority site, to the birds we were instructed above all else to try to find. We had our map with all the previous detections, clustered in a relatively small group not too far from the dotted-line path of a road. This road. The road we were currently driving on. And there we are, there’s where we want to be, there’s the spot where the detections were, there’s where we want to do our survey, where we want to do our hooting. Right there. Right where the campers are.

Dammit.

Alright, change of plans then. We speak to them and they’ll be there all week, so we change our plans and head down to Res and Dolly. But it’s raining when we find Res and he doesn’t want to mouse so we decide to try him again later in the week, at dawn, when we can ID him and mouse him and roost him.

So there we are, Thursday morning. It’s not quite 4am owl and we’ve had less than 3 hours sleep. It’s cold and wet and hard to get up. I’m stiff from sleeping in the truck and Tim’s cold from sleeping in the bed. He awoke to find his bag damp and frozen. I just found it hard to step outside. But we did and we began to hike up the road, waiting to hoot until we got closer to our previous detection. Just around that bend. That’s where we’ll start. Res should be right around there.

Dammit.

We round that bend and what do we see but a big plume of grey smoke blowing off of the landing ahead. We round that bend and what do we see but an RV trailer full of campers. More frickin campers.

We stop. We look at each other with our tired you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me eyes. Now what. We whisper for a moment, discussing our options. So Res is out. Now what.

We turn around, hike back to the truck, and move it down to the barracks. Then we crawl back into the truck and sleep. We will check tonight. If the campers are gone we will do a dusk walk in on Res instead of the Dawn one we intended. If they’re still there, we’ll head off to do our last option for the week, a night survey at a site where we don’t expect to find birds. We will play it by ear. Until then, we’ll sleep.

I almost don’t notice it. I’m curled up in the passenger seat, reading a book groggily, debating whether to put the book down and attempt another nap or continue reading. Tim is dozing in the drivers’ seat, having recently returned from a failed fishing attempt in the river that feeds into French Meadows Reservoir. Outside it’s been intermittently cloudy, rainy, and even hailing. It’s not the optimal weather for killing the daylight hours. We’ve been spending most of our time in the truck, doing paperwork, reading, or napping.

Until the sun comes. It never stays for long. The clouds will part and for a few glorious moments the sun’s magnificent rays stream down on us. It lasts a minute, five minutes, never quite ten. We’ve learned to take advantage of it.

I almost don’t notice it this time. I’m about to put the book aside when I realize there is light on it. Natural light. Sun light. I throw my book down and startle Tim out of his nap.

Quick, I say excitedly. Quick! Sun!

And just like that we’ve both hopped out of the truck and are lying on the dirty cement of the Barracks parking lot, soaking in those rays. It’s nice. It’s glorious. It lasts a wonderful seven minutes. Then the clouds come, then the rain, and we’re back in the truck, waiting for the next part in the clouds that will send us outside once again.

Oh Res. Res Res Res. It’s nice to see you, boy. It’s nice to hear you hooting at us, nice to find you perched up there in that tree, just high enough that we can’t make out your bands. But you’re not going to mouse for us are you? You, who, from what I hear, are an excellent mouser. But not tonight. No. You look cold and wet and miserable up there, trying to stay out of the rain. We understand. We too are cold and wet, but we came here for you. And it’s nice to see you. But I know you’re not going to mouse for us.

We will wait for you a little longer. But we can’t leave the mouse out, I’m afraid. You don’t care about it anyway, and it’s too cold and wet for such a little mouse to hang out in. We will return him to his warm group of friends, and we will be content to watch. We will watch you, hope that you move, at least, so we can get a re-sight on you. But that won’t happen either, because there you go. You moved after all, but not to a lower location, no. You’re gone instead. We don’t know where you are. Maybe you’re close, and quiet finally. Or maybe you have gone, off in search of a dryer tree. Because this rain isn’t going to let up anytime soon. It’s not too heavy, but it’s here to stay. Perhaps we should follow your example, and head off to a dryer place.

Goodnight Res. Hopefully the rain will blow off at some point this week. Perhaps we will see you again. In the mean time, try to stay dry.

I have a feeling I’m going to like these birds even before I see them. It’s mostly due to their namesake, the same name as the trail Brian and I take each year for our anniversary trip. But it’s also partly attributed to their remote location. Whereas many of the owls we monitor require relatively short walk-ins from an accessible road, these birds take serious effort to get to. It doesn’t help that the access roads are still impassable, blocked in multiple spots by hard-packed snow-drifts and large downed trees.

It takes Tom and I an hour and a half just to reach the trailhead, and we wind up hiking down the sparse trail in the dwindling light, then in complete dark. We lose the trail a few times as we try to navigate what is little more than a deer trail, searching with the dim light of our headlamps. It’s a long steep hike so we’re staying overnight, which means we’re carrying packs as well – not so bad on the way down, but sure to be a struggle on the return trip. It’s 2023 owl by the time we start actively cruising for the birds, having left our packs in a clearing not far from a swamped-up meadow serenaded by a boisterous throng of frogs. We’ve already hiked about 9 km, with about a 1200’ elevation change.

It’s worth it. Although the night walk-in produces little more than a long cruise in the dark and an equally long bout hanging out with a crow-barking female, high and invisible in a cedar, the early morning walk-in is all we could ask for. Not only do we find the female again, but we see her, she mouses, we are able to confirm that she’s unbanded, and we even get a non-nesting protocol on her. Then when that’s done, with uncanny timing, the male starts hooting. We find him and we roost them both and we’re done and walking back up the trail by 0600 owl. A good morning.

It’s a long hard climb back up to the truck, and I feel very out of shape, but it’s worth it. It’s cold and snowing and I’m out of water but it’s worth it for these birds. Tom’s right. There’s something different about the SNAMP owls. There’s something more natural and aloof and remote, and thereby more satisfying. It makes me glad to be on the SNAMP project.

The entire survey takes only 20 minutes. It’s our fastest yet. It must be something about the third visit. They say that Three is the Magic Number, that the Third Time’s a Charm. If Round Tent and Screw are any indication, it’s no lie.

We went in Monday night, Tuesday morning, and now here again on Tuesday night and there’s Mr. Screw, calling to us from the road before we’ve even started hooting for him. We put out one mouse, two, three, then four. He eats the first three one after the other, never straying far, always staying in sight of the road. It’s too easy.

And we almost lost it. He holds the fourth mouse too long and we know he’s going to fly with it, and when he does we almost lose him. But we’re lucky. He flies South, where the terrain is flat and the underbrush light, rather than North where we found him Monday, in an area thick with Manzanita making following the owls impossible.

But he went South, and after a short search we spot him again, mouse in talon. He’s at the top of a short broken snag, caching the mouse in what I’ve found to be one of the most typical caching locations. These owls love to cache in those small broken snags.

Now all that’s left is to wait for him to leave the snag without the mouse and we can officially call it a cache. He does.

Eat, Eat, Eat, Cache. Non-nesting protocol. Success.