A Lifer for Bill

"Olive-backed Pipit...the bird of the trip...the rarest bird on this island!"
Bill's eyes lit up with frenzied hope as I laid out the options for Brookline Bird Club's first evening on St. Paul.

Over my mountain of rice and octopus, I surveyed my 20 charges with uncertainty.  Out of the three options I'd given them--male Brambling at Hutch Hill; Common Cuckoo at Nova Stoshna; Olive-backed Pipit at Webster Celery Pits--the pipit was the one I was least stoked about. The previous day, Cory, Ashley, and I had failed to relocate it, my gut feeling was that it had skipped town.

Bill, leading his 23rd--and final--trip to St. Paul, wasn't about to be swayed. Unlike the other options, Olive-backed Pipit would be a Life Bird for him. So, after we escaped Trident's caloric onslaught, we loaded into the bus and drove to Webster. A few hours later, I dropped them off at the King Eider, still pipitless.

Two days later and Bill still hadn't gotten a Life Bird. I really hoped we'd find one for him--after all, it was his final trip. It was my day off, so I decided to go turn over some rocks that hadn't been flipped for awhile. It was a beautiful afternoon. Sunny, warm, only light winds. Just beyond the airport is a nice corridor of wet areas separated by lupine-carpeted dune bowls. We often check the wet areas individually, but I decided to just walk the whole complex.

I drove past Weatherbureau, arm raised in Rock Sandpiper salute to the lost Barrow's Goldeneye and Double-crested Cormorant. At the road's end, I grabbed my camera and binoculars and began slogging through the Mare's Tail.

When I guide, I'm constantly "on". You have to be sensitive to the needs of your groups, play off their dynamics, give them the best experience possible. You have to be adaptable, intuitive, three steps ahead of where the group's at. Your work goes far beyond simply finding them birds. You have to figure out the best way of getting everyone in the group on it, then be an ornithological encyclopedia about the identification, the life history, take a stab at explaining why it ended up on this speck of a volcanic island instead of on its Siberian breeding grounds. It's exhausting, gratifying work. To recharge, I must allow my thoughts to outwander my feet when I'm off.

I was thinking thoughts so deep they must have been heavier than my feet (swaddled in sweaty alpaca socks, entombed in rigid rubber coffins) when I saw a bird with huge white wing patches flying away from me. Huge white wing patches are not a trademark of any St. Paul regular, so I drew my binoculars and nailed the bird in my sights.

Awwww yeah--HAWFINCH. Most years, some Hawfinch end up in the Pribilofs as they leave their wintering grounds in Japan and head towards the Kamchatka. It was a Life Bird for me. Was it a Life Bird for anyone else?

The bird landed on the far side of the bowl. After snapping a "record shot", I called Scott, who was taking the Brookline Gang around that day.

"Yo."
"Hey, I got a Hawfinch in the dunes between Tonki and Tim's."
"We're heading that way."

By some miracle, when Scott's group started walking from Tim's, the bird had positioned itself optimally--to escape, it would have to fly by me or Scott, and those glaring wing patches weren't going to make a stealth escape easy.

Scott's small army and their colorful windbreakers crested the dune. The Hawfinch flew. I glared at it bouncing away in finch fashion. They were so close to getting it, this escape attempt was not permissible. I called Scott, barely out of shouting distance.

"Yo."
"It's flying your way...LOOK UP! Oh, it landed. Do you have it?"
"No."
"It must be just over the berm for you."

They marched forward, Scott raised his hand, they stopped. They had it. My anxiety upwelling receded, and I made my way to the group to be greeted by a receiving line of high fives.

During the chase, Bill's windbreaker had slipped down to his elbows. His eyes--those eyes that have been finding birds for more than 40 years--were wild, elated. He shook my hand.

"Nice going, nice going, I've been coming here for 23 years and this is my last trip. Great find, the bird of the trip. Good direction. Well-played, nice going."

Bill had gotten his Life Bird

Gale Walk

With the craze of spring migration, Days Off have been a precious resource to all St. Paul Tour guides. Although working here is living the dream, Days Off allow for activities ordinarily impossible--long walks; writing; not wearing pants. Two days ago, my legs needed stretching; my head needed emptying. I threw a journal in my pack and hitched a ride to Southwest Point with Cory and Ashley. There, I hoisted my tripod on my shoulder and set off towards Marunich.

