Akayo'kaki A'pawaawahkaa

Scout Bee And Magpie Bath

2012-01-23T11:39:00.002-07:00

IIII ) llllllllllllll Ksikkihkini (8Jan11)

0847 Coffee and Corvids, where I see that one of the "wild" magpies has somehow managed to break off all its tailfeathers. This happens to Derrick during the winter, as a result of repeated crash-landings sourced to his clipped wings. I've never seen it happen with any of the other magpies though, but here it is. The wind gusts are extremely strong this morning, and yet the magpie with the missing tail (who I'll try to photograph tomorrow) seems to have no problem at all navigating by wing, and landing perfectly on target at the rock where I've offered them food

I've often wondered about the long tail of the magpies, what its functions might be. I've seen it used in social displays of three different sorts: 1) when a bird is coming to land among others at a food source and wants to frighten them, it fans its wings and tail wide at the last moment; 2) when a bird is approaching another on certain occasions, which I do not completely understand but that seem assertive, there is a most complex song used, which produces a sound of two or more birds, and the tail is held horizontally at a ninety-degree angle, forming a V of body and tail, the open end of which is brought toward the recipient, perhaps in a manner of making him/her feel surrounded; and 3) when a bird is making a certain display, the purpose of which I do not fully understand, but that has something to do with calling attention to itself, it will perch, hold the tail straight up, and flick it in time to a particular chirp. Of the three, this last social display may be the most primal, because Derrick does it, though I doubt he learned it from the others. He always uses it when he wants to get someone's attention, and usually right before he launches into a related (but separate) display of toughness by attacking some non-living object with his beak [note: this tail-up display exposes the genital region, and I suspect, but have never confirmed, that it may be put to use in a mating dance]

I have also noticed that the long tail can be used in landing more generally, as a kind of cushion against the impact. But seeing this magpie today with no tail, yet still very coordinated of flight, invites speculation for yet another function... that the long tailfeathers can serve in defense against predators in a manner similar to the long detachable tails of some other animals. The longer the tail-to-body ratio, the more likely a predator will grab/attack the tail, and this may afford the magpie just what it needs to escape relatively unharmed

1346 Sspopiikimi - It's another warm winter day on the high plains, two degrees above with heavy winds and of course no snow cover. Focused as I've been recently at the river confluence, this is my first visit to the pond in over two weeks

1353 Because it's Sunday, I'm able to easily maneuver around the ongoing pipeline project in the absinthe field. When midpond comes into view, I can see there's open water near the ksisskstakioyis, and a family of seven aapsspini occupying it. I hike sunwise around north-pond, where there is another patch of open water derived from the construction flooding that continues to pour in. How the pond has not risen significantly after months of this continuous flow, I have no idea

1412 Climbing the levee, I can see down into the north wood, and there - poking around on the forest floor - is a male ring-necked pheasant. I can't imagine what he might be eating, unless he's after insects in the leaf litter. My understanding is that the pheasants eat mostly grains and berries, but this north wood is regularly flooded at the beginning of summer and really doesn't have many plants at ground level, save for some thin patches of brome. Even without the cover of brush though, I have only to take my eyes away long enough to fetch my binoculars and the pheasant disappears. He is a master of camouflage and stealth. I glass the forest floor and fail to find him again. Then I walk slowly down the levee and through the wood in attempt to track him, and only manage to catch sight of the pheasant again when I'm almost to the river, and a jogger with a large dog runs up along the cutbank and flushes the bird

1416 The jogger, seeing me, stops to ask whether I am taking pictures. When I explain that I was tracking the pheasant he just flushed, the man dismisses it and points me instead upstream, where there is an adult bald eagle perched on a limb overhanging our side of the river. He doesn't consider that the pheasant might be just as interesting to me as the eagle, and I head that way in any case, because trying to relocate the pheasant again would probably be futile now. The river is wide open, just a little bit of ice here and there, and the eagle is perched above the steepest cutbank, where the river is deep. I figure it's there to catch fish, but the eagle's presence also might explain why the aapsspini family is hanging out at the pond rather than here. Of course the eagle spots my approach right away, and though it had allowed the jogger to pass right by it along the levee trail, it takes wing when I make eye contact from a wide distance, and flies off into the forest on the other side of the river

1436 Continuing on, I drop down into the forest main and make my way out to the bulberry patch in the wet meadows, where I keep RyeCam02. Surprisingly, given my two week absence, there are relatively few images on the camera. I download them quickly and move back into the forest in search of a good log to sit on while I view them. I want to sit in the forest cathedral, but the log we usually use there has, almost directly above it, a heavy cottonwood branch that is in the process of breaking off where it meets the tree trunk, and seeing it sway in the heavy winds I decide to look elsewhere. I find an appropriate seat not far away, and there check out the images on a portable viewer I carry. While there weren't many pictures, the ones that had been captured showed me that the bulrush patch has been regularly visited by magpies, coyotes, male pheasants, and whitetail deer. Among the latter, there is at least one doe and two bucks. The younger buck has been injured, perhaps in a fight with the older one. His left antler is broken off near the base, and that side of his face is swollen

1448 I hike through the rest of the forest main toward south-pond fairly quickly and, as a result, with little to note. When I come to the duck blind, I see that the wide south pool is still entirely iced-over, but not with anything thick enough to walk on. In fact, there are large puddles on top of the ice again, being blown across the surface by the wind. The spring at the extreme southeast end of the pond is finally open again to its normal state. I wonder if this means that the river, which feeds it, has risen

1458 I next make a quick round of the owl wood to see if either the kakanottsstookiiksi or raccoons are in their normal winter haunts. Neither are, and soon I'm out by the high-level bridge, following the cutbank north again. Out on the gravel island by the bridge, there is a second aapsspini family with eight members. A bit further downstream, there are two male common mergansers hunting together. When they see me looking at them, they fly away upstream

1508 I'm back on the levee again and just starting to think about how odd it is that I haven't come across any magpies yet, when I begin to hear calls from my favorite corvids a little ways ahead. A few more paces along the trail, and I understand why they've been so scarce... the eagle is back again, and the attention of the magpies is consumed by it. This time, I pretend not to notice the huge bird perched above the river. I look at it only through my peripheral vision and keep moving along the trail. As I close the gap between us, the eagle leans over to keep an eye on me from between the branches. Just like the jogger from earlier, I am able to pass right by it, even snap a few pictures, and it doesn't fly away. All I can think is that the eagle has become accustomed to having mostly oblivious humans pass along this trail, and while it watches with caution it isn't prompted to retreat unless the human demonstrates more awareness

1516 One of the magpies stationed around the eagle follows me to north-pond, and there sets to singing a song for me that I've never heard before (and I know my magpie calls). Though impossible to render in writing, it sounds a bit like, "Wee-Wakee, Wee-Wakee, Wee-Wee-Wakee... Wee-Wakee, Wee-Wakee, Wee-Wee-Wakee." While listening to the song, my mind lingers partially back with the eagle. And by the time the singing is concluded, and the magpie flies off again, I decide not to let the opportunity pass, that I must return to the eagle to try to watch it hunt

1530 The idea is short-lived. I follow the trail again, the one that the eagle's used to seeing humans travel on. There's a bench not far from the perch, and I reason that perhaps the eagle has witnessed some of us sitting there too. So I go to the bench and take a seat, never looking directly at the bird. But I'm only at the bench for thirty seconds before it's had enough, and wings away again across the river. I then re-shoulder my pack and hike back to my vehicle, without another encounter to report

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllllllll Thoughts On Forest (18Jan11)

1058 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Over the last couple of days, we've finally received a touch of winter, a bit of snowfall and a sharp drop in temperature. This morning it is thirty-four below. I struggled to decide whether to come here, to the confluence, or to visit Sspopiikimi. I've been waiting for snow at the pond, so that I could trail the raccoons and find out where they're sleeping this year. The decision was made when I reminded myself that the coons don't come out in this kind of cold anyway, so best direct my attention elsewhere

1105 Worried that my car won't be able to climb back out if I drive into the floodplain downstream, I begin my hike at the coulee rim. Right away, there are tracks crossing and following the trail: a coyote, several white-tailed jackrabbits, and what I'm pretty sure is a deer mouse (though the field guides to mammal tracks that I own are worthless for settling the matter). The latter tracks lead in good distance, following an open trail, from beneath a concrete slab near the parking area, out about fifty meters to some entrances into the subnivian zone, and back again. I do not see anywhere that the mouse has stopped to access food

1121 I'm tempted to follow the coyote tracks, as I have every winter, but I'm very curious about what the western jumping mouse tracks will look like, down on the cliffs above the oxbow willows. So I hike the most direct route straight to the floodplain, my fingers absolutely freezing despite the fact that I'm wearing fishing gloves inside of ski gloves. On my way down, I pass the mule deer, eleven of them grazing low on the coulee slope. They are all does (or does and first-years), thirteen of them divided into families of four, four, and five. This is far fewer issikotoyi than I'm accustomed to seeing along this stretch in the cold season

1136 Once down at the sagebrush flats, I follow the treeline of the forest downstream, passing a porcupine who's eating bark high in a cottonwood tree, and a mountain cottontail sitting still atop a log pile in the chokecherries. Now my hands are warming up, and I'm able to move all of my fingers again. Eventually, I arrive at the cliff area where I had RyeCam03 set-up over the holiday. But to my surprise, there are no small rodent tracks around that I can find. None at the boulder feeding station where I know the jumping mouse to live, and none elsewhere on the cliff that I discover. Perhaps like the raccoons, they too have their limit for cold tolerance. I do, however, spot another cottontail. This one is sitting next to the entrance of a crag between two boulders that I know to be a regularly used shelter. Between this rabbit and the last, it seems clear the sikaaatsisttaa are compelled to be out during daylight in these conditions, feeding just around the entrances of their shelters to keep up their energy

1153 I move off the cliffs and follow the oxbow corridor into the forest, where the only sounds are those of the trees, some of whose branches are cracking explosively in the freeze. There are only deer tracks here, no others, and yet I'm very much immersed in a diverse pool of life. I'm conscious of the very different reality of the plants, large and small, surrounding me. Despite what poets might attempt, there is no analogy to draw between our animal familiarities and theirs, though my mind struggles to do so. The closest I can come is to say that what I see and recognize as "trees" are, crackling around me, are like a cross between the flowery antenna of a nymph and our arms, stripped of all muscle, tendon, and bone. They are circulatory in season, feelers sent toward the light and heat, in part to capture radiance, in part to shed waste. Wood is the shit of the living organism that is a tree. And the true forest is that which fills the earth beneath my feet

1213 A couple weeks ago, I positioned RyeCam03 looking out over a cottonwood that had split at its base and arched softly over a deer path. My hope was to learn what animals might make use of this scenario. I envisioned owls perched on the fallen trunk, awaiting rodents who might follow the clearing of the trail. As I arrive at this site today, a magpie passes above the forest canopy, and I can see no prints in the snow that would indicate anyone had walked or perched here. Aware that I myself am within the camera's range, I quickly shed my backpack and walk out along the tree trunk to download images off the camera trap. It has caught several over the past couple weeks, but because of the cold I'm unable to review them on-site. In these conditions, my portable viewer will download off the SD card, but doesn't have enough battery power to actually pull the images up on its screen

Note: The camera caught several night images of subjects that were out of range. The only animal to use the bent-over tree was the singular indigenous primate to this region... a human being, myself

1232 Continuing my way through the trees upstream, I arrive at the mid-forest meadow. Here, there is bit of activity. First, I roust two whitetail does, who run across the meadow toward the river. Then I hear and see a hairy woodpecker. Her chirps and movements are frantic, as she searches for morsels in the bark of the canopy. There are also two more porcupines here, one of them older and large, spaced far apart, high in cottonwood trees edging the meadow. Both porcupines are sitting upright and very still on their respective branches. I take out my camera to photograph the younger one, and when my nose, which is slowly seeping, touches the camera frame, it immediately freezes and must be torn free. It is certainly cold outside today, I can feel frost on my cheeks. But the human body, large as it is, can easily tolerate these temperatures (given the proper attire). One must either remain in a warmed shelter, or one must move. Once moving, it is not necessary or safe to build up a sweating heat. All it takes is to keep the heart pumping a bit faster than its standing rate

1259 Before leaving the forest, I hear the muted calls of aapsspini, who sound as though they're just passing by, but I check the river just in case. Sure enough, there are at least fifty geese here, just downstream from the confluence itself, lined up along both ice shelves. The river is far more frozen-over today than it has been all winter, but there's still a pretty much unbroken center stream. Before my presence disturbs the geese too much, I climb out onto the sagebrush flats, and enter the hawthorn brush where I keep RyeCam01. Again, I'm able to download, but viewing is out of the question. All I see in the snow around the camera are the tracks of cottontails and pheasants

Note: RyeCam01 caught images of cottontails, female pheasants, magpies, and a raccoon. This is the first passing of a raccoon by this camera in almost a year

1335 I hike up the coulee slope at a shallow grade, following an old service road that is now impassible, washed out in several locations. Usually in winter snow conditions, I would find lots of rodent trails along this route. Today, there are none. My suspicion is that the cold has come so suddenly and severely that they aren't chancing it, but staying warm in their burrows and waiting for the return of relative warmth that is not long to come

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllllllllllll Last Of Misamiko’komiaato’s (21Jan11)

1139 Sspopiikimi - It is the last day of Misamiko'komiaato's, and it seems our serious (and brief) freeze is over, at least for the next while. The temperature today is six degrees above zero, without significant wind. Mahoney and I starting along the west, passing deer, coyote, and vole tracks in the snow along the shale trail, making our way south so that we can have the Sun at our backs when we enter the forested areas

1153 The pond is frozen over solid, without a single open pocket, for perhaps the first time this winter. As usual, there are many coyote tracks moving across the surface, particularly around the impenetrable ksisskstakioyis (can't blame them for trying). All of the vole tracks we see along the trail are leading between one entrance and another of the subnivian zone, with no apparent stops at food sources between. Now at the south bench, we can see lots of cottontail runs in the currant and bulberry thickets above the peninsula. We've heard (but not seen) a single raven and a few magpies, all rather distant, somewhere upstream and near the coulee rim

1213 We loop down through the owl wood on our way to the river. This bit of forest is particularly quiet today, even the resident downy woodpecker couple seem absent. On the ground, we continue to see coyote and deer tracks in the snow. But we find no evidence of raccoons or rodents, and not surprisingly (given this) the owls remain elsewhere. When we do eventually reach sight of the river, we find it too is more frozen than it has been all season, though there's still a narrow open stream running almost the entire visible length. There are no goldeneyes in this open stream, and no mergansers. I'm very curious as to whether we'll continue to see goldeneyes on the river this winter, after I observed them gathering in larger groups a week or so ago. As we conduct this quick river survey, a flock of ten geese arrive from the stubble field feeding grounds. They land at their usual protective site below the high-level bridge. There is also a single goose couple standing together at the edge of the river stream by the big nesting island. This is the first individual couple we've seen, and as we're moving into the Ka'toyi moon their timing of this behavior is right on schedule. No eagles that we can see today

1241 From there, we drop into the forest main and begin hiking north. The spring is closed over completely again, due to the recent freeze. A little ways into the forest, we begin to encounter chickadees. They are hunting along the cottonwood branches high up in the canopy. Interestingly, they are spaced at fair distances from one another, where usually we find them working in fairly tight groups. Here in the forest main, we are again seeing rodent trails leading between subnivian access points, but still no sign of raccoons or even porcupines. This is not too surprising, I suppose, given the failure of almost all the berries here last summer. The absence of this fruit has meant that several species we're accustomed to finding here in winter are also gone

1300 A couple of magpies fly west over the forest canopy and, as we near the wet-meadows, we hear a pheasant erupt in clucks. It sounds like the pheasant might be in the big bulberry patch where I keep RyeCam02, but when I climb in it's nowhere to be seen. The camera, however, confirms that a male pheasant has been frequenting this brush, passing by almost daily. There is also record of regular visits by magpies, a single pass by a whitetail deer, and a coyote who came on one of the coldest nights. Outside of the brush, on the wet-meadow proper, I find places where coyotes have dug through the snow and moss to expose rodent tunnels, which they no doubt fed from

1320 Between the wet-meadows and our vehicle, we see that the flooding has ceased at north-pond, and we discuss wanting to collect the balsam buds off the large tree that was uprooted by these floods, before the city moves in with their chainsaws to clear it off the path. It sounds as though the magpies we'd seen flying above the forest were in route to something out on the golf course, though we can't see what it is. Perhaps we'll return tomorrow to have another look around

I Scout Bee And Magpie Bath (22Jan11)

1354 Sspopiikimi - It is the first day of the moon cycle Ka'toyi, so Mahoney and I are back at the pond again, excited to walk another round, to look for things we may have missed yesterday, or that have changed since. It's a few degrees colder this afternoon, and the wind has picked up. We're at three degrees above zero, but it feels like maybe ten below

1409 The most immediate and obvious change to note is the degree of snow melt that has occurred. Where we were able to observe all kinds of animal tracks yesterday, the shale trail and most of the grass on either side of it is now completely exposed. The snow has melted off the surface of north-pond to, where there's less hours of shade from the shadow of the coulee. But from the ksisskstakioyis on, the pond remains covered. Some melting has occurred here all the same, so that the coyote and deer tracks observable yesterday are now less defined, round hollows. It appears the coyotes visited overnight too, because there are a couple sets of tracks that are fresh and well-defined. As we near the wide south pool, a magpie in one of the cottonwoods on the golf greens chats back and forth with Mahoney. When it departs, we walk down the peninsula to have a closer look at the fresh coyote tracks, and are currently following them across the pond surface, below the cutbank of the currant and bulberry thickets

1417 Still walking on the pond, winding around the south pool toward the marsh, Mahoney makes a great discovery... there's a honey bee frozen on top of the snow. Since the snow only fell a few days ago, when out temperatures were around thirty below, this bee could have only come out from the hive in the relative (six degree) heat of yesterday. She was probably scouting the bulberry brush to ascertain whether there were flowers yet, but we are still three moons away from that happening. It definitely says something for the kind of winter we're having that the bees would already be sacrificing scouts on the off chance of learning that there are already flowers

[Note: We picked up the bee and brought her home on the off chance that she might not be frozen dead, but had no luck in reviving her]

1431 Passing the spring, which is still frozen over, we climb the levee to look out on the river. There are twelve aapsspini in their usual spot below the high-level bridge. No sign today of any lone couples, nor any eagles or ravens

1457 Our hike north through the forest main is uneventful today, no chickadees, woodpeckers, flickers, or anyone else. Mahoney is curious to learn whether there are any new pictures on the game-cam in the wet-meadows, so I head out that way while she waits on a log back by the forest edge. As I approach the big bulberry patch, a magpie calls out from within. The bird retreats as soon as I enter the brush, but not before calling again, revealing its more precise location at the nest they've used during the past couple seasons. The camera has just one image, that of the magpie taken earlier today. When I crawl through to the nest location, I find that the bulberry bush it's built in has split near the base of heart-rot, and is now bent over at such an angle that the nest itself (though still rather inaccessible due to the thorny branches) is only about three feet off the ground. This will not due. The couple will have to invest the six weeks or more of work to build a new home this year

1511 I rendezvous with Mahoney at the log to share the news about the magpie nest, and from there we walk out of the forest and up on the levee, to the cutbank overlooking the big river island. Out in the open stream on the other side of the island, there are three goldeneyes diving for minnows, two males and one female. While we watch them through binoculars, the kingfisher arrives, flying in chattering from across the river to land on a perch overlooking the very small open crag under the cutbank where they normally nest

1530 I approach the kingfisher with my camera, hoping to settle the matter of it's gender. It is not the same bird as last winter, this one's a male. He doesn't let me anywhere near though. The closer I come toward him, the further he moves away, until finally he flies up over the levee and into the forest main. I figure the game is up, so I turn to start walking away. As I do, the kingfisher flies right up to me, landing on the nearest branch, and scolds me harshly, then repositions himself above the open crag again. Now a second bird soars in from the forest main, and at first I think it might be another kingfisher, but it is a magpie, and it promptly chases the fisher back across the river. Now I think there's nothing left to see, and so I rejoin Mahoney a little ways downriver (where we first spotted the kingfisher in flight), and together we head toward the north wood. But no sooner do we reach the edge of the treeline than we hear the magpie back at the crag start calling, and this prompts three other magpies to fly immediately out of the north wood to meet it. The call is also responded to by two magpies across the river, who glide over to join the aggregation, and all six of them sound off with stuccato calls. They're not alarms, we're fluent enough in magpie to know that, but they do register excitement. Mahoney and I suspect we must have missed some other animal hidden over there, so we turn around and rush back. To our surprise, we arrive at the cutbank directly above the birds just in time to witness their communal bath. The magpies have selected a spot on the downriver end of the open crag which affords them an ice foothold under a few inches of river water. One by one, they take turns hopping in for a splash. For us, it's a beautiful sight, and it makes so much sense. Our magpie Derrick at home, who is consanguineally related to these birds, also likes to bathe in the evening, and demands our company to do so. What better time to cleanse than after a day of rummaging around for food, especially if you've been ripping and tearing at a carcass somewhere

1544 When the magpies finish their bath and disperse again in different directions, we head off toward our vehicle. As we walk, a family of coyotes erupts in yelps and howls up on the coulee rim. Between the scout honeybee and the communally bathing corvids, this has been the most interesting and satisfying visit to the pond this winter. I'm very glad we came

Jumping Mice, Chickadee Food, And Two-Winged Flies

2012-01-06T13:49:00.006-07:00

III Western Jumping Mouse (24Dec11)

1046 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - We've had several consecutive days of heavy winds, continuing at present, and the temperature is six degrees above. Obviously, there's no snow on the ground except in the most shadowed cold spots. I'm heading toward the confluence to check my camera traps and, hopefully, to make some progress on my study of winter leaf litter insects

1106 There's no geese here on the river this morning, and the ice shelf that had been building along the banks has receded significantly. On the downstream stretch, the river is almost entirely open. Only when I'm half-way to the oxbox willow grove, marking the start of the confluence floodplain, does the ice on the water reach out toward midstream. Right where it does so is one of the boulders that I tried unsuccessfully to fish from the other week. I'd reminded myself to bring along a small plastic container today, so I could gather up and store the three fishing kits I'd concealed under rocks. Even in the short time that's elapsed since my last visit, I've forgotten which rock I hid this first kit under, and so I conduct a brief search. I turn ten or twelve rocks. Under one of them, I find a vivid metallic ground beetle frozen beside an apparently deceased sow bug, lying on its back, legs up. When I eventually do find the rock with the fishing kit under it, and observing that the river continues to remain fairly open, I decide to just leave the it where it is. If the warm weather keeps up, I may try throwing the lines in again one of these days soon. Best that I stop relocate all three kits this afternoon though, so I can at least be reminded of which rocks they're cached under

1139 A bit further upstream, it takes even more effort to relocate the second of my fishing kits. This time I lift closer to twenty rocks, none of which had any insects under them, before finding the cache. Then, moving on from there, I make my way along the willow patch and climb the nearby sandstone cliff to where RyeCam03 was set to capture images of what I suspected would be bushy-tailed woodrats. Instead, the reward was a series of nocturnal images of what I'm pretty sure are western jumping mice and a few passing cottontails. So the jumping mice are the ones collecting gumweed, while the cottontails are probably responsible for the larger size droppings I had attributed hypothetically to woodrats

1211 I pack up the camera trap, figuring it best to take it along on my walk through the forest today, in case any new mysteries arise. Back down in the willow patch, I set a couple of rabbit snares, just in case I might catch one while down here today. I also move my box trap up onto the meadow in the willow round, where I figure there'll be a better chance of it being visited by pheasants and partridges, and not inadvertently catching beavers. Even though it's Christmas Eve, and I know it's unlikely I'll be back tomorrow, I go ahead and set the mechanism for the box trap, but leave it unbaited. At latest, I'll be coming around again in two nights

1232 With my snares all ready, I move off into the forest do a bit of sampling in the leaf litter while making my way to the other side of the floodplain, where I keep RyeCam01. As it turns out though, the potential for me to carry out the intended insect study here is unlikely. The owl wood and north wood of Sspopiikimi are far more conducive to it. Here at the confluence, there is a lot of brome and buckbrush growing on the forest flood. And while there are plenty of leaves, to be sure, they do not form the same kind of thick mats that they do in those areas where heavy flooding is more routine. So relenting from that part of my agenda, I begin instead to simply look around for the next interesting opportunity. There is a small family of mule deer here this afternoon, including a decent sized buck. Unfortunately, the crunching sound of my footsteps as I approach is enough to send them running out of the forest and off toward the coulee slope. Just beyond where these deer had been when I roused them, I came to a tree with an interesting, elongated hollow. This cavity had several old mushrooms growing out of it's walls, as well as two bird nests. One of the nests is little more than a platform of grass, and probably belonged to mourning doves. The other is a classic little grass bowl, and it is filled to the rim with some unidentified, brownish, granular substance. I pull this nest out to have a better look at the contents. But aside from several bits of insect exoskeleton, I can't make sense of what the bulk of this rodent nest or larder. The material appears to be vegetable, but I can't be sure. Ultimately, I decide to just put the bird nest back in the cavity and keep my eyes open for others of its type that are similarly filled

1311 I must not be very alert today, probably owing to the very few hours of sleep I got last night. All the way through the rest of the forest to the black cliffs upstream at the confluence proper, I find not a single thing worth stopping to look at. I do drop by my little shelter and position four more logs along the walls. In a small poplar near the shelter, a hornet nest has been revealed. It's remained surprisingly in-tact. Soon I am up in the coulee draw amidst the hawthorns, where I keep RyeCam01. It's been a couple weeks since I last checked on this camera, and it turns out to be filled with images. Almost all of them are nocturnal shots of mountain cottontails, with a few deer passings, one coyote, one porcupine, and about five daylight visits by magpies. I'm surprised that, in almost a year now, I've not caught pictures of any weasels, or for that matter even jackrabbits. But I suppose that's what this experiment is about, to show what's actually coming round. And in the hawthorns, who's here is predominantly mountain cottontails

1338 For the route back downstream, I opt to follow the riverbank. Partway along, I hear a rustle of leaves near a big pile of old drift-logs, and follow the sound to its cottontail source. No shortage of rabbits in this floodplain. Past that, I come to the ksisskstakioyis. Here, where the water is deep and slow-moving, all is iced over, from shore to shore. But it's not a long swim, for a beaver anyway, to arrive again at open water out toward the willow round. Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that the ksisskstaki are still coming ashore at night to gather willows. Not too tough a winter for the river beaver

1356 Since I found no inspiration for intrigue in the forest during my hike, when I arrive back at the oxbow willow patch, I again climb the sandstone cliff and place RyeCam03 at the same boulder overhang where it's been during the last week or so. As I do this, there is magpie chatter close by, at the edge of the forest. I should probably go see what they're excited about, but I'm too tired and I know my family would appreciate for me to come home

1437 The last thing I do before hiking back to my vehicle is check and disassemble the snares. Nothing has been caught, but I will set up perhaps a dozen more after Christmas and get us stocked on rabbit meat. The return hike along the cliffs is entirely uneventful. There are still no geese on the river, which means no coyotes or eagles as well. Must be up on the stubble-fields above the coulee rim. I really wish we'd get some serious snow

IIII ) l Search For Chickadee Food (26Dec11)

1344 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - the winds continue, a few degrees colder now at just four above, but still comfortable enough for the acclimatized. No thermals necessary in the middle of this abnormal winter. I'm just out for a brief walk today, making sure there's nobody stuck in my box trap. But one of the Christmas gifts I received yesterday is a powerful little flashlight, and I do want to take this earliest opportunity to give it a test run

1411 As with my last visit, which was also during a relatively warm but windy afternoon, there are no geese down here and the river is open. While I hike along the base of the cliffs, I stop at each easily accessible crag, rock overhang, or burrow I see. At first, I'm counting the stops. But soon I give up on that, and by the time I reach the oxbow willow grove, I've checked probably two dozen nooks frequented by rodents. All of them contain plant materials, usually comprised of just a single species. There are three plants the rodents have been gathering: wild licorice, gumweed, and russian thistle. Which plant is stored in which nook seems to me determined by proximity. In all cases, it is the seed the rodents are after, and so only the once-flowered tip of the plant is gathered. For several weeks, I have been referring to these collections as larders or caches, but looking more closely now I can see that all of the seeds have already been removed. In other words, these nooks are not being used for storage at all, but merely as protected areas that the rodents can retreat to while working out the seed extraction. Since my camera trap (RyeCam03) already confirmed that the gumweed eater is most likely the western jumping mouse, and as all of these eating stations follow a similar pattern, I'd conjecture the same species is involved. There is just one oddball nook, containing both russian thistle and long-leaved sage. There is sage in proximity of some of the other nooks, but no similar evidence of collection. Perhaps in this case, a sagebrush vole is also involved, as the camera trap caught images of one of them at its earlier cliffside location. Whatever the case, it's clearly very helpful to have a little flashlight on hand, something I haven't enjoyed since discovering hibernating drone flies in the bank swallow cavities last winter

1430 I'm glad to find there are no animals in my box trap, given that I'd left if for two nights unattended. Since I plan to be back again by morning, I go ahead and reset my two rabbit snares. I'd like to get away from snaring though, because even with frequent checks it's often the case that coyotes will get called to the scene (probably by magpies) before I do. Instead, I have in mind building a few more live traps, much like the box I already have, but using the deadwood that's already out here, lashed together, rather than hauling in another alien-looking chicken wire monstrosity

1444 I've now made my way, along the oxbow corridor, into the floodplain forest in search of rose hips to bait my box trap with. There are three magpies calling excitedly nearby, and when I follow their calls it leads me to the same small family of mule deer I encountered during my last visit. Today they are bedded in the chokecherry brush, but on my approach run out of the forest, onto the sagebrush flats, heading again toward the coulee slope. As the deer depart, so too do the magpies, but within seconds a downy woodpecker glides into view, landing on a nearby cottonwood. Observing the woodpecker I notice that, like the chickadees who are often companions of the downys, it is not extracting its food from inside of the wood, but merely gleaning from the tree's surface. This I recognize as an opportunity to learn something... what insects could it possibly find in this manner during the middle of winter?

