Category Archives: lifers

migrating south with some other locals

Our bladders braved it

Today was dedicated to birding. We took a longish (100 miles) trip south to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. On the way there, we we pulled into a rest area with the rattler sign on the left. I love snake signage. You just wonder, though, if they could have put the rest area somewhere else. Bosque is one of the big birding hotspots in New Mexico, mostly, I think, because it has so much water. People here get excited about birds that are common up north, and they’re especially proud of their Sandhill Cranes. But for us, the big draw was the local birds. If we want cranes, we can just drive a few hours to Indiana and see literally thousands. So whenever anyone here got excited about some crane sighting, we just thought, meh.

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recalculating

We toured Santa Fe yesterday, but did no birding. Today we headed out north to Bandelier National Monument to visit the Pueblo ruins and, yes, do some birding. We concentrated on the ruins on our first go through, though we still carried our bins. The last stop on the tourist trail is Alcove House, which you get to by climbing a series of long ladders. They warn you it’s not for everyone, and since Pole is acrophobic, she decided to sit it out. I bravely went up the first ladder on my own, but it was pretty spooky; the ladders are long and crooked. I hate to admit it, but I chickened out and went back down, which was even scarier than going up. Most humiliating of all were the little kids who passed me up. A birder, you say, afraid of death? Go figure.

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300 + 320

Pole and I arrived in Albuquerque on Sunday to do some vacationing and some birding. That’s why there’s no birding entry until today, Tuesday. This isn’t a Big Year for us, so we don’t have to be psycho birding every single second. So after fooling around in ABQ for a day or so, we headed north to Santa Fe, but instead of viewing the beautiful colonial city, our first stop was the Randall Dewey Audubon Center. Psycho.

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if you could read my mind, we wouldn’t be here

Last Wednesday (the 24th) we left on what’s becoming our annual winter trip to Gunflint Lodge in Minnesota. January 28th is Pole’s birthday, so that’s primary reason we make the trip. Unfortunately, we only had a full three days up here, so the whole trip was rushed, and a bit of a disappointment, really. The entire last day — the 28th — was spent driving the 1000 miles from Gunflint (basically the Canadian border) to Chicago. Happy Birthday, Pole.

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final day, final bird, final resting places [278]

On this last day of the year we officially failed in our Little Year quest (more after the jump), but we did see a lifer, so that gave us some hope. The bird was a MERLIN, and it was the fourth (!) Little Year bird in a row to be a double lifer. There was a sighting a couple of days ago at Chicago’s Irving Park Cemetery, and we saw the bird right where it was supposed to be: perched in a bare tree near the entrance. It flew away after about five minutes, but we had a decent look at it on this warm, rainy day. We drove around the cemetery trying for another glance, but no luck. However, we did see an large neoclassical building with an odd inscription on its pediment: COLUMBARIUM. It turns out (thank you, Wikipedia) a columbarium is place for the public storage of ash-filled urns. These buildings are said to look a little like dovecots, and columba being Latin for dove, columbarium is Latin for dovecot, and so there you go. The odd thing is that the scientific name for the Merlin is Falco columbarius, and I guess the bird is sort of dovelike. But it’s an odd coincidence all the same. So anyway, I think a dovecot for urns (an urncot? an ashcot?) would be a great place for any birder’s ashes.

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