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Pre Trip Sketching

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”

-Saint Augustine

One of my favorite parts about travel, aside from the travel itself, is the preplanning and research that happens months and weeks before the date of departure. These preparations creates the palpable excitement that intensifies to the point of lift off.

I am certainly not a planner that wants to know where I’m going to be every minute of the day. I look at it more as planned improvisation. I see it as the framework but I also want to be open to the serendipitous events that can happen when away from home far away. The event you can never plan for but plan to be open to.

One thing that I booked weeks before my autumn trip to New England, was an afternoon whale watching trip out of Bar Harbor, Maine.

EC Pelagic Card

A pre sketch design sketch.

I love whale watching cruises on the West Coast and I have enjoyed seeing humpback, Gray, and blues whale as well as orcas and other dolphins. And I have also enjoyed pelagic birding trips so I was looking forward to Birding on an east coast whaling trip.

You don’t always have a whole lot of time to identify pelagic birds as they pass by so I was going to do a little homework to help me with my fieldwork.

This involves doing a lot of research through field guides and reference books and distilling that knowledge and putting it into a single sketch.

One of the top birds on my East Coast pelagic wish list was great shearwater and I was hoping to see a Manx shearwater too.

Manx shear

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Birds of Brazil

At the end of 17 days birding the Cerrado, the southern Amazon Basin, and the Pantanal of Brazil I had added 309 new species to my world lifelist and seen a total of 525 bird species. By the time I boarded the plane in Cuiabá on my way to São Paulo, I had a total of 1,642 world lifers, which is about double the number of species found in the United States.

To reach this number I had to travel. All across the United States from California to Cape May to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Two trips to Spain. Then south to the Americas: Costa Rica Panama, Ecuador, and Brazil and over to the western Pacific to Japan.

I had also whiffed on birds all over California and the rest of the United States. I have many birds that might have been.

It is a reminder to stay in the moment and celebrate the bird in front of you. It may me with you a short time or you may get quality time but it never pays to think of the bird that never was.

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Bodega Pelagic

“At length did cross an Albatross,

Through the fog it came;

As if it had been a Christian soul,

We hailed it in God’s name.”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We met at 6:30 AM in the dirt parking lot of Bodega Bay Harbor.

A grizzled, sandaled sea dog of a Welshman stepped forward. He was to be our guide over the next ten hours.

He was and is Steve Howell, seabird author (his book Oceanic Birds of the World was in my pack) and expert of the avian world and he would be helping to identify the pelagic life we would be seeing in the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

While it seemed nice and calm on the dock, Captain Rick warned us of choppy and windy conditions. And things seem nice enough as we headed out of the harbor but once we hit open waters the New Sea Angler bobbed on the waves like a cork. There was a steady stream of birders heading to the stern to “feed the fish”. Luckily I had a stomach of iron and I never suffered from seasickness. But this trip was going to test my will and my digesting breakfast.

Close to port we saw many nearshore species such as brown pelicans, common murres, cormorants, and California gulls. A little further out we saw our first pelagic species: sooty shearwater. As Steve Howell noted, “They’re called shearwaters because, well, they shear the water.” These dark oceanic birds flew with ease, inches above the rolling water, seemingly cutting the surface.

Even further out, we saw our first whale spout. Off on the horizon, to the port side, I saw a humpback whales breach! This is when a cetacean partially or wholly leaves the water’s surface.

We were seeing a smattering of birds followed by a pelagic barrens of no birds. Captain Rick headed towards an anchovy school where about ten humpbacks were feeding. Soon Pacific white-sided dolphins appeared in the swells besides us. One highlight was a lone humpback that passed under the New Sea Angler and surfaced close to our starboard side. The whale was so close that I could hear the leviathan exhaling!

More shearwaters appeared around us: Buller’s, sooty, and pink-footed. Where the whales are you will find pelagic birds. We were still in relatively shallow waters and we had not yet seen the oceans most iconic species: the albatross. Albatross is a deep water species, rarely seen from land.