1533 For almost an hour, I go to work again with the flashlight, this time closely inspecting the furrows of cottonwood bark. I select three trees. Two of them are larger, with trunks at least two feet in diameter. The other three is smaller, with a trunk diameter of about thirteen or fourteen inches. Of course, the larger trees have deeper furrows, and predictably more insects to offer. My survey area comprises about two verticle feet, at my eye-level, around the circumference of each tree. What I find are plenty of exoskeletons, already-hatched spider eggs, and something else... the small, bark-colored coccoons of what I suspect is case-bearing moth species, lots of them. Surely this can't be all the available food on these trees, but it's a start to a survey I can readily continue with while visiting this forest

1552 With a couple dozen rose-hips in hand, I return to the box trap and drop them in through the chicken wire. As I do, a flock of twenty-one aapsspini fly high overhead, moving from my side of the coulee to somewhere across the river and over the opposite rim. I then move into the willow thicket to pass the rabbit snares once more before I leave. I also want to check RyeCam03 up on the cliff above, and as I begin to climb a juvenile bald eagle circles overhead. This bird's presence was probably the impetus for the geese shifting over to the other side of the river

1624 It turns out the camera trap has collected just four nocturnal images over the past couple nights, all of them confirming again that it is the western jumping mouse who predominantly inhabits this particular site. With these images downloaded, I make my way back downstream to my vehicle without any other encounters. The Sun has gone down and dusk's shadows are upon the coulee

IIII ) ll Glimpse Of Mallards (27Dec11)

0949 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Making a quick run this morning to check my snares and collect a couple samples of the case-bearer moth larva shells that I found yesterday in the deep bark furrows of the cottonwoods. I have some errands to attend to in town this morning, so I can't stay long. The high winds continue, and the temperature has dropped another couple degrees, but it's still above freezing and expected to warm up over the next couple days

1009 I thought perhaps I'd be early enough to find geese lingering on the small ice shelves remaining at the river's edge, but there are none. Instead, today there is a family of seven mallard ducks, who depart as soon as I notice them. As I hike along, following the base of the cliffs, I begin to wonder whether the geese are even sleeping here this year. Without our usual ice-over, and the open crags here, they really have no particular reason to stay along this stretch. There are other places with islands surrounded by open water that would offer far better protection from land-based predators

1014 While I consider the geese, and as I approach the oxbow willow thickets, I hear the unmistakable stuccato whistling sound of a goldeneye taking flight from somewhere upstream. Looking in that direction, I see there's a coyote hunting along the gravel bar on the bank opposite me. The coyote and eye meet one another's gaze, and she immediately turns and trots off around the riverbend

1030 As I enter the willows to check my snares, I hear the calls of a ring-necked pheasant up on the adjacent meadow. It gives me hope that I may find it caught in my box trap. The snares themselves are empty, but each has been visited - one of them pulled into a burrow, where the rabbit managed to slip it off, the other simply thrown to the side. I reset both of them, confident that success won't be long away. The box trap, when I climb up to the meadow to check it, is empty. I add corn kernels to the rose hips within as bait. If I had time today, I'd build another live trap of this sort from the abundant deadwood in the area. Perhaps tomorrow

1059 Following the oxbow, I breach the edge of the forest, and there set to work surveying the bark of cottonwood trees in the same manner as yesterday. Today I select four trees, three of them being older, with deeper furrows. They are situated in the same kind of floral environment as the three I inspected yesterday, surrounded by chokecherry, buckbrush, brome and canada thistle. Almost immediately, I begin finding the little case-bearer pods, though overall fewer than before, and no other insects to speak of. While I work, a downy woodpecker flies in and hops around above, picking at something in the canopy. I select two of the larger, most promising moth cases as samples to open at home

Note: Neither of these cases turn out to have anything in them. They are simply the shell remains that housed and protected the larvae during a transformation earlier in the season. Back to the drawing board regarding available woodpecker and chickadee food to be found on the surface of these trees

1111 With my moth cases in hand, I hurry back out of the forest, through the willows, and out along the base of the sandstone cliffs. In the short time I've been gone, a flock of thirty-one geese have silently arrived, and are standing on the thin ice shelf against the opposite shore. They must have gone up over the rim earlier, fed on the stubble-fields until full, and returned to rest. So much for my hypothesis that they're rejecting this area due to the open river. On the other hand though, they are behaving differently. They're safe enough (given that I carry no rifle) on the opposite shore, yet they quickly take wing when I come parallel to them. A few weeks ago, when it was colder and they were conserving energy, they were not this skittish

1129 I make two brief stops before reaching my vehicle. The first is at one of my fishing kits. Given the predictions of warmer weather the next couple days, and the absence of almost all shoreline ice at this particular station, I decide to go ahead and throw my line in again. I also stop off at a patch of tall goldenrods. Almost all of the stems have the spherical galls, produced from a chemical reaction to the saliva of goldenrod gall fly larva as they eat into the pith of the stems. I have heard that a good many insects may make use of these galls during winter, so I decide to take three of them home as samples

Note: Cutting open the goldenrod galls, I find in each case only the larva of the gall fly. All of them have excavated their escape tunnels already, and are waiting out the winter, preparing to pupate when we again transition to summer

IIII ) lll The Young Porcupine (28Dec11)

1013 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Back for another morning round, to attend my traps and perhaps explore the forest. My thermometer reads at seven degrees above zero, but owing to the continuing high winds it doesn't actually feel any warmer than yesterday

1029 I walk my usual route along the base of the cliffs at the river's edge. I notice up ahead there's something in the water near the one fishing kit where I have my line out. Moving closer, I can see it is a lone goose, and it's adopting a posture I recognize from the nesting season as an attempt to conceal it's presence, holding it's head and neck horizontal on the water's surface. At first I consider the possibility that this bird might be hooked or otherwise tangled on my line, but then it paddles across to the other side of the river and drifts stealthily with current downstream. I check the line just to make sure, and all is intact. It must be that this goose has a broken wing or some other debilitating injury that has forced it to remain at the river while all the others have gone to feed at the stubble-fields. With a river between us, I may never know for sure. Not likely I'll feel compelled enough to wade out into the icy water, and even if I did the goose could easily evade me. I'll just have to keep an eye out for this one during future visits

1048 I make my way to the oxbow willow grove, and there find my two cottontail snares in the same condition as yesterday - one has been pulled into a burrow, but the animal got loose, the other is flung off to the side. It may just be that positioning them at the den entrances is not going to work, and that I'll need to go back to snaring only along the runs. But I figure it's worth one more attempt, and so I reset them again in the same positions

1102 Next I climb onto the willow-round meadow and check my box trap. It has caught another porcupine or, judging by the size of it, the same yearling as last week. I open the box door and sit down a short distance away to smoke and consider my options. It is the opportunity for this animal to make an escape because, having now caught her twice, and given that even at her size she still has far more meat than a cottontail, I don't have many reservations about eating her this time. I smoke and wait for her to depart. When she doesn't go, I take up a strong stick, coax her out, and brain her

1208 I carry the porcupine out into the meadow away from the trap, and for the next hour or so process her. It might not have taken me so long, but my knife isn't as sharp as it should be, and she's pretty fatty. I leave her guts in the meadow for the coyotes to find, hang the heart and lungs on a branch of a nearby tree as an offering to the magpies, and pack all the meat along with the liver and kidneys

1230 There is only the matter of the porcupine hide to deal with. I don't want to leave it where the coyotes or corvids will find it, because the quills are too dangerous. So I bring it along as I head back to the cliffs. At a certain draw, I know of a sheltered little sandstone nook visited only by mice and voles. This is where I place the hide. The flesh and fat will be eaten away, and I can return later and collect the discarded quills

1245 The injured goose is nowhere to be seen on my route back. Chances are its gone even further downstream. I will look for it again when I return in the morning. No hike in the forest today, just the mixed emotions of an omnivore who doesn't like killing animals, yet detests absolutely his dependence on the commercial food industry, and hopes eventually to escape all participation in it

IIII ) llll The Old Porcupine (29Dec11)

0931 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Wind, wind, and completely exposed earth. There were rainstorms upstream yesterday. Thunder was heard. I keep thinking about the river beavers, how they secured their food caches directly to the walls of their lodge. And the garter snakes, how they elected not to den in their usual cutbank hibernaculum. How did these changes relate to the (non)winter we're having? What's to come? I'm expecting a deluge of rain at the season's close, floods, early flowering, and another summer without berries. We'll see...

0948 I hike along the bank of the river, the base of the sandstone cliffs. There's a raven calling from somewhere near the opposite coulee rim, but I can't spot it. A lone male goldeneye takes wing upstream at my approach. I stop at my fishing line, pull it in, and find it untouched. It's baited with a piece if porcupine liver, something I'd think would be irresistible. What was the goldeneye eating anyway, if not fish? I toss the line back in and continue on

1000 Soon I'm at the site of the two cottontail snares I have set-up, in what would be the banks of a river oxbow, were it not dry. Like the fishing line, neither snare has been visited

1022 From there, I climb up onto the willow-rounds meadow to check my box trap. I can see it through the bulberry and hawthorn brush as I near. The door is down, someone's inside. When I reach the trap itself, I'm met with another porcupine, this one an older male, large and muscled. I haul the box out into the open meadow, and carry along the same club I used before. When I open the door, the porcupine runs, but I close the gap in just a few bounds, and he stops for a second to take a defensive posture. Soon, but not nearly soon enough, he's dead. A minute or two stretches on and on. The resilience of life amazes me. People who never struggle to bring death to another mammal with their own hands, and their own strength, who never have to be the immediate cause of it, and look it in the eye, maybe they don't deserve to eat any meat

1110 I've brought a slightly smaller, sharper knife today, but the process still takes me some time. I work patiently, but still manage to get two quills in my hand and slice open one of my fingers. The raven who was calling before (I presume) crosses the river and lands up above me on the cliffs, waiting its turn. A magpie flies from the forest into the nearby willows, silent, also waiting. I don't bother placing the heart and lungs up on the tree branch today, given that the birds are right here, and will come down to take their share as soon as I leave. I wonder how many others are observing me from concealed positions in the distance. All of the guts from yesterday have been cleaned up. I'm sure these ones will be too. When I've packed what I'm taking away, I again carry the dangerous hide off to the cliffs, and deposit it in the same sandstone nook as yesterday's

1138 As I hike back along the cliffs, I get little whiffs of the male porcupine musk I'm wearing. I stop just once, to wash the blood off my hands in the river. When I'm almost back to the car, there's a couple with a big red dog walking toward me on the trail. We exchange greetings, but then the dog gets my scent and I can see the fear take over. It takes some effort for the man to hold their dog back from attacking me. And by the way they both react, I can tell they don't understand the motivation for its behavioral shift. I just keep moving

IIII ) lllll Chickadee Food Continued (30Dec11)

1013 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Finally, a day with relatively no wind. According to my thermometer, and verified by the appearance of the nimbostratus clouds above, we are at the freezing point this morning, zero degrees. Upstream, where I'm headed, there is a flock of perhaps thirty aapsspini dropping down toward the river

1031 When I reach the river and begin hiking along the base of the cliffs, the aapsspini take wing again. Likely they are being disturbed by a coyote, as I don't see any eagles around. What I am noticing though, hugging the sand by my feet, are flying insects. They a few, and at first I think they might be hallucinations, but eventually one of them lands just long enough for me to recognize it as a small two-winged fly. Unfortunately, it's gone again just as quickly as it arrived. By the time I make it to the half-way point along the cliffs, where I have a fishing line in the water, I've caught glimpses of six of these flies. None are willing to sit still for a macro photo. Overnight, my fishing line has become trapped in some new ice. I'll have to wait for a thaw before I can pull it in to shore again

1044 As I near the oxbow willows, it occurs to me that I haven't brought my knife. I took out of my pack at home to wash it, and never put it back. Fortunately, it turns out nobody has worked their way into any of my traps, and so I have no need for the knife today anyway. There are a few magpies already gathering around as I make my way through, checking the snares and such. When I inspect yesterday's kill site, I find they have eaten everything except the porcupine's stomach and a short section of intestines. Other parts of the intestine have been carefully stripped away, leaving behind the woody droppings that had been forming within

1124 For a little while, I walk around in the willow-round meadow, searching for an optimal site to build a live pheasant trap. I find a couple possibilities, but am also thinking it might be better to check the mid-forest meadow as well, something I can save for another visit. Right now I'm more interested in working on my phenology studies. I move back through the willows and climb the sandstone cliff, up to where I have RyeCam03 set up by a large boulder and rodent feeding station. Once again, it has captured a set of nocturnal images of the western jumping mice. I'm going to take the camera with me into the forest to look for a new mystery worth directing its lens toward

1205 On my way to the forest, I collect my two cottontail snares and reposition them away from the den entrances, where they don't seem to be working, into the dense thickets, where they've been successful in the past. I then follow the oxbow corridor into the trees. At first, I consider aiming the camera trap down the corridor itself, which I know serves as a highway for the animals. But not only would such positioning put the camera at risk for theft by humans who might follow the well-trodden trail, but its also not such a big question for me, which animals use this corridor. Instead, I find an large snag poplar up in the woodline above the oxbow cutbank that is appears to be especially favored by the woodpeckers. One aspect of this snag in particular raises my curiosity, and that is a large rectangular-shaped cavity. The known woodpecker residents of this floodplain in winter are the downy, hairy, and northern flicker, none of whom carve cavities of this shape or size. To me, although the cavity probably is just a widened flicker hole, it looks very much like the work of a pilleated woodpecker. Hopefully, the game-cam will settle the matter

1230 Down below the woodpecker snag, lying half-into the oxbow corridor itself, is a recently fallen cottonwood tree. I recognize it as probably the best opportunity I'm going to get for searching the canopy for potential chickadee and downy woodpecker food. I know these birds glean from the tree surface, but my inspections of several trunks hasn't turned up any insects. So I work my way from the terminal budding ends of this fallen giant, all the way down to that part of the trunk's base where it split. I pay special attention to what I figure would be the most likely places to find eggs or overwintering larvae - at the buds themselves, in the little hollows where twigs meet branches or branches meet trunk, under the loose bark by the diplodia galls, and in deep bark furrows. To my disappointment, I don't find anything. The only thing I am able to sleuth out is how the tree came to fall. There is a place on the trunk where a large branch once broke away, creating a wound that never completely healed over. And given the high winds we've had, leveraged against this weak spot, the wood gave way. It is very possible that any insects the tree did harbor were shaken loose from the impact of the fall

1253 I start making my way back out again, and get as far as the willow thickets, when I begin hearing the chirps and songs of chickadees. Following the sound, I come upon a group of five birds hunting in three young poplars. I get as close as they will allow and watch through binoculars as they survey these trees for food. For the most part, they don't appear to be coming up with much, if anything, from their search. Just two or three times do I observe activity that looks like they might have been successful. The chickadees hop quickly from one spot to another on the branches, looking but rarely testing with their beaks. Where they do really poke around is in the nooks at the base of the branches and branchlets, and under some bark that has been loosened by porcupines. It takes them only ten minutes or so to survey these three juvenile trees before they flitter off to hunt elsewhere. But watching them has given me confidence at least that my methods of searching for their food sources are on the right track

1313 On my way back along the cliff base, following the river downstream, I catch glimpses of two or three more of the small flies. Again, they come and go from my sight so fast that I don't have a chance to take any pictures, and so will not be able to identify them by species later. Perhaps they'll be out again tomorrow and I'll get my shot. I also come across a group of seven goldeneyes, who immediately take wing and fly whistling upstream. It is odd to see even this many goldeneyes together on the river. I'm used to only finding two or three in one place at most. I wonder if perhaps they're already getting the urge to migrate north again. Then, when almost back to my vehicle, a mature bald eagle passes low, directly overhead, moving in the same direction as the goldeneyes had, back toward the area I'd just come from. There seems to me to be fewer eagles surveying the river this winter, probably owing to the lack of ice and cold that would keep more of the geese down here throughout the day

IIII ) llllll Hibernating Anthomyiids (31Dec11)

1055 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Our second relatively windless morning, and this visit begins much the way that yesterday's concluded, with niipomakiiksi. As I walk in, I first observe a male pheasant flying to land near the opposite shore of the river, and then hear the chirps of nearby chickadees. Following the sound, I find them scouring a couple cottonwood trees. Soon, however, they flitter down, one after the next, into a large patch of bulberries below. There are still some shriveled fruits to be found on these bushes, and though I don't witness it with my own eyes, I figure there's a good change the chickadees are eating at least some of these, along with any insects they might find. I take a look at the branches of a couple of these bushes, and find no obvious insect presence. But then, I still haven't figured out what they might be eating from the cottonwoods either

1135 While I follow the niipomakiiksi, another event begins to unfold on the river. At least a thousand aapsspini arrive from fields above the coulee rim. The scene is much like that which occurs at dusk, with flock after flock descending, most of them landing on the ice shelf of the opposite shore. They are pursued by a juvenile bald eagle who, upon seeing me there, turns about and glides downstream. The geese are safe for the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if the coyotes show up soon. I hike a ways along the base of the cliffs, then climb up and find a good boulder to sit next to while I wait and watch

1156 When the geese begin to depart again despite the absence of coyotes, I move on. I've not seen any of the flies along the cliffs that were out yesterday. When I get to the oxbow and willow-rounds meadow, I find my box trap empty again, but this time empty also of the corn I'd dropped in as bait. Since the trap hasn't been tripped, I can only assume its been raided by someone too small to bump the trigger stick, probably mice. I haven't brought any more corn with me, so perhaps I'll use this as an opportunity to plan a break for tomorrow

1216 Next I check on the rabbit snares. They too are empty, but one has been nudged off to the side. I pull both of them so that I won't have to be concerned about tomorrow. Then I follow the oxbow further, into the forest, and download the memory card of RyeCam03, at the woodpecker tree. No animals have passed by as yet

1254 Not quite sure what to take on from here, I consider hiking to the other end of the floodplain to check RyeCam01. But then I remember the tree hollow from last week, the one with mushrooms and an old bird's nest that had been filled to the rim with some as-yet unifentified material. I decide to take a second run at it. After relocating the tree, I again remove the next. This time, however, I almost immediately notice something I'd completely overlooked before... the outside of the nest, where it pressed against the wood of the tree, is sheltering hibernating anthomyiid flies. They are somewhat alert. When I touch them, however lightly, they shuffle to reposition themselves. Turning to inspect the inside of the nest, I find it is mud-lined, once home to a robin. The bowl is filled with a lot of small particles. Some of them are woody, like porcupine or beaver droppings that had disintegrated. There are also identifiable mouse turds, some small seeds, and reddish egg casings from an unknown insect. Overtop of this assorted collection, someone (presumably a deer mouse) has packed a bed of dry grass leaves. I return the nest to its little shelf in the hollow, which appears to be a site where a large branch once broke off, leaving the tree to attempt healing. Below the hollow, there is yellowish sap leaking out of the bark of the trunk. It's dripping down to the ground, but presently iced over. When I rub it with my finger, it liquifies. There is no stickiness to it, and it doesn't have a noticeable smell

1324 Moving on, I search part of the forest for other trees with similar features. In total I locate four more good-sized hollows created by large branches that had dropped off. Two of them have robin nests, and of these I'm only able to extract one (the other is too glued in by mud). There are no hibernating flies under the nest I remove. The tree that houses it has a wide, dark stain under the hollow, as though it had bled a similar sap previously. I also saw sap running and freezing beneath the hollow of a non-nest tree, and in both of the non-nest hollows there was accumulations of the crumbly, woody material similar to that found in the first nest, as well as the red-colored insect egg casings. From one of these trees, where the healing wasn't as extensive, I could see under the bark that the crumbly material was remnant from the work of poplar borer beetles, something I should have recognized straight away

1338 My arrival back at the river incites panicked responses from several birds. First, a male pheasant, perhaps the same one from earlier, flies noisily up a draw when I pass close to him. Then, at the cutbank, a group of six goldeneyes whistle-wing downstream, and their reaction startles a small group of aapsspini into crossing the river. There are still about fifty geese lingering down here, in families of between five to seven birds, spaced out from one another along the shoreline

1353 The goldeneyes have landed about a hundred meters downstream from me and are drifting ahead as I walk. Their movement seems to be at about the same pace as mine. As I pass each aapsspini family, the sentinel males issue their usual grunts, "Be aware. Everyone be aware." Soon I am closing in on the car

IIII ) llllllllll Bluebottles And Wolf Spiders (4Jan11)

0941 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - It's the last day of my winter break, and another fairly warm one out here. I need to make my way to the oxbow willows to remove the rabbit snares and close up the box trap, and I'll be heading into the forest to collect the images off both my game-cams

I've made brief runs out over the past couple mornings, just to check on things. The snares, four of them in total at this point, hadn't been touched. The box trap had been raided each night for its bait (corn and peanut butter), but whoever's been eating it is small and delicate enough that they haven't budged the trip-stick

0941 Just as during the previous two mornings, there are some aapsspini on the river this morning. As I pass along the base of the sandstone cliffs, a flock of twenty-one geese paddle across to the opposite shore, and there they take to the air as two groups of ten and eleven members respectively. When I get to the floodplain and check the box trap, I find my bait has been removed againburns still nobody is in there, yet this time the trigger stick has been moved and the door is closed. I suppose a magpie might be able to work its way out between the mesh but, given that there's not a single feather to show for it, I think it more likely the work of mice

1016 There's a magpie who follows me through the oxbow willows to check my snares, none of which have seen any rabbits. It's not really surprising to me that the snares haven't been successful. The rule of thumb is that you should put up at least ten, and for most of the break I only used two. This was owing to my not being very enthusiastic about snare use to begin with, since the coyotes often beat me to the kill. In any case, I reel up the four that I have and stow them in the bush for the future, then continue on along the oxbow to RyeCam03. I've had this camera directed at an old snag that shows extensive woodpecker use, including a rectangular cavity entrance that is unusual for the species most often residing here. When I download the memory card, it shows the camera has taken more than four-hundred photos over the past three nights. Scanning through them in my viewer, it seems that all of these images were triggered by the movement of clematis vines swinging in the wind. There is no way to get around this problem without cutting the clematis down, and since new growth will issue from these old vines I don't want to do that. Best just to take the camera with me and find a new subject to direct it toward

1041 The quickest route to the upstream end of this floodplain and RyeCam01 is through the sagebrush flats, so that's the path I take. Walking along, I have to unzip my jacket and remove my touque. It's so warm today, I'm almost tempted to climb the coulee slope and check in on the rattlesnakes. It would be totally bizarre if I were to find them basking in this moon. There's pressing demands at home today though, so I decide to trudge on. When I get to hawthorns, I learn that activity has carried on here as usual for the past couple weeks. Most of the images are of mountain cottontails, though there are also magpies and pheasants. Curiously, the coyote and mule deer only make a single appearance each

1104 For my return route across the floodplain, I opt for the forest. I need to decide on a new subject for RyeCam03. I'm lonely for Sspopiikimi, so don't plan to come back here aain for at least a week or more. The new camera position must be somewhere fairly secluded, so that if anybody does come through in the meantime they're not likely to spot it. I have in mind to find a good log to aim it at. A lot of times during my winter walks, if I'm trailing coyotes through the snow, I've noticed that they use long logs as runs. I'm interested to see whether this is something they only do during snow cover, or if it is a more general strategy for navigating the forest. There are several logs along my path that would work for this experiment, but I eventually decide on one that's a bit different. Rather than being flush to the ground, the log I select is from a tree that has split vertically at the base and is bent over, forming a shallow arch that, at its greatest height, is about six feet off the forest floor. There's evidence of porcupine use on the log/tree, the trunk of which is thick enough for me to walk along from one end to the other, but it might be fun to see if anyone else uses this as a path or perch. I set the camera against the trunk of a neighboring tree, facing north so that the lens isn't pointed at the sun. This provides a perfect view of the length of the horizontal trunk

1120 Continuing through the forest, I scare up two whitetail does who are bedded down not far off my path. Just after they bound from view, and in the direction they ran, I hear a voice that sounds very much like a raccoon. When I look for the source though, I only see a magpie. The bird is watching me, an has probably been following me most of the day, as I've heard one or more magpies over my shoulder ever since moving through the oxbow willow. But if this bird made the strange raccoon noise, it is nothing like I've ever heard from them before. Certainly not out of the realm of possibility though, my magpie friend at home speaks several sentences in clear English. Yet, when I get back to the sandstone cliffs, I notice a print in the sand that makes me doubt it's the bird. There is a clear line of raccoon tracks. Fairly fresh, or I'd have noticed them before. It's not often I see raccoons down here. These are not like the bold urban coons who have no qualms revealing themselves. Our raccoons are masters of stealth and camouflage. The only way I've ever located them at will was with the aid of snow-fall

1138 The last stretch of my hike, back along the cliffs again, holds a nice surprise. There are not just a handful, but hundreds of the two-winged flies I'd spotted only glimpses of a few days back. This time, they are so abundant that I have no problem getting pictures, and I think they are bluebottles (though they lack the sheen I've seen in other seasons). And it's not only these flies, there are also hundreds of a particular species of wolf spider, who I imagine are feasting on the bluebottles. This is turning out to be a very strange winter indeed. So concludes the first holidy break I've ever had with the earth exposed and river wide open

Ravens And Leaf Litter

2011-12-19T11:35:00.002-07:00

IIII ) lllllllllll Positioning The Box Trap (8Dec11)

1142 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - I've driven to the floodplain at a point a little ways downstream from my usual stomping grounds. Toward the end of last winter, I built an old-fashioned box-trap suitable for catching small mammals and grouse-like birds live. It's a bit heavy, this box, and I've been waiting for the river to freeze over so I can easily drag it by sled to the confluence. When I woke up this morning and found we were at sixteen below, I figured that at least a decent swath of the river along the shoreline would be frozen now, and so I set out to haul the trap. Unfortunately, I've overestimated the power of this brief shot of real cold, and the strip of ice along the river shore is hardly much wider than the box itself. All the same, having already brought it this far, I'm determined to pull it upstream anyway

1206 It's a slow progression from where I park to get the sled and trap down to the bank, and then to navigate it by rope along the little strip of ice. There are about a hundred aapsspini down on the river when I arrive, and of course they soon move out after witnessing this unpredictable human thing going on. Once the geese are gone, the work has me moving ahead of or beside the sled, depending on the obstacles faced, and pulling it along bit by bit, while the ice makes all kinds of twanging and crackling sounds. By the time I reach the beginning of the sandstone cliffs, I'm already hot. I have to stop and remove my ski-gloves and mask

1243 It takes me another forty minutes to maneuver the sled along the ice below the cliffs, upstream to the next floodplain. Now I've removed my jacket too, and am exploring the willow thickets looking for a good place to set-up. The tracks I'm seeing are all mountain cottontail, coyote, and magpie. There are also some fairly recent signs of porcupine visits. I'm not seeing any pheasant or partridge tracks, but then this snow only fell yesterday, so it could just be they haven't been down here since. Now comes the hard part, maneuvering my box through the tight willow maze. Once it's in place, I'll have a bite of lunch, and then there are a couple other things I want to attend to. I'd like to look around for last summer's nests in the willows, and try to find out which birds are preferring use of this area for breeding. I also need to climb the sandstone cliff to check RyeCam03. I passed the site of this game-cam on the way, and was tempted to climb up at that point, but I figure it's best to get my trap off the ice in case some other hiker happens to come along

1314 Negotiating the willows with the sled turns out to be easier than expected. I follow an old beaver canal straight from the shoreline, and deep into the thickets. Here I find a secluded place to set everything up, baited with corn in hopes of drawing pheasants or partridges, and stashed the sled a ways off where it might come in handy for moving the box into the forest later in the season, before the floods submerse these thickets. I've left my pack and jacket back at the trap site, and have brought my coffee and sandwich back to the river cutbank for a lunch break. With the waters still so open, the beavers are continuing to gather food still. From drags in the snow, I can see they were here even last night

1343 I sit down at the riverside to eat lunch, with my legs dangling off the cutbank. Upstream a short distance, there's a flock of about a dozen aapsspini on my shore. Just as I finish all I'm going to eat of my sandwich, and light up a cigarette, I hear the geese start giving their "be aware" grunts. Looking over, they're starting to paddle across to the opposite shore, and I can see why. There's a large coyote pacing back and forth on the bank, trying to figure out how to get to them. The coyote's coat is unusually orange, almost like a red fox. But this is definitely no fox. Moving quietly, I head back into the thickets to retrieve a video camera from my pack. When I return to the cutbank, the coyote's still there, but a bit out of range for any good footage. So I again move, this time upstream and out of eye-shot of the animal. But of course coyote doesn't really rely so much on eyes anyway, and when I take another peek to see if I'm close enough, he is gone. The geese are all the way over to the opposite shore now. I'll hang tight a bit to see what happens. One thing I know... if you want to know where all the action is during winter, go find the geese

