Back to the Sonoma-Napa Marsh

Today, I revisited the marshlands southwest of Napa and was very pleased to not find any hunters, (or anyone else).

You can walk for miles on the old levees that were built to create the salt ponds and grazing land for livestock. They are slowly being opened up as part of a plan to re-create the historic and important marshes.

Natural looking marsh above compared to the salt pond below.

This "dead forest" was caused by the super salty water killing the trees. If you look closely, you can see something hanging from a branch. Through the binoculars, below, you can see it is a dead cormorant that had fishing line hooked on it which became caught on the tree. We get birds with fishing line injuries all the time at IBRRC.

The salt ponds are at least a half mile across. That is Mt. Tamalpais in the background.

You can see a flock of coots on the water. I'm going to have to splurge for a camera with telephoto lens some day soon.

Among the ducks are four tundra swans in this picture.

The tundra swans taking off with duck escort. Well, I will be back again. The breeding season is about to begin soon. Some of the other birds I saw today were American avocets, Clark's grebes, an American kestrel, black necked stilts, snowy egrets, great egrets, killdeer, and various hawks.

Salt Ponds to Marshes

Last Tuesday, I ventured out to the marshes and salt ponds in the south Napa/Sonoma counties area to try out my new binoculars. It is a great birding area with the exception of one thing: duck hunters. They were slogging around with their dogs, occasionally letting loose with a volley of shotgun blasts. Near the parking area there is a pond that is off limits to hunting where I spotted a beautiful male American Widgeon, Ruddy Ducks, Coots, and a few others I wasn't too sure of.

I set off along the dikes of the old Cargill Salt Company ponds where I spotted a flock of Black-necked Stilts, a few Greater Yellowlegs, and numerous little sandpiper type birds. While I was scanning a group of little sandpipers covering some dead tree limbs out in the salt pond, into view came a ghoulish sight - a dead cormorant swaying from a length of fishing line. The salt ponds are slowly being converted back to natural marshland, but it is a slow process. I definitely plan to return after hunting season in February, hopefully seeing breeding displays of some of the 153 bird species that inhabit the area. Oh yeah, up in the air were numerous hawks and kites. I didn't take any bird pictures because a telephoto lens is needed.

I've Gone to the Birds!

By now you probably know that whenever you contact me, I soon start talking about birds - especially pelicans. Maybe this explains why I don't get many calls anymore, but I've decided to assault you with some visuals anyway. Since late October, I've been volunteering on Saturdays at the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia, next to the Suisun Marsh. This is one of two state of the art facilities in California that comes under the auspices of the California Fish and Game Department. I work about 10 hours with a half hour for lunch. I feel privileged to be around the staff and the birds - both are exceptional and often quite amusing. Most of these photos were taken by one of the volunteers, Liz, who made them available to me on her Flicker site.

The IBRRC is a 10,000 sq. ft. facility for the rehabilitation of wild water fowl. It is at the ready in case of a major oil spill.

Behind the main building are the therapy pools and aviaries.

This is the 100 foot long pelican aviary. Right now, there is a pelican crisis with hundreds of pelicans becoming emaciated, disoriented, and prone to other problems. The reason for this is not clear yet, but we had about 40 pelicans this past Saturday. In the wild, hundreds have died in the past two weeks.

Here I am holding the business end of a pelican that is being rinsed by Monte and Greg (facing camera). Greg is a UC Davis Vet School student, and Monte is the facilities manager. Monte is a poet, and is possibly one of the wittiest persons I've ever been around.

This pelican was contaminated with oil which prevents it from waterproofing and staying warm.

We always have grebes, it seems.

This week we had this brown booby.

A great tat worn by a dedicated IBRRC volunteer.

This is Mark Russell who has been on wildlife rescues all over the planet.

Birds often have to be tube fed either fish slurry or Pediolite.

Monte and a volunteer washing a gull, I believe.

We've had a great blue heron the past couple weeks.

That's Marie on the left, assisting Shannon, our veterinarian. She is one of the Saturday crew with a great sense of humor and is a Rehab Manager.