When we were out about 25 miles, the winds peaked at 20 knots and we saw our first albatross, easily riding the wind. This was the black -footed albatross and we would see more as we labored above the submarine canyon near Cordell Banks.

Two amazing highlights were just ahead of us, above the canyon’s edge. Two massive whale spouts, one after the other, billowed in the air, just to our starboard. Two bluish-gray whales rolled on the water and then appeared again heading on an easterly course, across the canyon. These whales did not appear black, like the humpbacks but we’re blue like their namesake: blue whale. These are the earth’s largest creatures; the largest creatures that ever have lived on the planet earth.

These two whales had their accompanying mass of pelagic birds but one was a sought after bird for this trip. Mario, one of the spotters, called out, “Laysan!” And every birder within earshot rushed to the bow of the boat, eagerly scanning the pitching waves from a pitching boat. Not an easy task. No albatross.  I moved into position, scanning the waters in front of us. The swell moved towards us revealing the following trough. And there was what looked like a massive western gull. “Laysans on the water in front of the boat!” I exclaimed.

The Laysan sat on the pitching waters, stretching it’s long, narrow wings. The birder density was reaching critical mass on the bow as this was a sought after a lifer as well as a Sonoma County bird. After a quick preen, the albatross stretched out both wings, ran across the waters, and effortlessly lifted off into the air. It headed to the east, presumably to catch up with the blue whales.

Cordell SketchA sketch to pass the time as we headed back to port. I had attempted to sketch earlier but didn’t have my sea legs yet and it came off rather disheveled. Sketching on a moving boat is not as hard as it seems, and I had some experience in the boats of the Amazon and the Pantanal. But Big Blue offers huge challenges for the sketcher of the waters.

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The Conception

On Monday of the Labor Day Weekend, 2019, word was out about a boating accident near California’s Channel Islands. When “Santa Cruz Island” and “scuba boat” were mentioned on the radio newscast, I was all ears.

The reason for my instant attention was that I had been to Santa Cruz Island twice. More recently on a camping trip to the Scorpion Bay Anchorage and then in April 2006, a scuba diving trip on a live aboard diving boat out of Santa Barbara.

When more news came out it became clear that a diving boat had caught fire in the early morning hours of September 2 with passengers asleep below deck. The fire quickly engulfed the vessel and the boat sank. At the time of this blog’s writing, it was believed that all the passengers, 34 divers, had perished while five crew members had escaped.

The name of the dive boat was “Conception”.

I headed home after work on Tuesday and rummaged through a storage box that contained my 9 by 12 Canson all media journals. I was looking for the journal that contained sketches from my 2006 dive trip. In the fifth journal I checked, I flipped through the pages to find the dockside sketch of the live aboard dive boat the night before we headed out to Santa Cruz Island. Below the sketch I noted the ships specs: Built: 1981, Length: 79’, Beam 25’, Cruising speed: 12 knots. Above the drawing was neatly stenciled letters in all caps. It was the boat’s name.

Her name was Conception.

This discovery sent chills through my body and a wave of empathy and horror for those who had perished.

Quail Rock

I turned the page to find a near monotoned sketch, dated 4/29/06, of a rock called “Quail Rock”, a sketch I remember doing on the deck of the Conception between dives. I had a quote from my dive buddy written in the bottom left corner: It’s like the difference between driving & walking. ~Sam on the difference between sketching and photography.

The last of the three sketches I did on this trip was the most chilling. It is dated  4/30/06. It is a comic of myself, squeezing into the tight berth below decks in the Conception. It shows me with my arm braced inches above my head, my teeth clenched in frustration as the sound of the boat’s engine drones on.  The title is, “Lower Bunk 10D of the CONCEPTION”. And here is the really chilling aspect of this illustration: it looks like I’m trapped alive in a coffin, like something out of a Poe short story. This was an illusion to show how cramped and uncomfortable my bunk was.

Bunk

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Haunted Hospital

There was always that house that your mother told you to stay away from. The odd boxy house at the end of the street. The one where the dogs in the neighborhood wouldn’t even use the front lawn to relieve themselves. That house.