1409 Nothing further transpires with the geese while I watch, and soon I'm off to survey part of the willow thickets for nests. I find a couple old nests, probably from a couple years back, and then finally one that looks more recent. This latter nest is woven primarily of thin strands of some kind of reddish root I recognize from the river shores. It may be willow, or poplar, or wild licorice. What's interesting about this nest is that it's not anchored to any branches, but just squeezed between a cluster and, given the root it's made of and it's non-uniform shape, the nest could very easily be confused with one of the many clots of flotsam found in the willows, comprised of the same materials. I have no idea what bird makes this nest, but when I come back in a day or so, I'll look for others of the same type, and hopefully sleuth-out the constructor this summer

1444 Next, I'm off to climb the cliff and check RyeCam03. As I kind of suspected, it needs to be relocated. High winds had shaken the camera loose from where I'd wedged it under a rock overhang, and it fell face down. For the night before it fell, there are two images, neither of which reveals the passer-by. I think I'm trying to do too many things at once here. My main objective in the camera's placement was to catch rodent activity, but I also aimed it at cliff-side lookout so that it might catch eagles and others as well. I take the camera and find a nice crag between some boulders where I imagine rodents will pass, and resituate the unit there. But I wouldn't want to commit to a year in this position, as I have with my other game-cams that are focused on larger animal trails. Thinking about it now, perhaps RyeCam03 should be designated a short-term mystery-solving tool. I know from previous, more snow laden winters, that there are several kinds of rodent living in these cliffs. My goal right now is to identify them. But there are plenty of other mysteries this camera might help out with... like which of these rodents is it who clips the seed heads off the wild licorice along the shoreline, or who are the ones that make their nests in the wood-work of the beaver lodge, etc. Yes, I think this camera would be better re-purposed to assist in solving some of these little mysteries

1506 So I'm now almost back to the car, with no further encounters along the way. I did, however, find a good patch of wild licorice being worked for seeds by the rodents, as well as several of their cliff-side lairs, which have licorice burrs spilling out of them. Perhaps this will be where I situate RyeCam03 next, when there's not a weekend approaching, and therefore less chance of human traffic. In any case, given that the box-trap is set, I'll be back here to check on things very soon

IIII ) lllllllllllll O’takaotsipiiyssko (10Dec11)

0923 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - with only a couple hours to work with this morning, I've again driven into the coulee-bottom downstream from the confluence floodplain and have set about to walk in along the river's edge to check on my box trap. It's been two nights since I set it out here, and I don't really expect that any of the animals will have entered it as yet, being as how it's a foreign addition to their environment

0925 There's a lot of aapsspini activity going on here this morning. I saw a flock of about fifteen up on the stubble-field above the coulee rim, then another five or six flocks of similar size lifting off the river as I drove down. Now, down by the water, there are four more flocks, with members numbering between fourteen and twenty four, spaced out from one another on both shores. I have to walk right past them to get where I'm going. As I approach, they use the same strategy as I noted last week, with certain members issuing grunts that tell the others to be alert, and the flocks on my side entering the water and drifting to join up together in a larger body with a group downstream

0948 I've barely started rock-hopping my way past the sandstone cliffs when, from somewhere across the river, I hear a call that sounds like a pig being butchered. It reminds me a bit of an electronic distress call used to attract predators. I drop my pack and start glassing the coulee slopes in that direction. Sure enough, about two-thirds of the way up, nestled in some brush, I spot a hunter... or rather a sociopathic killer. He's trying to lure coyotes, and I doubt he's planning to eat what he kills. It's really frustrating to think that this kind of wasteful killing of a supposed "pest" animal is perfectly legal, while much of the subsistence hunting, trapping, and even plant gathering I engage in are considered criminal. What a bad joke. I'm happy to see that the geese are bothered by the call and evacuating. Where the geese go, the coyotes go. If this guy had sat patiently, he wouldn't have had to wait long before one or more coyotes came around to check on the birds. With the geese conspicuously departing, this guy may have just blown his shot

0955 I continue a short distance upriver and stop at a big boulder jutting out into the river. Seeing the waters open down here during my last few visits got me to thinking it might be worth trying to set some fishing lines in the water. So this morning I've brought heavy line, hooks, weights, and prawns as bait. I anchor my line to the base of a shoreline willow, measure out enough to reach beyond the ice shelf, rig up the prawn and toss it in. My plan is to return on my way back to check on it, then again later this evening, and a third time tomorrow morning before pulling it back in for the coming work-week. Eventually, I'd like to cache a good fishing kit down here to use during my visits

1010 Moving on, I'm soon climbing a draw up the sandstone cliffs to the rocks that I resituated RyeCam03 to two nights ago, in chasing an answer to the first mystery I've assigned this camera to... namely, what rodents inhabit these cliffs? When I reach the camera and download its memory card to my portable image viewer, it is apparent that the last couple nights have been successful. The rodent visits come at all hours, but especially about three hours after dusk and three hours before the dawn. It is in one of the near dawn shots from just this morning that I get a decent image of what I'm relatively confident is a sagebrush vole. So at least part of the mystery is solved. But this vole is certainly not the only species inhabiting these cliffs, and the work to sleuth out who else is here will have to continue. I'm especially looking forward to snow-covered nights ahead too, so I can learn to match rodent species with their particular tracks

1020 A pair of ravens pass overhead as I descend from the cliff and make my way into the willow thickets at the mouth of the confluence floodplain. My box trap is not too far in, and I'm actually relieved to learn its caught nothing. Because I'd left it two nights, I worried a little that there might be an animal penned inside for this extended period. But I also recognized that most animals would avoid something so foreign for maybe a week or two before daring to investigate. In any case, none have approached the trap, that I can tell. Looking at it now, I think it needs to be camouflaged better. Perhaps I should weave some thin willows through its chickenwire sides so that it looks at least a little more familiar. That's something I may do tomorrow. For now I want to toss a couple more fishing lines in the river, and then head home to drive Mahoney on her errands

1045 I throw my next line in a little ways upriver, and figure I'll put a third one in somewhere between the other two. As I start making my way back. I decide to follow the edge of the willow thickets surrounding a small meadow. This kind of landscape feature is known as o'takaotsipiiyssko, or willow-rounds. There are several places in Blackfoot territory that bear this name. Walking the inner perimeter, I can see why people paid attention to these sites in the past. From the tracks around me - deer, coyote, cottontail, and pheasant - it's clear that this secluded little meadow is visited quite frequently. And it makes sense. Any herbivore could come eat in here, hidden from predators hunting outside the willow round, yet be able to immediately see any who entered the circle, and the willow thicket itself provides a thousand quick escape routes. It would be a good spot for ambush hunting and pheasant snaring

1119 I put one more fishing line in along the sandstone cliffs, and check on the first line, but no luck. I'm feeling the frustration of this morning's hurry. There are all kinds of exploring I'd like to do around these cliffs. One of the questions I have pertains to what insect species may be wintering or incubating here. I need to spend some serious time rock-turning and crevice-peeking. And of course there are the rodents. I'm very curious to learn whether, as I suspect, there might be bushy-tailed woodrats here. If so, they would have some decent caches hidden away, and I should be able to find them. These are some interests I'll pursue over the winter. For now, I'm nearly back to the car, an will try to return briefly before sundown...

1550 ...I've returned to check my fishing lines. Rock-hopping below the sandstone cliffs, I pass by the first line and move to retrieve the second. Not too surprisingly, it's stuck somewhere in the rocks and, maneuver as I might, it's not coming up. Eventually I pull the line slow and steady, until the tension disappears, and I've lost the hook and sinker. No good. I rig it back up with a new hook and prawn and toss it back in the river. While doing so, a pair of bald eagles circles downstream, hunting the floodplain where I've parked

1610 Moving on, I check the box trap in the willows, empty, and then attempt to retrieve the upstream fishing line. This one comes back to the surface with no resistance, until (predictably) the hook and it's in-tact prawn reach the ledge of the river ice, where they get caught fast. Again I pull until the line breaks free, and now there is a tasty and tempting prawn visible to birds at the edge of the ice, with a hook hidden inside. And I can't get out to it myself, because the ice is too thin. Clearly this fishing endeavor was not a good idea, at least not using metal hooks and lead weights. It was irresponsible. I can only hope that it will be a magpie who finds this morsel first, and not a raven. I'm certain it will be one of the two, and at least the magpie would pin the prawn down and pull it apart while eating, thus avoiding the hook. But the whole assemblage is small enough for a raven to swallow whole. I do not set this line up again for a second toss. Rather, I wrap it round and round my hand until it's all gathered, then hide it away under a rock from which I will retrieve it to reuse in a more forgiving season. Damn

1634 The last line to check, the one closest to where I've parked, also becomes hung-up on the ice ledge. How could I have imagined it would go otherwise? This time though, when I give my pull, it actually straightens the hook and enables me to bring it in. Again, I store this line securely under a rock for later. Within the week, I'll bring a container down here to keep these lines in, and find better hiding places for them out of flood range. I still have the one re-set line to deal with in the morning

1651 Just as I begin hiking away from the last line, I notice a crag in one of the lower shelves of the cliff that has licorice burrs spilling out of it. This is part of a rodent larder that continues into the crag itself, and it no doubt belongs to the same creature who snips off the tops of the licorice and eats many seeds on-site. The identity of this rodent has been a mystery to me for years, but not much longer. I put my pack down below the fissure, so I can easily find it again, then quickly walk back upstream and climb the cliff to retrieve RyeCam03. It is now set-up at the licorice larder. Hopefully the identity mystery will be resolved by first light tomorrow morning

IIII ) llllllllllllll Cliff Survey (11Dec11)

0956 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - Taking the same route as my last few visits. As I arrive at the river-bottom this morning, I am greeted by a pair of magpies, who call from a cottonwood tree before flying off across the river. There are perhaps three hundred aapsspini in their usual clan-sized flocks, some of these in the air, but the majority spaced out from one another by fifty meters or more along both sides of the river. At my approach, those flocks along my shore take to the water, grunting alertness and drifting downstream to coalesce with others

1006 There are a few items on my agenda today, the first of which being to check the results of last night's game-cam images, in my attempt to learn the identity of the rodent who clips and caches wild licorice burrs, to consume the seeds within. When I get to the camera, it has recorded several shots. Most of them do not capture the animal who triggered the infrared sensors, but there are two taken back-to-back that do. Unfortunately, this mouse or vole is, in both images, turned away from the lens, hunched over, eating. I don't think I'll be able to identify it from these bum shots alone

1023 My next order of business is at a boulder that juts out into the river upstream. Here I am to retrieve the last of my three fishing lines thrown in yesterday. Not surprisingly, this line has become locked-in by surface ice. But with a bit of chipping away with my handy crowbar, I'm able to successfully extricate it - hook, sinkers, and all. This line, that would have been invisible underwater when I began the experiment, had overnight become a point of crystallization for the cold water, and when I brought it up I had a six-foot, inch thick snake of ice that I had to crush with my boot against the boulder before winding the clean line around my hand and finding a good rock to stash it under. Next time I visit, I'll bring a small container of some kind to put all three fishing kits into, and cache them somewhere accessible, but out of flood range

1036 Continuing my hike upstream, I enter the willow thickets to check on my box trap. Sure enough, overnight I managed to catch a porcupine. I'm not at all adverse to eating them, but having worked a few porcupine carcasses last winter I can now look past the appearance of largess created by a thick pelt, to judge the maturity of the animal beneath. This one is too young, probably a yearling, and I have the luxury of being able to hold out for an adult animal. So with a bit of coaxing by a tickle of its foot with my finger, followed by a few soft prods with a small stick, I'm able to convince the porcupine to shift from defense to flee mode and make its way back out into the life world

1110 Since I plan to be around for the next couple hours, I go ahead and reset the box trap. I also quickly fashion a couple rabbit snares and situate them at the entrances of two dens that I know are in use. These dens were initially dug by muskrats during flood periods, when the oxbow where the willows grow fills with water. This is where the chorus frogs and mourning cloak butterflies conduct their maiting ceremonies and deposit their eggs during the last moon of winter and the first of summer. If the high waters remain longer than that, beavers and muskrats move in, and both excavate shoreline dens to use while they feast safely on the easily accessible willows. When the waters recede again, the beaver lodges are adopted as shelters for porcupines, who are basically land-beavers, and the muskrat dens are taken over by mountain cottontails

1116 While I'm fashioning the rabbit snares, a pair of magpies at the edge of the nearby forest canopy begin issuing excited calls. I believe they're responding to what I'm doing. They continue to call once the snares are ready, as I climb up the side of the cliff overhead, until reaching a comfortable, grassy bench to set my pack on and rest. There are a lot of boulders, crevices, small caves, washouts, etc. up here. My plan is to find a new place to set up the game-cam for the next few nights, while also surveying underneath rocks to learn whether there are any obvious insect species who either themselves winter or incubate their eggs over the season on these cliffs

1138 As I begin my work on the cliff, the magpie excitement is joined by chatter from black-capped chickadees, and then the sporadic single calls of a northern flicker. Down in the meadow ringed by willow thickets, I can see a porcupine climbing a young poplar tree, probably the same animal I recently released. So far, the larger boulders are looking promising for a new location of the game-cam. I'm still pursuing further more knowledge about what species occupy these cliffs. So far, I have identified the sagebrush voles, but I know there are others. Rather than just setting up in areas that seem obvious as potential shelters for many rodents, I'm beginning to appreciate that a more helpful approach will be to find dens, larders, plant harvest areas, and other such features that can help me not only identify the species who are here, but also the particular signs of each species' activities. Around some of the large boulders I'm surveying today, I've observed den entrances and droppings that are too large to belong to mice or voles, but smaller than those left behind by rabbits. I'm thinking they may belong to bushy-tailed woodrats, but I'd like to confirm that suspicion. I've also found an area between the boulders, on a bit of badland erosion, where the russian thistles are being harvested. Without enough snow on the ground to leave tracks though, I'm not sure how recent this harvest was being made. So for now, the boulders are looking best. But there's a good drainage draw to investigate first, before I make any decisions

1150 As I move along, I turn over a couple dozen rocks in search of wintering insects, and find nothing. I know they're here somewhere... most likely burrowed deep underground, using narrow fissures in the eroded soil, or old rodent dens. If I want to increase my knowledge of the ecology of these cliffs, I might as well catalog some of the plants that grow here, and that are still recognizable to me in winter. I see pricklypear cactus, broomweed, blue-gramma, ricegrass, gumweed, sagebrush, skunkbrush sumac, moss phlox, double bladderpod, evening-star, pasture sagewort, long-leaved sage, what I think is slender wheatgrass (though I'm still not great with grass species), and rhombic-leaved sunflower. There is also some kind of vetch and a few other plants I don't recognize and probably won't be able to learn until they bloom in summer

1159 Following the drainage draw, I come to a good stretch where the heads of almost all the rhombic-leaved sunflowers have been methodically removed. It could be the work of rodents. On the other hand, it could also be the mule deer. In fact, the trail I'm following has become well-defined by mule deer passage. One of the things I'd like to do is collect samples of deer and rodent droppings from each moon cycle and plant them to find out which seeds grow. Though I won't get started on that endeavor today, I suspect some of the deer droppings up this trail would produce sunflowers

1220 I think I've settled on the new site for RyeCam03, at least for the next three or four nights. It's back at one of the first boulders I surveyed. There are two den entrances there, one on either flank. On the downhill side, there is a wind-excavated patio sheltered above by overhanging rock, and in front by some skunkbrush cover. On this patio, there are some gumweed heads that have been brought in, all the surrounding grass has been clipped to its base, and there are a few of the larger turds that I suspect were left by a woodrat. I can't see far enough into the den entrances to confirm whether they're occupied, but the presence of the gumweed heads suggests so

1252 It's no easy matter to set up at the boulder. In order to get the angle of the patio I want, and the focus distance, I have to hike down into the forest, find an adequate log to anchor the camera to, and haul it back up the cliff. Hopefully we don't get any winds strong enough to shake this log loose, but it seems pretty steady for the time being. It's starting to snow pretty heavily now, which means it might get difficult for me to drive up from the downstream floodplain. I'd best pack up my traps and get moving

1314 As I start descending the cliff, a flicker lands atop some skunkbrush above me, gives a single call, then wings away up over the next ridge. Toward the base of the slope, I check another large boulder that is split such that, from one side, a little cave has formed. This cave has been further excavated and lengthened by a cottontail who is present when I peek inside. It sits with its back exposed. I'm barely able to reach in and tickle its fur with a thin sunflower stalk, and this prompts it to shuffle and turn around. When it sees me looking in, it spins again and offers me its back. I could go through the effort of extricating this rabbit, but it would probably require harrassment and bruising that I'm not interested in committing. Better to snare them clean. Unfortunately, down at the old muskrat burrows, there's been no action. Probably most of the cottontails are sleeping off their dawn rounds right now. I collect the two snares, put them into my box trap, and disengage the trap itself. Chances are, I won't be able to return here for a few days. Besides, most of this trap and snare work has been warm-up for my soon-to-come winter break. Then I'll get serious

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllll Ravens And Leaf Litter (17Dec11)

0855 It's warm and wet outside today, eight degrees above zero currently, and just four days before solstice. The rivers here are still wide open, even though the moon when they are supposed to freeze over is waning now. And at this point I'm thinking these waters will remain at least somewhat open all winter. While in the short-term this may be a glorious season as far as beaver, muskrats, geese, owls, magpies, chickadees, humans, and other fully-active and consistently-colored permanent residents are concerned, I doubt all's well among the snow-white jackrabbits and weasels, presently very conspicuous. I also suspect it's going to be a difficult haul for those who are accustomed to passing most of the winter in full torpor, or those who rely on processes of super-cooling. For these ones, every flip-flop between sharp temperature rises above the freezing point of water (such as we're experiencing today) and subsequent drops below (as we will no doubt return to shortly) requires significant energy expenditures. I would imagine that too many such fluctuations without additional food intake would equate with death. Any significant population loss in this respect, compounded with earlier end of winter thaws and longer periods of transitional rain, will have serious impacts on the timing and availability of food for both migrant and permanent summer species. Ever wonder why almost all the berries failed this year? Add to this predictable population explosions among parasites like pine beetles, who would normally be reduced homeostatically to manageable numbers over the winter...

Observe what's happening from this perspective, and the comfortable conditions we register today - as we go merrily about our annual Christmas assault on life - bring into relief the very real and dangerous systemic shift that is not of the future, but already underway. Our elder world speaks to us, yet we do not respond

1147 Sspopiikimi - A warm but windy day, eight degrees above zero, with what little snow we've had now melted except in the shadows. Having focused most of my recent attention on rodent studies at the confluence, it's been two weeks since I last walked a round here, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's new. I would have preferred a fresh snow cover. One of my favorite aspects of winter is the opportunity to try and read events written in the tracks on snow. Yet I'm sure there will be other types of learning opportunities granted today. There always are

1201 I begin by walking the west length, which I haven't bothered doing for a while, owing to the north-end pipeline construction that usually blocks me from making a full circuit. Today, however, the workers are away, and so I am able to cross their zone, hop their pipes, and set out on a complete round. As I move along, I notice a few pockets along the base of the cutbank where it's apparent the beavers have endeavored to maintain small, open pools. Even these have a thin layer of ice over them today, but both the ice and the surrounding area host a litter of bulrush stems left behind by the beavers after they'd eaten the tender bases and starchy roots. There is considerable melting underway at the pond, overall, with large puddles of water atop the ice, trenching down today as the winds ripple them across the frozen surface

1219 As I pass slowly by the bulberry and current thickets above the peninsula of the wide sout pool, I can hear chirps of a group of chickadees and the voice of a single magpie, both seeming to come from somewhere on the coulee slope. I also hear the call of a Canada goose, more clearly sourced at the base of the high-level bridge. But I don't encounter any animals at all until I drop down into the owl wood. Almost as soon as I enter, a female flicker comes to alight on a branch of the canopy above, obviously curious about me. I note her presence and continue along. Now, halfway through my round of the owl wood and not having come across any other animals, I think myself foolish for not sitting down on the spot with the flicker. Perhaps she would have continued her business in the forest, and I might have learned from something from observing her. This is a reminder to keep myself inquisitive. It's all too easy to walk through the forest, especially in winter, and really see nothing at all, though the life world is everywhere prevalent

1223 I continue through the owl wood and then up to the bench on the levee, above the abandoned garter snake hibernaculum and overlooking the river. From here, I can see there is not one goose below the high-level bridge, but thirty. I scan the skies and treeline of the opposite shore for eagles. Nothing. But this conditioned association for me of the river, geese, and eagles is today suggesting a rationale - one which probably should have been obvious before - for why I so often find geese under the bridge during the daytime. With all its mesh of steel girders, the high-level bridge offers excellent protection from predators above.

1230 As this little insight sinks in, I first hear and then see a raven exploring some of the girders above the geese. I know from my last visit that the ravens hunt pigeons who roost under the bridge, but they are generally further up, where the coulee slope meets the rail platform proper. I've never noticed pigeons down here on the girders above the river. What's more, as I watch the raven I notice there's a magpie following it... not closely, but definitely moving to inspect any area the raven has shown attention to. Not wanting to repeat my mistake with the flicker, I'm going to walk over there and try to learn what it is the raven's up to

1314 I walk the river cutbank to where I too am under the high-level bridge, and both the raven and magpie are still here, but not for long. As soon as I sit down in the tall grass to observe, the raven flies up to a girder where it can peek through some gaps in the steel lattice-work at me, and then hops up to a position that's out of my line of sight. The magpie then begins gliding from girder to girder, moving ever closer to me, stopping at each available point to look. When it is close, it wings an arch past me, still inspecting, and off into the owl wood. I search again for the raven with no success, then climb partway up the coulee slope and sit at the anchor of one of the trestle columns. I figure the raven is still around somewhere, and in any case it's always worthwhile to stay near the geese, if one hopes to witness some winter action. A few of the geese are laying down. Others are pecking around at who knows what on the ice. I don't have to wait too long before the raven again reveals itself. It is in the exact same place as I last saw it hopping toward before, a big joint in the bridge where it could easily conceal itself. It wings off into the air and joins a second raven, its partner, who has probably also been near all along. They soar in tight circles, moving away from me, but following the line of the bridge. Eventually though, they are out of sight. I determine to wait for them, and a thought occurs to me that perhaps they are here to take advantage of something that happens when a train passes. So I sit and wait for the next train. After about twenty minutes more, a train does come, passing slowly but noisily overhead. There is no appearance of the ravens. I could wait longer, suspecting as I do that they have an interest to pursue here, but I also realize that their absence is a response to my foolishness. I should have kept a good distance from the trestle, observed through binoculars, been smarter about my surveillance. My cover is blown for today, that much is clear, so I suppose it's better to move on

1344 I retrace my route along the river cutbank, back up over the levee and past the bench, down into the forest main. When I stop again, it is at the tree with the hollow where, during my last visit, I thought I might have glimpsed the elusive (more likely long gone) saw-whet owl. Today the hollow appears empty. I pick up a branch about as thick as a baseball bat, but longer, and whack a few times on the trunk to see if anyone will come out. Nobody does, but I suppose that doesn't mean it's an empty house. I don't like that I'm hitting the tree, or making loud noises. And I don't know that it would be any less obnoxious to climb up and peek in, though that's really not an option given the height and lack of supporting branches. More accessible and just as interesting is a log at the base of this tree. It is riddled with woodpecker cavities, each one filled to the brim with mouse goods. I might attempt to excavate and explore the contents of one of these nests, were I not already feeling guilty of inappropriate intrusion after my whacking of the tree. I fix the mouse log in my memory for a future visit and move on instead to my game-cam, tucked into the big bulberry brush of the wet meadow. There are not too many images on RyeCam02, considering the two week stretch since my last download. The brush has been visited intermittently by pheasants and magpies. But there is another as well, one who I thought might have moved on, having seen no sign of his presence since last year. And that is the raccoon. If only we had decent snow, I might be able to search out his winter den

1358 Leaving the wet meadow, I finish my round of the quiet forest main, then climb the levee and move toward the cutbank over the big river island, where I hope to spot the wintering kingfisher. Sure enough, she is there. My approach disturbs her. My approach disturbs her, and she goes chattering off to a different perch upstream. Actually, I haven't determined whether the bird is male or female. Last year's wintering kingfisher was female, and for now I'm just assuming she's the same. But the literature describes the males as the more likely winter candidates in northern regions, sticking around to keep dibs on their breeding territories. I can still see our kingfisher here, even on the more distant perch. But as usual, I'm looking southward at her, with the sunglare in my eyes, and she has her back turned toward me, so I can't see her breast to determine sex. In any case, I've begun to hear magpie calls from the north wood, so I might as well go see what that's about

1424 The magpie is gone, or at least gone silent, by the time I enter the north wood. All is quiet here. Only skeletal trees, leaf litter, and the frozen puddles of flooding remaining from the construction work of the other day. Ahhh... but the leaf litter. Now here is something I have not yet made a study of. Surely there is much to learn in and of the life world that exists beneath this blanket. The birds, for their part, are not ignorant of it. During my last few visits, I myself have witnessed magpies, chickadees, and flickers all exploring the forest floor. The magpies appeared, at that time, to be visiting caches near the bases of trees. But what if in fact they were hunting at the most likely places to find food? I select three trees and, with the aid of a branch, pry back the leaves immediately around the base of each one. Even with how warm it is today, I'm amazed. There are spiders scurrying everywhere, two species that I see, but one whose members are especially abundant. The leaf litter itself seems comprised of at least two layers - those leaves that have fallen recently, this season, loosely packed, and a more dense wall of old rotting leaves beneath. Because this north wood is a major flood zone, the trees all have trenches several inches deep, carved out by the flowing waters and ringing the base of their trunks. This seems indeed to be where the life is most dense. Out beyond the trench, the lower, denser packing of leaves hardly exists. When I get actually to the ground level, there are more than spiders. I find a frozen worm, a small ground beetle of a species I don't recognize (with a slightly metallic green sheen to the head, and brown wing-covers), a slightly larger sidewalk carabid beetle, and a true bug I don't recognize. All of these, the spiders, insects, and worm, I locate in hardly more than ten or fifteen minutes haphazardly raking back the leaves. Yes, in addition to further observations of raven activities at the high-level bridge, I think this study of winter life in the leaf-litter would make a good project for the season

1435 Pleased with my simple discoveries, I climb out of the woods, over the levee, and down to north-pond, so I can make my way back to my car. On the route, I find that one of the largest cottonwoods at the extreme end of north-pond has toppled, a victim of the construction flooding that has been ceaselessly flowing across/under the soil that secured its roots and trunk. Several other trees, its family, are in similar danger. The city, as I now understand it, is not only routing drainage with the new pipelines being laid, but also horizontal drilling and piping for sewage to be moved east across the coulee, underneath the river, to a treatment facility downstream. I suppose the loss of a few good trees in the process is not considered to be problematic

Small Wolf Cap

2011-12-05T12:14:00.002-07:00

IIII ) lll Small Wolf Cap (30Nov11)

1015 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - it is possibly makoyisttsomo'ki (wolf cap) day, or what may pass for it this year. Woke up to high winds and sticky, wet snow that greased the roads so quickly I had to cancel my lecture at the college this morning and stay home. Figured it's a good opportunity to hike down at the confluence and change my dead batteries out of RyeCam01. I also picked up a third game cam, and will be looking for someplace appropriate to situate it. We're not really supposed to go outside hiking around during makoyisttsomo'ki. In the past, this kind of wet snow, sticking to anything vertical, was considered the most dangerous of winter storms, both innaugerating and closing the season. Today, with gum boots and snow suits, it's not quite so much of a threat for the person on foot. We're overdue to receive ours this season, and what's happening today is relatively minor compared to many such storms I've been in. Nonetheless, I'm still glad to be off the road

1031 I'm already down to the sagebrush flats, having taken the straightest route to the bottom of the slope today. About two-thirds of the way down, I encountered a whitetail doe who was bedded down in the grass. As I approached, she stood up and ran down, across the flats, and into the forest. I myself followed almost the same path, and am now walking the edge-zone of the treeline, moving east toward the sandstone cliffs that meet the river at the downstream end of this floodplain

1048 I've now passed the end of the forest, and am walking between sandstone cliffs and a wide patch of rabbit (or sandbar) willow that grows at the start of the oxbow corridor. Here I have to strip off a bit of clothing. As cold as it felt in the exposed winds at the rim of the coulee a half hour ago, I'm now sweating. The standing temperature, to begin with, is not terrible at one degree below zero. I've overdressed, wearing a light thermal onesy, snow pants, a sweater, jacket, gum boots, mask, ski gloves, and touque. Of course, it's better find oneself needing to remove clothes than to come down here inadequately prepared, which is a lesson I learned the hard way one time, when the muscles of my legs threatened to quit working at thirty below. I stop, remove the sweater and let my upper body cool down for a bit before replacing my jacket. I also take off the ski gloves and exchange them for relatively light fishing gloves that are without fingertips for the thumb and first two digits (I'd packed these along for just such a need). While I go through this down-dressing, a small flock of fourteen aapsspini take off from the river, flying a loose circle around the floodplain, looking for another river site to land at. When they first take wing, a magpie in the forest gives a four-call. I'm still too far away from the river myself to be responsible for having provoked the geese. There's probably a coyote or eagle out that way. I'll be there soon

