Our "rest" day - Malkolm

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We cycled into Hazleton in northern British Columbia, glad to be rid of the swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes that had infuriated us along the Stewart-Cassiar Highway. The bugs made hanging out at camp intolerable, so we had put in long days on that stretch, dragging our heavy loads more than 70 kilometers per day for six straight days. The birds enjoyed the bugs however: we found our 100th species on day 14 in Hazelton. We needed a rest day.
We camped out in Hazelton at the home of very kind birders Ray Sturney and Maureen Sargent. I was keen to find a few alpine birds that we hadn’t seen yet, like ptarmigan and grouse. Ray suggested climbing to Nine Mile Mountain, a place rich in avifauna. They drove to the start of the hike while Wendy, Ken and I cycled along a rough track that lead to the mountain. As we rounded a bend in the road we wondered if we had taken a wrong turn – the track turned into a creek (a beaver had dammed the creek, diverting it onto the road). After a more few kilometres we left our bikes and set off on a steep, two-hour hike to the alpine plateau.
When we came out onto the plateau, we were serenaded by Golden-crowned Sparrows singing from spindly evergreens. Horned Larks hopped amongst the boulders and American Pipits flitted over the tundra. A grizzly bear strolling across a nearby hillside startled us. We finally found one of our target birds, a Willow Ptarmigan, not completely changed out of its white winter plumage. The Ptarmigan clucked “go-back, go-back, go-back” then scurried away. “The slog up here was worth it,” said Wendy. She might have reconsidered when her knee started hurting on the long hike down.
Our “rest day” turned out to be anything but.

Run in with a moose (Ken)

Malkolm gets a break from blogging since he has to write his final exam tomorrow!
This morning I wandered down towards Dease Lake to fetch a pot of water for coffee. Down at the lake, I knew, there was a Spotted Sandpiper's nest. I'd seen the sandpiper earlier. She'd fluttered away, crying piteously, drawing me away from her four eggs. This time however, I rounded the corner and heard what sounded like the photo-finish of a Kentucky Derby. A pony-sized calf moose galloped down the trail towards me, nearly knocking me back into the forest. I looked nervously about, hoping its mother wasn't following. We never saw her.
We've been on the road for five days now. Malkolm has seen 54 species of birds so far. The boreal forest seems endless. An ocean of trees. We know however, that it is finite. It is the birthplace of many of the songbirds that North Americans love. But many of these Boreal bird species are declining, including Boreal Chickadees, Rusty Blackbirds . . . and Spotted Sandpipers.
We'll keep cycling, hoping we humans can find it in ourselves to make the changes necessary to protect birds.

The Romance of Bird Year

Getting ready for our Bird Year is extremely romantic. Today I vacuumed several rooms, swept and washed the stairs leading downstairs (never done that before), spent an hour or two responding to emails and spent a joyous few minutes scrubbing the bathroom floor. My daughters’ dogs are staring at me reproachfully because I haven’t taken them for a walk (Kirsten, Polly and Malkolm are in Haines, Alaska having fun at a bike race).
Starting on the summer solstice, I won’t be scrubbing any floors for at least a year (although we may need to wash the tent).

How did Malkolm get us into this? (Ken)

“Look at this one,” said seven-year-old Malkolm. “A purple… I can’t pronounce it. A purple something.”Malkolm sat strapped in the back seat, thumbing through the bird book that we’d just bought him. We were in the middle of a six-month slide show tour about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We tried to ignore the contradictions as we drove from the Yukon to Florida, up to New Jersey and west to California… burning gas while trying to prevent oil development in the Arctic Refuge. Back in 1999, global warming was a tiny, barely noticeable cloud on our horizons.We taught Malkolm his schoolwork while we drove from show to show. He liked the bird book more than Math or English. By the time we found the “purple something” (a Gallinule) in the Everglades, he was hooked. We’ve always read books out loud in the evenings. During a trip to the Arctic we read Kenn Kaufman’s Kingbird Highway. Kaufman, like Roger Tory Peterson and other notable birders, was writing about his “Big Year,” a year-long quest to see as many North American bird species as possible. I figured that Malkolm would eventually do his own “Big Year”, but I didn’t realize that he’d drag Wendy and me along with him.

Marathon Birdathon (Malkolm, May 27)

This weekend we put the last two syllables of the word “marathon” back into the Yukon Birdathon. Ken, Wendy and I are recovering today, after 16 hours of frantic birding and a few hours of deep sleep. We traveled about 50 miles, scouring marshes, spruce forests and a putrid sewage lagoon. We finished our birdathon along the Yukon River admiring a singing Warbling Vireo, or 77th species. The star bird of the birdathon was an Eared Grebe, only the fifth Yukon record. It was conveniently swimming alongside a pair of our more common Horned Grebes for comparison. I thought that it was considerate, although the grebe no doubt did not have our welfare in mind.
Wendy hopes that our Bird Year will not be as exhausting as the birdathon. If it turns out to be, either we’ll end it with loads of species – or we’ll finish it halfway through, in a hospital with fatigue-induced something.
(to the left is Malkolm's drawing of the Eared Grebe)

Shakedown (Ken, May 15)

While Malkolm was cycling to Haines, Alaska with his class, Wendy and I did a three-day “shakedown” trip of our own. Didn’t go far, but we discovered:
We aren’t as young as Malkolm.
It isn’t that easy to tell a Pacific Golden Plover from an American Golden Plover.
When your friends tell you to go light on bicycle touring adventures, listen to them.
It is less than six weeks until we set off.
Lake Laberge was still thick with ice, but in the sliver of open water at the mouth of Deep Creek there were Goldeneyes (both Barrow’s and Common), Trumpeter Swans, Mallards, Pintails and Blue-winged Teals. A couple of dozen American Widgeons strolled on the mudflats like sandpipers, which didn’t seem to bother the real sandpipers (we didn’t have Malkolm to identify the peeps) and plovers (both Golden and Semipalmated). A female Smith’s Longspur poking along the shore looked lonely. The Killdeer nearby looked at home.
The 55 kilometer (34 mile) cycle home into a headwind took a long time.

Building Bikes (Wendy, May 1)

During the winter, we built our sturdy, simple bikes. We are not naturally mechanical. Philippe,our teacher – owner of Philippe`s Bicycle Repair - had a challenge. My bike is funny looking. But, it works well and it is the most comfortable bike I`ve ridden. Yesterday we took a training ride. We looked for our first crocuses (none). On the clay cliffs, dry sage plants rattled in the breeze. This was a `recycle`- the pungent aroma of sage wafted up as I leaned over to collect squished aluminum cans. No crocuses, but we did see our first robin of the year!
Today, on our training ride, we saw our first shoveller! And our first yellow rumped warblers! Yeah! Butter-butts are back!