I wanted to sketch Nevada City’s version of that house only it was not a house but a madhouse. The former Nevada County Hospital. The hospital that most locals don’t want you to know about.

The original hospital was built in the 1860s and different wings were added to the main building over it’s lifetime. The building served many purposes over the years but the reason the structure in now infamous is because of a January 2001 shooting spree.

In 2001 the building housed the Nevada County Department of Behavioral Health when a patient, a former school janitor, who was suffering from mental health issues, entered the building and shot three people, two of whom died. He then drove to a Lyons Restaurant near Grass Valley and shot two more people because he thought that they were trying to poison him.

In all, he fired 20 shots from his semi-automatic pistol leaving three people dead. The killer was declared incompetent to stand trial and he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is currently at the Napa State Hospital for mentally ill patients.

There are no maintenance vehicles in the parking lot of a building that needs lots of maintenance. All the windows of the former hospital are boarded up.

Five years after the tragic events of January 10, 2001, the hospital closed it’s doors for good. The windows were boarded up and the doors locked and the the massive structure sits alone and abandoned, just off a two lane country road, across Highway 49 from downtown Nevada City.

It is hard not to think of the the ghosts of the past as I stood in front of the closed hospital. The structure must have many stories within it’s boarded up walls, some uplifting and happy and others quite tragic. These tales are all silent now and the only sounds I hear are the calls of red-breasted nuthatches and Stellar’s jays from the trees above.

If there was any good that came from the tragedy of January 2001, it was the creation of Laura’s Law, a law that assists outpatient treatment for the mentally ill. The law is named after Laura Wilcox, the first victim that was murdered at the hospital. She was a 19 year old intern who was working at the Department of Behavioral Health during her winter break from college.

Michael Moore’s 2002 Academy Award winning documentary about America’s gun violence epidemic, Bowling For Columbine, is dedicated to Laura Wilcox.

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Jaguars in the Morning

We were at the dock before first light. This was our second jaguar expedition and it seemed hard to beat the six cats we saw the previous afternoon. But that didn’t stop us from trying.

In the back of my mind, it occurred to me that we could be skunked because with wildlife, nothing is guaranteed. The jaguars would either be active and out in the open or reclusive and in deep forest away from the water course. We had been very lucky to see six jags the previous outing, this was more that some of the totals of past tours where numbers of one to four jaguars seen was a pretty good haul.

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To see wildlife, it helps to get an early start and this was certainly true of finding the New World’s largest cat.

We were off up the Cuiaba River and I was glad that I packed a jacket because this was the first time I wore it in Brazil. In the previous week a cold front had moved in from Antarctica, keeping temperatures comfortable and reducing humidity. We were speeding up river to get to the tributaries where jaguar was most likely.

Within an hour we joining a flotilla of other boats, peering into the far-shore green. Two young males had been seen. And now we waited for them to appear.

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A young male appears out of the green!

The two young jaguars were heading downstream, making half hearted attempts at hunting caiman. They still have a lot to learn. They had yet to prefect their deathly pounce.

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The two young males hunting along the riverside.

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On the other side of the camera. The flotilla of ecotourists that followed the jaguars every move. There’s even a guy taking a selfie. I have very mixed feelings about the intrusion of people into the jaguar’s lives and I wondered how our presence could possible affect the jaguar’s behavior both positively and negatively.

We followed the jaguars along the river. One turned back and swan across the water to the near riverbank, demonstrating what I have already read: that jaguars are excellent swimmers.

DonacobiusBlack-capped donacobius seemed to be our constant companions in the rivers of the Pantanal. A pair readily defended it’s patch of reeds with an auditory duet of sound.

After watching the two young cubs hunting along the river side we headed off in search of more jaguars. At this point in the morning we’d seen a total of eight jaguars.

On one of the smaller tributaries we came upon a single boat on our port side. This was nothing like the flotilla we had just jettisoned. A boat stopped by the riverside meant only one thing: jaguar.

