Between the Facts

What a team Lindsey and I are! Can it get any better than this? We are kicking ass with these dawn walk-ins!

Let me explain. Start at the beginning. Start with what we do.

When we do a walk-in, you see, we have a set of goals. At each site, over the course of the season, there is a checklist of things we must accomplish. First, obviously, we must find the owls. We must find both the male and the female of a pair, or go in often enough to confirm a solo owl.  Next, we need to ID each bird. If it’s banded, resight it. Which leg is the band on? Which color? What pattern? What color is the tab? Check the tail – is it an adult? A subadult? If unbanded, have both members of the crew confirm that fact, then come back when all else is done, capture it, band it.

Another task: get protocol. This is, perhaps, one of the most important, second only to the resight. Is this pair nesting? This is where the mice come in. If an individual owl eats or caches (or some combination of both) four mice in a row, you have non-nesting protocol. If there’s a nest, the overwhelming chance is that the owl will take one of the first four mice to the nest. That means running blindly after the owl, eyes half in the air following the bird, half on the ground attempting to watch where you’re going, as the owl swoops through the trees in the dark.

If you get non-nesting protocol, they could still be nesting. So you need two non-nesting protocols over the season to confirm they’re not nesting. You could find a nest, but the nest can fail. So you go back in later, do a nest check. Confirm it still exists. Look for fledged juveniles. And, eventually, you capture those juvys, band them.

Final task. If there’s no nest, or you’re not sure, you need to roost them. Roost the male. Roost the female. Go in at dawn and follow them around until they settle in for the day, until their eyes droop and you can be confident that that’s where they intend to spend the day.

Those are the tasks. Find them. ID them. Get protocol. Roost them. If necessary, capture them, band them. Typically, this takes many trips, many walk-ins, tasks slowly getting checked off.

That is, until you put Lindsey and I together on a gorgeous, sunny, lucky week.

Tuesday morning we head into Greek, where the pair has only been seen once and there have been no IDs, no protocol, no roosts. We find them and roost them both, watching happily as the affectionate pair settles in for the day in a shady copse of cedar and fir saplings. They coo at each other, groom each other, follow each other from branch to branch, looking for all the world like a young couple early in their relationship, madly and comfortably in love.

Then Wednesday morning we head out to Dixy, and we get it all. We find them both. ID them both. Get protocol. Roost them both. In a matter of an hour and a half we’ve checked Dixy off our list for the season. Tasks complete. Dixy is done. And we are thrilled.

Yet we aren’t done yet. Our luck isn’t over. There’s still Thursday morning, our walk-in with Res. We go in expecting a single male. Our task is to ID him, to get protocol, and/or to roost him. For a while we don’t think we’re going to find him. Then we hear him. Then, to our surprise and confusion, we hear her.

He has a her!  What a treat! And we find them. We ID them. We get protocol. Both are excellent and eager mousers. Complicatedly so. We have to block one owl from the mouse while we try to get the other to take it. At one point, they almost trick us. Shit. Which one took it? Was it her? Wait! They’re switching! Did he give it to her or did he take it from her? Urrrrmmmmnnn….

Then she hoots and we’re saved. He took it. Gave it to her. She ate it. One mouse later, we have non-nesting protocol. And we’re happy. Content. Satisfied. We were hoping to roost them but we lose them downslope. Alas.

One last look. Why not? Lindsey sounds confident they crossed the road. So we walk down. Just to take a look. It’s very difficult to find the owls at this point. It’s getting light and they aren’t hooting anymore. The song birds are chirping up a storm. To find a roost, you have to follow them. You don’t happen across them. But we have a general area. We might get lucky.

And we do. We walk down, and, by chance, I see movement out of the corner of my eye as one of them hops to a different branch. Got ‘em!

Fifteen minutes later, after another adorable cuddly grooming session, we are confident they’re there for the day. We roosted the pair. Success!

A good team, Lindsey and I, or a good lucky week. Take your pick. Either way, we kicked ass! J

It looks like a Teddy Bear. A soft cuddly Teddy Bear. That small. That adorable.

Lindsey and I each let out a squeal of excited shock when we see it, then again as we round the bend and Mama Bear and Brother Bear come into view. Even from the truck it’s incredibly exciting.