12:30 PM. It's been a half-hour since I started walking the ATV trail from southwest, and I'm almost at the top of High Cliffs. The wind is fierce--it tangles my hair, buoys kittiwakes, slams swells into the rocks well below. The sea is angry, beautiful. I crouch as close to the edge as I dare, just above grating Parakeet Auklets, imagine my mom's disapproval. I feel so small, so alive.

1:20 PM: I've now made it to the base of St. Paul's highest point, Rush Hill. It peaks at a whopping 665 feet, and I spontaneously alter my route to take me over its summit. I've traded the guttural sounds of the seabird colony for longspur snarls and Rock Sandpiper (Frog Sandpiper?) croaking. An arctic fox whines from another slope. There is no shelter in this bowl; unsurprisingly, no birds either. Time to move on...

2:02: I still have not summited Rush, thanks to my discovery of an intriguing fissure begging to be explored. Following the fissure led me to an American Pipit and a large opening that felt like an abandoned ampitheater decorated by tundra flowers, moss, and reindeer skulls. Snow Buntings and Rock Sandpipers call from the slopes. The beauty here is more peaceful than the sea's fury.

2:58: After a harrowing walk down Rush Hill's volcanic furrows I'm now sitting on a grassy plain. I sat in some veg that smelled like sage--and on further examination, tasted like sage too. I'll make this a short stop--Tsmana's pond and house beckon from a mere half-mile away. I finally remember to take a lupine photo for Dave, and suddenly feel a twinge of guilt for the selfish pursuits of my day off. Adri, Danielle, Gunnar, Katie, Rose, Summer--you're all in my heart. I miss you. I'll write you soon.

3:29: Tsmana. There are 2 Red Phalarope on the pond--2 Red Phalarope and a LOT of whitecaps. I knew walking the shore in this gale was idiotic, but last night Scott and I talked about irrational opinions and one of mine was that a Spoonbill Sand would be waiting here for me. It was not, but Red-legged Kittiwakes are gathering mud next to me and that's pretty cool, too.

Tsmana Camp House

4:07: Wind and hunger make me angry...need I say more? I packed a sandwich, but ate it about 2 miles into my hike, back at High Cliffs. That was intelligent. It's so windy that as the waves are coming in, the opposing wind is actually blowing them backward. There is a big raft of Harly Ducks offshore; the fulmars seem to be enjoying the gale. Glad something is.

4:44. I found a bird I hadn't crossed paths with for a couple weeks--Red-necked Grebe. I pretended it was a rare bird, and thus documented it, since that would be the correct action. This documentation was less to prove the bird than it was to prove that I have a camera.

5:21: Once I saw the size of the Harly flocks along the north shore, I halfway expected to find a Steller's Eider, and I did! Steller's are the smallest eider and nest on arctic tundra. At St. Paul, they are a fairly common winter resident, and there are still a few lingering with the Harlequin flocks. Steller's are listed as "threatened", and thus a better bird in more parts of the world than, say, the Common Cuckoos that have been causing a ruckus on St. Paul this past week. It's only the 3rd time I've seen one; the walk has now been justified.

5:54: Aww yeah, made it to Cormorant arches, it's an easy 20 minutes back to Marunich. I'm ready to be done with the wind, which must be a sustained 30mph+. The gusts unbraided my hair, which induced a fit of rage when I had to wrangle my hair out of my eyes and mouth as I tried to identify a swallow being buffeted. It's moments like these that tempt me towards dreads, girl problems...

9:15: Finally out of the wind, after a dash up to the north side of the island for an unsuccessful stab at Olive-backed Pipit. Per usual, my day off left me more exhausted than the accumulation of days on, but it's a good kind of tired.

