With rain on the wind, I set out with Dickcissel on another Saturday morning heading north. Our destination was four and a half hours away to a piece of open expanse known as the Arcata Bottoms. This is a winter raptor wonderland with white-tailed kites, red-tailed, red-shouldered hawks, harriers, kestrels, merlins, prairie falcons and peregrines and short-eared owls talking over the crepuscular and night shifts.

The weather forecast was uncertain with rain forecast in Arcata and we left the Bay Area under a sheet of rain. We both didn’t say it out loud but this could be a waste of a long road trip if the weather reduced our visibility to nil and out target bird moved on in front, and on into oblivion as far as we where concerned, of an approaching storm front.

We knew the bird had been seen the day before and we hoped the Arctic breeder would not be put off by a bit of winter rain. While our quarry is suited for cold temps with body feathers, down, and feathered legs, we packed rain coats and pants, hats, mud boots, and an umbrella. We had been watching the rain forecast all week and as the weekend loomed, the prediction was that there would be a small window of clearing in the early afternoon and we wanted to take advantage of being in the right place at the right time.

As we neared Arcata, the rain lessened and we began to see patches of blue. We pulled into Eureka (we hoped to later say, “Eureka! We found it!”) and then headed northeast to the area of open farmland, north of Arcata Bay, known as the Arcata Bottoms.

Pulling off the highway we were greeting by a narrow, cracked road with a line of loose chickens that blocked our passage. We were really out in the open country now which contrasted with the cities we had left had left behind earlier in the morning.

It was not long before we saw our first raptor flying low off to our left. It flew up to a distant post. We got the bird in the scope hoping that it would be our target bird but no, it was a juvenile red-tail. We packed the scope into the trunk and headed to Jackson Ranch Road, stopping between the yellow house and the blue-roofed house. This is where our target bird had been seen over the last month.

As we stepped out of the car and geared up, it started to rain. This was not a great sign. Every power pole, post, and open ground was closely inspected with nothing save a raven or a red-tail, but no falcons. We headed back along the road to get a better view of the line of power poles that ran out into the green field. A source had told us that the falcon favored these poles as her favorite perch.

The rain began to abate.

Behind us there was a explosion of activity as three raptors filled the air. The strident call of a peregrine filled the previous quiet air. We quickly ran back from where we had come, which is not all that easy when you are shouldering a scope!

“There it is!”, Dickcissel exclaimed and I got the bird in my bins. It was a perched and did not resemble any other bird I had seen, Falco rusticolus, the largest falcon in the world, the Gyrfalcon! The peregrine was stooping on the gyrfalcon, proclaiming it existence in the world.

The first photo I took of the female gyrfalcon! What a beast!

This is an arctic breeder that is very rare in California. Most gyrs that head south during the winter are juvenile females and we where looking at one of three morphs. This female was a gray morph. The bird rocketed low across the road and landed on her favorite perch: the third power pole from Jackson Ranch Road.

“Have you see the bald eagle?”, a voice asked from the house behind us. It belonged to a woman who lived in the blue-roofed house and she pointed down the road to a bird perched on a power pole. I got the bird in my bins and it was the resident peregrine falcon.

Field sketch of the female gyr on her favorite perch.

For the next two and a half hours we watched this amazing falcon in the 360 degree theatre of the wide-open-space called the Arcata Bottoms.

Some lifers are seen for a short time and you may not get quality looks with the bird being obscured by foliage, seen from a great distance, or the target bird being seen in poor light. The gyr was a completely different story. This was not only an extremely rare bird for California, but we were getting incredible views of the gyr, close up and in great light. This is a falcon of wide open spaces and we had prolonged looks at the perched falcon. Unlike other raptors, the gyrfalcon was extremely active as she flew low over the fields, often being pursued by ravens. She turned and started to chase the corvid, easily closing the distance with her powerful wingbeats. The gyr would return to her favorite power pole perch to preen before raising her wings before launching another sortie, to the consternation of any avian life in the area.

One odd observation was a black Labrador that was running through the fields and chasing American coots up from the slough. The gyr joined in on the attack, flying down a coot with ease. She grabbed a coot and would then release it dropping like a stone back into the slough. I wondered if this was some primeval hunting relationship between the gyrfalcon and Arctic wolves. Such a beneficial relation exists between wolves and ravens in the Arctic north. The gyr made two more passes as she flew above the dog, grabbing a coot along the way and then letting it go. Prey practice I assume

Dickcissel enjoying a gyrfalcon and a rainbow, Arcata Bottoms, California, Raptor Heaven.