Bear cubs! We just saw two baby bear cubs! We know now that it’s going to be a great rest of the week. Hell, everything from here on out could be a disaster and we’d still be satisfied. Bear cubs. That made our week.

“Whoa. Hello.”

I stop behind Lindsey and look around in the branches overhead.

“What? Do you see one of them?”

She points in front of her and I follow her finger, directed low. There on a branch no more than four feet off the ground and less than ten feet in front of us is a Spotted Owl. He looks at us, then away, back to the ground in front of him. It’s barely past 1900 Owl and still light, yet here he is, hunting already.

We need protocol on these birds so we toss out a mouse and I circle around the back of him to attempt an ID. He’s unbanded, that’s easy enough to see when he’s this low. And his tail. His tail is tipped with white triangular points. I’m excited.

“Dude! Look at that tail! He’s a subadult. He was just a juvy last year.”

It explains a lot. As we soon discover, he’s not so good at the hunting yet. Not so good at the mousing. An unbanded subadult in the SNAMP area, he’s still a rookie. Still inexperienced. I come to love him for it.

It takes him a lot of staring and a few swoops before he takes the first mouse, only to drop it. A few minutes later he has it again, but it’s another 15 before he manages to eat it all. Most of the birds down it in one quick gulp. Not so with Greek. He keeps trying but just can’t get it down, so he resorts to tearing and nibbling and dragging it all out.

When he finally finishes (his female having flown in in the meantime to visit), we toss out a second mouse. He takes it much faster this time, but unfortunately grabs a few twigs along with it. That, in turn, gives him a bit of trouble when he attempts to eat the mouse, and he very nearly drops it in his attempt to let go of the sticks in his grip.

Poor Boy. It’s comical. How, we wonder, is this guy still alive? Hopefully he’ll learn soon.

He is cute though. And a good mate, I must admit. He gives both the second and third mouse to his female. Unfortunately for us, she takes off and we lose her both times, and we fail to get protocol.

Maybe next time. After Mr. Greek has had a little more practice. A bit more experience. At the very least, when he’s learned to eat a tiny mouse in under 15 minutes.

‘The point should be just around this bend,’ says Lindsey, consulting the map. We’re half-way through our second night survey of the evening, having spent most of the last few hours hooting for owls and getting no responses. There are no previous detections at the sites we’re covering now, but you never know. We might get something. And so we hoot.

‘Is that one of us?’ We round the bend to find the vague outline of a truck parked at the turnoff for our survey point. It looks like a crew truck, but as I pull up towards it, we note the stickered decal on the rear window. ‘Nope, not ours.’

‘Is there someone inside?’

I’ve parked a few meters away from the truck, next to a pine from whose extended branch hangs our green survey-point flagging.

‘I didn’t see anyone.’

‘Why would they park here? Is there a trail nearby?’

‘I don’t think so. Weird.’

We hesitate a moment, looking back at the truck.

‘Maybe they have a Meth lab,’ we joke.

‘Or maybe they’re just sleeping inside the truck.’ I’d hate to startle someone awake with a bunch of imitation hooting, but we step out of the truck and start anyway. In the distance we can see the lights of another vehicle.

‘What’s with all these cars anyway?’ We had unexpectedly passed a car earlier in our survey, speeding by us in the opposite direction, and heard another while at our last point. It’s odd. We’re usually alone out here.

‘I don’t know. Who would be out here now anyway? I mean other than us. It’s after midnight, people time.’

We shrug it off and continue hooting as the roar of a vehicle approaches, and moments later the lights of the distant truck fall over us.

‘Dammit. I hope they don’t stop.’ The truck slows momentarily then speeds off, and we sigh in relief. Too soon. Moments later, just as our 10 minutes are almost up, we hear a roar approaching from the opposite direction and the lights are on us again.

‘Dammit.’

‘Is that the same truck?’

‘They must be lost.’ Sure enough they pull over and I walk to the front of our truck, resigned to socializing, to giving directions and explaining why we’re out here.

The passenger door opens and a young guy steps out and I smile a tired greeting, expecting to hear him say ‘Hey, do you know how to get to…’

But instead, in a rush, we get: ‘Hey, do you know who did that to that truck?’

