Is That Brand New? Is That a Smew???

I hankered for adventureFor more birds? Oh yeah, you bet’ cha. So I looked for big old thrills
to Sonora in them golden hills

Did I drive there for the view? 

Did I look for something new? 

    Can you guess where I went too?

 I was hunting for the Smew!

Is a Smew a kind of tree? 

Can Smews make honey like a bee?

 Are Smews a thing you find for luck?

 Hell no you silly, a Smew’s a DUCK

Ok, enough Dr Seuss for today. Monday morning I was too hyped from birding over the weekend to sit still and having heard there was something exciting in the little gold country town of Soulsbyville, I decided take the 2 hour drive out there.

The drive was both scenic and historic – I had to pass through Angel’s Camp in Calaveras County; famous for Mark Twain and the celebrated jumping frog.

The Smew Drake The bird I was after is a small European diving duck called a Smew. This particular duck, if wild in origin most likely blew our way after getting lost on its annual flight in or out of Siberia. Cute little things male Smews are – looking rather like a ducky version of a Panda - white, with black eyes like they lost the fight and black patches where a Panda’s ears would be, and like Pandas they are Eurasian.

When at last I made it to the little Soulsbyville reservoir, it was obvious the duck was still present as evidenced by a happy row of birders, their spotting scopes at the ready. All were happy chatting as the Smew enjoyed having a lovely spot to perform some fancy diving while among his new mates, a group of Hooded Mergansers.
Being a tad randy, the Smew was oblivious to his admirers. His little crest was up and he bobbed his head back and forth reminding me of Richard Prior doing that ‘That’s right – I’m bad!’ thing from the movie Silver Streak. The Merganser hens paid Mr Smew no mind, reacting as if he were only some dirty old man ruining the sanctity of their afternoon. Perhaps that is why Mr Smew was not lost in the gold Country – perhaps he was only evading charges of being a known duck molester in his home land.

Birding circles and the Internet are abuzz with speculation as to whether this particular Smew is an escapee from someone’s exotic duck farm or if he had managed flapping his eensie wings all the way from Siberia; in short, is the bird a zoo escapee or the genuine article?


Hooded Merganser Drake

The final decision on the Smew is now with the California Bird Records Committee - after careful study and probably a few beers - to either declare the little guy a countable wild-arse bird or an escapee, i.e., a pretender to the throne, a genuine rare 'vagrant' bird for California.In short - the Bristle-thighed Curlew is gone, long live the Smew.

Feel free to genuflect now.

Believe me, if the Smew is declared to be the real deal I will have to join my fellow birders who are driving to Soulsbyville from all over California and do some bad-arse head bobbing with my bad self because we’ll all have a new addition to our ABA area life lists.

Headed Home

I woke in the wee hours of Sunday morning at Bishop's Ranch to the high pitched yip yip yipping of coyotes. It was a great way to start the last day of my mini-break. After another yummy breakfast and we were off; caravanning to Bodega Bay.

Bodega Bay was fruitful – we found dozens of Brants – beautiful and petite ocean dwelling geese with smart modern art on their necks.

There we also saw loads more Eared and Horned Grebes, and most interesting – a humongous mixed flock of shore birds; Willets, Marbled Godwits and Dunlin, who huddled together on the shore bank waiting for the tide to go out.

After that we three went to a local chowder shack for a bit of lunch, then it was time to go our separate ways; Don & Teresse headed back to Palo Alto, and I headed for home.

Along the route I decided not to pass up Fazio Wildlife Refuge hoping for something exotic, bit finding the usual cast of waterbirds; cinnamon teal, coots, Northern Shovelers and Pintail.

However, I did have a bit of fun photographing an American Bittern that raced along an irrigation berm as though late for a meeting of the Better Bitterns Bureau.

Shortly after that a beautiful little Wilson’s snipe walked with every bit as much a sense of pressing obligations, along the shore, quite close to my Honda. I took several photos of it and got one that is dead lovely; best Snipe photo I’ve ever managed.

'Hurrah!' I thought, 'finally a clear shot of a Snipe.' Feeling rather smug, I then headed for home.

Mini-break Day 1 - Birding the Mendicino Coast

T’was the wee hours of the morning, hours yet to the first crack of the swallow’s fart. My cell phone rang birder buddy Don’s ring theme - the Mr. Magoo cartoon show theme song, circa 1963’.