There is nothing like closing out a genus or group of birds. Like seeing all the corvids (jays, magpies, crows, and ravens) that exist in the United States or checking off all buteos (broad winged hawks) that breed within our borders.

This can also go beyond our political borders. Last summer I saw both species of condors: California and Andean, although both birds are placed in a separate genus.

Last Saturday I set out with Dickcissel to close out a genus. In this case Sphyrapicus. I had red-breasted, red-naped, and Williamson’s sapsucker. The only sapsucker missing from my list was the easterner: yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius). And one had been spending some time in the south in Santa Clara County.

Sewage ponds, landfills, and water treatment plants may not be a place to spend your Saturday morning but if you’re a birder they can be an avian heaven on earth! In this case it was the Santa Clara County Water District in San Jose and the line of pepper trees that lined the Guadalupe River and the percolation ponds. This is where the shy, juvenile, male sapsucker has been spending it’s time.

We first walked the line of pepper trees, willing the shy woodpecker into being. There was no movement and no woodpeckers to speak of, aside from the distant call of a northern flicker. As we headed upstream, towards the dam, Dickcissel called my attention to a bird in a bush. It was not a woodpecker but a thrasher (not the ghost wraith LeConte’s) but California thrasher. The bird sat in the top of the bush, allowing great looks and a few photos.

California thrasher, Toxostoma redivivum.

We turned right at the dam and birded the path that led back to the water district buildings. That’s when we first heard the harsh trill of our first woodpecker! We soon found the source of the call: a female Nuttall’s woodpecker.

This is not the woodpecker you’re looking for!

After watching 75 robins feasting on pepper tree berries we headed back to the river road and the trees that lined the path. After making the 90 degree turn to head back downstream, I saw a woodpecker in a snag right in front of me! “There’s the bird!” I exclaimed, in a quiet sort of way, in order not to spook the shy sapsucker. Too late. The bird bounded into the closest pepper tree.

We surrounded the tree like the LAPD on an SLA safe house but the sapsucker flew off toward the path where we just where birding. We rushed over and got some diagnostic looks before the bird disappeared into foliage.

The yellow-bellied headed back from whence we came and we where on a wild woodpecker chase to get more looks and photos. The sapsucker perched briefly in the first pepper tree and then disappeared again. I went up the path and Dickcissel tried to flank the bird on the pond-side of the trees.

After a short search Dickcissel was on the bird again and I headed over to his position. This time the young male was perched on a near horizontal branch. I noted that this bird is either extremely active or very sedentary. Pete Dunne notes this behavior in the Birding Bible, the Essential Field Guide Companion, that the bird’s behavior is “bi-polar” and we where now observing it’s still stage, where the sapsucker seemed to be impersonating a tree branch, which gave us exceptional looks.

A typical look at the shy sapsucker, always placing himself between a few twigs.

Coda

After spending time with the yellow-bellied sapsucker we headed on a short 15 minute to another location in a residential neighborhood to add another sapsucker to our day.

This was a red-naped sapsucker that was spending time in a sycamore tree on the banks of Guadalupe Creek. Within four minutes of searching I spotted the not-so-shy rep-naped sapsucker on The before mentioned sycamore tree.

When I stepped out of the car it was 6:21 AM. It had taken me an hour and seven minutes to get here from La Quinta. The morning air was chilly, very chilly, the temperature was 27 degrees. And here I was, in the high desert, at the Borrego Springs Landfill.

It’s all about a bird of course, not just any bird but a true nemesis that had evaded me, despite numerous attempts at Joshua Tree, Nevada (near Las Vegas), and even the open space preserve just a mile north of my current, cold location. But the view ain’t bad.

This harsh, sparse, and dry habitat dominated by saltbush and creosote is the domain of the elusive LeConte’s trasher, which is the Sasquatch of the thrashers because it is a pale, drab bird that prefers to run on the ground rather that fly and has the annoying habit of always keeping dense vegetation in between itself and the observer. In other words, it a damn hard bird to see and see well, that is until the pull of defending it’s territory kicks in. This usually starts in January and lasting through March.