Sure enough there was a female jag on the bank 30 yards away from our boat. To our left was a large male pacing back and forth.

Over the course of the next 30 minutes we watched these two jaguars, from our boat making baby jaguars. We stayed with the amorous cats for about 30 minutes and finally decided to leave them to their privacy.

By the time we got back for lunch and after two boat trips in the Pantanal, we had seen a total of ten jaguars. We had been very lucky. This was a once in a lifetime experience that would live long in my mind and in my sketch book.

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Jaguars in the Afternoon

After our bone rattling ride on the Transpantaneira we arrived at our destination for the next two nights: the Hotel Pantanal Norte at Porto Jofre.

At this point in the tour our focus now was not on finding new bird species for our list but adding the New World’s largest cat to our mammal list! And we where wasting no time in doing it!

We checked into our rooms, set our bags down, had time for a quick shower and then we met Gonzalo, our boat driver, at the dock at 3:00 to start our afternoon search for jaguar. We would be heading up the Cuiaba River and explore some of the tributaries which was about a 25 minute speedboat ride away.

Jag Boat

We did stop once on the Cuiaba to look at another large mammal and yes, another Brazilian superlative: the giant otter. This is the world’s largest otter and the the world’s longest member of the weasel family.

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Giant otters look nothing like the their cuddly-cute sea otter cousins. These beasts look positively dangerous.

Within 40 minutes from leaving the dock, we came upon a flotilla of five other boats. This was a positive sign that a jaguar had been sighted in the area and a fellow boatman gestured to a sandy bank on the other side of  the river, confirming the fact. At the moment the cat was out of sight. If a group of birders is invested with one quality, it’s patience. And we had just enough left over from looking for antbirds in the Amazonian understory.

Within five minute a male jaguar appeared! He walked down to the river. Up on the bank was a female. This was a little post amorous stroll. It was amazing to see not one but two jaguars on our first afternoons out!

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My first jaguar sighting in the Pantanal. This is also one of my first photographs. This is the male coming down to the river to drink. The female can be seen in the upper right.

The pair of jaguars headed back into the forest and out of sight. We headed off in search of more jaguars. within the hour we were amid another flotilla of boats, again looking at a pair of jaguars resting in a clearing by the river.

Downstream, another jaguar appeared heading along a path toward the pair in the clearing. Jaguars are normally found alone and they do not tolerate the presence of others. This could get explosive. The lone lone jaguar was nearing the clearing and we weren’t sure how the jags would take to this territorial encroachment.

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Here come the “intruder” downstream towards the pair in the clearing.

The lone cat disappeared into green and reappeared in the clearing and all tension was dispelled as we realized that this was a mother and her two young cubs. Our driver told us that they were about two years old.

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About ten minutes later, a fourth jaguar appeared on the path. This was a lone adult male. The female left the cubs behind and trotted up the riverside path and let the male know that his presence was not wanted. He changed his course and disappeared into the green forest.

So on our first afternoon of jaguar hunting we saw six individuals! Most tours are lucky to see one or two cats over the course of two days and we still had one more morning of searching to go. Could we possibly go into double digits with this iconic cat?

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Transpantaneira

Our destination for the start of our search for Jaguars in the Pantanal was Porto Jofre on the Cuiaba River. But first we had to drive south on the legendary Transpantaneira Highway.

The Transpantaneria is a 147 km (91 mile) dirt road starting in Poncone in the north and ending at Porto Jofre in the south. The highway crosses 122 wooden bridges (a few have been updated to concrete) on it’s way south. All of the bridges are only wide enough for one vehicle to pass at a time.

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A traffic jam on the Transpantaneira. One bridge and one car, time for some roadside birding.

Crossing a bridge on this highway was always an adventure, partly because we were unsure that we would make it to the other side before the  fragile looking wooden structure would be able to support the weight of out rental car for the full duration of our traverse and collapse into the water.

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One of the 122 wooden bridges on the Transpantaneria. We made it across this one without  misadventure. The side “guard” rail on the left could use some love.