‘..huh?….Did what?’

We follow him to the abandoned truck and see, for the first time, that all four tires have been slashed. He explains that he and his buddies ran out of gas and parked it and took off in their second vehicle, and came back to find this. Slashed tires. The instrument panel inside tampered with as if someone had been trying to steal their stereo system but failed or got scared off half-way through.

There are 5 or 6 of these boys, all angry and flustered and frustrated, yet still with a sense of humor.

‘When we drove by and saw your truck, we were afraid the culprits had come back to finish the job. We didn’t know what to do.’ But then they saw it was us: just two girls standing by their truck. Hooting. I guess we weren’t too intimidating.

Darn.

We, of course, feel a bit stupid. A bit oblivious. We didn’t even notice the slashed tires. We had been standing there for 10 minutes, after all, and had even been discussing the truck. Sure, we were making a point of not looking at the vehicle, uncertain if someone was inside of it or not. Yet even so. We feel foolish.

Not to mention concerned. We leave our trucks on these roads all the time while we do cruises and walk-ins. What if that happened to us? I know from now on we’ll be more mindful of where we park. Who would have thought there’d be tire-slashing bastards roaming these remote forest roads in the middle of the night?

I can deal with bears and cougars and other wildlife. I can deal with poison oak and Manzanita and white thorn, with ticks and mosquitoes. I can deal with rain and hail and snow. I can deal with fallen trees and inaccessible roads, and even with campers interrupting our survey plans. But to have to worry about this as well? That’s just ridiculous.

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.

It’s hot and the water is so deliciously cold. Shockingly icily cold. It’s break-out-in-hives cold but it feels too good for me to care. Right now, I’m loving Stumpy Reservoir.

I can’t believe I didn’t come here more often last year.

It’s almost too easy this time around. We are fairly certain about the nest tree by the second mouse and with the third it’s confirmed. She swoops down for the mouse then perches momentarily on a low broken-top snag nearby, looking for all the world like she’s going to fly again any moment, taking the mouse with her. She keeps glancing up and westward, toward the knarled broken-top Douglas Fir we’re pretty sure she flew back from after the second mouse.

Then, sure enough, off she flies, and it’s light enough now that it’s easy to see where she goes. She bee-lines straight up to that Douglas Fir and into the north-facing cavity that is her nest. Success! We knew she was nesting but now we’ve confirmed it. Now we can say for sure, and can say exactly where.

I guess it’s all about the dawn walk-in with these birds. It’s all about three tries and a dawn walk-in.

Sheila’s right. This is the perfect owl for my first capture. Joe is calm and oblivious, perched on a relatively exposed branch not far above our heads. It’s a clear shot and he’s easily within the noose pole’s reach.

As Sheila distracts Joe with a mouse, I extend the pole and ease it up to him. The line is a bit droopy but I manage to fit the loop carefully over his head. Then I tug slightly. But alas, he flies and the noose doesn’t tighten and all I’ve caught is air.

But he’s a good boy, this Joe. He’s landed at the same height on the open branch of a nearby tree, and he’s still calm and uncaring. I make my way over to him and try again, but no luck, and there he is, back on the first branch, watching the mouse.

We test the noose on Sheila’s wrist before I try again and we understand. The noose doesn’t tighten. Damn! But we do our best to adjust it a bit then I try again. I loop him and pull but it still doesn’t tighten. But he doesn’t move either. He looks confused, a little annoyed, but then he ignores the line around his neck and goes back to watching the mouse. And we decide all we have to do is wait for him to fly for it.

It works perfectly. As soon as he lunges forward into the air to go for the mouse, the line tightens, and we have him. He’s brought down carefully and Sheila moves in quickly and expertly and she has his legs and has removed the line and she bands him and it’s a success. I’ve officially made my first capture.

Thank you Joe! You were such a good boy.

We weren’t expecting this. The truck is all loaded up, we’re all ready to go, then Sheila notices it. The truck has a flat.

It must have been a slow leak. I could swear it wasn’t like that when I loaded up the truck an hour or two before, but I can’t be certain. We haven’t driven it since last night.