1110 As I near the river, three more small flocks take to the air, numbering 18, 18, and 24 in members. All three wing away upstream. Again, I don't think that my approach is what frightened them. In fact, when I reach sight of the river itself, there are four more groups - numbering 17, 17, 25, and 14 - who do not take wing at all, even when I begin walking along the narrow bit of earth and rock between the base of the sandstone cliffs and the river, heading in their direction. Rather, a single member from the larges group begins issuing a grunt call every ten seconds or so that I recognize as their "be aware, be ready" signal. At the same time, the two smaller flocks upstream use the currant to float as rafts toward the larger group, while the smaller flock downstream paddles in single file along the shoreline toward the same body. There are also other small flocks further downstream that I can see, and after climbing up a draw leading to an overlooking cliff, I watch a couple of these other groups join the larger collective as well. Once they are all joined, the excited signal to fly is issued, and the big flock moves upstream together. It is fairly unusual to find even this relatively small number of geese at the river midday in winter. Normally they would be up on the stubble-fields above the coulee rim. I can only presume that the weather is what's kept them at the water today. They probably know, as I do, that though the snowfall seems fairly light, its particular quality makes it dangerous. This is what the wolf cap is all about

1120 The cliff that I'm standing on is one that I've come to visit several times at dusk throughout the past few winters. Where the river meets these cliffs, there is a bend, and I don't know if it's something about the water right here, or if it's the shelter of the cliffs themselves, but even on the coldest nights there will always be an open crag in the ice. At sundown, when the shadow is just getting so dark that our human eyes can't see clearly, the aapsspini will come here, flock after flock, until there are two or three thousand crowded around. There are other such spots along the river I know of, and the same thing happens at these. During the night, as the coyotes move, so too do the large collectives shift among sites. I like this cliff in particular because it is the perfect saaamissapi, or lookout-point, from which to witness the event. It would be equally perfect as such for taloned hunters, and I've witnessed many eagles pass close - at eye level - from this site. This is where I intend to situate RyeCam03. There is a perfect perch, a large sandstone rock, dangling out over the cliff edge. And not far from this, there is a nice little weathered-away crevasse that I can wedge the camera into. Hopefully, from this setting, I will capture images not only of the birds who visit, but also of the small rodents who use the shelter of the crevasse as a protected passageway

1202 Before leaving the cliff, I had a magpie fly-by. And now, about half way through the forest heading upriver through the oxbow corridor, I've just had another. They're keeping an eye on me, I suppose. All the way along, I've been scanning the trees for owls, porcupines and the like, as well as listening for chickadees, woodpeckers, tree sparrows, and others. I find none of them, only a mule doe and a whitetail doe, spaced about a hundred meters apart, each having been bedded down in the chokecherry brush that lines the corridor. Otherwise, the forest is quiet and most who are here remain hunkered down... again, I believe, as a response to the weather. The snow, for the moment at least, has ceased. Now, far from the cliffs or coulee slope, the wind is stronger

1215 A couple years ago, one of the trees skirting the mid-forest meadow broke about eight feet up its trunk and fell in such a manner as to create the perfect frame against which to build a comfortable shelter. Since then, when I pass this area, I sometimes add a log or two to the structure, with the intention of eventually having a research station of a sort. Usually, when I do this, it kindles a daydreaming process, and today is no exception. The first thought that comes is I start thinking about how I really would like to set a couple days aside to do nothing but invest myself in the project, to ready it at least for overnight occupations. Then I begin imagining what it could be if enhanced by stucco made of the grey clay that seeps out of the sandstone cliffs, mixed with the dry brome of the meadow. And this possibility, far from fantastic, leads me down a trail of thought about which of our contemporary technologies actually do support life as a human, and all the rest that are nothing but unnecessary luxury and entertainment. I mean, if I was to live in this coulee, what would I want to bring with me, or have access to, from our mainstream technology set? Right away, I know I would want to be able to keep steel - as in having access to acquire, when needed, steel pots, bottles, and blades (knives, machetes). And it would be very helpful to have wool clothing and blanketing available. But beyond wool textiles and steel, then it really seems we branch off into the extraneous and unnecessary. I consider such things as I hike further through the forest, and it dawns on me that in spite of the fact that today's snow is wet, sticky, and dangerous, if I were living down here, I'd be celebrating its arrival, because with the snow comes easy access to clean water... and water, in this environ, especially with how grossly polluted our rivers are (even though we're close enough as to be within sight of their source), would be key. Hunger can be assuaged for a bit. Thirst really cannot

1241 I daydream my way through the remainder of the forest upstream, still seeing and hearing nothing other than my own footprints in the snow, and there follow the hawthorn draw to where I keep RyeCam01. Sure enough, new batteries brings the unit back to life. Unfortunately, I've missed capturing images of some small animal today, perhaps even a weasel, given the size and spacing of the tracks. In any case, I revive the camera and sit for a smoke, before starting my climb back up the slope. As I relax, three small aapsspini flocks pass by, following the river upstream. Their size is comparable those of the other flocks I've witnessed today, roughly fifteen members each

1325 When I've marched about two-thirds of the way up, I notice suddenly a large mule buck on a bench of land a bit below me. He is walking along swinging his antlers at the grass as if in mock-battle. Immediately, I drop to the ground and move on my stomach until I can see him again. Now the buck has ceased his play, and I notice also a second large buck following him, and a doe short distance below them both. All are feeding on the plants of the slope, though on what exactly I don't know. As I watch, the second buck turns around and drops down to meet the doe, who has turned her back on him. He pauses long to look at her back-side, and I expect to see him mount, but he never does. Instead, he eventually walks along beside her and begins to eat. I continue watching for another ten minutes or so, but when there are no significant changes in activity I continue my ascent. It would have been nice to come upon them before the bit of antler display that I witnessed, to have caught more of the communications between the two bucks. Now I am back at the car though, and ready to go find some cold water to drink

IIII ) lllll Gathering Kinii (2Dec11)

1016 Sspopiikimi - I've arrived this morning to find that the trenching which blocked access to the parking area last week has been filled-in, and assumedly the pipe laid. However, when I get out of my car, a backhoe driver pulls up beside me to suggest I park back off the side of the road again, since they would be fitting other pipes together and likely block me in. I recognize that this was my opportunity to ask some of the questions I've had about the purpose of all this work. But in the moment, I wasn't thinking, and simply attended to the recommended relocation. Now I'm walking along the highway on-ramp toward the levee to begin my hike and survey. There is no wind today. It's a comfortable one degree below zero

1043 Rather than walking the levee itself, I decide to begin the way I ended last week, by exploring the owl wood. In particular, I move south following the tree-line that runs parallel to the river. About half-way through, my approach frightens a bird. I see it fly across the river, and I know approximately where it landed, but I can't seem to pick it out with my binoculars. The impression I got, in the few seconds I had to watch it, was that this was probably the same "small falcon" I observed fleeing in similar manner last week. Today, however, it strikes me as less falconish of wing, and I am optimistically hypothesizing that it is not a merlin or kestrel at all, but the elusive northern saw-whet owl who not so long ago visited the brush where my game-cam is hidden. If so, I've twice encountered it in the treeline along the river, though a bit further upstream last week. Next time I visit, I will have to be exceptionally stealthy in my movement along this line, and hopefully spot this bird before it notices or at least flies away from me

1122 When I come to the end of the north wood, I continue to follow the river cutbank until entering the next treeline. The Oldman is even more open today than during my last visit, even the oxbow on my side is running. Before re-entering the trees, I can see a kingfisher perched above this oxbow, but it is backlit, so I can't confirm whether it is a female, and therefore perhaps the same bird who wintered here last year. By the time I get to the other side of her perch, she's gone. All the way along through the trees, I collect kinii from the prickly roses. I pocket most of the berries I gather, but am never without one in my mouth. A pair of magpies follow me, curious about my berry collecting perhaps. I also notice that the grosbeaks have completely cleaned the seeds off their green ash tree, and are no longer present themselves. At the south end of this treeline, I sit down on a bench above the abandoned garter snake hibernaculum. There are two male goldeneyes diving for minnows in the river, four aapsspini standing on ice below the nearby high-level bridge, and a raven calling from somewhere upstream. No sign of any eagles

1151 Continuing on, I maintain my course along the river cutbank, continuing to pick, pocket, and eat rose hips along the way. A female downy woodpecker flies in close and lands on a bulberry push, which she explores briefly before exploding in chatter and subsequently departing. When I come near to the high-level bridge, I change direction and head north into the owl wood. There's still a bit of snow on the ground, and as I move between the trees I see tracks of coyote, deer, and deer mice, but definitely not raccoon. Today the kakanottsstookiiksi are absent as well, even from their favorite tree. Soon I am through to south-pond, where I again sit for a break above the wide pool. All is iced-over at the pond. There are large milky areas where I can tell the snow of two days ago melted in, and other spots so clear as to look deceptively like open water. All is thin

1225 Followed by a watchful magpie, I round the wide south pool and drop into the forest main, where now, instead of kinii, I eat aapssi, or silver berries, as I walk along. Like with the owl wood, there is evidence that the coyotes and deer have been following the same paths I'm using. But when I eventually reach RyeCam02 in the large bulberry brush of the wet-meadows, neither animal appears in any of the images. Nor has the saw-whet returned. The only passers-by this week have been the magpies and pheasants

1259 I am on my way to the vehicle, having just climbed out of the forest and back onto the levee, when some event transpires with the geese. From over the coulee rim, several flocks descend, until there are between four and five hundred aapsspini. I try to get into the north wood before they arrive, but am not quick enough. I believe they'd intended to land around the big river island. But seeing me near, they circled around a few times and then decided to move to a different location downriver. As the geese depart, a trio of magpies swoop down, landing near to me, and begin picking around in the leaf litter at the base of a certain tree. I'm sure they are checking a cache, and I'd like to know what they have there. When my gaze becomes too apparent, the three fly further into the wood. I then check the leaf litter myself at the same spot, but find nothing. I doubt the magpies have gone far. In fact, I suspect they are watching me. If so, they're not the only ones. While I search for the cache, a group of five niipomakii arrive. Most of them pretend to hunt for insects in the crevices of tree bark, but I know they're mainly interested in me. One of them even comes down to pick around in the leaf litter with me, hardly an arm's length away. Neither of us find anything though, and soon we both give up. As the chickadees move off, traveling from tree to tree, I walk north, passing again the magpie trio, who now watch me from the canopy, and continue to my car

IIII ) llllll Song Succession (3Dec11)

1337 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - getting kind of a late start to my hike this afternoon, but the temperature is above zero with only a slight wind, so no complaints from me. There are about fifty aapsspini in the stubble-field above the coulee rim when I pull up, and no flocks that I can immediately see down on the river, but of course that's quite a ways. I want to follow the same route here as I did a few days ago. Anticipation of images from the new game-cam (RyeCam03) has been eating at me. At the very least, I want to be confident that the unit is functioning before I leave it alone for a week or more

1405 Though my general trajectory and specific destinations remain, I find myself drawn to taking a slightly different route down the slope, one that brings me through some badland fossil beds. I never know what might be emerging from the earth here, where fragments of ancient crocodile bones and turtle shells litter the tables created by one of the more resilient sedimentary layers. Nothing too exciting in this regard reveals itself today. However, I do notice some tiny, white objects embedded in one of the drainage draws. At first I assume they are fossilized shells. But when I look closer, I recognize them as prickly pear seed husks. They have been flushed by drainage out of some rodent dens above. Using the torch on my iPhone, I attempt to look inside these small caverns. In them, I see caches of rhombic-leaved sunflower heads. These cavities go back a ways though. It would be fun to explore them with an inspection scope

1445 Time seems to disappear as I complete the rest of my descent and begin walking the edge-zone between forest and sagebrush flats, and then forest and sandstone cliff, and then willow thickets and sandstone cliff, and finally river and sandstone cliff. Just as I arrive at the first of these transitions, there is a sudden burst of brush-crashing sound. Three mule deer and two whitetail deer (all female), scramble to depart, each species using its own particular strategies - the mules hopping up a draw in the cliff to get above me, the whitetails running deeper into the cover of forest. At the next transition, between willow and cliff, I find mountain cottontails, many of them. I spot at least five, owing to their tendency to flee when I step close. But I'm sure there are many others here as well. This is the site where I sometimes set out rabbit snares in winter. The population is large here not only because there are extensive patches of mature, close growing sandbar willow, but also because muskrats and beavers have excavated excellent shelters all along the banks of the oxbow canal in years of flooding, which the cottontails are happy to claim as their homes. I'm considering taking a different approach to any snaring I might do here this year. The coyotes and their magpie allies know this place too. In fact, there is a pair of magpies waiting here right now. They are all too apt at securing any cottontails I snare before even half the day has passed, and I move to check the run

1525 After the willows, I am quickly up and down the cliff to check the new game-cam, then back past the rabbits and on along the deer trails in the oxbow corridor leading through the forest. The camera is definitely functioning. There are several images on the memory card, most of them of myself moving away from and back to the site, but also some night shots that include just a partial shot of what I think is a rodent. It is really difficult to make out. I figure I'll leave it going in the same position a few more days, and then decide whether or not to resituate for more clarity

1541 Dusk is not long away now, and I am moving faster than I should be. Much faster. It takes the chatter of a downy woodpecker to break me of the speed. She is high in the canopy and, when I look up in her direction, I notice there are a few other birds perched high as well. They appear, from a distance, to be starlings, but I take out my binoculars just to make sure. When I aim the glass in their direction, a larger bird, which I hadn't even noticed before, take wing from beneath them and glides silently past another dozen trees before finding a perch. It is a great-horned owl, one half of the couple who nest within a hundred meters of here, in a tree at the edge of the mid-forest meadow

1641 I stop in the mid-forest meadow as usual, to throw a couple more logs on the shelter. For how many times I've done this, I sometimes wonder whether another visitor might have the opposite ritual, taking a few down on each pass. While I'm doing this, the geese return to the river from their stubble-field feeding grounds. And by the time I get out of the forest and over to my other game-cam, the kakanottsstooki couple are singing their serenade duet. The second camera has lots of images - all mountain cottontails, porcupines, and coyotes. As I look over the images, I can hear another bird calling from below, a juvenile great-horned owl, still using his begging pleas

1714 Last to sing are the coyotes, their greeting howls and yips sounding from families spaces all over the coulee. I march my way up the slope, and again at about two-thirds of the way to the rim see a trio of mule deer on a shelf below me. The three look up. It's too dark for me to tell whether it might be the same couple bucks and doe from the other day

IIII ) lllllll Oriole Nest (4Dec11)

0953 Sspopiikimi - it's colder today, seven below, and for a few hours last night we got another little blast of wolf cap snow, leaving some of the roads a bit icy this morning. For this reason, as well as one other, I've elected to park on the coulee rim rather than drive down the slope. Not that the road would be that terrible, but it's not worth the tension. And besides, I know where there's a huge patch of saa'ksoyaa'tsis (stinging nettle) up here, and this is a good season to gather lots of it for twining without interrupting its reproductive cycle. That'll wait for my climb back up at the end of my hike. The main reason I'm here today is to search the forests slowly and thoroughly for the saw-whet owl. Christmas Bird Counts are coming up, and I would love to be able to find this particular bird when the time comes. More than this though, I just want to confirm my suspicion that it's still here

1000 The route I take down the coulee slope passes directly under the high-level bridge, where the saa'ksoyaa'tsis grows. I'm surprised to find, in the same area, several bushes loaded with bulberries. We hardly had any berries at the pond this year, and I hadn't suspected these bushes would have any either, so I never checked. But it makes some sense to me. One of my hypotheses about why the berries failed was that misamssootaa, the long-rains, were too extensive this time around. There were four or five weeks of fairly steady rain that arrived just as the flowers on the berry bushes were blooming. By the time the rains subsided, the flowers were played out, and I doubt many pollinators had an opportunity to visit them. But up here, the bridge may have shielded the bushes from at least some of the intense soaking

1011 Before I'm completely down off the slope, I stop on a ridge looking out over the owl wood, and now my search begins. I carefully glass every branch within view for birds. There are four magpies in the wood, and they're already aware of me, looking up and giving four-calls. I don't see any owls though

1029 I move a bit further down the slope and glass the owl wood again. While I'm searching, a flock of thirteen aapsspini rise off the river and pass overhead. When they're almost out of view, the four magpies emerge, flying up into some brush on the ridge I've just descended, curious about what I'm up to. I continue on, and move to the south end of the owl wood, where it meets the river. There are no geese on the ice under the high-level bridge at present, nor any goldeneyes on the open water that I can see

1131 The magpies follow me at a distance into the owl wood, where I begin moving very slowly, just a couple steps at a time, and thoroughly surveying every tree. About half-way through, a downy woodpecker couple came to meet me, calling and chattering. The two seemed very pleased to have me in their territory. They followed me closely until I was near the north end of the wood, and at that point the male moved ahead and led me to the tree cavity they've excavated and are occupying. Along the way, I see no owls, not even the kakanottsstookiiksi. From this, I must assume the usual couple are not roosting here this year. If they were, I would have seen them. The small great-horned I came across a couple weeks ago must not have been the male of the pair, but was probably one of their juveniles, and it must have found somewhere else to stay. What I do find, however, is something beautiful that I've been trying to get my hands on for the last couple years... an oriole nest. It is not either of the nests I've been keeping my eyes on, those high in the canopy that haven't been shaken loose by even the strongest winds and (in the one case) heaviest snows. It's a third nest I hadn't come across before, and it is woven to a branch low enough that, with the assistance of another very long branch, I'm able to bring it down, anchorage and all. What a treat, this finely woven little bag. I can't wait to inspect it closely at home and decipher each of the kinds of fibers used in its construction

1217 After the owl wood, I travel just as carefully through the trees along the river cutbank. The magpies are still keeping an eye on me, as well as others... yes, there are others. The regular parking area must be open now, and I've seen two joggers, one very unfortunately with a canine companion who barked. This alone might foil my hopes for a saw-whet sighting. There are three male common goldeneyes on the river now that I can see. While entering the south end of the treeline, an immature bald eagle soared in tight circles overhead, moving slowly upriver. Now at the north end of this treeline, I've encountered a northern flicker. No owls yet. I have only the north wood and forest main left to survey

1254 I begin my search of the north-wood by following the tree-line along the river, where I had a possible saw-whet sighting two days ago. Today, however, there are no birds other than the five magpies whose territory this is, and now they are following me south again through the heart of the wood. The construction flooding that began here a couple days ago has continued, and now there is a considerable puddle extending below the trees. Strange it's not iced over. I'm starting to lose hope in ever getting a confirmed sighting of this little owl. It's reminding me of the long-eared owl at the confluence a few winters back. After one very close encounter and a couple distant sightings, I searched the floodplain forest day after day for a week or more to no avail. Of course, the benefit of taking the time to conduct a search for a bird who's not even supposed to be here (and probably isn't any longer), is that I get to see more of the other residents who are present. It pays to move slowly and alertly like a grazing deer through the forest

1328 My last encounter of the north wood is with the black-capped chickadees. There are four of them, and they must feel cold, because today they have no time for me in their busy search for food. I then climb over the levee and enter the forest main, my last chance for the sighting I've come for. I hike about half-way through, moving a bit faster now, then cut over to the wet-meadows and bulberry brush where I keep RyeCam02. Just as I come within view of the brush, a whitetail doe bursts out and runs to the forest. Then, following the trail into the brush, there are pheasant tracks. I'm sure the game-cam will have caught images of both these animals. But when I download the memory card into my photo viewer, there is only one picture, and it is a magpie. I must remember to bring a package of meat down here with me during my next visit. These magpies are, after all, Derrick's consanguineal kin, and I owe them for the joy they've brought to my life. I know they're fine on their own in summer. But when the freeze comes on, they often have to resort to eating coyote scat in order to get any energy. I should be bringing them gifts

1353 Leaving the wet-meadows, I continue my survey of the forest main. Though this may be the happening place in summer, during this season it is extremely quiet. I come across another flicker. I'm aware of the magpies watching me. Toward the south end of the forest, there is a cottonwood tree with a hollow where a large branch once broke off. The hollow is too high for me to see clearly into, but with my binoculars it looks very much like there's an animal in there. I take a couple shots with my 500mm lens and move on

[Note: The images by no means help me confirm anything, but it does appear to me that there's an eye looking out of the darkness at me. Could this be the winter roost of the saw-whet?]

1434 I exit the forest main at its south end tired and defeated. My search today has lasted more than four hours. I retrieve the oriole nest, which I'd stashed in some chokecherries by the owl wood, and climb the coulee slope once more. I'm feeling so drained, I don't even think I'm going to gather any of the nettle that had been half my rationale for parking up on the rim in the first place. But then something exciting occurs. As I come below the high-level bridge, a raven flies into view. I call out to him in my best throaty raven impression, and in response he immediately lands on the bridge to look me over. I give a couple more calls, then he offers one that's far more authentic and takes wing again. As he does so, a flock of thirteen rock doves explode from nearby and the raven swoops uncommittedly at them. Now I'm dropping my pack and trying to retrieve my camera in case he actually takes out a pigeon, but the raven calls once more and disappears across the river. Now it dawns on my why the eagles always survey the bridge so closely as they pass. I'd known there were pigeons here, but never put two and two together. This little event alone serves as a sufficient pick-me-up, and I do stop to gather is sizable bundle of saa'ksoyaa'tsis before hiking the last leg to my car. It's been a good day, a good few days. Tomorrow I'm back in the office, but the winter holidays are approaching, and I'm already planning my coulee agenda, given all I've experienced these last few hikes

Dialogs With Deer And Sparrow

2011-11-28T11:12:00.001-07:00

II Northern Saw-Whet (25Nov11)

0929 Sspopiikimi - I've arrived this morning to confirm, as expected, that the big pipeline trenching has begun, making access to the pond even more difficult. I've parked off the side of the lane merging east onto Hwy 3, and from here will attempt to hike in and gain access via the river or levee-walk. No telling whether this will be possible though. I may very well need to drive around and park among the residences on the coulee rim, and drop down from there instead

0941 Despite the obstacles, I am able to access the levee and follow it to north-pond. Now I just have to hope my car doesn't get crunched by a bulldozer or dump truck, or alternatively towed by the city. Anyway, we've recently experienced two days of heavy chinook winds that came through in excess of a hundred kilometers an hour, eating all the remaining snow as it passed. This was followed by yesterday's calm and relative warmth, at one degree above zero. Today it's supposed to be even warmer, but the wind has picked back up, and it doesn't feel comfortable at all. At north-pond, all the waters are frozen tight, even where the flooding from the construction, which continues still, is entering in

0947 With the pond frozen-over, most of the wildlife action will probably be taking place along the Oldman. I walk over to the high cutbank overlooking the big river island to scope things out. All is much as it was last week. The main stream is still just a little ways after the high-level bridge, and down past my position, though the oxbow that moves along this side of the big island is mostly solid now. Upstream, nearer the bridge, I can see five aapsspini standing on the ice. I'll make my way over to them eventually, but might as well head to my game-cam on the wet-meadows first

1006 As I drop down into the forest main to start my way toward the wet-meadows, I'm reminding myself not to rush anything this morning. My last couple visits to the pond, though each turning up new birds we'd never seen here before, felt hasty. The pond, river, and forests all seemed too quiet. But I know that even in the worst of winter, when it feels like life has abandoned this place, and that nothing at all is happening, it's only because I've failed to concentrate and expand my perceptions. There's always something interesting happening here, one just has to have the right eyes to see it. No sooner does this reminder cross my mind, then I scan the forest canopy and notice a large porcupine, sitting high on a heavy branch near the cathedral. To get a better look, I reroute and climb back up the levee. I think this porcupine may be the one we call The Blonde. She's mature and pale enough. Noting my presence, she turns her head to give me a bored glance, then - in classic porcupine fashion - repositions her body on the branch so that her back is turned my way. Nearby, I can hear the pine grosbeaks. They're still working seeds off the same green ash that I found them eating a week ago

1012 The grosbeaks allow me to sit very near to them (a trait they are known for). There is one male and eight females, plus others I can hear calling from the forest main. As I watch them, a downy woodpecker arrives, perhaps interested in gaining my attention. It picks around in the cottonwood bark on the nearest tree-trunks. Then a magpie soars in, landing somewhere in the brush near the river cutbank, and all of the sudden the other birds burst into the air in a tight group that sweeps away into the forest main. Could the magpie have provoked such a stir? No... there is a small falcon, a merlin or kestrel, gliding out across the river, being pursued by the magpie. I just catch glimpses of the predator between the trees as it departs. It could have very easily have been perched here the whole while. It's a good reminder: whenever a magpie comes nosing around, there's always a good reason. Find that reason

1023 I remain seated under the ash tree. The bulk of the grosbeaks have not returned yet, though there are two females back here feeding now, and the songs of the others in the forest main are picking up and moving closer. But while I've been waiting, I've noticed a couple other birds. Off in the distance, I occasionally hear the unmistakable chatter of a kingfisher. This is exciting, because it suggests a winter holdout, just like last year. I also observed a smallish waterbird landing near the shore of the river opposite me. I suspect it is a goldeneye, and will move to confirm this, just as soon as I check the status of the south-pond spring, and whether or not the kingfisher is feeding there

1044 The sight of a small bird perched on a limb overhanging the river cutbank prompts me to reroute again. Sure enough, it is the kingfisher, and on my approach he/she flies chattering away downstream. Peeking over the edge of the cutbank myself, I find - just below the kingfisher's perch - three common goldeneyes, two males and one female. The males whistle-wing upstream immediately, while the female cranes her neck trying to figure out what the threat might be. Eventually she too spots me and moves to join her companions. Must be a good spot for minnows. Just as the female departs, a trio of mallards in the same distribution (two drakes, one duck) come flying in from an unknown direction and pass over the forest main, as though heading to the pond. I myself find a deer trail to follow along the cutbank and walk south, with an aim to eventually reach the owl wood. Along the way, I pass willows whose bark has been shredded (earlier in the season), no doubt by the young whitetail buck who'd been visiting my wet-meadows game-cam. I also come across three unidentified scats, too large for deer, too small for coyote, too un-uniform for porcupine of beaver. They are red in color, and when broken apart seen to be comprised entirely of plant material, a uniform paste, perhaps bark mixed with bulberry. My best guess is a porcupine with a slightly troubled stomach

1100 There definitely won't be much action observed at the south-pond spring this winter. When I come up from the river cutbank to cross over into the owl wood, I see the spring is all but iced completely over. The opening now is hardly twelve inches in diameter. The river water that had, through all the years we've known, passed underground to resurface here, currently are not. I sit down at the bench above the now-abandoned gartersnake hibernaculum to smoke a cigarette, and down below I can see a female mallard at the edge of the river ice, as well as the three previously-noted goldeneyes, distant enough to feel secure, diving for minnows. Above, a mature bald eagle comes soaring in from the east coulee rim, reaches the river, and turns to glide upstream. Now to check the owl wood

1120 The owl wood is, as usual, deceptively quiet. As I walk through, I occasionally pull a bit of bark off some of the cottonwood snags. I miss the insect presence in winter, and the under-bark is one of the places where there are some to be found. At the same time, I don't like to pull too much of the bark, because each piece I remove is a bit of potential habitat destruction. So I don't pull much of it this morning, and what I do exposes no insects... just an old chrysalis shell and a small cache of bulberries, five or six of the fruits stashed by a magpie or mouse. At the south end of the wood, I check the old, rotting bike jump in the brush that last year served as a den for raccoons. There is no sign of them using it this winter. No scat, no berry store. Not surprising, given that the usual bulberry crop is practically non-existent this round. At least in this manner, I look forward to snow days ahead, and the opportunity for tracking the whereabouts of some of the invisible mammals. There's no better chance to actually see raccoons at the pond than in the winter. But it takes a carefully, as with many other opportunities here. And as though to emphasize this point of thought, I am almost back out of the owl wood, preparing to climb the levee over to south pond again, when I pass the favorite roosting tree of the resident kakanottsstookiiksi, and almost miss seeing the male owl entirely. He is so camouflaged. If I did not already know how much they like this particular small tree, I would never had spotted him... even though he's perched at almost eye-level and very close to my trail. His mate, who is also undoubtedly present somewhere near, has watched me move through the wood completely oblivious

1136 Leaving the great-horned owl, I cross over the levee to explore the bulberry and currant thickets above the peninsula on the southwest end of the pond. In addition to the expected mountain cottontails scurrying through the brush here, I'm surprised to find three house finches sticking it out in the cold. There could even be more. The three I see, two of whom wear male red plumage, flitter away up one of the brushier coulee draws. I also come across an amazing little warbler nest, set low in some bulberries, and packed to the rim with warm fuzzies... deer hair, the little cottony floats off some kind of flying seed, perhaps Canada thistle (what are those downy parts called?). I snake a finger into the nest and find it definitely body-heat warm, though I roust no mice, nor do I sense the flesh of any pinky newborns. Perhaps the resident departed unseen as I approached. I'll have to keep an eye on this one

1157 I next wind my way around the edge of south-pond an onto the wet-meadows, where I begin flipping planks from the old boardwalk. I'm not expecting much, considering the lengthy flooding of the wet-meadows that occurred this summer, but I have to know for sure how it may or may not have affected the insects. Sure enough, there are hardly any wolf spider egg sacks, not to mention centipedes and live-frozen beetles. I do come across one hibernating saltmarsh moth larva, which is curious (I usually find them under logs along the forest paths). Eventually, I come to the big bulberry patch where I keep RyeCam02, and here there is a welcome reward. In addition to several passes by coyotes, magpies, a lone pheasant and a whitetail doe, there is a perfect night-shot of a bird I've never seen before - at Sspopiikimi or elsewhere - outside of captivity. In one of the frames, there is an unmistakable northern saw-whet owl perched right in front of the camera. Brilliant. This kind of (for me) rarity is exactly why I've bothered setting up game-cams in the first place

