Moose Surveys III

I'm finally getting to the story I wanted to write about when I started writing about moose surveys -- one particular moose survey.  We had set off from our Anchorage home base for a moose survey west of Knik Arm.  Anyone familiar with Knik Arm knows that near it's northeastern headwaters, Cook Inlet splits into two arms -- Knik and Turnagain with Anchorage located at that that junction.  Turnagain Arm has the largest tidal range (up to 40 feet) in the United States and ranks fifth worldwide.  Knik Arm certainly can't be far behind.  Currents roar through glacier fed, silt laden Turnagain and Knik Arms with immersion in the water being virtually unsurvivable.

All went well that day until we ran into a large concentration of moose near the foot of a glacier "flowing" out of the Alaska Range.  With every circle over a group of moose, more moose seemed to pop up until finally, with fuel running low, we had to turn for home.  That's when we flew straight into unexpectedly strong head winds.  Progressing at an agonizingly slow rate I anxiously watched the bulbs on the fuel gages on either side of the cockpit slowly descend towards nada.  Soon the engine sputtered as the right gage registered zero with Anchorage nowhere in sight.  The pilot quickly switched to the dangerously low left tank until it, too, registered zero.

By then we had come to within sight of Anchorage with one remaining obstacle -- besides the miles that separated us -- the terrifying Knik Arm.  Reaching the shores of the waterway, with one tank totally empty and the other reading the same, the pilot announced we were going to head across to Anchorage.  I said NO and at that moment he spotted an abandoned airstrip.  We landed.  Now the prudent thing would have been to radio to someone at the Anchorage Airport that we needed help.  However, this pilot spotted a rusty abandoned Caterpillar Tractor at the end of the strip.  Nosing around he discovered there was still liquid in the gas tank, three gallons of which he was able to siphon into an empty Blazo fuel can.  

I have no idea what that tank really contained, but now we had something that smelled like fuel instead of Avgas in the plane.  With the fuel gage still registering zero and with great trepidation I agreed to join him as we headed across Knik Arm.  Need I say I was incredibly relieved when we safely landed in Anchorage marveling that we did not run out of gas as we taxied off the Anchorage International Airport runway?

By then I questioned the wisdom of that pilot and decided to scratch him from my list of potential transporters.  Six months later he and all his passengers perished in a plane crash.

Again, lacking digital images from those years, I'm attaching some recent photos Kären has taken far removed from Knik Arm, but rather on our Southeast Alaska Island.

The snowline doesn't even reach saltwater in mid-January this year.

But it sure is awe inspiring at higher elevations.

Agree?  See the alpenglow on the top.

No snow in the muskeg in early January.

Although some clear days have been pretty frosty.

There must be trumpeter swans somewhere around here.

Surely there must be some.

Aha.

No, you are not a swan or a moose!

 

The Lady and the Sea Lion

The arrival of our helicopter on Seal Rock, a naked pile of stones on bedrock off the southern entrance to Prince William Sound, scattered the adult sea lions like dandelion seeds in a gust of wind.  It was the early 1970s and we were on a mission to brand their new-born pups, innocents born far from the presence of man -- until we showed up.  This Steller’s sea lion natal rookery lays along the route the Exon Valdez would have taken had it not encountered Blye Reef.   The research project goal -- to learn about the movements of these Sea Lions.  After they matured,  branded sea lions could be tracked as they roamed about the Gulf of Alaska.  No one knew if populations from different rookeries moved about or remained faithful to their “rock of birth.”  Armored with hip boots and heavy rain gear, we would wade into tide pools where the temporarily abandoned pups congregated.  With the brands each one received it’s personal identity  - kind of like it’s own social security number. 

If you’re envisioning clear pools of sea water, the substrate covered with flowing strands of green kelp, red and green sea stars decorating outcroppings and sea anemones waving their tentacles hoping to snare a passing tidbit of plankton, you haven’t been to a tide pool on Seal Rock.  Sea lions are not house broken.  When the mother gives birth, no mid wife cleans up the remnants.  When a pup dies, there is no funeral procession to remove the last remains.  These pools are opaque brown, the surrounding air fouled with their stench.  Our job -- to wade into these septic messes and grab the pups in a frenzy of splashes in their attempt to get away.