Quarry Qualms

Greg Fleming Photo

There was once a time in my life when I loved the idea of The Quarry. Surely, its lava outcroppings beckoned to any off-course bird; its mossy boulder-covered walls must harbor vagrants. There also was a period in my life when I devoted too much time to imagining what my first good Asian find on St. Paul would be. I would even pore over Rare Birds of North America before I went to bed, hoping my dreams of Terek Sandpipers and Mugimaki Flycatchers would manifest themselves to reality. 

I now have entered a new phase in life. Now, I kind of despise the quarry, so much that I dream about it and wake up pissed. Additionally, I no longer wonder what my first vagrant find will be, instead wondering how long one can eat PB&J without becoming entirely delusional. These changes of outlook are connected; their nexus follows. 

Van #4 crept through the hamlet of St. Paul, its occupants scouring every roof for finches, every puddle for greenshanks. We all were on edge, sucking up any movement outside the van, straining to find vagrants from the previous day's storm that had driven even the most stalwart birder inside.

My phone whistled, increasing the tension in my gang of already-eager vagrant junkies.
"What's Cory got?"

The other tour leaders were scrutinizing the island too that morning. An incoming text could mean a breakneck ride over washboard gravel roads--or, it could just be Scott telling me about how the calm, sunny morning was perfect napping weather.

"Oh, it's nothing. I was just finding out if anyone was doing Quarry this morning, because I want to."

The suspense in Van #4 ebbed, and conversation resumed as we rattled out of town, dust cloud trailing behind. We had about an hour to kill before lunch--enough time, I thought, to work the quarry bowl and the two-track winding up to the lava fields. Even when it's not birdy, there's always solid scenery accompanied by a soundtrack of displaying Snow Buntings.

We bounced through Upper Cut. I tuned my eyes to the rocky hillside, filtered the chatter in the van. Tufted Flycatchers, splits and lumps...you know, birder things.

"I asked Scott how things were different with a female guide. He said the house smells a lot better."

I laughed and tried to think of something witty, which isn't easy to do when you work outside for like 14 hours a day.

Fortunately, some movement out my window caught my eye, saving me. It was small, brown, skulky--Asian by appearance and behavior.
"Get out of the van NOW and GET ON THAT BIRD." 
Heeding my own advice, I got it in my binoculars for a split second as it dodged rocks near the top of the hill. Even olive-brown back, short-tailed, small, thrush-like. I knew it was good.

On St. Paul, when you have good birds, even if you don't know what they are yet, you immediately get the word out to other groups, so protocol dictated I call Scott and Cory. It's Murphy's Law that places with the best birds have the worst cell signal.

"Hey Scott, I got on this small thrush-like bird running around in Upper Cut."
"You're breaking up."

Yep.

"In the upper cut of the..."
My phone stopped crackling and started beeping; the call had been dropped.

Cool. I had effectively lost the bird and infused terror over missing a rarity into the other guides.

Many stories could end here. This one, however, does not.

Matt Victoria photo

24 hours later, I was curled in the fetal position on A-dorm's couch. 
"I should ban you from ever birding in the quarry again," Scott warned. 

The mystery thrush, when relocated by our resident Sherpa, Brad, ended up being a female Siberian Rubythroat--a good bird. Good and infuriating, because it lurked in the rocks near the top of the ridge, requiring all able-bodied birders to stumble through the boulders on the hill, while those more accepting of their physical shortcomings waited anxiously beneath. 

I was an able-bodied birder. By some miracle, I still am an able-bodied birder. Getting up the ridge to Rubythroat land meant you had to balance precariously on boulders that in turn balanced precariously on the hillside. Deceptive patches of moss and lichen gave way to caverns that probably went all the way to China. After falling down several, I wondered if the rubythroat had made the same mistake and inadvertently ended up back home. 

Greg Fleming Photo

While I scrambled, I had two dominant thoughts: how much of my body I would sacrifice in order to protect my optics; the futility (idiocy?) of trying to find a small brown bird when every third step was potentially life-threatening. Note that most of us engaged in this undertaking clad in St. Paul's designated footwear--rubber boots. I have since deduced that it's generally a poor idea to engage in mountain goat activities when you're wearing rubber boots. 

Don't be deceived by my griping. I love St. Paul, I love rare birds, and there's a good chance I'll be tempted into the quarry again tomorrow.