1214 Moving back into the forest main, I go to take a seat on a log under the arching bows of the cathedral. I want to see if the oriole nest by-chance blew down in the recent strong winds. But no... For a couple years now, I've monitored the oriole nests in winter, hoping that one of them will fall from snow weight or high winds. They never do. Now my mind is back on the saw-whet. Could it be that this small owl is residing here somewhere this year? What are the odds it would just happen to stop-by in the bulberries on the wet-meadows? Finding an owl of that size in daylight, without the aid of calls to guide me, and given that they're prone to inhabiting tree cavities, seems unlikely. Yet, no chance I'm going to neglect an at least an attempt. As I rise to get the search underway, I can hear the grosbeaks nearby, and the bald eagle passes again overhead

1251 I hike first back to the extreme end of south-pond, near the spring, so I can conduct my survey of the forest main a couple steps at a time, moving north, with the sun at my back. I scan every tree for the odd bump, using my binoculars to peer at suspect shapes and into dark cavities. No luck on the saw-whet. But I do scare up the whitetail doe, and about half-way through I cross paths with three male grosbeaks perched on low bulberry scrub, but reaching down to pluck what I suspect are buckbrush berries, though I'm not able to confirm this before they flitter away. Now at the far end of the forest, I'll cross the levee again and continue my survey through the north wood

1317 If the saw-whet is here, which it very well could be, I'm not finding it. The bird could be living in the forest on the other side of the river for all I know. Hopefully there'll be another game-cam image soon to let me know it's still here. In either case, the north-wood offers me only niipomakiiksi and a second fallen hornet nest (the other having been found in the cathedral of the forest main several weeks ago). There's no underbrush in the north wood to speak of, owing to the more extreme flooding that occurs here regularly. Though I can't find the site where the hornet nest was connected, it could only have been up in the trees. This means that both hornet colonies this year placed situated their nests high. Normally, I find these nests low, even in the buckbrush. Now I wonder whether the wasps predicted the floods, or whether the high waters were already in place before they began construction. Another puzzle past and future. Now I'm back at the highway edge, within sight of my awaiting car. It's been a good visit

III Dialogs With Deer And Sparrow (26Nov11)

0949 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - it's been a couple weeks since my last visit to the river confluence, and as I drive the couple kilometers to this coulee rim from my house, I pass the classic winter aapsspini activity. There are approximately one-hundred and fifty geese feeding on waste grain in the stubble fields. Today, I intend to make a sunwise loop down the coulee slope, and then following the dry oxbow canal to the far upstream end of the forest, where I can collect the most recent images off my game-cam before hiking back up

1010 I'm almost down to the sagebrush flats already, my route taking me (purposely) past the lower rattlesnake hibernaculum, where all is as ghostly quiet as should be. All along the deer trails I follow, there are prickly pear fruits with their seed pods scattered around them, each with a little hole where the mice have extracted the seed. I've heard not a peep from any smaller birds, but overhead another sixty-three aapsspini have made their way to the rim, all coming from some unknown site upstream

1059 When I get to the bottom of the slope, I cross the sagebrush flats, enter the forest, and immediately sit down to listen. All is quiet. I wait. There is a faint rustle in the brush nearby, and soon I hear the unmistakable contrived sneeze of a whitetail deer in distress. I'm not the only one who notices it. Immediately there comes an inquisitive "Wok?" from a magpie a little ways out in the forest. The magpie call is followed by the rise and fall of a few twitters of unseen (and unknown) small birds in the distance. Again the deer blows, and now the magpie has to come find out what's going on. It gives a double call before swooping just close enough to get a decent look at the scene, then moves to a perch neither too near nor far to follow whatever might unfold. The deer blows again. Now I stand to show myself, and to see who exactly I'm dealing with. She is a whitetail doe, concealed well in the thick of a chokecherry patch. I squat back down to learn what she'll do, now that she's seen me plainly. The doe remains. She sneezes a couple more times, then goes briefly quiet. I wonder if she has silently departed, so I stand again. But she is still there, and lets loose another blow. This time, I mimic as best I can and blow back. Immediately she becomes visibly alert and gives an even longer blow. Again I mimic, and a third time she extends the call. I give my interpretation a third time as well and then squat down to wait quietly. The magpie conducts another fly-by. The deer has had enough of my antics. She begins quietly, but hurriedly moving through the thick brush that grows along this edge of the oxbow canal. I wait until she's gone a ways and quiet, then follow the same narrow trails, not so much as to pursue her, but more because this route was my intention all along. In all of this coulee, there is no better a place to find animals than along the edge of this canal. It comprises a semi-open corridor, flanked by high banks on two sides that are thick with bulberries, chokecherries, saskatoons, dogwood, and buckbrush. It is perfect to conceal travel from one end of this section of coulee to the other, and offers more food opportunities than anywhere else in the forest

1135 I don't go too far, perhaps fifty meters or so, before I sit down again to type up my notes about the deer. While writing, I hear the call of a ring-necked pheasant coming from the direction I'm headed, perhaps bothered by the doe who is traveling ahead of me. Then a downy woodpecker comes to tap at a nearby cottonwood, and soon a single tree sparrow arrives, tseeping and picking through the leaf litter beneath some diamond willows in the corridor. I whistle one of the tree sparrow songs, and the bird gets excited, flying back and forth in front of me, and landing near, among the chokecherries, to check me out. Every time I whistle the song, the sparrow responds with a quick flight past me. But after four or five repetitions, both of us have had enough. I stop whistling and the sparrow flutters away. The magpie, for its part, has remained near, and continues to give single calls from nearer the canopy every few minutes. Whenever I look to see what it's up to, I find the corvid poking around in the tight intersections of branches, probably looking for its own or others' caches

1218 I never come across the pheasant, who I suspect hunkered down when I passed. But I do re-encounter the whitetail doe, about half-way through the forest, and this time she makes a good run to set some distance between us. I also find, close to where I see the deer, a large cottonwood that has recently fallen. Its cambium is dry, and there are significant sections of bark missing from both the top and bottom, a victim of borer beetles. But it kept a wide belt of bark that is still tight to the trunk. At the edges, I'm able to peel off a couple small pieces. Underneath, I find several saltmarsh moth larvae, one beginning to coccoon, a number of live-frozen two-spot and seven-spot lady beetles, and half a dozen brown eggs of unknown origin. I take two of the eggs, which I'll hatch at home. While I inspect the fallen tree, which has split half-way up the trunk at the site of a flicker cavity, a porcupine eats away the terminal bark on the branch of a still-standing neighboring tree

1255 Somewhere between the fallen tree and the river on the upstream end of the coulee, my magpie tail finally found something more interesting to do and left me. As at the pond, the main flow at the confluence is still wide open, but the water is slushy, at least on its surface. The wind has now picked up, and is making my hike far less comfortable. Above the river, in a draw of hawthorn brush, is where I'm keeping RyeCam01. I'm disappointed today to find that my batteries ran out of juice almost a week ago, and as a result I've missed whatever may have passed by most recently, though there are images of mule deer (including a large buck), pheasants, and coyotes caught prior to the shut-off. I'll have to make a trip down again in the next few days to power this unit back up. As I reshoulder my pack now to begin my march back up the slope, there is an adult bald eagle soaring fairly low, following the river

Grosbeaks And Sick Bay

2011-11-24T14:32:00.002-07:00

IIII ) llllllllllllll Quiet Coulee (11Nov11)

1030 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - taking advantage of the lull in the wind this morning to hike down into the coulee, take a bit of a phenology survey, gather kinii (rose hips), and download the latest images off my game-cam

1115 It takes me a while to get half-way down the slope, to the hibernaculum, because I'm collecting kinii all along the route. The rattlers have long gone underground but, after witnessing painted turtles diving beside the ice last week, I can't help checking to be sure. There's definitely a winter feel to the coulee now, everything quiet, dry, and seeding. It seems the tree sparrows may be gone, I've neither heard nor seen any of them in the skunkbrush

1143 When I get down to the sagebrush flats, and the little hawthorn draw where I keep the game-cam, I find the area has been visited routinely almost every night by mountain cottontails, but not at all by the deer. Other than the rabbits, there are images of pheasants, magpies, coyotes, and a porcupine. Nothing new. I'm looking forward to changing this camera's location once its year emplacement has been met

1215 Dropping down off the sagebrush and into the forest, I begin scanning the trees for owls... the resident great horneds should be back now. I can't seem to find them, which only means they're in some other part of the forest, but I do encounter a couple magpies, who quickly wing away, and a family of six black-capped chickadees, who conduct their usual close inspection of me while feigning to hunt insects off the nearest tree. I also startle a mule buck, who takes a few hops to get out of my line of vision. Eventually, I wind my way to the shoreline beaver lodge, where I sit for a break. Their food cache is still anchored directly to the lodge wall. While I rest, one of the residents appears out in the still completely open Oldman River. It swims back and forth, head held high above the water, sniffing the air for my scent. I watch the beaver and listen to a couple ring-necked pheasants calling from somewhere in the distance

1245 From the lodge, I hike through the willow thickets and back into the forest, following a trail that I know will lead me to a large patch of prickly rose by the edge of the sagebrush flats. But it seems the birds must have beaten me to the kinii here this year... probably the pheasants, or perhaps a porcupine. I see only a handful of berries in the patch that usually produces several hundred. So I continue on, climbing the coulee slope, now on the downriver side of this floodplain

1305 The march up is uneventful. Summer birds and insects gone, winter fowl yet to really settle in. I'm looking forward to snow days down here, and some more thorough explorations of the forest

IIII ) lllllllllllllllll Less At Mookoan (14Nov11)

1129 Out at Mookoan Reservoir, seemingly unable to find the fish here. On the lake there are about a thousand snow geese, a couple thousand mallards, about fifty Canada geese, and a smattering of shovelers, green-wing teals, western grebes, and Ross's geese. Far fewer birds here this season than in any previous year since I’ve been monitoring. Every time the birds move in-mass, a rough-legged hawk comes soaring over the dam to check it out

IIII ) llllllllllllllllll Sick Bay (15Nov11)

1206 Out at Tyrrell Lake, scouting the scene for tomorrow's phenology fieldtrip. Appears to be far fewer snow geese here today as compared to a week ago, but no telling how many might be off feeding in the stubble fields. Every few minutes, a huge flock will arrive, many of the birds performing fancy dives and rolls just prior to landing among the main raft of perhaps ten-thousand. I'm no longer seeing swans or pied-billed grebes, but there are still mallards, scaups, and no doubt others. Now the goldeneyes have begun coming down for the winter

1505 While scouting Tyrrell today, I couldn't help but swing by the area where I first encountered Eva. Believe it or not, there was another injured juvenile snow goose there, with a broken right leg. This time, I did not rescue the bird, for two reasons... First, he was out on thin ice that had formed further into the lake than existed during my last visit. Secondly, his mom and one sibling were floating just a few meters away, keeping a vigil with him. So I guess maybe that south spur of the lake, so isolated from the larger collective, and with its ice platform, is sick bay for the geese. It also seems to be that the first-year goslings are at special risk for breaking their legs during their initial migration. I'm going back out tomorrow afternoon with my students, and will obviously be checking sick bay again

[Note: Eva was a juvenile snow goose I recently rescued, and who Mahoney and I rehabilitated and released. While on a birding fieldtrip led by Lloyd Bennett of the Lethbridge Naturalists Society on the 5^th of November, we stopped at Tyrrell Lake to observe the snow geese. As we drove to the far south end of the lake, a crippled juvenile was noticed alone on the ice. When the fieldtrip concluded, I returned to see about the injured goose. By that time, she was bedding in the grass and allowed me to walk over and pick her up without resistance. I thought she might be shot, as there were hunters out there that day, in which case I would have eaten her. But after inspecting her body, I could find no open wounds. Instead, it appeared she had a broken leg and injured wing. I brought her home and decided I would try to help her. In Blackfoot tradition, people have received important gifts from animals they’ve assisted in times of need. She was treated with a regimen of quiet and warm rest at night, with bathtub floating periods twice a day, and back-yard rest during most of the daylight hours. She wasn’t interested in eating much of the food we offered (corn, wheat, and grass), and by the second day her stool was becoming more liquid, so we supplemented by tube-feeding her high-protein (chicken-based puppy-kibble shakes). After eight nights, Eva still had a bit of a limp (we never did splint the leg), but was otherwise very strong, and she flew off to rejoin her kind. Had she not done so, I’d already contacted the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Society, and they were prepared to receive her]

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllll Ice Over (16Nov11)

1718 Dramatic changes at Tyrrell Lake today, as compared to yesterday's scouting expedition. Arrived this afternoon with my phenology crew to find the entire lake iced-over. This is not a small body of water, we're talking serious systemic icing. The snow geese were still there, though I figure they'll depart very soon, probably tonight. On the extreme south end, a.k.a. sick bay, the predators have moved in. We saw one dead bird on the ice (probably the broken-leg juvenile from yesterday) being eaten by a ring-billed gull, with three already-full bald eagles sitting nearby, and coyotes pacing the shoreline and thicker ice in frustration

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllll Grosbeaks (17Nov11)

1510 Sspopiikimi - The drainage development project in the coulee draw leading down toward the north end of the pond is rapidly becoming problematic, in terms of inhibiting access. I've arrived this afternoon to find the road to the parking lot completely cordoned-off, both by the usual construction barriers, and by two massive pipe assemblages that lead a good ways up the draw and out toward the levee. Surely they will soon be excavating a deep trench to lay these pipes in, and that will mean hiking an alternate route down off the rim to access the pond later in winter. For now, I park a short distance away and try to be quick and inconspicuous as I climb over the pipe works and cross the construction zone to enter at my usual trail

1517 I figure on taking a sunwise route around the now entirely frozen-over pond, but don't get far before I encounter a new marsh. I have no idea where the water is coming from, but it obviously has something to do with the construction, because they've set-up hay bales along the sides of the trail in a failed attempt to sandbag the flow, which I can see is pouring into the extreme end of north-pond, where the old boardwalk timber has collected - a site known by the birds for easy access to aquatic invertebrates, and by the turtles as a basking area. No animals are there today, that I can see, though it offers a bit of open water, owing to the continual flow. I hope this drainage into the pond is not some form of contaminated waste water. In any case, I have not worn gum-boots, and so for the sake of comfort must turn around and take a counter-sunwise route instead

1541 I walk the whole of the west length with few encounters... save for a magpie that glides from the forest main to the golf greens, a mountain cottontail who bravely continues munching grass by the currant and bulberry brush of south-pond as I pass, and a small group of niipomakiiksi searching the bark of poplars for frozen insects at the edge of the owl wood

1553 One item on my agenda of things to do here today is to look carefully at the area surrounding the south-pond spring. Last year, we had a female kingfisher wintering and making daily use of the open pool of water filtering in under the levee. But this go round, I highly doubt we'll see a repeat event. In fact, I find the spring nearly iced-over already, with just a one-meter diameter open pool. This is strange. It hasn't been too many degrees below zero yet, and even during the coldest days of previous years we never saw this much ice in the spring. All I can think is that, for some reason, the river water isn't seeping through like it used to

1629 Since I can't move around north-pond without sludging through the new drainage swamp, I decide to walk the levee to the north end of the forest main, then cut down into the trees and onto the wet-meadows to collect this week's game-cam pics, before returning the way I'd come to my car. In a sense, the circumstances set me up for a stroke of good luck, because half-way along the levee I first hear and the see a family of pine grosbeaks. Like the mixed-morph fox sparrow encountered last week, I've never come across grosbeaks at the pond. Today they are eating seeds from an unfamiliar tree, one with thick clusters of pods at its branch-tip, each pod about an inch and a half long, narrow, and enclosing a seed in a flattened papery sheath. There are only two such small trees at Sspopiikimi, and I take them for escaped ornamentals, not unlike the couple of Russian olives that can be found here. I watch the birds munch the seeds from this tree for some time. They allow me to stand very close-by. There is one male with bright red plumage and four females with yellowish crowns. When they leave, I pop a few of the unknown seed pods in my mouth and attempt to separate them as the grosbeaks had done. I can't seem to find an actual seed worth speaking of, at least with my mouth

[Note: I again relied on lifetime naturalist Gus Yaki to assist me in identifying the mystery tree as a green ash, confirming it as an ornamental brought in from eastern North America, but very much known to be in favor with the grosbeaks]

1700 Dusk came over the coulee as I watched the grosbeaks, and when I move on it is at a fairly quick pace, down through the quiet forest main to the wet meadows. There I find that few animals had visited the big bulberry patch. There were less than ten images on my game-cam. One was a passing coyote, and the others remain unknown... either they are very small mammals, too tiny to appear clearly in the image, or they were fast-passing (like magpies), too quick for the camera to capture. Significantly, there were no visits from either the whitetail doe or buck who've who near-constants during awakaasiiki'somm. After downloading these images, I march swiftly south through the forest, around that end of the pond, and again along the west length and over the pipeworks to arrive at my waiting vehicle without another encounter or note to speak of

Simitsiim And The Fox Sparrow

2011-11-10T12:57:00.001-07:00

IIII ) l Simitsiim Eat Bulberries (29Oct11)

1000 Sspopiikimi - pulled in to find access to the parking lot has been purposely blocked with a large pipe that weighs so much I can't even budge it. I don't know if they expect the people who regularly visit this place to just back off for the winter while they carry out their drainage development or what. I'll be walking in no matter, just as I am this morning

1043 When I come within sight of north-pond, there are nine mi'ksikatsi on the scene, all turned on end, dipping for food. I decide to come sit on the unsightly plastic dock in the north reeds, to just be quiet and listen for a bit. The ducks, seeing me here, begin paddling south and are soon beyond the oxbow bend. I hear the occasional "wok" of a magpie, and the drone of traffic in the distance. A muskrat surfaces not far away and floats, munching on something that it retrieves from diving. I can't see what it is that's being eaten. After a bit, I make some sucking squeak noises that calls the muskrat to investigate. It approaches underwater and surfaces on a flank that I'm not watching at the moment. When I glance that way, it makes a splashing dive and is not seen again

1101 Just as I'm about to give up on this position, because there's nothing happening, four mi'ksikatsi return, three of them drakes. As they return to dipping, a coyote starts howling from somewhere on the coulee slope behind the golf greens. I glass the area and find him sitting on his haunches in some grass below the ledge that we call Coyote Playground. I watch him for a few minutes, then become distracted by the sudden appearances nearby of both a kingfisher and a magpie. The kingfisher wastes no time diving for a minnow, then flies away toward the river chattering. The magpie moves into the forest main. And when I look back toward where the coyote was, he is gone. I suspect, in the absence of other human visitors, that he is making his way down to hunt the forest. The magpies, who are now giving repetitive calls from the same woods, might be getting excited about the prospect

1159 I decide to leave the dock and head into the forest myself, following the magpie calls, thinking that if I move quiet enough I might be rewarded with a coyote encounter. But the forest today is full of bohemian waxwings, who are cleaning up the few bulberries that are available. Regardless of how quiet I step, when coming upon a feeding scene, the waxwings take to the treetops and give their cricket-sounding trills. I figure this alone may very well reveal my presence to other residents accustomed to paying attention to such alarm. As I move south through the trees, the magpies ahead of me seem to do the same. Then I hear human voices coming from behind me, and I squat down in silence and watch as two women pass completely unaware. The women remind me of how clumsy and detached we humans are out here. Just as easy as it is for me to avoid their recognition, so too I'm sure for the majority of animals as I pass through trying to be stealthy. As though to reinforce this thought, I glance up above me and immediately spot an oriole nest, exposed now that the leaves have fallen. We must have passed below this nest a hundred times last summer, and yet only caught the occasional glimpse of one of these birds early in the season as they flew through the trees. I look up on the opposite side of my trail, into the area we call the Forest Cathedral, and there see an exposed hornet nest, now abandoned and falling apart. Again, Mahoney and I sat facing this nest on many occasions, yet never noticed it. We are so easy to hide from. Continuing on, even more careful than before, I catch a flash of white in my peripheral vision. There is a bird gliding over the wide south pool, and it could be the caspian tern we've seen here in prior years. I move quick to get over to the duck blind that overlooks this area. The bird is not a tern, but a ring-billed gull. It lands on a small island in the middle of the pool. There are ten mi'ksikatsi here as well, spaced out in groups of six and four, feeding near the reeds. And the magpies are here, four of them, scouring the shallows and island edges, talking away and picking at this or that. I wait and watch. The eventually enters the water and seems content just floating around. The magpies continue to explore. And the bohemian waxwings keep tabs on everything from the treetops, dropping down in small parties to raid the berries while others keep sentry

1238 Leaving the blind, I climb the levee and walk to the river cutbank by the owl wood to check on the garter snake hibernaculum. Again there is no snake presence. They must have moved away. At the edge of the owl wood though, there is some activity underway. Here is where the bushes most full of bulberries are located, and I find both magpies and waxwings plucking away at them. Then, rounding the south bend to start my way back along the west side of the pond, I pass flickers and robins in the single cottonwood that stands amidst the currant and bulberry brambles. In the wide south pool, the ring-billed gull is still paddling around, the mallards dipping, and a single muskrat is seen swimming north

1300 I follow the muskrat, who eventually makes a short dive to gather something (milfoil I suspect), then climbs out on an old beam to munch. When it's done with that batch, the muskrat dives again, and I see the wake of a pike zooming away. The rest of my walk back to the vehicle is fairly uneventful. I do spot a lingering pink-edged sulphur butterfly. Tommorow I'll go check in on things at the river confluence

IIII ) llllll Fox Sparrow (3Nov11)

1400 Sspopiikimi - It's a warm day, that or I'm getting my winter acclimatization in order already, because I'm out with just a long-sleeve t-shirt and very comfortable. But there's no doubt that on some level it's actually very cold. The surface of the pond is almost entirely frozen over. From where I enter, at north-pond, I can only see a couple of open pockets, no more than a meter in diameter. All else is covered with a thin sheet of ice

1421 I want to see if the entire pond is iced, so I walk the counter-sunwise route that takes me along the west length first. As I expected, there's a significant pool that the ksisskstaki have kept open on the south side of their lodge, and moving through the subpond canal. There's also some open water in the wide south pool along both the east and west banks. I stop at the bench near the peninsula, and below me are all the mi'ksikatsi, twenty-one in total, and all but five of them are drakes. Also, to my somewhat surprise, there are turtles out. They are feeding in the milfoil under the ice, occasionally surfacing to float at the edge of the open water strip. Hardy reptiles we have in these parts

1452 While sitting on the bench, I hear a bird call that I don't recognize. This is what keeps me stationary long enough to witness the turtles, as I wait to hear the call again. It never comes. But I do start hearing individual "tseep" calls coming from the bulberry and currant patch, so finally I give up on the odd sound and go to check out who's "tseeping" at me. My quest to find the source of the call flushes two robins, and all the while I can see bohemian waxwings in the treetops of the nearby owl wood... they flutter off from their perches, calling in their cricket chirp voice, fly in a little circle and come to perch again. When I do find the actual "tseeper" (who is not the robins of course), my first thought is that it's a yellow-rumped warbler in drab winter plumage. The sight of this little brown bird brings me immediately back to a couple years ago this season, when again the pond got its first coat of ice. The warblers were dancing along the edges of the banks, nipping frozen insects off the blades of burr-reed that crested the pond's surface. At the time, I didn't recognize them as yellow-rumps, not in their drab brown suits, and I ultimately had to seek assistance in their identification. Today's "tseeper" would prove equally challenging. I photographed her and moved on, figuring I'd confirm her warbler identity later

Note: When I compared the image of this bird with that of the winter-garbed yellow-rumps from a couple years ago, they were entirely different. The beak was all wrong, the breast to chin wasn't light enough, it just wasn't a warbler at all. I paged through bird manuals looking for a new match, and the closest was a "sooty" fox sparrow. I then forwarded the image to Gus Yaki, the same lifetime naturalist who helped me with the warbler call a couple years back, and he also figured the "tseeper" for some variation of fox sparrow. Gus in turn passed it to Jocelyn Hudon of the Royal Alberta Museum, and she confirmed it as a cross between the red and slate-colored subspecies, "An interesting bird"

1514 With the "tseeper" photographed, I continue walking west instead of rounding south-pond, moving along the edge zone between the owl wood and the coulee cliffs. I want to see if I can spot the kakanottsstookiiksi who I'm certain are back now for the winter. I walk until I'm within close sight of the last trees along this path, then cut down into the owl wood proper, following a deer trail and winding my way crunchily through the trees, over their bed of fallen leaves, until reaching the river. There I check the garter snake hibernaculum before crossing the levee to the forest main. Still no snakes... they've opted to winter elsewhere. Soon I'm approaching the duck blind, where the forest meets the shallows of the wide south pool, and there I see a large, dark bird winging heavily over the mallards, who are agitated. At first I think it's a raven, whose throaty voice I'd heard in the distance earlier, but not noted. But looking more closely, it's mohkammii, the great blue heron, another surprise. The heron was probably startled by the leaf crunch of my approach, and is winging its way toward north pond

1530 I don't stay long in the blind, just briefly so that I can check the little islands and shoreline here for rusty blackbirds, who I'm used to seeing in this season. None so far this year. From the blind, I walk the edge zone between the forest main and the wet-meadows, until reaching the big male bulberry patch. There I hear a load crashing in the brush. I never see the source of this sound, but it is almost certainly either a whitetail doe or ring-necked pheasants. Here in the brush is where I hide one of my game-cams and, when I check the images from the past week or so, I see this area has been regularly visited by the doe and pheasants, as well as magpies and a coyote. One magpie flies by overhead as I download the images, probably trying to learn what it is I do in here

1546 From the bulberries, I continue north through the forest main, looking for the owls, until I reach north-pond. I never do see the kakanottsstookiiksi, who are likely hiding in plain sight. But I do observe a muskrat in a small ice-free opening at north-pond, floating and munching on milfoil. This muskrat is the last animal I encounter before arriving back at the parking lot. Though my visit was short, it has been fairly productive. I'll be interested in watching how things shift as the real cold takes anchor

IIII ) lllllll Geese At Dusk (4Nov11)

1821 I'm sitting on a cliff above the river, in the coulee by my house, enjoying the late-dusk. All the goose clans are coming in from the stubble fields, thousands of birds, to sleep in huge flocks on the shoreline. One of the clans, who just splashed down below me, made a fancy entrance, it's members tucking, and turning, and performing all kinds of flourishes, even flying upside-down in ways you might not imagine capable of geese. Part of the effect is the creation of dramatic noises as the wind moves over their wings in various ways. There's a beaver lodge right below me, and one of its residents is gnawing noisily on his dinner. At another lodge on the opposite shore and just downriver, a beaver is splapping its tail in annoyance at one of the goose families. A coyote a short distance away is exchanging greeting yips and howls with me. Dusk at the river is just all-over awesome

Awakaasiki'somm

2011-10-31T12:59:00.003-06:00

I A New Rattlesnake Hibernaculum (25Sept11)

1043 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - starting off down the slope along a different route this morning, hoping to come across a rattlesnake hibernaculum that I suspect to be situated somewhere along the downstream end of this stretch of coulee. It's been warm, and the yellow jackets are already harassing me. Hopefully it won't be another painful visit

1147 It doesn't take long to find exactly what I'd hoped for. Though the general area where rattlesnakes will den is pretty predictable, finding one is not a simple matter. Both the snakes and their hibernaculum entrances are usually well concealed in this season, and they generally won't alert a person to their position until you’re within a couple strides proximity. This is the case here. I've suspected the location for a couple of years now, given the early summer movement of young snakes observed in this area. Also, about four or five years ago, I came across a stone cairn here in the resemblance of a rattlesnake. I have searched ever since, but have never come across the den, nor even the cairn again... until today. Now I will never lose it. The site has all the perfect features. But unlike the other hibernaculum upstream, the entrances here are mostly small rodent holes. There is one badger burrow with a snake beside it, but the others who have arrived thus far are occupying very inconspicuous entrances, and I feel a bit vulnerable not knowing where all of them are. At this point, the snakes have sensed my nervousness and gone underground, so I'll leave it for today and return again in a week or so for another survey. Now down to the floodplain

1228 Flickers announce my arrival as I cross the sagebrush flats at the base of the coulee slope and enter the floodplain forest. Like at the pond, most everything here is drying and yellowing. It's almost getting me excited for the cold weather to come, and the hunts that can be carried out in the absence of wasps and flies. Though I scan around for deer, who should be starting their rut soon, I’m not really intent on focusing on the forest today. I'm only passing through as a means to get to a particular spot on the river, where the beavers keep a large shore lodge. I'm wondering if I'll find, as with the other four lodges I've surveyed over the past week, that this family is caching it's winter store right up against the lodge walls. Indeed, when I emerge from the thick willow patch that runs between the forest and river, this is exactly what I find. The family has been collecting sandbar willow and cottonwood saplings, and the clipped base of all these plants has been anchored straight into the mud of the lodge wall, forming a big green wreath around their home, where it meets the water. Again, this is not how this family usually stores their food, which is rather anchored in the river bottom and piled up in a deep pool a few meters in front of the lodge. All of these beavers must know there's going to be something different about the winter to come

1306 From the beaver lodge, I follow the riverbed upstream, past a couple guys panning for gold, to the black cliffs... wait. Did I say there were guys panning for gold on the Oldman River? Sure enough. First time I've seen it here, but I'd recognize it anywhere: the ongoing hominoid quest for shiny things. Futile here, I suspect. But I have to give them credit for not sitting at home watching sports or fights, hockey season is starting. Anyway, at the black cliffs I head back through the trees and up the draw to where I keep my hidden game-cam. I read several papers earlier this week about the benefits of eating hawthorn berries for the heart and arteries. Figure while I'm checking my camera, I might as well pick some of these fruits to get Mahoney and I started on them