In the early 1970s the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was an undemocratic organization.  Female biologists were not welcome beyond the office.  Statements like “could you imagine how wives would feel if their husbands went into the field with a woman,” prevailed.  Eventually a few courageous women braved that prejudice to be hired by the Division to work in the lab.  The Lady was the first woman in the Anchorage office to finally break the ultimate shatter-proof glass ceiling and go into the field.  Her first assignment -- a helicopter ride to Seal Rock. 

The project coordinator assigned her what seemed like a somewhat benign task.  At the head of a large elongated tide pool, where most of our quarry congregated, a gray rock ridge separated the “pond” from the swells rolling in from the Gulf of Alaska.  At low tide, the restless surface of the Gulf waters lay many feet below the level of the tide pool, but incoming swells swept high up the ridge.  On the Gulf side a bull sea lion weighing as much as a Volkswagen Beetle seemed particularly intent with reclaiming his territory.  The Lady’ job -- Persuade him it was now hers.  While she had a gun, the idea was that just by standing on the narrow rock outcrop, perhaps 10-feet above the pool and twice as far above the open ocean, he would agree.  Wrong.  As each swell surged up the rock face, the bull would rise with it, lunging towards The Lady in an effort to show her who really owned that slab of real estate.  

With each surge the bull became more and more brazen until on one huge ocean wave he rose almost eye to eye with her.  Reflexively she stepped backwards, lost her footing and plunged backward into the tide pool’s primordial soup.  I can still envision the brown geyser that gushed out of her mouth as she emerged from beneath that “goo.”  The Lady did not enjoy the remainder of the field excursion nor the mysterious side effects that haunted her the rest of her life..   In hindsight, I'm sure she regretted her "good fortune" at the becoming the first woman to be a Game Division field biologist that day.

Of course I packed my camera during these tagging operations and exposed more than a few rolls of 35 mm film.  One head shot of a pup caught Karen’s attention.  She wanted to paint it.  It is Karen’s only oil painting, but demonstrates the versatility of this watercolorist recently turned acrylic artist. 

                                 Waiting for Mama  16 x 20 inches  Oil on Canvas

Merry Christmas from Snowy Petersburg, Alaska

What follows is our annual Christmas letter (sort of) to family and friends which we're posting here for anyone curious how we spent this past pandemic year. So, here goes:

We’re not sending Christmas greetings this year.  You probably say we haven’t sent them in years, that they only came from an itinerant squirrel.  However, said rodent has been deported south to a lovely spruce/hemlock forest where she can observe swans but not us.  Her sin…making an unauthorized border crossing… to move into our abode.  She wanted to spy on us as she gnawed on the wood frame that keeps our cabin standing erect.

After unsuccessfully erecting a US Customs and Border Protection certified barrier (a stick stuck in a hole) and using a subsonic, undetectable-to-the human-ear noise-making machine, which only caused the pretty lady to ask “what’s that sound?”, we surrendered.  The impetus came in the form of the grouch presenting amaurosis fugax (look it up) which necessitated his being temporarily exported to Seattle for investigation.

Thus, we deported our Christmas letter scribe on the day of the grouch’s departure.  We feared she would solidify her reign on our log cabin home and bar us from reentry to the pile of sawdust that remained of the abode.

Not only did said rodent betray our loyalty, but even the grouch’s favorite tree, a cottonwood he conceived by sticking a branch in the ground in the 1980s, betrayed us.  After our basement toilet erupted in a volcanic explosion rivaling Mt. St Helens, a camera forced through the sewer line revealed said cottonwood tree’s roots hanging like stalactites throughout the pipe preventing the movement of movements.  Beautiful, but…  We replaced the sewer line.  The tree?  It remains unscathed except it’s “toenails” have been “trimmed.” 

Barely relaxing after back to back traumatic events, we received a phone call.  A house painter would arrive the next day.  This necessitated the panicked removal of every ornamental and not-so-ornamental object reclining against the house and car port — enough to furnish three condos.  Once begun, the paint job resulted in covering our windows with opaque plastic during this past summer’s only decent spell of sunny weather.  It gave us the unparalleled nightly opportunity to marvel at the beauty of an illuminated sheet of plastic as the sun retreated behind Petersburg Mountain.