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A typical bridge view from a Transpantaneira bridge. Full of foraging egrets, bathing black vultures, and sunning Yacare caiman.

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Brazilian Superlatives

Brazil is home to many superlatives and many of these are covered in feathers.

Brazil, at 3,287,956 square miles, is the largest country in South America, the 5th largest in the world. Brazil is considered the world’s most biological diverse country in the world with about 103,870 animals and 43,020 plants. About 700 new species are discovered in Brazil each year. 1,806 species of birds have been recording in Brazil, 235 of these birds are only found in Brazil. South America’s largest country hosts 60% of the continents bird species!

What follows is a selection of some of Brazil’s avian superlatives that I encountered in the Pantanal.

Largest Stork in the Americas: Jabiru

This truly impressive stork, like the Hoatzin, seems to belong to a long, lost epoch. This massive bird has the second longest wingspan of any land bird in the Americas, losing out to the Andean condor. It was always something special to see this bird, either on the wing or on the ground. The Jabiru can be surprisingly approachable, just stay outside the range of its deadly beak! Like the jabiru pictured below. The stork followed our boat along the riverside.

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Largest Parrot in the World: Hyacinth Macaw

This macaw was certainly on my wishlist. It is amazing to see a bird that you have seen many times in zoos, pet shops, movies or as part of an animal act, wild and free flying. Most people around the world, looking at an image of this bird would be able to identify it as a parrot or a macaw. We had many quality looks of this iconic parrot in the Pantanal. And they were very approachable at Porto Jofre as they cracked nut with their powerful beaks.

Hyacinth Macaw

Largest Toucan in the World: Toco Toucan

The largest toucan in the world is also the prototypical toucan. This South American Big -nose seems to be advertising products all around the world, albeit in a modified form. The Toco can be seen on advertisements from everything from Fruitloops to Guinness Stout, marking the Toco one of the world’s most recognizable birds. We started to get far off view of Tocos in the northern Pantanal. It wasn’t until we reach the end of the Transpantaneira Highway, at Porto Jofre, that we got jaw-dropping views of many of these unreal birds.

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Heaviest Bird in the Americas (Largest Flightless Bird in the Americas): Greater Rhea

These avian grazers where very easy to see from my porch at Pousada Piuval. Another bird that I was really looking forward to seeing. This large flightless, 60 pound bird is a smaller version of Africa’s ostrich and are related to other flightless birds that are still in existence. (emus, cassowaries, kiwis).

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The Cristalino Towers

In Amazon Basin, most of the birding we did was with from trails in the forest or from boat and we we seeing birds that favored the riverside, ground, or understory. To see the birds that made a living in the forest canopy, we could spend a lot of time straining our necks and peering into the forest tangle to look at a far off bird butt, or we could climb the observation towers that put us up above the trees.

There are two 50 meter (165 feet) observation towers at Cristalino that allows you to see all the layers of the forest with many stopping points on the way up to the top.

IMG_3380Sunrise from the top of Tower One.

On the morning of July 5th we climbed the steep steps of Tower One, 165 feet to the very top platform which was high above the top of the forest canopy. We timed our climb to be in place before sunrise, not just for the stunning views but also to take advantage of optimal of bird activity in the canopy.

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All eyes on deck as we pick through the large amount of birds working their way around  Tower One.

The idea was to be at the top of the tower to observe the avian activity while the sun was still low on the horizon and then move to the lower platform as the the morning heated up moving the bird activity below the canopy. This morning proved to be our most prolific in our short time in the Southern Amazon Basin. At times the bird activity was nonstop and we seemed to be surrounded by avian movement with lifers coming quick and fast!

Paradise Jackie

We got good looks at a paradise jacamar from Tower One.

B-G Barbet

A southern Amazon speciality, the black-girdled barbet. This sketch is of the male.

IMG_3504The paradise tanager is a truly stunning tanager amongst many stunning tropical tanagers to be found in the Amazon. At Tower One we finally got great looks at this canopy dweller.