We currently have a couple of loons like these. In fact, all the staff are somewhat loony.

This is Donna, another Saturday regular, getting the tube feeding syringes ready.

Thank you IBRRC for fixing my broken leg.

Interns from around the world come to the center and do 3-4 month internships, working 10-12 hours a day, 5 days a week. The woman pictured is from Brazil, and left shortly after I started. Since I have been there, there have been interns from Canada, Mexico, and now England.

Well this is what it is all about - a successful release back into the wild, in this case IBRRC's backyard.

Oregon Trip

I just returned from a ten day trip to Newport, Oregon to see my brother Steve and his family. What a beautifully rugged part of the country it is! There was an additional bonus when my sister Sarah, who was visiting her friend Joannne in Seatle, decided to drive down Thanksgiving Day to spend the holiday with us in Newport. There were also several days of great weather to go explore the natural wonders of the Oregon coast.

I met Steve at his office in Newport where he is a coastal planner for the state.

Steve, Lorie, Shadow, and I went for a hike up a canyon with some huge cedar, spruce, and fir trees. It was oozing moisture and was prime fungi territory. Here Steve is showing us how to find cantarelle mushrooms for our Thanksgiving dinner. Cantarelles grow only around spruce trees.

These are not cantarelles. The purple color suggests, "Eat me and die."

More fungi.

This fungi looked like a coral formation.

This gives some idea of the lushness of the coastal forest.

Steve and Lorie above the forest on an overlook hundreds of feet above the ocean. Lorie is the managing nurse for the hospital in Newport.

The view goes far enough to see the curvature of the earth (or is it just my progressive lenses).

This is a blowhole we had to stop and check out.

Sarah (standing) from Alaska and her friend Joanne from Seattle. Sarah's last name is Williams, not Palin, even though she did have to sit in meetings with her.

Steve prepares the cantarelles we picked.

Across the street from Steve's and Lorie's home is Yaquina Head. This is the view looking south on the way out to the lighthouse.

Logan, the older of their two sons, is 16 and quite possibly going to MIT next year. Currrently, he is assisting a Phd after school with software development for hydrophones that study a variety of oceanic sounds.

The Yaquina Head Lighthouse, which we climbed a few minutes later.

Looking up through the Fresnel lens of the lighthouse.

Looking down the free-standing spiral staircase made entirely of cast iron (you can tell I paid attention to the ranger).

Early Sunday morning Steve and I drove up to Nelscott Reef in Lincoln City to watch the annual tow in surfing contest. This was a stop at Whaler's Cove on the way up. This wave is much bigger than it looks.

The surf contest was not visible in the morning due to fog. The reef is about a half mile offshore. Steve decided to take me for a hike to Drift Creek Falls about 12 miles back in the mountains. This is a suspension bridge crossing the chasm above the falls.

This is the waterfall as seen from the suspenson bridge.

The waterfall and the bridge above.

Mossy guardians of the falls.

Back to the surf contest in the afternoon; the wave in the distance is where the surfers are. There is a surfer on this wave which probably is in the 20 to 25 foot height range (remember, it's a half mile out there). On the cliff where we were standing, Gerry Lopez pulled up and stayed awhile. He was known as Mr. Pipeline in the '70's. He dominated Hawaii's Bonzai Pipeline for years. He seemed like a regular guy, my age, who now lives in Oregon.

Sunset from Steve's and Lorie's deck with the lighthouse in the distance.
Looking south from their deck over Agate Beach.

I am now a sushi convert. Here we are at Sada's sushi restaurant, which Lorie claims has the best sushi on the west coast. That's Aaron on the right. He is an eighth grader, champion table tennis player, sax and guitar player, and has a real feel good kind of personality and sense of humor.

One of the sushi plates - yummmm!

Across the street, the bull sea lions were raising a ruckus as they established the pecking order for room on the boat docks. Well, that about sums up my trip as I am out of photos fit to print. Thank you, Oregon family, for your wonderful hospitality! 5 stars!