1411 I don't gather too many of the hawthorns. Most are already shriveled or have been half eaten by birds, who pick off the flesh, leaving just enough to hold the seeds to the plant. There is also the issue of abundant wasps, who are all too interested in what I'm doing there. Hawthorns are like rose hips, they will stick around as a winter berry, though a bit more dry. In any case, I can return when the wasps are less pesky. I gather enough berries to last through to my next visit, then download the images off my camera - all cottontails, porcupines, and strange dancing lights - and start making my way back up to the coulee rim. Along the route, I stop by the downstream rattlesnake hibernaculum, my old familiar. There are piles of snakes in each of the den entrances as expected, but none basking outside. I can barely see them in the holes through the thick surrounding grass, so I use a stick to push this vegetation aside. Surprisingly, the snakes aren't bothered by this at all. They don't rattle, they don't move, and I am very close to them. I'm glad the rattlers at the new upstream den weren't like this today, or there could have been an accident. It makes me wonder whether maybe these downstream ones might be birthing today. It would explain why at least the females might not be overly focused on the danger of my presence. But then I would expect the males to still be alert. Maybe the strong wind is throwing them off. Without any snakes above ground to watch, I decide to continue on up the slope. I march the route, noticing only the grigs hopping out of the path as I pass, and am soon back at the car

IIII ) llllll Garter Snakes Still Out (4Oct11)

1001 With nothing pressing for the next couple hours, I'm heading down to the pond

1031 I arrive today to find there is construction underway in the northwest section of the absinthe field, which comprises part of the mallard nesting area. They are clearing ground with a bulldozer and there are huge, black pvc pipes piled nearby. I take this to be an extension of the drainage work being done in the coulee draw above, where there has been considerable flooding over the access road during the past couple years. I will be interested to watch what kind of floral reclaimation takes place in this disturbed area next summer. At the pond proper, I’m taking the counter-sunwise route, and am looking particularly for non-mallard waterfowl this morning. At the north end, I observe three kingfishers. One of them is perched and hunting, the other two are chasing one another. I wonder if any will attempt to winter again and feed at the spring. Coming toward the ksisskstakioyis, there is a lone mallard, and more who I can see further up in the wide south pool

1036 At the ksisskstakioyis itself, their food cache is looking a bit more as it had in previous years, taking on a large mound-like appearance. It is still closer to the lodge and more connected than we’ve ever seen, but not quite as extreme in this sense as the caches of the shoreline families along the river, who have their caches anchored right into the walls of their lodges. Curious to learn what this means for the winter to come. There are still a few blooms of hairy golden aster along the trail, but not much else, and wind gusts this morning are starting to bring down the poplar and cottonwood leaves

1042 When I reach the wide south pool, I count eighteen mallards in two loose groupings. I suspect these are mainly of the two families who raised broods here this summer, though five out of the eighteen birds are drakes. In the buckbrush along the trail, I’ve spotted a few skimmer dragonflies and some dark-colored damselflies, even a couple cabbage white butterflies. Overall though, the insect presence is way down from what it was even a week ago. There are barely any grigs around to speak of

1058 In addition (and perhaps related) to the drop in insects, there is an absence of small birds here. Usually I would encounter waxwings, tree sparrows, and dark-eyed juncos in the currant and bulberry patches while rounding south pond this time of year. Today there are none. Part of this absence, I believe, can be sourced in the minimal berry crops produced this year. There are hardly any chokecherries remaining, the few currants and saskatoons that did fruit have long since been plucked, even the bulberries are scant. While I walk over to the garter snake hibernaculum, a single magpie passes overhead. This is the only bird I’ve seen today aside from the mallards and kingfishers. I thought for sure the garter snakes would be here by now, but I explore the area thoroughly, peeking in all the crannies under the boulders along that area of the river cutbank where they normally winter, and find nothing. It is not unusual for these snakes to take their time returning to the den, given the degree of cold they can tolerate. But this seems to be getting beyond their usual habit, and almost makes me wonder whether they haven’t decided on an alternate site to use this year. It’s been a strange summer for the garters more generally. There were far fewer inhabiting the north cutbank where we used to see them. Of course, this changed might be attributed to the late-summer mow along the path edges that shredded several snakes last year at the north cutbank… others may have hesitated to return there this summer

1132 Before heading into the forest main, I stroll through the owl wood. I want to learn whether either the kakanottsstookiiksi or the raccoons have returned yet. Neither make an appearance. I check the old bike jump buried in the wood, where the raccoons denned last winter, and see no sign of recent activity. There’s just not many bulberries here this year, so it’s hard to say what kind of animal presence we’ll be left with at the pond this winter. Once I’ve made my round of the owl wood, I go over the levee and drop into the forest main, walking the edge-zone along the wet-meadows, where there are a lot of matted grass paths where the beavers have dragged their cottonwood saplings down into the subpond and out along the canals to their cache. My game cam in the big bulberry patch captured fewer images this week. A single whitetail doe has been visiting regularly. No sign of the young buck who’d been coming through. The only other visitor was a lone coyote who passed through just once

1155 I decide to go out on the wet meadows and climb up the ksisskstakioyis to get a closer look at their cache. It appears to contain all the usual foods they collect, in generally the same ratio we’ve noted in previous years: mainly bulrush stems, along with quite a few willow and poplar saplings, and then smaller amounts of cattail and prickly rose, all weighted down with logs that have already had the bark eaten off. After this inspection, I follow one of the dry beaver canals that the deer have been using as a trail, taking me back to north-pond. It feels like the visit is over for today, but as I’m walking the trail past the north cutbank, there’s a wandering garter crossing. It appears to be hunting, and I’ve spotted it from enough of a distance that my presence hasn’t seemed to register. So I wait and watch for a bit, hoping to see it catch a vole so I can again observe its method of constriction. I have film from a previous episode of garter snake constriction that I think proves the behavior is practiced, although some believe they are only holding their prey so as to get at it properly, head first. I know this is not the case. The vole I observed and filmed being eaten was certainly dead before the snake began its slow swallowing activity. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see it again today. The snake eventually leaves my path, heading into the grass, and when I walk to where it entered, it’s nowhere to be seen

1447 Just wrapped a wonderful photo session with the leucistic magpie of ULeth. Walked around on the lawn with her for about thirty minutes, and she never flew away. Many university students passed by, eyeing me as you might if you noticed someone shooting serious pictures of a blank wall. Why on earth is he photographing a magpie? No doubt this bird has been here several months, since the nesting season, if not longer. And I suspect that few to none of these passing young knowledge seekers, perhaps not even any of their professors, have registered anything unique about a light-grey magpie in their midst

IIII ) llllllllllll Mohkammii And Reed Camouflage (10Oct11)

1657 Sspopiikimi - arrived at the pond to find the construction they were setting up for in the absinthe field along the access road is now well underway, with a huge trench dug to contain the large pipes that will soon be buried here, routing flood drainage into the river

1720 Walking the west length, we encounter a wider variety of animals than I'd anticipated, all apparently taking advantage of the semi-warmth this day has offered. There are a couple pink-edged sulphur butterflies about still, but no longer any grigs or dragonflies, at least that we've noted. In addition to the usual assortment of twenty or so mallards on the water, today there is also a female merganser. She paddles along with her face underwater and occasionally dives in pursuit of pike. In the buckbrush directly across from the ksisskstakioyis, I hear and then see a single dark-eyed junco. There are kingfishers chattering and hunting in both north- and south-pond. And surprisingly enough there's even a turtle basking in the wide south pool, despite the matter of this end already being cloaked in the coulee's shadow

1748 Rounding the wide south pool, we see magpies, robins, and flickers, all in and around the lone cottonwood tree in the currant and bulberry brush. We then make our standard stop-in at the garter snake hibernaculum, but once again find nobody home. They're really taking their time returning to the site this year

1820 Dropping down into the forest main, we head to the duck blind. The great blue heron is here, in the shallows just below us, hunting with extreme patience and muscle control. We watch closely for at least twenty minutes as the heron moves almost imperceptibly through water that is up to the top of its legs. I realize now that the heron's legs are designed not only for the wading itself, but such that they must appear very much like bulrush stems to the passing fish. At one point, the heron seems to spot something. It slowly stoops its neck down so it's head is just above the waterline. At the last moment the fish must have caught on and darted away, because the heron lifts its head suddenly and snaps at a nearby reed in frustration. It then moves on a few meters further and slows down once more

1904 Leaving the duck blind, Mahoney climbs up to sit on a bench on the levee walk overlooking the river, while I move through the forest and out onto the wet-meadows to check my game cam. It has taken only two pictures this week, one of the whitetail doe and the other of a passing coyote. I figure this lull in activity is related to the nearby pipeline construction. It is dark now, and walking back through the forest to rendezvous with Mahoney, we can both hear a great-horned owl couple calling, and we silently text back and forth to one another about it. I figure them to be in the area we call the cathedral, so I head in that direction. Sure enough, the owls soon register my approach and I see them move to a different part of the forest, over by the ayinnimaoyiiyis. Once there, they return to singing, and I continue on to find Mahoney

1919 Several families of geese came in honking as we walked through the dark, back to the car. I think they may be passing their nights on the big river island. In the not too distant future, it will be the open water crags where they again assemble

IIII ) lllllllllllll Rattlers On The Slither (11Oct11)

1724 After miscalculating the location of my morning meeting by about a hundred kilometers, and then learning that practically every one of my traditional foods students had different instructions about when or whether we were getting together today, I gave up and went to Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko, where the agenda is less threatened by confusion or distraction

I hiked straight down to the rattlesnake hibernaculum, past all of the dry plants of summer, and the relatively few crickets, grasshoppers, greenbottle flies, and grounded black blister beetles who remain. The wind was intense, so there's no telling what other insects might have been around if the conditions were calmer... just imagine what the wind might be to a creature as small and weightless as an insect. My greater interest though was in the snakes. I've still not encountered any newborns for this year and, since I'll be away on business for the next week or so, I knew there might not be another opportunity to visit

When I arrived at the hibernaculum, I fully expected to find all the rattlers piled up around the den entrances, basking in what little heat was available. A few did drop down into the main den as I walked up, suggesting they were huddled near the rim. But as I continued on toward the other entrances, I began to encounter snakes on-the-move. Away from their safe zones, these rattlers reared at me, prepared to strike if necessary, and backed away in this posture toward whatever den entrance was closest. One of them had a telling bulge down by her tail, suggesting that she was close to delivering new snakes into this world

The combination of high winds and wandering, defensive snakes put me on edge just slightly. Even those with the loudest rattles could barely be heard over the gusts and the buzzing seed-pods of various vetch. Rather than remain in the danger zone with both myself and the snakes on edge, I decided to leave for awhile, hike down to the bottom of the coulee and check my game-cam. For the third week in a row, there were no coyote pictures in the lot. Those who did pass by were the regulars - deer, porcupine, and ring-necked pheasant. I'm already scouting for the next location to situate this camera after the year I promised to leave it at this location is up

Before leaving the floodplain, I picked some of the hawthorns that had not already been partially eaten by birds or become host to insect larva. Mahoney has begun to use these berries as a medicine for when she feels her blood pressure is too high. I then hiked back up the slope and almost passed by the hibernaculum again without stopping. I didn't want to cause stress for any of the mothers who might be near to delivering their babies. But then the thought occurred that perhaps I could walk up to within view of them and watch from outside without too much disturbance. So this is what I did. For the next forty minutes, I stood still in a safe, shortgrass area about three meters out from the main den entrance. Immediately I could see that this registered as an appropriate distance for the snakes, who certainly knew I was there, and yet never took a defensive posture, but rather carried out their business as they had been doing before I arrived and bothered them during my earlier pass. From what I could see, they were moving between the five den entrances. When one snake would arrive at a den, another would leave. Sometimes three or four would leave, one right after the other, following the same paths. They didn't use the deer and rabbit trails that wind through the hibernaculum area. They stuck instead to the tall grass, and I could only catch glimpses of them as they passed through narrow clearings, or as they entered or left their grass cover. I observed one snake move from the main den toward me, again using the grass to conceal himself, and I suspect he came near and watched me for a while (other rattlers at the hibernaculum have done this with me in the past more visibly). In the end, I could not detect the purpose of their rotations between the entrances, whether it was a result of the wind bothering them, or if they were hunting, or anything else. In prior years, I've observed a single, large snake engaged in similar activity, moving from entrance to entrance on circuit that took about an hour to complete, and approaching to inspect me whenever it passed. But today it seemed the majority of the snakes were involved in something of this manner. How I'd love to have x-ray eyes so I could see through the grass, and perhaps a week to do nothing else but sit with them

Eventually I left the hibernaculum and climbed the rest of the way up the slope. At the rim, I met up with Reg Ernst, coordinator for the rattlesnake project in Lethbridge that has been relocating snakes from around the city to a man-made hibernaculum in this coulee. Reg was busy with two colleagues, but stopped me to inquire about what the situation was like at the natural hibernaculum he knew I'd just visited. I shared briefly what I'd seen, which unfortunately did not include an accurate count of the number of snakes there. I did comment about how I'd seen no babies yet. Reg had seen some at the man-made hibernaculum, but not elsewhere. We also chatted briefly about conservation strategies, and specifically about non-interference with the snakes when they're at the hibernacula. Reg fears that too many encounters with humans at the dens might prompt the snakes to move to a different and perhaps more dangerous location, jeopardizing their persistence, and referred to an occasion when he'd been involved in a project capturing snakes at a den and tagging them with radio-monitoring chips as a time he felt particularly uncomfortable. It was a soft way of admonishing me for my visits, and I suspect that ultimately he's right... too many human encounters would indeed cause the snakes to think twice about returning to the same site again. On the other hand, I've been visiting this particular den for several years now, stopping by perhaps once a week while the snakes are present, and I don't think it has impacted the population here at all. In fact, I believe that the hibernacula represent extended families who have wintered at each site for millennia. I suspect that almost all the snakes I saw today were born at this site, some of them I must have met as babies, and that it would take a lot more than the occasional visit by a now-familiar, hands-off human to coax a relocation. If the truth were otherwise, the idea of successfully moving snakes from other parts of the city to a foreign, man-made hibernaculum in this coulee with the hope that they would remain here would be absolutely absurd. But it's working, snakes are returning to the new site and bearing young there. The real threats to the persistence of rattlers here are not intrusions by naturalists, biologists, conservationists and the like. They are loss of habitat resulting from urban development and industry, motor vehicles, and the deeply embedded cultural fear and hatred aimed toward these ancient ones

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllllll HyperAwareness (20Oct11)

2114 Many, many strategies for living have-been and can-be learned from observing non-human animals. Consider, for example, the question of what to do when one suspects and/or confirms the approach of danger. Animals do not generally sit there and accept the presence of a predator closing in on them, unless of course they have ample defenses at their ready. They do not say to themselves, "Today, I'm going to meditate on all the blessings I have, and pay no attention to dangers in my world." That kind of thinking would be tremendously risky. Attached as they are to daily and seasonal realities, most animals are constantlu hyper-aware, both sensitive and curious about EVERYTHING in their environment. For this reason, it is considerably difficult for a predator to advance within killing range of its prey without either using special technologies (silent feathers, camouflage, etc) or targeting a particular weakness (the tendency not to look straight up, rate of speed, fatigue, etc). Faced with the shield of hyper-awareness most animals habitually raise, predators far more often have to feed off helpless babies, or prey that are distracted by injury, illness, starvation, and the like. This alone constitutes a valuable lesson: desperation equates with vulnerability for those who deem the service of immediate desires to be more important than maintaining appropriate minimal levels of sensitivity, curiosity, and caution. In my estimation, no matter what physical powers of evasion one might possess, hyper-awareness is the survivor's greatest tool. It is possible for an animal to sustain considerable injury, and yet continue to stay alive in the presence of predators, so long as that awareness is maintained, and threats are accurately assessed and responded to. Returning to the original question then, what are the options for response? In some cases, the best strategy is to sit very still and unnoticed while the danger passes. In others, it's best to increase distance, or to seek shelter, or to herd or flock. Among the more social animals, one of the most common strategies is to mob the predator. When a magpie spots danger lurking, it issues an alarm call that soon draws other birds to the scene. All who arrive assess the situation, and if they agree that there's a threat, they too will cry in alarm. Once a critical mass is reached, the magpies will begin swooping the potential predator. At best, this strategy succeeds in chasing the danger away. At worst, it alerts everyone to the presence of threat. When eggs or hatchlings (i.e. the future generation) are at risk, parents and/or colony members become even more bold in their protests. Maintaining hyper-awareness, vocalizing alarm, and assembling to ward off danger are all crucial strategies that have helped some species survive for millions of years. For those who are concerned about our own well-being, and that of our children and grandchildren, as we face an industrial empire that threatens the life-system as a whole, any suggestion that we should intentionally decrease our awareness so as to focus on the happy rainbows, or quiet down about the issues at hand, or limit our actions to private individual responses when we there are opportunities to mobilize as groups... any such suggestions may not be too wise

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllllllllll Mi’ksikatsiiksi (23Oct11)

1540 Sspopiikimi - this is our last visit for the summer lunar season, a relatively warm day (sweaters and toques), and we are making the counter-sunwise stroll, passing twenty-five mi'ksikatsi (sixteen drakes) midpond, on our way toward the wide south pool

1554 The south end holds no great reward as far as we can tell at first survey, four more mi'ksikatsi (one drake). No sign of any herons yet, nor the kingfishers. The sspopiiksi are no longer basking, though they may have been earlier. There are three of them under the bench where we're sitting, swimming and feeding within the milfoil. Along the path, Mahoney and I saw two pink-edged sulphur butterflies. And on the ground at our feet presently, a harvestman spider. The leaves have really been falling since our last visit two weeks ago. Most of the trees in the forest main and owl wood are already bare

1618 We hike around the south bend to the Oldman River, gazing into the owl wood as we passed. With the leaves gone, the locations of nests we'd not found over the summer are being revealed, some even within a meter or so from the edge of our normal path. Once again, we find the garter snake hibernaculum absent of activity. No birds on either the river's waters or shores along this stretch. Very quiet today

1707 From the hibernaculum, we drop down through the forest main to the duck blind above the south marsh... nothing. Then Mahoney climbs back up the levee to sit on the river bench while I walk past the subpond and out into the bulberries on the wet-meadows to check my game cam. The device has captured a couple of very nice sequences this round, including a bedding doe, magpies leading a coyote through, a late-night porcupine visit, and a pass by the young whitetail buck who hasn't been around for the last month or so. While I squat in the bush to download these images, I can hear a magpie giving double-calls from the forest main, the only non-mallard bird we've encountered today

1725 I rendezvous with Mahoney at the bench and show her the game cam images. Then we walk the levee out to north pond and hike back to our vehicle. Still no sight or sound of the kingfishers, and I can only guess that they've now departed. From the way things are lining up, I'm predicting a very lonely winter at the pond

Golden Flies And Beaver Forecasts

2011-10-01T18:30:00.002-06:00

IIII ) llllllllllllllllll Many Skimmers And Mohkammii (17Sept11)

1600 Sspopiikimi - given the prolonged lull in significant phenological change after the hawklings fledged, we took a couple weeks away, and are now returned to survey anew in the strong wind this afternoon

1605 Walking around north-pond and down into the forest main, my initial impression is that not a lot has changed still. There's an absence of birds, or at least bird sounds, just two mallards on this end of the pond, no kingfishers or others apparent. The obvious insect presences remain with medium-sized grigs (two-stripes and redwing clickhoppers among them), smaller skimmer dragonflies, and a few pink-rimmed sulfur butterflies. The flowers still in bloom are mainly the hairy golden and tufted white prairie aster. All of the goldenrod and rhombic-leaved sunflowers have played out now and, in the forest, most of the showy asters have gone too

1643 At the edge of the wet-meadows we take a break so I can climb through the bulberry brush to check my game-cam. Finally, activity here is picking up. After the ducks of the flood season, all we were finding in the candid shots were redwing blackbirds and grackles. And then, after they departed, nothing for several weeks. Today though, we have a series of images, mostly of whitetail deer, but also coyotes and pheasants. Among the whitetail shots, there is a young buck who keeps returning. He shows up initially with velvet on his single-tine antlers, and later (just days ago) with the velvet sheared off. Another of the deer, a doe, has a large scar down her ribs, probably from where she was hit by a car

1715 On my way back to the forest main from the bulberries, I come across a paddle-tailed darner clinging to the low plants of the wet-meadows. I'm surprised it allows me so close, and doesn't do more than flick its wings a few times when I pet it. Then, continuing our hike south through the forest, Mahoney and I disturb hundreds, perhaps thousands of skimmers. Some of them are of a species we haven't noticed before - dark with a tail that bears narrow, yellow stripes, so small that two of them can fit together on the surface of a single buckbrush leaf. We stop and take pictures in an area particularly dense with them, where the chokecherry hugs the path. There are dark damselflies here too, and a large yellow and green darner. Eventually, we come to the duck blind above the wide south pool. The islands are filled with mallards today, far more than just the two families who had been here up until our last visit. I count twenty eight sleeping on the two main islands, and there are others around here and there. Nothing like the thousands that gather in Mookoan Reservoir, but still more than we've recently seen here

1740 Just before we depart the duck blind, I spot someone we haven't seen here since early summer. It is mohkammii, the great blue heron, hunting along an edge of the bulrushes. Mahoney and I then walk back through the forest and climb the levee to check the garter snake hibernaculum on the riverbank by the owl wood. As far as we can tell, the snakes aren't back yet. I guess they're using every bit of remaining summer we have

1818 Our walk around the south bend and along the west bank is without much incident. We see the mallards and heron again as we pass, the latter lifting heavily and crossing over to the subpond, out of view. Below the south-pond bench, we startle a kingfisher, who flies away chattering. We notice that the water has gone down quite a bit, enough that some small islands have been exposed between the Ksisskstakioyis and the west bank... this being the usual trend for end of summer, the golf course continuing to pump water out for their greens, and no rains to replenish. The beavers still haven't built their food cache up above the surface, but it appears that are at work at it, the entrance on that end of the lodge is crowded with floating bulrush stems

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllll Otsstatsimaan Absence (18Sept11)

1153 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - I arrived about a half hour ago at the coulee rim, diverted by residential construction that has my normal access road closed. It's another windy day, and I've hiked down to the hibernaculum to learn whether the rattlesnakes have returned yet. Several things have changed since my visit of two weeks ago, when the yellow-jacket workers were pestering and stinging me. Today there are none. Gone also are the blooms of broomweed, gumweed, and goldenrod that held so much attention from the insects. Now there are only the inconspicuous yellow panicles on the big sagebrush. The grigs are still thick here, though I've not seen any of the large two-striped females, and I suspect their eggs have long been deposited. Unlike the pond, there are no dragonflies or damselflies about. And the only birds I've seen so far were a couple song sparrows in some stunted chokecherries about a third of the way down the slope

1234 There are at least four snakes returned. I find two younger rattlers along with a large, probably pregnant female at the main entrance, and I hear another young one drop down into the far entrance as I approach. I still expect to see a lot more return before the serious cold arrives. Leaving the snakes, I've now climbed up a ridge and am in search of cactus berries as I follow this route down toward the floodplain

1317 I find none of the fruit I'm looking for, otsstatsimaan. It may be that this was a bad year for the cactii, just as it has been for the okonoki, bulberry, currants, and so many others. Misamssootaa was too long. I hope this is not what climate change has in store for us from here out. In any case, when I hit the dark sediment toward the bottom of the ridge, I stop to watch a large wolf spider that has run across my path. It climbs under some leaf debris below a dry, overhanging patch of buffalo bean. When I look closer beneath the same plant, I find an event underway... there are dozens of slate-colored assassin bugs here, and they are mating. Continuing on, I stop next at my game-cam in the hawthorn brush. It has collected images of all the usual visitors: coyote, deer, cottontails, and pheasants. In some grass below the camera, there is a huge wasp struggling to climb away. I think it may be a new yellow-jacket queen, and perhaps I've disturbed the area she's hoping to bed down in for the winter

1422 My return hike up the coulee slope is without much incident. I sit for a quick break at the Oldman riverbank, then select a more direct climb that takes me over shortgrass where I know there are ball cactus. Again though, there are no berries to be found. There are, however, still a lot of the tiny citric skunkbrush berries. These I suspect are what the song sparrows are eating, as I’ve come across several more of these birds in the sumac during my climb. Toward the rim, where the broomweed and gumweed has recently played out, the ground is moving with black blister beetles. Aside from the sparrows and beetles, I find nothing else of note and am soon back at my car

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllllllll Beaver Caches Against The Lodge Walls (22Sept11)

1139 Heading out the door and down the back alley, toward the coulee and hopefully a break to (not from) reality for the afternoon

1213 Though suburbia concludes a block away from my house at the top of the farthest reaching coulee draw, it's still a bit of a hike across a sort of transition zone to get to that part of "outside" that feels really outside. This transition zone is comprised of mixed grassland that was not very long ago farm field. It is now being reclaimed by native plants and animals, but the small gain will be short-lived... for the same reason this area was farmed, its relative flatness, it will soon also be developed to support more of the suburban sprawl. I feel like I have been all my life crossing these kinds of temporary transition zones to enjoy brief respites, and to access learning experiences that are more difficult to recognize in the areas like my neighborhood that our landscaping and architecture has so dramatically transformed. And I know that part of this is just my own psychological obstacle, because the synanthropic species like magpies and crows have little problem carrying out less imaginary ways of life amidst all of it. But on the other hand, many of them die there of bizarre causes that don't exist where I'm presently sitting, halfway down a coulee ridge, with my back up against a boulder, in the exact same place (judging by the flattened grass) where deer, coyotes, and others sit to rest and observe the surroundings

1255 Part of what I want to do in the relatively short time I have to enjoy here this afternoon is emulate those like our neighborhood magpies who come up to suburbia from their coulee roosts simply to be corvids in a place that is as much theirs as ours. If they are synanthropic, I want to be synbiotic... in other words, I want to be a human animal in this coulee that I belong to as much as I belong anywhere. And so what do the magpies do when they come up? They eat, and they explore, when it's hot they find shade. Even though the boulder on this ridge is cool against my back, it's getting warm. And just down the way, in the draw, there are chokecherries that offer both fruit and shade...