ROAD HOG!

I opened the cell phone and barked, ‘Yes! ‘ I can hear the Great Horned Owl!’

Tee hee. Of course I wasn’t irritated in the least. Don was next door ringing in to find out if we were hearing the Owl that hooted away, outside in the pasture. Do I know my friends or what?

Bishop’s Ranch is beautiful. For a while now Don had tried to talk me into birding the area but for who knows what reason I stupidly shunned the idea. What was I thinking? I reckon I wasn’t enthusiastic because he said the Ranch was a retreat which gave me a mental picture of dour ministerial monks, roaming about in a neo-hippy setting with grimy outhouses, vows of silence (as if I ever could!) and hair shirts. This place was the opposite – it was sunny and bright with well kept grounds and adorable buildings. We got on the brunch line and dug in. Don’s a good soul. He informed me the Owl we were hearing was a male Great Horned Owl by the pitch of its hooting. What? We're annoying you already? Hang on, I promise we will get more annoying, but there will be photos to distract you.

Soon enough everyone was up and dressed and we admired the meadow in which black & white Holstein cows grazing like a tubby plush pillows. There was a Varied Thrush posing in a tree and a Bufflehead duck floating on the pastoral pond. We went over to the cute little ranch house where all the Ranch guests would meet for a buffet breakfast.



Over breakfast we talked the ears off our fellow Ranch guests and immediately decided there would have to be repeat visits to a place that not only supplied milk and half & half for your coffee, but also soy milk. How can you not love such a place?

After we had enough breakfast and coffee to fuel us up we were off up the coast birding in search of something feathered to aim our binoculars at. Off to good start, we spotted a funnel of turkey vultures in which Don spotted two immature Bald Eagles. The eagles represented only the second time ever I’ve seen Bald Eagles in California. After a couple of more spots to scope out the local bouys and gulls we decided to visit Fort Ross State Park.

Loved the fort; an early Russian stronghold on the West Coast – was the living history – several people dressed as early Russian from the 1800s. The rooms in the little wood hewed buildings looked suitably rustic. Don pointed out an interesting bit about the old mill grist stones on display. He said the mill stones were long believed to be lost to history until someone noticed a local farm over yonder had some very interesting stepping stones in their yard and garden....

In the last room we found three ladies dressed in Russian garb. I wanted to show off a bit and try a bit of what little Russian I remember. Having once had a Russian speaking boyfriend I knew I could impress them with clever dialog in Russian. Right. The only things I managed to blurt out were ‘привүт’ (pre’vyet) which means ‘Hi’ and хлеб'which means bread. The latter came out of me when one lady told us they were preparing to bake bread in this wonderful old oven.

We did bird before we left the fort, seeing a beautiful male Golden-crowned Kinglit and several calling Brown Creepers. I couldn’t manage pictures of any of those – being too small and too far away.

Next we hit Point Arena for the ‘main event’ – a look at the world renowened ‘Al the Laysan Albatross’. Well, I guess we ought to have let Al in on our plans for the day because the Al was nowhere to be seen. All I got was a photo of a pretty sign on the Point Arena dock.

We had to settle for identifying the numerous grebes and gulls floating about in the harbor.

Boo hoo! We decided to lick our wounds and go searching for some hawks on the nearby roads. Teresse and I had a ball giving Don a difficult time. Teresse would spot hawks and shriek for Don to stop which he doesn’t do very easily – I think he must have met his end in a former life by being rear-ended in a car or horse cart because the man does NOT like stopping on roads – even if you can’t see a car coming for ten miles back! So we all laughed and cast spurious insults at each other but all silly remarks were forgiven each other when a flock of 20 Tundra Swans were spotted on a pasture. The birds seemed to have found a lovely spot to spend the oncoming night.

We had finally done enough birding to call it a day. Heading south we stopped at for a tasty dinner at a seafood restaurant. We’d hoped for fresh Pacific oysters but we settled on crab cakes, pasta and a morrocan style chicken with goat cheese.
To be honest, I hardly birded at all in 2006. Birding is rather addictive, and like an addict, if you stop birding for a bit, the urge decreases. But one whiff of a few good birds and you’re back on the birdie trail, your tail feathers afire. I ended the day with my birding fires rekindled.