The key to finding LeConte’s at Borrego is to arrive before sunrise, walk out west of the landfill and wait for the sun to kiss the saltbush flats and soon you will should hear the distant sound of an unseen male singing. Well hopefully that’s how it was going to happen.

The shoe prints in the frozen desert sands spoke of the other early morning birders on previous days that have come to this location to find LeConte’s. All I had to do, like the Yellow Brick Road, was follow the the footprints that would lead me to the ghost thrasher.

I first hear the rolling-meandering call of a thrasher at 6:41 AM and I rushed to the southwest in search of the singer. But this desert wraith led me on a wild thrasher-case that ended at a dense brush Leaving me gazing into oblivion. Then from my right, I heard another song and I rushed off to the northwest. This time I saw a pale bird with a peachy butt hop to the ground and disappear into a dense thicket. My first, but brief, sighting of this feathered ghost. . . I think.

Off to the northwest I clearly heard another thrasher’s song and as I hurried across the flats (dodging bushes along the way) I could see a distant bird perched up on a snag. Could this be my first good look at a LeConte’s?

I moved closer but the bird was still far off and I didn’t want to flush it off it’s singing perch. I raised my camera and zoomed in and:

no, not a LeConte’s thrasher but a loggerhead shrike. This thrasher really does make you see ghosts and phantoms.

From my left came another thrasher song and like a sail boat tacking across the sands, I set a course toward this new singer.

This time I could she a pale bird singing in a mesquite bush. Again I raised my camera to my eye and zoomed into the singer:

Then I zoomed in some more:

A pale, drab bird with a down-curved bill, peach undertail coverts and a long, dark tail. I was looking at my Nemesis Bird, the LeConte’s thrasher!! Lifer!!! ABA bird number 560! He gave me great views and I was able to capture many images.

As I slowly moved closer the thrasher popped down and out of sight into the bush. I then heard another male singing off to the northwest and off I went.

It was now 7:30 AM, the hour of power! I was able to locate another male perched up and singing on another mesquite bush. This is the bird where I got amazing looks and was able to get some great photographs to document the existence of a desert ghost.

Coda:

While still in the afterglow of my thrasher experience and once I had returned back home to San Francisco, I checked the pockets of my down jacket that I was wearing on that cold morning, west of the landfill. I pulled out gloves, my scarf, and a figure that I had found, half buried in the sands, just as I was starting my search for LeConte’s thrasher. I have almost forgotten about this figure.

It was a plastic, olive green army action figure, the kind that I used to play with when I was a child. Each figure was in a different pose. There was the soldier crawling on the ground, the solder kneeling on his knee, rifle raised to his eye, the dude with the flame thrower, the guy shouldering a massive bazooka, and the soldier on the phone. But the little green soldier that I held in my hand was none of those, but the solider with left arm raised and in his right hand he held binoculars raised to his eyes, as if shouting out, “I think I see it. . .yes it’s a LeConte’s thrasher!”

It was an interesting time to be in a National Park because of the partial government shut down (which at the time of this writing is in it’s third week). Joshua Tree National Park was still open but all the park rangers and maintenance staff where on furlough leave. The advice I received from locals was, “Bring your own toilet paper and trash bags and don’t climb in the Joshua Trees.”

This didn’t stop me from heading into JT (with toilet paper and trash bags) to see and sketch some of the beautiful sights in this high (and sometimes low) desert wonderland.

Plants

Located in the southern part of the park where the high Mojave Desert drops down to the lower Sonoran Desert is a grove of interesting desert plants know as the ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens). These tall plants may look like a type of cactus but they are the sole genus of a Mexican species found the United States, in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. After passing through the incredible Cholla Cactus Garden I stopped at the Ocotillo Patch, pulled out my camp chair and started sketching this amazing desert plant.

The Cholla Cactus Garden, Joshua Tree National Park

Birds

I sketched a few birds that I encountered in JT. When hiking in the desert you do not encounter very much avian life but when you do, it’s really something special. At first glance a desert seems a harsh and dry habitat, seemingly lifeless, but only after spending some time in the desert to you see the life that is perfectly adapted to this extreme environment.

I sketched three birds that I encountered on the Maze Loop hike (~4.6 miles), located in the northern part of the park. The black-throated sparrow, Gambel’s quail, and phainopepla are all common desert species that are relatively easy to see on a desert hike in the high Mojave Desert.

Black-Throated Sparrow

Gambel’s Quail

Phainopepla