1343 Not too many strides away from the chokecherry patch is a cliff overlooking the Oldman River. I decide to walk out and have a peek before moving into the shade. When I reach the edge, I see straight below me a large cormorant standing on some boulders about a third of the way out into the river. The bird spots me immediately as well, and wings off upstream. I watch it go, then head back to the berries, and for the next while pick and munch casually, filling half a brown paper lunch sack with what I don't eat on the spot. It's comfortable in the brush, aside from the commingled burdock that, despite my attempts at careful avoidance, seems to swat at me with their prickly seed heads. When I feel cooled and ready for a change of pace, I climb the next ridge and again look over a cliff edge at the river. Now there's a great blue heron where the cormorant had been standing. It must be a good fishing spot. Like the cormorant, the heron is spooked. It flies downstream and across the river to land on the food cache of a large, shoreline beaver lodge

1453 Now my curiosity is piqued, and I can't resist climbing down the cliff and wading out to perch on the rock myself in the hopes of seeing what the heron and cormorant are so interested in. But alas, I don't have their eyes, or perhaps their stature, or stillness, or patience, whatever it is that enables them to successfully spot and acquire fish from this position. I’m reminded of the days my dad would take us snorkeling in the clear north-fork of the Santiam in the Valley Willamma. I could never see the trout from above, but with my face underwater they were suddenly abundant. Perhaps that is what's happening here in these far greener and hazy waters of the Oldman. The tiny minnows are enjoying it though. Every once in a while I change footing, dislodging small crumbs of goose droppings from this poop-encrusted rock, and the minnows swim right up and feast

1538 I haven't been down here, to the river just below my house, since probably the middle of last winter. I don't know what it is. I think in part it's just that I don't want to get too attached. With all the development going on up above, I'd be upset if I came to know this place well and then had my access blocked. But that’s not very synbiotic thinking. In any case, there's been a lot of growth in sandbar willow and cottonwood saplings since I last visited. Probably this is owing to two summers of fairly high water. But I suspect it's also connected to the work of the beavers who reside here. Having left my midstream rock and climbed back up an adjacent cliff, I can now see there are three large, occupied beaver lodges all within maybe a two-hundred meter stretch - one just below me on my side of the river, and two spaced out on the opposite shore. A beaver triangle. I know all these lodges are occupied, because each of these families have started a food cache for winter. And in every case, the cache is right up against the end of their lodge, which is curious

1629 I slowly make my way back up along the ridge, noting a few of the insects present along the way - dark morph cowpath tiger beetles, yellow jackets, and one of the elusive red flies. I have my eyes peeled for otsstatsimaan, the fruit of ball cactus, but I find only four plants, and just one with a pair of berries. Eventually I again cross the mixed-grass transition zone and arrive at the edge of suburbia. Here I am met by the local magpies, two or three families, all of whom know me, and some having even visited and explored the inside of my house. They are giving double and triple calls, rounding up all their members. There are robins here as well, and sometimes when one of the magpies takes a short flight, it is swooped by the smaller bird. No doubt the robins loath the egg-thieving corvids. Soon the magpies will head down into the coulee draw that I've just left. I stop and talk to them, and there is one who hurt his leg a few days ago who's begging, but unfortunately I haven't brought any of the beetle grubs we usually offer them. In any case, meeting them here at this edge zone seems the perfect conclusion to my day, and maybe they feel the same

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllllllllll Golden Dung Flies (24Sept11)

1658 Sspopiikimi - out for an evening stroll around the pond, and perhaps a dusk sit down with the beavers

1716 It's dry and hot today, as it has been most of the week. As we make our way around north-pond and into the forest main, it's clear the conditions, compounded with the watering regime of the neighboring golf course, is sucking the moisture out of everything. There are no longer any flowers to speak of, save for a few tufted white prairie asters and purple showy asters in the shade. The leaves of the trees have turned mostly gold, as have those of the willows and dogbane on the wet-meadows. The dragonflies, abundant last week, are gone. In their stead are golden dung flies who, though they may deposit their eggs in feces, mainly feed on other insects, and so are widespread in the forest, and hunting

1753 Our first real stop is at the edge of the forest main and wet-meadows, where Mahoney sits down on a log in the shade while I cross over to the bulrush patch to check on my game-cam. This week, it has been just a single whitetail doe visiting this brush. I have several images of her laying down to nap right in front of the camera, and one picture of her nose sniffing the lens. Continuing south through the forest again, we find more of the golden flies and a spider that is camouflaged to appear as a sweetclover seed. There are also lots of funnel-web and harvestman spiders about, and a few mosquitoes. We stop again at the quiet cathedral where the owls hunt, so I can catch up on these notes

1824 Between the cathedral and the garter snake hibernaculum, we come across several colonies of ants who are producing their mating swarms. All of these colonies are of the same species - a very small ground-dweller whose hive entrances comprise mere holes on the surface, with no mound. The winged generation appears to be of two sorts, many of them being about five times the size in body of the regular colony members, but others appearing smaller. I will have to research their species name. We stop off briefly at the duck blind to observe that the waters of the wide south pool have gone down even further. No sign of the heron tonight, and we've not seen the yellowlegs make their seasonal visit here yet. There are also far fewer mallards on the islands this evening. The snakes, however, are starting to make their way back to the winter den. They haven't come to occupy the hibernaculum proper just yet, but Mahoney spots a young one as we climb the levee toward their site, so no doubt they'll be here soon. These wandering garters emerge later than the rattlers at the beginning of summer and, from what we’ve come to recognize, return later at summer's end

1859 Rounding the wide south pool, we cross paths with several mountain cottontails by the currant brush. The kingfisher is here, plucking baby pike from the water, and the merlin is present, snatching the last remaining dragonflies from midair. Eventually we take our seats on the west cutbank across from the Ksisskstakioyis. Like the river beavers, this family is building their winter food cache right up against the wall of their lodge. This is the first time we've seen them use this strategy. Usually, the cache is built at least a couple meters out. Makes us wonder whether they might be expecting some peculiar conditions this winter

1927 The light is fading, and both the beavers and mallards are congregating to feed just below us. There are seventeen mallards here, and more in north pond. There is also another water bird who flew past us toward south pond. It may have been a pied-billed grebe or ring-necked duck... we are accustomed to seeing both stop by at the pond this time of year. But with only shadow to work with, we couldn't make a firm identification. We are, however, able to distinguish one of this summer's beaver pups by its much smaller size. It stays close to the lodge and plays at the edge of the food cache before we depart

Tattered Wings And Starving Hawklings

2011-09-06T15:03:00.001-06:00

I Tattered Wings (27Aug11)

1800 Sspopiikimi - much can change in a week at the pond, and it's been that long since our last visit. Walking in to take our seats on the west cutbank across from the Ksisskstakioyis, all is noticeably quiet. The sikohpoyitaipanikimm family appears to have moved on, there are far fewer butterflies, only the dragonflies and grigs remain, and the mi'ksikatsi families in the wide south pool

1835 As we wait for the ksisskstakiiksi to emerge, a single mourning dove alights on a perch formed from one of the sticks of their lodge, and warms itself in the final bit of direct sunlight before the shadow of the coulee envelops the pond. Once warmed, the dove flies down to the edge of the Ksisskstakioyis for a sip of water, then wings away. I begin wandering the west bank in search of insects. As during the walk in, I notice primarily grasshoppers and dragonflies, the wings of the variegated meadowhawks and pale snakeskins all tattered. I also see a green leaf-hopper, a cabbage white butterfly, and a pink-edged sulfur. The season is definitely winding-down

1908 After a full hour's wait, the first beaver finally makes an appearance... there are ripples in the water around the lodge, and soon it is floating out above the food cache area. Judging by its size, I figure it for a yearling. It floats quiet, then dips underwater and reappears again briefly just below us before again rolling under and out of sight

1921 As we wait to see if the beaver will return, I suddenly feel a twinge of itchy pain on my sandal-exposed toes. Looking down, it appears to be a bee, and I instinctively reach down and knock it away. My hasty response has critically injured the animal, and now I pick it up by one wing and see it is not a bee after all, but a deer fly. The itchy pain must have been the effect from when it sliced into my toe to get the juices flowing that it intended to feed on. Meanwhile, another beaver has emerged, swimming toward the midpond cattails

1937 With so little to note for presences, perhaps I should focus a bit on absence. Four that we've been accustomed to seeing and hearing, and who were certainly around last week but not evident this evening are the robins, tree swallows, nighthawks and catbirds. I've no doubt there's still some of them are still around, but they're sure not making themselves known. This time of year, we often get blue herons and yellowlegs at the pond. But the waters were high almost all summer, and have still not receded to a level that would make it profitable for the yellowlegs at least to stop by. I don't know that we will see wigeons here as the season closes either, for there are no coots around to dive and retrieve the milfoil they enjoy. And the milfoil itself, being so far submersed, never bloomed to our knowledge

2006 The merlin has come in for his evening meal, perching on the same pole he usually uses, at the edge of the golf course behind us. From this lookout, he spots dragonflies and quickly swoops down over the pond to grab them. On one such dive, going particularly low, the merlin startles a beaver into splashing. The ksisskstaki have been coming and going from their lodge, making runs to both north and south-pond. I'm kind of surprised that they're not bringing home any food for storage, after all the boughs and saplings we saw them towing over the last couple weeks

2029 The merlin makes several successful dragonfly grabs before it's dark enough that we feel compelled to leave. And just before we stand up, a yellow-jacket comes to lick raspberry tea off the rim of Mahoney's cup. We pack up and hike to the vehicle, with one of the beavers following us half-way, and as we pull out we find that the hawklings have not gone so far away after all. They are standing at the roadside of a ramp leading onto the highway, picking grasshoppers off the plants. This ramp is normally quite busy, but lucky for the hawklings there's construction on its route down the coulee slope, and it will be closed for some time to through-traffic

II Starving Redtail (28Aug11)

1109 Could be an interesting day... we're at breakfast with the family and have just been told the location of an injured hawk. So Mahoney and I will drop the kids downtown with some money and roll out to attempt a rescue

1330 I just caught the injured hawk... it was able to fly a very short distance, so its wing can’t be that bad... on our way to the Birds of Prey Center, with Mahoney holding it as we drive

1626 That's three for three successful rescues we've participated in this summer. That hawklet waited for assistance on the side of the road in this brutal heat for a full week. Can you imagine?

IIII Is It Appropriate To Save A Starving Hawk? (30Aug11)

Over the weekend, Mahoney and I were informed of a hawk that had been standing on the side of One Spot Road for at least a week, apparently injured. As soon as we heard this news, we drove out to help the animal. We found a fledgling who was weak and unable to fly, so we picked it up and drove it to the Birds Of Prey Centre in Coaldale, where they specialize in rehabilitating and caring for hawks, eagles, and owls. When we arrived at the Centre, workers there assessed the hawkling and told us that it was not injured or sick, but rather starving, and that they would fatten it up and see to its release. It surprised me that a young hawk would starve in this region that seems so rich in voles, mice, grasshoppers and the like. It made me wonder whether their food sources might be so diminished by our industries that parent hawks are finding it difficult to adequately nourish their young. So yesterday, I sent an email to Marie Winn, a nature writer from New York who is famous for her work with hawks and the wide network of experts and enthusiasts she’s brought together in dialog, to inquire as to whether she knew if fledgling starvation is normal, or if there is any indication that this is a growing trend. She forwarded the letter to John Blakeman of Ohio, who has expertise in the matter, and he responded as follows:

“This morbid occurrence is rather common in August and September, as hawks in their first summer are no longer being fed or guarded by their parents. Many have not yet learned and perfected sufficient hunting and killing skills to maintain weight. So yes, these birds are in the process of starving. And it’s common and normal. Only a fraction, between 20 to 40% (sometimes fewer) of [those] fledged ever survive their first year, and starvation in late summer and early fall is a prime lethal factor. Survival of the fittest is at work.”

This morning I relayed this information on Facebook, along with a suggestion that this is the kind of situation where we humans might make ourselves useful and assist the hawks. The question was raised though, if we were to do so would it be an irresponsible interference with nature? Inferring from the last sentence of Blakeman’s response above, there are folks out there, including some who devote their lives to learning from these animals, who believe just that. I observe that there are several ways people typically approach this ethical dilemma…

On one extreme, there is the “survival of the fittest” and/or non-interference approaches, which are anchored in many cultures, and basically espouse the same response: that humans should not mess with the natural flow, regardless of how cruel it may sometimes be. If we go out of our way to save starving hawklings, then we risk contributing to an unnatural over-population of these birds, and also a weakening of their species. Hawks fledglings who are not developing in time with their parents’ care, if helped along by humans, might in the future breed young who are equally maladapted.

On the other extreme, there are those who espouse the “stewards of the planet” approach. These folks generally believe that we humans were created by a higher power explicitly to be the caretakers of the nature on Earth, and that this nature was “given” to us. In other words, we are like terrestrial gods, and it is our responsibility to tend to all of these species that we have been charged to care for. In more secular circles, this approach translates as a discourse of management, and assumes that we can in fact understand the intricacies of biological systems to such a degree that our purposeful interferences can be carried out to their benefit.

In between these two extremes are found the more complex positions, and they are incredibly varied. Here is my opinion…

I do not espouse the non-interference survival of the fittest philosophy, because I believe it carries with it a fundamental misunderstanding of adaptation. To me, adaptation is about fitness within an eco-social matrix, not simply who lives or dies in the short-term, or whose genes get passed on to the next generations. In this eco-social schema, the most adapted species are those whose very lifestyles support the most expansive diversity of life.

Beavers, for example, are animals who I would consider to be among the most adaptive in our eco-social networks. Every major aspect of their way of life benefits others. Their homes and dams are microhabitats for a vast host of smaller life, insects and the like, who inhabit the mud and rotting wood. Many passerines frequent the beaver lodges and dams in search of these smaller critters to eat. Other animals – muskrats and geese for example – nest in the tops and sides of these lodges, and are in this manner more safe from predators than they might be elsewhere. When a beaver fells a tree or bush, or digs out a piece of bulrush or cattail root, it very often results in the plants responding by sending forth several new shoots, such that you end up with more willows, poplars, and reeds as a result. The water held back by their dams and channelled laterally by their canals create wetlands that thousands if not millions of species depend on for their very existence.

Now… the beaver may not purposely set out to assist all of these others, but their way of life supports this network naturally, and to me that is the epitome of high adaptation. I believe we have the tools to consciously shape our own human ways of life in similar synergic manner, such that everything we do could promote biodiversity. And in this, I am not talking about that extreme position of stewardship. I do not believe that our purpose here is to tend or manage other species or ecological systems. We are NOT intelligent enough to understand those systems in all their complexity, though there is a certain extent to which we can, and in my opinion that limitation resides in phenological studies. We are capable of recognizing the annual patterns of behaviors of plants and animals, as well as some of the relationships between any particular species and the others with which it is directly connected. When the complexity goes beyond this, however, when the effects of the life of one species carries through others in indirect ways, or when more than one species’ lives act in concert to produce a phenomenon, then we’re out of our league, the intricacies of the system are too much for us to fully appreciate. It is for this reason that I do not identify with stewardship and management discourses.

What we are capable of managing appropriately and responsibly is ourselves. Our activities. Our ways of life. This is the area where we can do applied work that will benefit others and may some day carry us to becoming a highly-adapted keystone species within wider (yet localized) eco-social systems. This is where phenological study becomes imperative, because in order to manage ourselves to the maximal benefit of others we need to be able to recognize both the normal patterns of behavior in order to seize opportunities where we might in some way assist (like with the starving hawklings), and also any dynamic changes to these patterns (like the ibis moving further north) so that we can assess whether our activities are prompting these changes (which in this case they are) and manage ourselves responsibly (which in this case we are not).

So to me, the important question is not whether we should interfere with nature to assist a starving hawkling. Perhaps consider this… when a beaver makes a dam, it is interfering with nature, and it is justified in doing so partly because that interference supports its life. The beaver creates that dam so that the waters will swell, forming a pond around its home, giving it protection from predators and safe access to lots of food. But if all the dam did was support the beaver’s life alone, would this trait have lasted the test of time? The beavers’ dam-work creates a habitat that supports the lives of thousands of non-beavers, and it is my opinion that nature selects for this kind of adaptation. The more benefit your species’ way of life brings to those who are not of your species, the more likely nature will keep you in the picture long-term, because then your life becomes integral to the vitality of the eco-social system. Like the beavers, we too are a part of nature and are justified in our interferences partly because they support our life. However, if we fail to manage our activities strategically, in ways that have a positive impact on biodiversity, do you think nature will keep us around?

Worst case scenario: We recognize that many hawk fledglings die of starvation, so we set out to assist any birds we find in this condition, and after several future generations it leads to the hawks having a greater dependence on us, and so we have to change our lives to suit the needs of the hawks… we have to become much more aware of them, we have to learn where all their nests are, we have to watch for those who are starving in the fledgling stage and ensure that they are fed adequately until they can catch their own food… in other words, we have to strengthen our relationship to the hawks, recognize that their existence is important for our own and for the life system, and utilize the gifts that we have as humans to support that mutuality… I’m not convinced this scenario is a bad thing

IIII ) llll Kakanottsstookiiksi Return To The Owl Wood (3Sept11)

1903 Sspopiikimi - and then comes a day when it's no longer warm enough for just shorts and a t-shirt, and a buff sleeve returns to warm the neck. The temperature dropped to just two degrees above zero last night, and we are here to walk, survey, and check in at the garter snake hibernaculum. We expect all the reptiles are moving home, having babies, settling down for the season

1918 Hiking in along the north cutbank, we see the mallard families are still here, feeding midpond. So too are the kingfishers, grasshoppers and dragonflies, especially the paddle-tailed darners. The remaining flowers are minimal, but there are hairy golden asters, tufted white prairie asters, goldenrod, showy aster, and a few rhombic-leaved sunflowers. The spiders, it seems, have some business at present. Many of them are crossing our path, several varieties of wolf spider and some harvestmen, and there are occupied funnel webs in the grass

1948 We try to move hastily to the hibernaculum, given that the shadow of the coulee rim has already crossed both the pond and river. Quickest route is via the shale trail on the levee. It's so quiet here now. The only birds we see in the forest main as we pass are a few western kingbirds, though doubtless there are others concealed in the still mostly-green canopy. Coming to the south end of the forest, high above, we witness a large group of hawks in migration. There are close to forty of them, by rough estimate, too high up to discern species, at least by our untrained eyes, but my understanding is that broad-winged hawks will travel in such close aggregations. Nearby, in the owl wood, we hear the begging calls of an immature great-horned. It is followed shortly by the typical call of one of its parents. I wonder if they have returned here at this time to eat the garter snakes who will be traveling this way in-route to their rocks. Or the owls might be keeping an eye on the chokecherry and bulberry bushes, all in fruit and attracting small birds, porcupines, raccoons, and deer mice. When we reach the hibernaculum, there is nobody around. Either they haven't started arriving yet or we're just a bit too late in the day

2023 We decide to try locating the owls, skirting around the perimeter of their wood. A whitetail doe crosses our path, but our efforts to find the birds are fruitless. They see us, we never catch sight of them, and by the time we get over to the area where we originally heard the begging calls, they strike up anew from over by the hibernaculum. The family has moved silently without our notice, and it's getting dark now. We head over to the wide south pool of the pond. There are swarms of male mosquitoes surrounding us, and a catbird crying from the currant thickets. Out on the water, we find one mallard family surface skimming for their evening meal, another already going to sleep on the big island

2048 We walk the west length, past the Ksisskstakioyis, to the parking lot. No merlin this evening. One of the beavers is out and upset about our trespass. He whacks the water with his tail a few times to demonstrate his frustration. If his family is caching their winter food, it hasn't crested the pond surface yet. We're expecting to see it taking shape soon though

IIII ) lllll First Rattler At The Hibernaculum (4Sept11)

1500 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - it's a warm day after a few nights of near freezing temperatures, and I've come down to check on whether the rattlesnakes are returning to their hibernaculum

1520 I hike straight down to the den without pause, wanting to look in on the snakes before anything else. But I've not failed to observe that the insects are enjoying the warm afternoon. Most of the activity is focused around the yellow blooms of gumweed and broomweed, with pollinators and predators galore. I also see that, along the sections of trail with some clear ground, both the black and green-morph cowpath tiger beetles are hunting. While the river-bottom below remains rather green, the grass and other foliage of the coulee slopes has dried and returned to more earthy tones

1552 Sure enough, the first snake has returned, heard but not seen rolling into the main entrance as I step near. The grass here, though dead and dry, has not been matted down by basking serpents yet. There is at least one here, the sound of a rattler scrambling to safety is unmistakable. My question for the season is whether any young will be born of the extended family who live here. Last year, there were only unexplained abortions. Unfortunately, while checking in on the third entrance to the den, I experienced another unmistakable and familiar sensation... that of a yellow-jacket wasp injecting venom into my flesh. It had crawled up and perhaps got stuck under the hem of my shorts, just above the knee. My hopes for a rare, sting-free summer have been dashed. The vengeance of the wasps and bees upon me continues, now thirty-three years since my childhood offense

1631 Leaving the hibernaculum behind, I hike down to the hawthorn brush at the edge of the floodplain to download the latest images from my game cam. Surprisingly, there've been no coyotes moving through this trail for at least a few weeks. Those I find photographed are the mule deer, porcupine, mountain cottontail, ring-necked pheasant, and my first shot here of a brown thrasher. While flipping through these photos on my little viewer, yet another wasp comes to bother me. There's something low, by my stomach, they're after. But their attention makes me uncomfortable. I'm in no mood for another sting today

1719 I start making my way back up the slope, popping on a macro lense and stringing my camera around my neck with the intent of taking lots of insect photos during the return hike. My first and last stop is at a large, fuzzy, light-brown caterpillar I've never seen before. It’s making a mad dash along the trail in front of me, and comes to rest eventually in a bit of rocky shade. The whole while I'm trying to take pictures of this caterpillar, another yellow-jacket is hovering around me. I'm glad to get off a couple decent shots, so I can walk away. But the wasp harassment doesn't end. They are landing on my hands, on my camera, hovering in front of my stomach. I decide finally to just put my camera back in my pack and march non-stop back up to the rim. In a way, it’s fortunate that I do. Just as I come over the last crest, I find Reg Ernst walking away from the parking lot, carrying a white bucket and a snake stick. He'd been brought out to relocate a rattlesnake that had wandered (rightly) into one of the new suburb developments nearby. I talk to Reg briefly, updating him on the one rattler who's returned to the natural hibernaculum, and reminding him of our discussions from last winter, that I would like to do some volunteer work with the snakes, whether it be research or relocation. If anything should ever happen to Reg, I’d like to be able to take over the work on their conservation here

Red-Fly Appears When Hawklings Fledge

2011-08-24T14:50:00.002-06:00

IIII ) llllllllllll Hawklings Leave The Nest (13Aug11)

1639 Sspopiikimi - I'm sitting on the north cutbank, a feature I've yet to arrive at a better name for, where it seems like only yesterday I was watching insects on the coneflowers and thistles, now completely played out. The only blooms to see here at present are the occasional alfalfa, tufted white prairie aster, and inconspicuous absinthe

1645 Many plants are drying out, the grass already starting to yellow. There are at least some gold leaves on all the poplar trees. Walking in, I saw that the first leaves had even fallen, though compelled to turn and drop prematurely due to extra weight and lost nutrition associated with the development of petiole aphid galls. So many signs of winter's approach, but summer's not over yet. From where I sit, I can hear the hawklings of Ayinnimaoyiiyis calling for their parents, and I expect to find a mourning dove hatchling in the forest on my way to see them. There are lots of dragonflies in the air, and clinging to the tops of the absinthe around me. One of the nighthawks still calls in display above

1713 Moving on around the tip of north-pond, past all the floating wood from the old boardwalk, where a spotted sandpiper hunts for insects, I see other flowering plants. There are the two sweetclovers, yellow and white. There are tall goldenrods and rhombic-leaved sunflowers. And there are clematis. Only a smattering of the clematis flowers have started to seed. Most of them are still brilliant white, and being visited by honey bees and ants

1719 I have my eye out for painted turtles, but there are none basking on the north end. Those I do see are only briefly lifting their heads above the surface before diving back below. Mahoney and I released a turtle here a few days ago, one that - while perfectly healthy - had been deposited at a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Mohkinsstsis. We figure there must be a painted turtle population, unknown to the herpetologists, somewhere in that vicinity. In either case, it's living here now and, having memorized the unique broken pattern of one of the uppermost plates on it's back, we'll be looking forward to crossing paths with it again

1745 I drop down into the forest main and hike through to the wet-meadows so I can check my game-cam. Not to surprisingly, it hasn't been visited over the past week. It is positioned in a large clump of all-male bulberries, so there's no fruit to draw the animals. And since nesting season is pretty much over... I probably won't see significant action there until winter, when it becomes one of the few places at the pond for good concealment

1800 Leaving the camera and moving back toward the forest, I'm set upon by one of the parent hawks. This makes me suspicious, and when I come within view of the nest my thoughts are confirmed. The hawklings are not here. They are no doubt flight-training between trees in the forest, and I'll have to wait and listen for their cries if I hope to see them

1813 I sit patiently, waiting for the hawklings' begging calls, or for the sounds of a mobbing, and watching the canopy for any movement. At one point, I walk over to check on the dove nest. The pair of eggs are still being incubated. I notice that the spurge hawk moth larvae are gone, orobably off to the next stage of their development, subterrainian pupation. Sitting down on a log again in the shade of the forest, I hear a hawkling cry. They are north of me

1848 I hike slowly back through the forest main, taking just a couple steps at a time, scanning the canopy at every stop. I never hear the hawkling's voice again, nor does the parent bird return. All along the route there are house wrens, mourning doves, catbirds, yellow warblers, eastern kingbirds, cedar waxwings, and dozens of flickers. The latter are being scared up from the ground, where they must be feasting on some kind of insect. Climbing the levee again at the forest's north end, I even come across a yearling wandering garter snake, but no hawks

1909 Not wanting to give up quite yet, I follow the levee trail, watching the trees until I come to the bend around the wide south pool. Both of the aapsspini families are here. But as I arrive, the Four Square family in particular come flying down off the golf greens in a group. If what we have witnessed over the last five years visiting this place holds true, they will not be long for the pond. Also on the water, there are eight mallards, all with drab plumage, very likely one of the clutches born here this summer, only now these duckings are hardly distinguishable from their mother. There is a kingfisher hunting the south spring, and robin fledglings picking their way along the mowed strip on either side of the shale trail. I have this sense that we've missed out on a lot of learning opportunities here this summer, that our study has stagnated, and I'm recognizing only the same general events we've witnessed before, on evenings when we took more time sitting still on the banks and watching

1947 Missing the good'ol days, as it were, I decide to conclude my visit this evening sitting by the water's edge across from the Ksisskstakioyis. It's not the same without Mahoney, but perhaps she'll do this with me tomorrow. I sit and watch a young member of the ksisskstaki family tow a good-sized willow sapling along the nearest canal and down in front of the lodge. It reminds me that they'll be building a food cache at this very location soon, if this willow is not itself among the materials being pegged in at the base. One of the parent hawks has returned, sitting in a tree behind me, above the golf greens, crying out to the fledglings, who could very well be in the trees above the greens themselves. I wait for more beavers to emerge, but none do. A large, blue paddle-tailed darner passes by on it's way south. The water tonight is calm and reflective, save for the little raindrop-like ripples made when the aquatic beetles surface, or the heads of turtles poking up now and then. This light, this calm, this seat, this is the pond that I love

IIII ) lllllllllllll Mi'ksoy'sksissi (14Aug11)

1751 Sspopiikimi - we're sitting on the west bank across from the Ksisskstakioyis this evening. The first beaver just appeared, and is swimming up the closest wet-meadow canal. We can see one of the three hawklings perched on a large branch a few trees south of the Ayinnimaoyiiyis, mostly red in color and occasionally crying. It's been a long time since we've come here and sat still

1816 When the beaver returns, he's towing three items - a poplar sapling, a rabbit willow, and a bulrush stem. Like yesterday, he dives on this side of the lodge, in the position where they usually build their cache. As he goes under, he loses the bulrush and it's left floating in front of the lodge. Just as well though if they are starting to make their winter store, because the bulrush layer can't be fixed until there are willows planted into the mucky bottom of the pond

1820 The hawklet has stopped calling, and Mahoney uses glass to look across to the edge of the forest main. It's still on its perch, and she thinks the other two are still in the nest itself. Meanwhile, I can see the mallard family and the smaller aapsspini family off in the wide south pool. No sign of the Four Square aapsspiniiksi yet. A turtle rises to the surface briefly below us, and some dragonflies amass in a little pocket of sunshine atop the prickly roses. A kingbird lands on the Ksisskstakioyis, sits for a minute or two, then flies across the pond and past us to the golf greens

1838 Where the kingbird lands, a family of flickers follow, four fledglings and their mother. Like the kingbird, the mama flicker alights on a wire running low between posts that demarcate (in human eyes only) Sspopiikimi from golf course. From this perch, she watches as her young ones search the grass for insect morsels. While they're eating, one of the hawklings in the nest begins crying out in begging fashion. A spotted sandpiper hunts briefly in the mud of the Ksisskstakioyis, and then the (same?) beaver appears again and moves back up the canal

1851 We're watching the Four Square aapsspini family, who've just come down into south-pond from somewhere on the golf course, when a raucous of hawkling cries breaks out. We look over only in time to see one of the parents depart from the nest, immediately mobbed by a few smaller birds. The parent hawk flies north, out over the river, and probably came in through the forest from that side too, which accounts for why we didn't notice right away. We don't know whether food was dropped off or not... the hawking out on the neighboring branch makes no effort to return to the nest, and her siblings continue to cry after the parent leaves. Now as the cries begin to wind down, the beaver has returned again carrying another poplar sapling, this one big and leafy, but still brought underwater and out of sight

1926 There is a period of quiet, when nothing more happens than a repeat visit of the sandpiper at the Ksisskstakioyis, who soon flies off to the south-pond peninsula. Then all at once the lull ends. It begins with one of the beavers swimming out toward our shore with a small, weathered log, which it leaves floating while dropping underwater. Then just a meter in front of us, Mahoney notices a strange insect alight on a flowering stem of buckbrush, a very large, furry, and bright-red fly the likes of which we've never seen before. It is Adejeania vexatrix, in the western science vernacular, but I think we'll just call it mi'ksoy'sksissi, or red-fly. It moves off before I can get a focused picture of it, so I stand up to pursue it, and at the same time Mahoney decides to take a walk back to the parking lot to fetch her sweater. Just then, two beavers come out of the lodge and swim over to investigate, floating like logs below us and sniffing in deep breaths. Not wanting to startle them, I sit back down, and no sooner do I than two female mallards opt to paddle past me and up the same canal the beavers have been using. They are followed by a huddle of seven grown ducklings, who themselves chose to take the old subpond canal. The two beavers are still floating around, occasionally rolling underwater. Unbeknownst to me, a third beaver slips up the canal after the mallards. I sit still, and can see that Mahoney is on her way back. As she approaches, one of the parent hawks glides in and lands on a power pole behind us, yelling out to her babies, who return the call in their own immature voices. Now with the hawk yelling and Mahoney walking the trail, the beavers start getting upset, and the one nearest Mahoney splashes the water with her tail. The hawk continues to scream as Mahoney reclaims her seat, and the annoyed beaver twice swims by to splash at us again. Meanwhile, the third beaver who'd gone up the canal returns with a big clump of rabbit willow, and the seven grown ducklings emerge again from the subpond. As we watch the ducks and beavers, the hawk cries cease, and when we look back again the parent is gone

2025 One of the ksisskstaki climbs up on the south wall of the lodge with another small weathered piece of wood, and sets it down against that wall. This action marks the beginning of another round of calm. Once the beaver slips back into the water, the only animals left to watch are the ducklings. They precede north toward us, but then cut into the reeds of the wet meadows, and slowly and sneakily move over land and under cover to pass around our position, not wanting to cross within direct view even though we're on the opposite side of the pond. As the shadow of dusk moves over the coulee, I make one last attempt at finding the red-fly, checking a larger patch of buckbrush behind us. Only a few of the plants are still flowering, and on one of these I catch a fleeting glimpse of the insect, but it has seen me first and wings away. Again a beaver climbs up on the lodge with a small, weathered stick, this time placing it on the north wall and, being as how all is on shadow, we determine to leave. As we walk out, we are lucky to observe one of the parent hawks dive down onto a wide, mowed pathway leading to the parking lot. Again I'm reminded that, while the mow outright killed many animals, it has at least facilitated the needs of a small selection of others

IIII ) lllllllllllllllll The New Dock (18Aug11)

1107 Sspopiikimi - it's a cool overcast day, and I couldn't see wasting it indoors, so I've come to the pond to take advantage of the opportunity and try to get some learning underway while it's so comfortable