Without the invasions of a rodent, a tree and a painter, life seemed boring so we took an autumn road trip to Wisconsin and Iowa.  A couple of days prior to our Alaska ferry departure, a friend of daughter Amanda offered a suggestion.  Since Mandy was taking a well-earned break between nursing jobs and her parents, at least the grouch, is getting decrepit, why shouldn’t she be their chauffeur?  Thus, the pretty lady rode shotgun while the grouch sat in the back seat for much of the trip as the two ladies up front still fulfilled their duties as back-seat drivers to the grouch.  

After a family rendezvous on the sun-drenched shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin and in Iowa, the three Corns aimed for Seattle via road and/or air.  In transit the grouch and Mandy toured Colorado Springs guided by son/brother David a deliverer of people for Uber and Lyft and stuff for Amazon.

While traveling, Mandy demonstrated the modern day convenience of locating coffee/pastry shops and reviewing restaurant menus on her cell phone.  The pastry part awed the grouch but he found comparing restaurant menus exceeded his level of desire to find basic grub.  As a bonus Mandy (a barista in a past era) taught the fair lady in seven simple hand-written steps the fine art of ordering a latte that wouldn’t drive a barista nuts.

Regarding cell phones, a significant part of family time involved convincing the grouch that he and the pretty lady needed to be brought from the 18th century into the 21st.  The clincher!  So he could track her via “find my” as she wanders with her camera through territory inhabited by significantly sized black and brown furry creatures.  The hardest part, more difficult than purchasing an AK-47 with 1000 rounds of ammo — signing up for cell phone service.  We couldn’t convince any cell phone service provider who was skeptical we live in a post office box that 1002 Wrangell Avenue exists.

Can’t forget, just because we banished last year’s scribe doesn’t mean the pretty lady has ceased communing with non-humanoids.  Beyond our windows seven days per week you’ll spy large pleading brown eyes and hear clucking sounds.  The pretty lady’s personal deer herd and neighbor’s chickens all consider her to be their guardian angel as she hands out organic apples, carrots, cantaloupe rinds and halves of pomegranates minus their seeds… even popcorn she pops just for them and not the grouch.

 

Incidentally, now that the pretty lady has a cell phone, the grouch knows she’s at the dentist’s office as he writes.  Alas that’s because he didn’t get a call from the dentist saying the didn’t show up.  The $1,200 cell phone?  It sits atop a dresser where it might as well be glued because she doesn’t want to damage it.  She just needs to dust it from time to time. 

And so, with this level of activity and, let’s face it, because the grouch gave up coffee which he blames for his laziness, we will not have a Christmas letter.  

However our prayer for each and everyone of you is simply this:

Rejoice that you are alive! Many of us struggle with aging knees and arthritic hands, but be thankful it means you have both knees and hands.

Rejoice that you have family and loved ones and friends that love you for who you are.  Friends who want the best for you are irreplaceable treasures.

So many in our world struggle with bodies no longer whole and able; they struggle with broken relationships and shattered dreams; and they struggle with prejudice because of their nationality or color of their skin or with themselves because they are not receiving encouragement for the gifts they do have.

We are thankful for all of you who have been so much a part of our lives.  

We are thankful for knowing where to take our gratitude, realizing that the kind of joy and peace that surpasses all understanding is found in that stable where a very little baby lay so very long ago.

Blessings and Joy to all of you, and, despite the notice at the start of this message, Merry Christmas.

Don and Karen

A Thanksgiving to Remember

For me Thanksgiving while I was “migrating” towards adulthood meant one of two things — often both — the obvious combination of duck hunting and football.  With a workaholic father, those moments we spent together were my favorite memories of dad.  Thanksgiving mornings, at least when we lived in Utah during my early/mid-teens, were the days he would take me duck hunting in the marshes along the Great Salt Lake.  Initially, dad assigned me the roll as the family Labrador retriever — until my 14th birthday.  I shivered with excitement that Thanksgiving Day, the day I initiated my first hunting license.  Fortunately for the ducks, no adolescent ever did a better job of educating them on the perils of duck decoys.  Never mind, with no ducks to clean, my brother and I had more time to toss the ball around at halftime during football games.

One year, shortly before Thanksgiving, an errant shotgun pellet that I launched accidentally hit a Canada goose.  I swelled with pride at the admiration I received from passing hunters as I lugged that “monstrous” bird down the dike leading back to our car.  Back home dad announced that we should let it age before cleaning it.  That's what he did growing up close to Barnegat Bay in southern New Jersey, but perhaps not the wisest strategy considering the heat of the garage during that warm Utah autumn.  