At least this is something I’m good at, something I know how to do. Last year made us all pros at changing tires. We had a lot of flats last year. And this is easy. This is on flat ground. This is on the hard compact earth of the parking lot.

Not bad for our first flat. Now if only the rental company would give us trucks with better tires. I would be surprised if these are even within legal thread. But if it’s anything like last year, it’ll take getting a flat to get a new tire out of them. If they don’t just patch it.

There’s nothing like bad tires on a good truck to ruin a good truck.

Rob had always been one of my favorites. Rob - a telemetry owl from the study I was on last year, a bird I had come to call “The Ornery Old Man.” He was a single male in a crappy territory who just couldn’t seem to get any, and was bitter because of it. He was the most vocal of the telemetry birds, responding to passing cars, to honks, and even to the steady beep beep beep of the telemetry receiver picking up his signal. He was one of the easiest birds to find at night.

Unfortunately, he was also one of the most difficult to capture. He would roost high and ignore any offered mice. He was never a good mouser. One of the worst. And he knew the noose pole. He was almost as bad as Bald in that respect.

That is why we are here now, Whip sticking up from the top of our truck, receiver playing static broken occasionally by a few faint beeps. We are looking for Rob, still toting his transmitter, still beeping. We are going to find him. We are going to capture him, and we are going to free him of his transmitter. We are determined and confident and hopeful. Oh boy are we hopeful. And excited. We both like Rob, Sheila and I. We are both excited to see him again.

But he’s not in his usual territory. It takes us a while, driving and triangulating, frustrated occasionally by bounce, before we are confident enough of the bearings for a walk-in. And now we really are excited. Has Rob finally moved on, found himself a new territory? Has he finally figured it out? What if he found himself a mate? Can you imagine, if we walk in and find him, if we capture him and remove his transmitter and find a nest? We have no reason to think this, perhaps, but we have high hopes now.

It’s no surprise we’re disappointed. In the end, the result of our walk-in is significantly less satisfying. It is far from satisfying. It is down right devestating.

We find Ron not far from the road, among a stand of large Ponderosas and Cedars. We find him, a small pile of feathers at the base of one of the Ponderosas. Feathers, the transmitter, his federal and color bands, and a few clumps of dried mammal scat.

Oh Rob! Rob, Rob, my poor ornery old man! I’m so sorry. I’m so sad. I loved you. Even when you frustrated me, even when you followed me so I couldn’t triangulate you. Even when you wouldn’t mouse for me. I loved you and I will miss you.

Goodbye Rob.

Her name is Round Tent, and she’s my first Spotted Owl of the season. And she likes her mice.

She’s a good mouser. A great mouser, and it makes for an exciting night. We’ve chased her as best we could down to the creek and back up to the second road, than up the steep incline to the top and down the other side. We’ve chased her as we moused her, trying to keep up and see where she goes, what she does with the mice.

She’s nesting. We know she’s nesting. Just look at that ragged tail, that large brood patch. Just look at her fly off with those mice. She’s stopped beelining off with the mice and we know that her nest must be right around here but in which tree? In which frickin tree? It’s too dense and we can’t see where she’s going. We can’t get protocol but we know she’s nesting.

We’ll find the nest. Maybe not tonight, but we will. She’s special already, this one. She’s my first owl of the season. I like her already.

Here we go. I’m off again. Gone again. After just a few days with Brian, I’ve gone again.

And here I am back at Blodgett. Here I am back in the Sierra Nevadas, nestled among the mixed coniferous forests of Eldorado County. I have returned. And I’m excited to be back.

Last season I participated in a Spotted Owl radio-telemetry study. This season I’ll be working for the same people on what should prove to be a more exciting and rewarding project. A project that will involve seeing a lot more Spotted Owls. A project that will involve hooting for owls, finding and mousing owls, capturing and banding owls. It will involve tromping though the forest in the dark of night, chasing after owls in rough steep terrain, attempting to ID owls with a mag-lite and binocs. It will be hard work and it will be fun work.

I may be gone again, but it’s worth it. It’s going to be a good fun season.

Note: for more info about the project, follow the links to Rocky Guttierez’s lab site and the SNAMP project page.