1114 One of the first things I notice walking in is that a new feature has appeared at north-pond. The humans have been up to more of their nonsense, and have decided to construct a dock as an intrusion into the north-pond bulrush patch. It is sitting right over-top of the specific patch of reeds that the coots on this end have nested in every year since we've studied at the pond. It's open on its south side to one of the favorite little pools that the beavers created so that they could feed on bulrush roots while concealed by the cover of the surrounding reeds, and it exposes the turtles who bask on floating planks around this pool for the same protection it provides. The dock is made of metal, plastic, and PVC compounds whose colors, textures, and uniformity clash in relief against the nature-made backdrop of the pond. Obviously, I am not excited about the presence of this pontoon, but I suppose this is my perception, my biases, and we'll have to wait to learn how the animals will respond and adapt to it

1202 I sit on the dock for a bit, writing my initial impressions, and surveying this new feature. The plastic floats that serve as the actual dock itself must be giving off fumes of some sort. They seems to be attracting flies and yellow-jackets. On the upside, I'm finding already that this walkway will allow us easier access to study aquatic life. I can see beetles and snails from this vantage point that would otherwise require slogging through in waders. It also allows me a closer look at what some of the birds are up to. As I sit here, a cedar waxwing stops by, moving from reed to reed, plucking something off the seed heads of the bulrush. So I suppose there are benefits to having this dock here, at least selfish ones. I'll be curious to learn whether any of the coots or redheads dare nest here again though... or if they do, what kind of abuses they'll be subject to by human visitors

1225 Eventually I am drawn away from the dock, toward the voices of the hawk fledglings, who are in the trees at the edge of the golf course. Arriving minutes later at the scene, I find one hawlkling up in a tree, a second hunting grasshoppers on the ground, and a third calling from not far away. I'm sure it is by no coincidence that sikohpoyitaipanikimmiksi nest such that their fledglings begin moving out right in time with the peaking grig season. These birds will follow their grasshopper diet south and feed in this manner for all of what is our winter. So the fledglings needn't bother struggling learning how to catch small mammals just yet

1308 Eventually the hawklets cross back over the pond to the trees around Ayinnimaoyiiyis, and I start my quest to locate one of the mi'ksoy'sksissiiksi that Mahoney and I observed here a few nights ago. At that time, the red-flies were visiting buckbrush flowers, and so I've been walking the west length, carefully surveying all the buckbrush stands. Along the way, I've photographed dozens of insects, some I know and others I need to learn about. The buckbrush flowers themselves are being tended to mainly by honeybees and their drone fly mimics, but there are other bees and flies as well, and a whole host of grasshoppers, butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies as well. Unfortunately though, none of the brilliant red-flies I'm looking for

1358 At the wide south pool, I move down onto the peninsula to learn what's new there. I find mating cherry-faced meadowhawks on the rocks, little orange european skippers in the alfalfa, and the largest group of water beetles I've ever seen. Not surprisingly, there are bank and tree swallows on the scene, swooping out over the water and plucking meals at their leisure. From there, I round the wide pool, following the shale trail along the levee, and am now down into the forest main to survey some of the buckbrush here

1444 Like the west length, the forest main produces no red-flies either. Perhaps it is an insect that prefers the dusk, or maybe it was just a rogue passer-through (we've never noticed them before). But what the forest lacks in red-fly, it makes up for in other ways. One of the things I've hoped to see are the hatchlings of the last mourning dove brood, and that has now occurred. Mother dove took off with such a start that one of the hatchlings was turned upside-down and unable to right itself, so I gave it a helping hand. The hawklings, for their part, on seeing me, took fairly graceful wing and moved yet again to the opposite side of the pond. And there were many insects, including what might be small moth cocoons and beetle pupae on the white sweetclover, as well as the recently transformed seven-spot lady beetles

1509 Coming out of the forest at north-pond, I am again presented with the sterile new plastic dock. It might not be so terrible in the long run. Maybe it'll grow on me. I can imagine Mahoney and I sitting out here during the evenings amidst the reeds, watching some of the nests of early summer. Still, I'll also remember sitting up on the north cutbank looking toward the nests in these reeds and not having to suffer the sight of such a foreign distraction

IIII ) llllllllllllllllll Evening With Hawklings (19Aug11)

1855 Sspopiikimi - on a warm, calm water evening, Mahoney and I have set up our low chairs on the west bank across from the ksisskstakioyis, with one hawkling standing on a pole just behind us, and another calling from their old nest by the forest main

1906 Wow... we're only sitting here a few minutes when the hawkling closest to us flies down and lands on the ground right beside us, not ten meters away, and begins feeding on grasshoppers. After a couple bites, my rock-hound friend Duane from Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko comes strolling down the shale trail with his wife and daughter, scaring the baby away to a nearby tree. But the human family having passed, she's come back to land on the nearer pole and I suspect will come down beside us again

1931 The three hawk siblings call back and forth to one another from their respective perches. While we wait for another grasshopper to reveal itself to the hawkling nearest us, there are other things happening on the pond... a ksisskstaki emerges from the lodge and swims toward north-pond, two mi'ksikatsi females move past us in the same direction from the wide south pool, and the seven ducklings come toward us from mid-pond, moving in the same obtuse V formation they'd used when much younger, then switched to a near-shore line formation once they'd noticed us. A bald eagle passes high overhead, moving toward the river. And presently a second ksisskstaki has appeared, floating like a log between us and the lodge. There is no sign of either aapsspini family, it appears their flight training concluded and they've moved on

2008 One after the other, the hawk parents come to land at Ayinnimaoyiiyis for the night. When the first arrives, a hawkling flies over us from the golf greens to follow. Now there is only one baby still on our side of the pond, and it is perched on a pole back near the coulee slope in the other side of the golf course. The ksisskstaki who'd swam north has returned as well, towing a leafy poplar sapling and diving with it below the water in front of the lodge

2023 We're waiting for the remaining hawkling to move to the roost, but instead it drops down onto the golf greens, again to eat grasshoppers. No sooner does it come to land than a merlin appears out of nowhere on the pole near us, a mountain cottontail hops out of the buckbrush immediately behind our chairs, and three coyotes begin yipping and howling from the coulee slope. The hawkling finishes its grasshopper meal and flies again, landing on yet another pole just a ways north of us. Mahoney is walking over that way to watch her while I remain back at our seats, where the kingbirds have begun calling to one another and making short, dancing flights out from the cottonwood trees

2045 Eventually the last hawkling glides over the pond to join its family, and I'm almost sure the observations with them are complete for the night. But after ten minutes or so, one of the parents departs from the group, moving toward the coulee slope, and it is followed by the hawkling, who again lands on the pole just north of us. Meanwhile, from the nearer pole, the merlin has made two short flights out over the pond to snatch dragonflies invisible to us, until that is he lands again to eat them

2053 When the merlin makes his third successful dragonfly capture under dusk's heavy shadows, and the two hawks still haven't returned to the nest, we decide it's time to take our leave. It's been a wonderful evening at the pond, so inspiring that we may return come morning

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllll Grasshopper Parasites (21Aug11)

0954 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - arrived this morning in deep contemplation about the changes I'd like to make in my life, a bit at a time, all the small but significant decisions we make every day that ripple through our ecosystem. Just on the route from my house to the coulee rim, less than a mile distant, I noticed two discarded plastic water bottles on the roadside... one that looked like it was chucked out a window, the other standing straight as if it had just been set down. It's not the sight of litter that disturbs me, but the reminder of our disposable use of material culture. Across the road from here, a farmer is cutting hay in a field no doubt full of rattlesnakes, since this coulee is where most of this region's harmless reptiles are relocated. Why couldn't he wait for them to move back to the hibernacula, or at least employ some kind of system to have a couple hands walk out in front of the blades to ensure minimal damage to threatened species? It's these simple decisions, opting for responsible action, that we really need to start adopting

1013 The aapsspiniiksi are flocking up now. Arriving at the coulee rim, a group of twenty three passed overhead, moving between stubble-fields. The dominant color of the season is yellow: yellow sweetclover, broomweed, gumweed, and sunflowers, not to mention the burning blades of grass and turning poplar leaves. Today I remembered to bring my small root-digger (a.k.a. crowbar), so I can collect onions on the way down

1027 In less than ten minutes, still at the rim, I'm able to harvest enough wild onions that I can't hang onto the batch with one hand. Depositing these onions in my car, now I'm ready to start walking

1122 It's slow going, at least for me today. It takes a full to get halfway down the slope, stopping constantly to observe the insects who are tending to the gumweed. Most predominant are the black blister beetles and a small orange and brown butterfly whose name escapes me. There are also several varieties of bees and flies on these flowers, and they are what capture most of my attention, as I need photographs of them in order to research their identities. The road dusters are finally out in full force now, and the two-striped grasshoppers are fat with eggs, as I learn cleaning a few for later eating. Funnel-web spiders have taken over all the burrow entrances claimed by black widows earlier in the season. And the only birds I'm seeing or hearing are the western kingbirds

1154 Before I reach the river-bottom, the mid-day heat is on and I'm damp with sweat. It must be that the onions and dotted blazing stars have two blooms a season. Both were among the earliest flowers of summer, and both are out again at present. Walking through a patch of dry, played-out sweetclover, I can see that this might be an easier feature in which to nab grasshoppers. They're abundant here, and there's relatively few places where they can seek concealment. I leave them for now though, continuing on to the base of the slope, and the brushy draw where I keep my game-cam. The images for this week are all pheasants, cottontails, and deer. The fawns are growing up nicely. There is also a small, brown bird in one of the shots, but I'll have to identify it at home. All around the brush by the camera, there is maanikapii going to seed. I haven't picked any this summer, and will definitely want it should any viruses get in my system this winter. So I grab a decent bundle, and the. Continue to the river

1236 At the Oldman, I employ the "keep cool on a hot day trick"... I soak my shirt in the river, and put it back on for the climb upslope. When I again pass through the dry sweetclover, I'm able to catch quite a few grasshoppers while on the move. I notice a small lesion on the abdomen of one of the two-stripes, just a little red dot that suggests to me the work of an ovipositor. This is enough to prompt a release of the animal, because I certainly don't want to eat anything suspected to be full of parasites. It's a good thing too, because not five minutes later I find another with the same marking, and fairly zombified. This time, I pop off the head and, sure enough, maggots come climbing out of the body

1311 The sight of the parasitic larvae turn me off to the grasshopper idea, at least for the moment. I am noting how labor intensive their acquisition is, for the amount of potential protein gained. It would perhaps be better to invest the energy into catching fish, or something a bit higher up the food chain. But it's grasshopper season after all, and they're only here in any abundance for this brief period each year. I clean the ones I've collected and hike back up to my vehicle. The heat is tiring me out. I'm ready to seek shade and a cold glass of water. But I feel like I've accomplished something... I'm bringing home onions, maanikapii, and some grigs. And I've had an opportunity to further my phenology study at the same time. Who can complain?

Late Nests As Leaves Turn

2011-08-10T15:47:00.001-06:00

I Leaves Begin To Turn (29Jul11)

1959 Sspopiikimi - it's a breezy dusk, and the shadow of the coulee rim has already crept over about half the pond, though we've enough daylight remaining to at least take a stroll around

2011 We are greeted by a depressing sight as we make our sunwise round... there are yellow leaves in almost all of the western cottonwoods. It feels like they only just unfurled their green canopies, and already all too soon they will drop. It is, after all, the beginning of Pakkii'pistsi Otsitsi'tsspi, the second to last summer moon. It seems we are to have no currants or saskatoons this year. All the berries are stunted, hardly existent at all

2053 Despite the turning leaves, the forest is otherwise lush and pleasant. There are tall goldenrod and clematis in bloom, as well as white sweetclover and maanikapii. In the trees and brush, we see house wrens, cedar waxwings, least flycatchers, northern flickers, and a fledgling downy woodpecker. The spurge hawk moth larvae are still at work eating the leaves and flowers off their favorite plants. We even find a couple on the sweetclover and brome. Many are bloated and fat at this point, but there are still others not long from the egg. They look so exotic in their bright colors, with the large red spikes at the base of their tails. Poisonous to eat no doubt, given their constitution for leafy spurge. All the same, I can't resist petting them. Of course we also check in at Ayinnimaoyiiyis. The hawklings are growing so fast. With summer nearing its conclusion, we'll be expecting flight training soon

2136 In true dusk's shadow, we walk the shale trail along the west length of the pond. The two aapsspini families are still here, though tonight we're missing one from the Four Square family, probably one of the yearlings who were helping their parents. My mind is still very much on the new mapping project, though this evening's hike has been a bit too hurried for the kind of reflection needed. Perhaps in the next day or two we can return and take our time

IIII ) lll Effects Of The Annual Mow (4Aug11)

1719 Sspopiikimi - it's been several days since our last visit and, pulling into the parking lot, I see that in our absence the city sent someone out here to mow large swaths parallel to the pathways. I guess my first focus of the evening will be to survey the damage

1822 It takes me an hour to hike the full course of the mow, which runs in a five-foot swath following the shale trail around the entire circumference of the pond. Fortunately, the death toll isn't nearly what it has been during such mows in previous summers. I find the remains of just one garter snake and one mouse, where usually there are several of each. As always though, it's difficult to even conceive of what the impact has been to smaller creatures. No doubt thousands of insects have met their end at this year's blade, and who knows how many deposits of their eggs among the plants. One of the large thatching ant hives has been mowed, and the survivors are busy rebuilding. I've seen no road dusters yet this season, and they are often one of the hardest hit. There are now two-striped grasshoppers, I saw a few on the path along the way. My attention was directed toward the clippings though, so I did not stop yet to make note of all the other live insects about. At one point, I crossed paths with both aapsspini families. The Four Squares are still short one adult, as they were when we last saw them. Also, I noticed that the ayinnimaikoaiksi are starting to call from their nest. Curiously, one of the parents swooped me when I was all the way on the opposite side of the pond from them. Now I'm entering the forest main, and headed purposely their way

1903 Now moving at a more appropriate pace, I'm hardly into the forest when my attention is drawn to the tall goldenrods. They are in bloom, and there are flies visiting their flowers. But there are also two other insect events underway here. The one is that some of them now exhibit the classic, spherical goldenrod galls, which means they are bearing the maggots of goldenrod gall flies. I've never seen one of these flies yet, to my knowledge, but I'll be on the lookout this evening. Secondly, and perhaps related, there is something causing the leaves at the terminal end of some of the plants to gather together and curl. I'm not sure what this is about. Like last year, I take the time to investigate a few of these, finding a small cocoon with a drab-colored worm hidden in just one of the leaves on only a single plant, but not in any of the others. All the while as I look at these plants, there are a couple house wrens chattering nearby

1942 I am sitting in the duck blind when I write the goldenrod notes. As I do, I notice that there are dark little bees with almost-white patches under their abdomen moving in and out of some of the cracks of the wood. These, I assume, are an indigenous species. Looking into the cracks they're entering, I see some yellow, almost lichen-looking material that nearly fills the gaps to the surface. I assume this is their hive, or rather where their eggs are being deposited, as there are too few bees here to really consider this structure a "hive" in the same way as honey bees, yellow jackets, hornets or ants. I sit on the ground to watch them at close range, as the come and go, and perform work I don't understand. Because I am sitting so low and still, the birds of the surrounding forest don't know I'm here. Twice I am visited by very startled birds, a pair of robins and a single flicker. Perhaps they know of these bees as well. And their appearance reminds me of the new mapping project... while this little nook may have been built to serve as a duck blind, in the minds of these bees and forest birds it is other things altogether

2012 Initially we saw but one... then we learned there were two... and now I can confirm there are three ayinnimaikoaiksi. I'm sitting down in the grass beside some buckbrush (which isn't nearly enough cover) watching the trio. They are now large enough to climb out, awkwardly unbalanced, onto the small branches supporting the nest. Every time their parents call from the distance, they take up a mimicked call themselves. I wait patiently a half hour or so, hoping to observe one of the parents bring in a meal. But when the moment does come, I am immediately spotted, and the adult bird wings off to sit in a neighboring tree and scream at me. I give it a few more minutes all the same, but the Sun is dropping behind the coulee rim now, and I don't want to keep these hawklings from their evening meal. Best to move on

2035 I figure I'll head home at this point, so I walk straight from my seat below the Ayinnimaoyiiyis toward the main forest trail. Along the way, I come across a patch of buckbrush with a small black currant bush growing out of it. Unlike so many of the other berries, these ones are large, dark and ripe. I'm popping a few in my mouth when out of the buckbrush flushes a mourning dove. It's the kind of escape flight that tells me right away there's a nest here. Sure enough, when I peek in the spot she came out of, there's a little grass pad between two logs on the ground, and a pair of white eggs. Pretty late in the season for these guys, must be a second or third brood

2056 From the dove nest, I move through the forest without further event, and climb out onto the shale trail on the levee at the north end. To my surprise, the aapsspini families are here too. They'd have never come up onto the levee, except now there is such a wide strip of mowed grass... they can see around them now, and so they're taking advantage of it. Another lesson in varying perspectives. As I pass them, a kingfisher darts over to the pond from the river, and a nighthawk begins to call from above. Soon I'm back at the car, and looking forward to visiting again in a day or two

IIII ) llll Lupine Bugs (5Aug11)

1821 Sspopiikimi - We arrived about a half hour ago and have just walked the west length, which is no doubt known by the majority of residents for the short grass hunting ground of the adjoining golf course, or the dense patches of lens-podded hoary cress along the cutbank (a wild mustard that is food and/ or breeding grounds to many)

1825 Along the path there are dozens of cabbage white butterflies flitting about, mating and depositing eggs on the hoary cress. There are also small golden dragonflies, the two aapsspini families, a single member of the ksisskstaki household paddling around near the lodge, and a pair of still-breeding redwings whose nest we're not going to disturb. Sitting at the bench beside the currant and bulberry patch at south-pond, the female redwing is making an appearance. She's arrived with a beak full of grasshoppers and, after brief hesitation, flies into the brush below us to feed her hungry, chattery hatchlings

1857 We round south-pond and cut through the forest main to sit again in the grass below Ayinnimaoyiiyis and observe the hawklets. Unfortunately, one of the parents is here when we arrive. He or she comes winging low overhead as we approach, but is quickly mobbed away by tree swallows, and is now somewhere out over the coulee rim, screaming in frustration. No chance we'll see a feeding. We won't stay here long. Besides, it is humid tonight with zero breeze, the mosquitoes are taking their toll

1932 With fair warning of the immanent storm, which we can now see forming over the coulee rim, Mahoney and I move down onto the wet meadows to download the images RYECAM02 has captured over the last couple weeks in the bulberry brush. The i'naksaapis plants surrounding the brush have grown tremendously. If I didn't already know where the entrances are, it'd be doubtful I'd find them. Also, the water that had created an island of this place through most of the summer has receded, and is now only ankle-deep. We are expecting to find a lot of images, given how long we've left it. Disappointingly, there are only five, and none with anyone identifiable at a glance. Over the camera's sensors, a spider has woven a thick screen of silk and attached eggs

1948 Moving again through the forest main toward north-pond, we wind our way carefully through the stands of white sweetclover, leafy spurge, tall goldenrod and brome, trying not to disturb any of the larger insects clinging to the stems. There are swollen spurge hawk moth larva, sulfur butterflies, thousands of damselflies, and a brown assassin species called a lupine bug that we recall seeing last year at this season. By the time we climb the levee at north-pond and are able to look a bit further west, it appears as though the storm has split and is going to pass around us. Still, we hike back to the parking lot and prepare to depart. On one of our car doors there awaits a huge promachus robber fly, a welcome sight to conclude this evening's visit

IIII ) lllll Wood Nymphs And Grigs (6Aug11)

1713 Pitsiiksiinaikawaahko - I've come out this evening prepared for a very slow trek down and back up the coulee, with one thing in mind, and that is gathering food. Though it appears our berries are going to be minimal to null this year, there remains all kinds of possibilities, especially for daring to experiment with omnivorousness in its fullest

1721 I'm hardly twenty meters from the parking lot when I spot a patch of medick black with seed. This will be my first stop, to pluck the seed bundles like berries. All around me there's a hum of bees visiting the still-flowering yellow sweetclover. And clinging to the stems of grass amidst the medick are seven-spot lady beetles, frozen in the midst of pupation

1805 I fairly clean all the seeds off the one patch of medick, leaving a neighboring patch alone, and then head downslope toward the hibernaculum. Along the way, I net grasshoppers, focusing particularly on the somewhat larger two-striped species. There are fewer grigs here than I'd expected, though in a few weeks they should be in their full glory. The majority of what I see flying around this evening are small golden dragonflies and common wood nymph butterflies. The latter are particularly dense around a patch of Canada thistle, which is also attracting black blister beetles, several species of fly, and the Hunts and Nevada bumble bees. I find, in some grass near the thistles, a pair of Hunts bumble bees mating. And as I sit here writing these notes near the hibernaculum, a large female Nevada bumble arrives, goes purposefully underground beside me, and surfaces again a few minutes later to fly away

1838 The ridges surrounding the hibernaculum are skunkbrush country. And though some of the bushes are already played out, others are still laden with their sticky, citrus berries. I wander around, collecting what I can. It's too bad I left my small root digging crowbar in the garage, because the onions are now perfect. Might have to bring my traditional foods students around this week to harvest some. While I wander, I notice several new plants in bloom - purple and white prairie clovers, and evening stars. The ma's is now completely dry, their stems soon to be detached from the root. A nighthawk is calling in display from above

1925 The skunkbrush keeps me busy for a while as I wind my way down one ridge, then another, until I at last reach the sagebrush flats. Here, in a pocket of hawthorn following a small draw down to the river, is RYECAM01. It's been at least three weeks since I last downloaded images off of it, and tonight I'm not to be disappointed. There are beautiful pictures of coyotes, pheasants, whitetail fawns, catbirds, porcupines, and cottontails. All the usual suspects, but still nice to see

2039 After my stop at the game-cam, I descend to the banks of the Oldman, and there set to work netting minnows. It would probably be easier to just set a minnow trap, and perhaps I'll do so next time I know that I can come down two days in a row. If made right, such a trap might also succeed in nabbing some crawdads. There are bird-eaten remains of these crustaceans littering the banks. Anyway... with a couple dozen minnows secured, I again ascend the coulee slope. Most of the insects, save for the bees, have already gone relatively dormant, clinging to the plants and turning round to the opposite sides of the stems as I pass by. I find, as I go, that it's probably more difficult to net grasshoppers in this state, at least this soon after sundown. They are keenly aware of my gaze, and in the split seconds it takes for my eyes to focus and confirm what I think I'm seeing, they register the threat and hop down toward cover at ground level

A New Place-Names Perspective

2011-07-29T11:26:00.002-06:00

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllllll A New Place-Names Perspective (23Jul11)

1623 Sspopiikimi - it's been seven days since I last had an opportunity to hike around and catch up with the goings-on here. After half a decade of such visiting, there's still so much to pursue in terms of gaining phenological familiarity, and enhancing my relationship with the foods of this pond. These endeavors will certainly continue until my end. But just yesterday I had a thought about an additional project that could take our learning to a higher level. Mahoney and I have named this pond and many of its features and micro-environments, based on our perceptions and experiences. I wonder though, what we might learn if some of the resident animals here were producing these names for us, based on their perceptions and experiences rather than our own. What features are important to them, and how would they describe them? In some regards, undertaking a mapping project of this nature would be an exercise in imagination. But it would also be an opportunity to strengthen our identification with the animals, and our appreciation of their perspectives. And who knows... when approached as teachers, the animals often lead us on amazing journeys. We've asked them to educate us about how the seasonal cycle affects their lives, and they continue to do so. Perhaps it's time we ask them to teach us about their senses of place as well

1650 So I've started off today with this kind of inquiry in mind. I walk down the trail from the parking lot, and out onto the cutbank of north-pond. Already my thoughts are reeling at the possibilities. What is the parking lot to the residents here? How does it figure into their lives? How do they understand the trail, or this cutbank area, or this end of the pond? My own attention is immediately attracted to the coneflowers and wavy-leaved thistle blooms, forcing the inquiry to become reflexive. Am I merely drawn to these blossoms because I am a contemporary human, detached in so many ways from natural subsistence? I want to say that I go to the flowers because of my phenological interest, because I'm still learning about the relationships between symbionts that seem to centralize on the bloom. But I know this is mistaken. The birds don't seem overly attracted to flowers. From what I've seen, they seem to be far more interested in what can be found on the plant stems, or in what can be harvested during the seeding. So is it just the pretty colors that impress me? Am I that simple? Or are the flowers themselves drawing me to them for a reason? What ancient human place in the symbiotic weave around flowers have we forgotten in our absence of local subsistence practices? Unfortunately, the blossoms aren't offering too many answers today. On the coneflowers, I find yellow blister beetles and ambush bugs. While on the thistles, there is a milkweed beetle buried headlong in one of the flowers, and hosts of thatching ants gripping lethargically to the resinous housing that surrounds the seeds. Are they drunk from the nectar of these played-out blooms? They don't even bother me when I touch them, which is odd for thatchers. What harassment I do receive is from deer flies, landing on my exposed skin and biting

1701 I am very tempted not to move at all, to just sit right here on the cutbank of north-pond and consider all the possibilities. For the beavers, we know, this area is used to harvest certain greens and roots, and is also the location of a shore lodge once built and utilized by their children in starting their own families. It was abandoned, presumably for a better location on the river, three years ago. For the geese, on the other hand, this cutbank is not utilized. The absinthe is growing here, obscuring their view far more than other plants on the wet meadows or golf course. The ducks, for their part, use the cutbank for cover, floating in the water just off the shoreline, under low-hanging roots and trees. Many possibilities to consider. Perhaps I will return to focus here this evening, but I want to check on the swainson nest. I'm very much curious whether their hatchling is still alive

1722 Moving now, I climb the levee, or at least as it's known from our perspective, noting as I do the absence of turtles basking on the main concentration of accumulated wood from the old boardwalk, floating at the extreme north end. I look carefully and see that today the turtles are on the relatively fewer boards in the bulrush patch on the edge of the wet meadows. Most years, without the kind of flooding we've been having, the turtles wouldn't be able to utilize these boards. Most of them would be anchored to land. At present however, this area affords more concealment than the exposed drift on the far north end, and so the wise option is obvious, and they are keen to it. Up here on the levee top, there are rhombic-leaved sunflowers in bloom. Again I am immediately attracted to them, and look them over to find they are being utilized as the mating grounds for marsh weevils. It appears the weevils don't really care if the flowers are actually open or not, for there are as many of them on the flower buds as on the blooms themselves. Is this where they lay their eggs?

1754 There is an increased dragonfly presence as I walk what we know as the levee. There are a few different species here, all of whom I attempt to photograph for later identification. Two of them - a large blue darner and a small golden dragonfly - are clinging to plants, which I at first assume is for escape from the wind. But this presumption fades a bit when I crouch low and close to a medium-sized green darner who is landing on the shale trail itself. Mahoney and I have often seen this behavior with the red-colored variable darners, and thought it had something to do with camouflage. Through my macro lens though, I can see that this individual before me is turning something over in its mouth, eating. And it's lime-green coloration certainly does not blend well against the red shale. Perhaps surveying open trails for small, ground-dwelling insects has been the feeding strategy of the variable darner all along

1823 When I come to the first dirt path leading down into the forest main, I take it. Last week, along this same route, the trees were a raucous of begging fledglings. Tonight it is quiet, and I almost suspect that some of the families who nested here have moved away, though why this would be I don't know. Perhaps the parents feel as though, through the nesting period, the predators here had become all too familiar with them and their routines. Maybe it's safer to move along to another stretch of trees once the fledglings get used to flying and finding food. Or maybe they are already starting to form larger flocks for the same reason. The flora here has also changed a bit. White sweet clover, maanikapii and aahsowa are all in the height of bloom. Also, both color morphs of the spurge hawk moth larva are now appearing. I walk along until coming within view of the swainson nest. The parents are not here, and their absence at first has me thinking the worst. But I am pleasantly surprised when I glass the nest and see not one, but two hatchling faces looking down at me. The second baby is far darker than the other we'd seen before. I wonder if it will take on the dark adult plumage of the color morph for which this species is known in Blackfoot. Sikohpoyitaipanikimm... the Black-Greasy-Hawk. I prefer this name to the English Swainson's, which these hawks are obviously called after some come and gone human being. In fact, I don't think I will use the English term again. I also feel that here we may have our first perfect place reference. Mahoney and I have always thought of this as being the hawk tree, and maybe that was alright. I'm thinking the title Ayinnimaoyiiyis is appropriate. It utilizes the Blackfoot generic term for hawks, ayinimaa, and can be transliterated as Seizer's-Nest. Surely this is something close to how many of the residents of the forest know this patch of trees overlooking the subpond and wet-meadows

1906 Already I feel like I've taken in a lot this evening. Having confirmed the presence of ayinnimaikoaiksi, and settled on at least one appropriate feature name, I'm satisfied and ready to go home. As I walk out through the forest and back along the levee to north-pond, I finally begin to see and hear some of the smaller birds - a catbird calling "ow-ee" from deep in the brush, a waxwing moving from branch to branch on a tree down by the river. Coming again past the big drift of old boardwalk wood at the far north end, I see it is being utilized by a spotted sandpiper family. There are two fuzzy fledglings hunting insects on the wood, while their father stands guard and keeps up a pip cadence that the little ones seem to move in time to. We have observed many bird species use this wood in similar manner, as a place to harvest insects. Maybe a second feature name can be derived from this, but I will have to give some thought toward constructing a manageable title

2038 Spotted a big patch of mature stinging nettle on my drive home from the pond. Continued on a little ways thinking, "Maybe I'll harvest some tomorrow." Then came to my senses, turned around, pulled off and picked a nice bundle. It's a start... one of the plants to get right now, before the leaves begin burning