Finally, too long afterwards, we cleaned the goose — the centerpiece for a Thanksgiving dinner in the tradition of our forefathers and mothers.  Soon the aroma from the roasting bird wafted through our house — driving everyone outside.  Maybe, we wondered, had it aged too long?  Still mom dutifully finished her job mistakingly assuming that dad knew best.  At last we gathered around the table as dad carved my goose — a Thanksgiving dinner to remember.  Alas, from there on, our story diverged from the original Thanksgiving, because after one sniff, no one touched my inedible Thanksgiving goose.  Yes, it was indeed, a Thanksgiving to remember.

Now in our autumn years Thanksgiving is still a time when birds remain a part of our season’s attractions, but in a more gentle manner.  No longer am I the center of attraction dragging an enormous Canada Goose down a dike, but rather it's Karen attracting comments and dogs as she stalks birds throughout Petersburg.  For Karen who would never even consider shooting a goose, duck or any avian (or mammalian) species, any bird is a wonderful target -- for her camera.  But throwing a football around — nah.

Karen, it turns out, is a far better hunter than I ever was.  Here is just a sample of the many recent photos she has taken of birds.

Vancouver Canada geese in Petersburg sense Karen is a "big threat."

                                       As do mallard ducks that are obviously distressed by her presence.

A common loon stretches it's wings.

A Wilson's snipe contemplates if it should have migrated south.

A "tiny" flock of long-tailed ducks land in front of Karen

An American dipper wonders about that one-eyed critter (the camera lens)

A surf scoter enjoys a bath.

A Barrow's goldenye surfs the waves of Frederick Sound.

And her favorite, a raven with whom Karen exchanges pleasantries.

These images are just a tiny sample of very patient Karen's latest "trophies."  You can't eat them, but they don't drive you out of the house during Thanksgiving.

Miracles

A prudent pilot leaves their plane tethered to the ground when fog rules the skies.  However, a co-worker whom I'll call Joe (by coincidence his real name) failed to return from a moose hunt the previous evening.  We had to do something, anything, so Lyman (actually his real name, too) offered to start an aerial search.

The call reverberated through our office.  Any volunteers to add a pair of eyes?  So there I was sitting in the back seat of a red Citabria headed towards a snow encased birch forest west of Talkeetna, Alaska.  Never mind that visibility in the area could be compared with peering through random keyholes while Lyman squeezed the plane between the frozen tree tops and a dense fog bank, a layer of air barely wide enough to accommodate the plane, it’s red-painted wings the only color in our line of sight.  Down below we knew searchers reinforced our efforts, but the thick mantle of snow on the trees obscured any sign of them -- and of course, Joe.  Undeterred, we persisted.

We knew it would take a miracle to spot Joe, but the point of the entire exercise, we were doing something and you can never spot a miracle in advance. 

Now, daylight, if you want to call it that, ends early in November at that latitude.  That also coincided with our similarly dwindling fuel supply.  Reluctantly, we turned towards Anchorage in the early afternoon.  That's also about when a voice in Lyman's headset gave us the news.  Searchers had found Joe, or was it vice versa?  Either way, he had simply lost his race with nightfall to get back to his car the previous evening.  Other than a frigid night and feeling embarrassed, he had a story for his grandchildren. 

That's also about the time we crossed the Petersville Road.  Now remember, we constituted the filling between a white layer of fog and a white layer of snow-covered tree tops.  What we did not know was a power line had been added to that filling -- strung along that road, just above the tree tops.  That frost encased line bore a striking resemblance to everything above and below it.  Talk about cammo!

That was the moment the lights went out in some homestead along the Petersville Road.  However, all I felt was a slight hesitation in our forward momentum.  That's all.  No sparks, no flying wires, no Hollywood-style pyrotechnics, just a momentary hesitation.  Lyman turned to me and muttered, "we just screwed up." 

With that he banked left towards Talkeetna to make a stealth approach.  We landed far out at the end of the runway, hoping our landing gear was intact and to escape notice.  Lyman leaped out of the cockpit and dashed around the plane to make a hasty inspection of the plane's exterior. Satisfied that the apparently thin wire hadn't inflicted any obvious damage we roared off into the gathering twilight aiming south towards home.  Joe was safe, we were safe, and we’d let someone else puzzle over the mystery of the severed power line.

Today, well beyond 40-years later I wonder why we survived.  I've read multiple accounts of aircraft encounters with power lines.  The wires always won.  Always.  Except this time.  Like I said, you can never spot a miracle in advance.

              ------------------------------------------------------------------

Lacking any digitized photos from the days of this event back in the 1970s, this seems like the time to augment a post with some of Karen's images that include, surprise, fog.  

Wise "aviators" remaining grounded waiting for fog to lift.

A commercial fishing boat sails into fog in SE Alaska.

Fog bank over Frederick Sound, Alaska.

Frontier Justice

In the early 1970s, the Palmer game warden, Fred Smith, occupied the corner office two doors down from where I was stationed as an Alaska Department of Fish and Game game biologist.  Well past retirement age with fleeting eyesight and a receding gray hairline, Fred still made as many cases as the best of them.  

The reason: people identified with this friendly grandfatherly gentleman.  Fred didn't have to sneak through dense willow thickets to pounce on poachers.  Everyday citizens, fed up with seeing someone else steal their moose or salmon dinner, simply reported violations to Fred.  He excelled at being a kind old man telling stories about the good old days.  The public reciprocated with modern day versions.  

My opportunity to assist Fred came the night I registered for a mid-winter watercolor painting class.  Returning home that frigid night on the winding remote (at that time) Matanuska Valley roads, a parked car seemed out-of-place.  Strange, I thought, so slowed to read its license plate number.  The notion that something didn't seem right gnawed at me until back home, I turned around and drove back.

The car had disappeared.  Instead I found blood in the road.  Armed with a flashlight, my boots squeaking in the cold, I followed a trail of crimson flecked snow to a steaming moose gut pile.   Back home I dialed Fred.  

Fred said he would check on the license number.  A few minutes later my phone rang.  It was Fred.  Rumor had it the owner of the car whom I shall call "Robert" was a moose poacher who sold the meat to the poor.  Fred still hadn't been able to make a case against this supposed modern-day Robin Hood.  He said Robert would be at the Pioneer Cafe the next morning.  I should meet him there.

At 7:30 AM, sure enough, I found Fred standing in the Pioneer Cafe parking lot next to the drab weathered sedan I had seen the previous evening.  The key to the trunk remained fixed in place, obviously ready for quick action.  Fred twisted the key.  The trunk popped open to reveal a blood-stained interior and moose hair, not the typical trunk used to transport suitcases to the airport.  Fred directed me to collect a blood sample on a microscope slide and close the lid saying he'd be right back.  I complied then dashed inside not wanting to miss the action.

Inside the Pioneer Cafe Fred found a tall angular man clad in Army surplus "bunny boots" wearing a grease-stained parka right where he knew he'd find him, sitting at a counter stool in front of a plateful of bacon and eggs.  

Fred approached Robert and with a friendly smile, simply said, "When you're done, come on over to my office," and left.  That was all.  That's sure not how they do it on TV, I thought to myself.

Fred and I went back to our respective Fish and Game offices and waited.  It didn't take long before I saw Robert slouch past my door.  I listened intently.

"You never know when your friends are going to rat on you," I heard Fred say.

"Who told you?," a panicked Robert replied.  "Who was it?"

Of course Fred was only making up a story, but that sounded like a confession to me. 

After more unsuccessful pleading from Robert about how Fred knew,  I heard Fred state, "we need to go get the meat, it would be unlawful to leave it where it was."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  "Unlawful."  Since when did that bother Robert?  However, he fell for Fred's bluff and with that the two of them got up and Robert led Fred to the evidence -- the evidence Fred needed to make his case, a case for which Robert spent six months in jail. 

Today I muse at the chances.  My love of art led me down that road.  I had been disappointed that all we did was register for the watercolor painting class, receive our materials list and an announcement the class would begin the following week.  Feeling let down, I drove home hours earlier than expected that evening.  Later, when class would normally have ended, Robert would have vanished and, at best, I might have seen blood on the snow-covered pavement. 

Otherwise, a flock of ravens, maybe a pair of eagles at the top of a cottonwood tree would have alerted us that another moose had been poached.  Why didn't we ever catch these guys?  Chances -- chances and a bit of bluff from a kind old man broke the familiar pattern leading, for once, to frontier justice.

        Dance of the Aspens  9 x 12 inches  Alkyd on Canvas  Private Collection

Other than a whimsical watercolor card, this is the only painting I have which includes a moose,  Thus, wanting a moose painting for this post, it'll have to do.  I started Dance of the Aspens as a plein air piece in the Yukon.  There I was drawn to the aspens battered by wind and snow to take on every manner of twisted shapes.  I didn't complete the painting that day, so brought it home to finish in my studio.  As for the moose, she's an add on from a photo Karen took in a similar area Fred would have patrolled although, given his poor eyesight, probably never would have seen.  In fact, neither did I.  But, Karen did.

Life on the Docks

Winter in coastal Alaska has a bonus not enjoyed by someone living in — say — Delmar, New York (where I finished high school) or Brookfield, Wisconsin (where Karen grew up).  Like grizzled retirees from those same towns chasing the winter sun, waterfowl and shorebirds, fleeing iced-over ponds and marshes in interior portions of the continent, sashay down to our coast.  Here they happily spend the darkest months indulging in fresh seafood delicacies that dwell in our marine waters.  They join larger members of the animal kingdom whose “wings” just aren’t powerful enough to enable them to fly — except through the water.

                            A pair of Common Loons newly arrived after interior lakes began to freeze over

Barely more agile on land than a bowling ball and even less so in the air, this Harbor Seals epitomizes grace when it "flies" through the water.

This is particularly true at the northern end of Wrangell Narrows, the site of the city of Petersburg, where harbor seals and Steller’s sea lions are joined by thousands of gulls, ducks and shorebirds.  Here upwelling seawater nourishes an ecosystem filled with enough species of marine worms (yum) and fish to keep “everyone” happy with the added bonus of tasty ground-up seafood processing waste from our local canneries.  

A Common Loon wrecks the day of a fish -- but can it swallow that big of a victim without a set of wolf-like choppers?

                                                                     No Problem!  Well, maybe just a little.

For the record, one local cannery’s permit required wastes to be discharged in waters somewhere around 30 or 40 feet below sea level.  Wellllllll…..I once joined inspectors diving on that outfall.  While we navigated to the site, the diver made his final preparations.  Oxygen tanks filled— check.  Dry suit on— check.  Regulator functioning — check.  Tank valve open — check.  A couple of test breaths — check.  Weights on — Check.  Get ready, we’re closing in.  STOP!  REVERSE ENGINE!  WATCH OUT!  DON'T HIT THE PIPE!  If he had jumped over the side of the boat at a deep spot he might have gotten his knees wet.

I never saw the final inspection report.  However, I couldn’t help but notice that currents are so fast at the site that the discharge is well diluted.  Instead of looking like a biological wasteland around the outfall — as sterile as Mars but less colorful — the area looked more like a Hawaiian coral reef.  It’s a great place to cast a fishing lure during higher tide levels.

This week Karen took her new Canon Powershot SX50 camera out on the docks to give it another test run.  The first day, as she slowly crept up on several sleeping seal lions, she paused.  “Why do I have this uneasy feeling?”  The dock began rocking and bobbing accompanied by the increasing volume of a gurgling sound.  Suddenly a geyser of water reminiscent of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful erupted as it gushed out of a standing pipe -- the one under which she was hiding.  Karen had been creeping from pipe to pipe using them as photographic blinds — if one can use a standing pipe as camouflage.  Only Karen would take a shower on the docks — without a towel.  Most others seek out more private facilities.

Nevertheless, brave Karen returned the next day, this time using her navigational skills to avoid that “trap.”  She went to a different dock.

                                                 Steller's Sea Lions know the meaning of comfort.

                                           So who's keeping track of whose flippers belong to who?

            Black Turnstones and Surfbirds seem to sense that Karen is a softy when it comes to predatory instincts.

Petersburg's upside down Harbor Seal cruises through the harbors in it's own style.  Don't knock it until you've tried it.

                                                                           It's downright addictive.

A short-billed Dowitcher proved a challenge in deciding if it was the short-billed species or the long-billed version.  Here's hoping we got it right.  The surfbird was an easy call.

This Bonapartes Gull is unlikely to stick around all winter, but will be another harbinger of spring in five or six months.  Just the thought of that makes us think it's on to something.

                                             You know, there's more than one way to fly.  I wonder......