15 December 1996
Dear Friends and Family,
We hope you have had a good year in 1996. Our tenth full
year here in Rochester
went well; we got to do some fun traveling, and made good progress on our Moose
River Plains botanical project, mentioned in last year's letter.
My work has been reasonable, although the end-of-the-year
crunch to finish up projects was the worst ever. This was because we finally,
after three years of planning, moved physical location into the complex which
represents the digital imaging center of the company. The area was newly built
to our specifications and is great! It is exciting to finally have all of us
who work on the same projects located so closely to one another; most of the
people with whom I work are now within 15 seconds of my office. My major
project has made it through another year unscathed and now seems to safely have
the momentum to carry it to completion in about three years. In 1996, about ten
people contributed to the effort, and another five people worked on projects
that we have spawned.
Most of the winter was spent finishing identification of the
roughly 350 specimens collected in the Moose River Plains in 1995. Our final
species total was 307. We prepared a list of target species for the 1996 field
season that included species for which better specimens were needed (e.g. with
fruit in addition to flowers), or for which a voucher specimen was needed by
the New York State Museum to substantiate occurrence in Hamilton County. This
list contained about 100 species, giving us plenty of things to work on in
addition to finding new species! We rented movie videos every weekend and
cooked potato pancake breakfasts (complete with jalapeno cheese, Indian mint
chutney, and salsa) many Sunday mornings to remind us of camping. We attended
several figure skating tour programs, which were very enjoyable. When the
weather finally improved in April, we got to see a lovely milk snake in a
friend's yard, and enjoyed viewing Comet Huyakatake
almost nightly for over a week.
Early in May we took a 16-day trip to southeast Arizona involving three days of business in Tucson (judging in the
International Science and Engineering Fair for Kodak). The birding was
wonderful as always, and Eileen's folks drove over from El Paso to join us for a week. Eileen saw 38
new birds (!), bringing her North American life list to 610; Strickland's
woodpecker, on the road to Carr
Canyon, was her 600th
species. She also had 6 new mammals, bringing her total to 104; Arizona gray squirrel was her 100th species, but was
eclipsed in excitement by # 104, her most wanted mammal: a mountain lion
streaking across the road in the Chiricahua Mountains,
then sighted in binoculars as it gracefully departed
from a hollow where it was being mobbed by gray-breasted jays! This and hooded
skunk were only my second sightings, but I did get two new birds: a beautiful
male flame-colored tanager in the Santa Rita Mts., and three white-eared
hummingbirds in Ramsey Canyon, bringing my total to 683 (excluding introduced
birds). Other particularly nice sightings included violet-crowned hummingbird, sulphur-bellied flycatcher, Mexican chickadee, tropical and
thick-billed kingbirds (the latter especially in Guadalupe Canyon), common
black-hawk, rose-throated becard and hapatic tanagers in Sycamore Canyon, Montezuma quail and
antelope jackrabbit in California Gulch, many coatimundis,
and many nice pines and oaks. One enjoyable aspect of the trip was visiting a
number of classic locations that we had not seen previously (such as several of
the canyons of the Huachuca Mts.).
Our early June census of small white lady's-slippers
(endangered in New York
State) at one of their
two state locations was encouraging, with a higher total and percentage of
plants in flower than we have had for several years. We also censused stands of several
regionally rare plants (twinleaf and green violet) for The Nature Conservancy.
An exciting local find was green dragon, a plant closely related to
jack-in-the-pulpit but much less common and even more bizarre. One day Eileen
was able to walk to the end of the street to see the Olympic torch
pass by, helping to make up for the fact that we missed much of the
Olympics due to travel. Our ten-year wedding anniversary on 14 June was spent
touring Sonnenberg
Gardens in the Finger
Lakes region; while there we heard a clay-colored sparrow, a
prairie rarity that was later seen by a number of other birders. I got in
trouble for pointing out that a ten-year anniversary was "particularly
special" only if you used the decimal system of counting. Late in June we
started on a wonderful 30-day trip to the Pacific
Northwest (see end of letter).
We collected about 190 specimens this year (excluding
duplicates) in the Moose River Plains, which we expect will bring our species
total to about 375 after two years. This is what I had estimated for our final
total before we began our study; it will be interesting to see how far past
this mark we go. Despite the Pacific Northwest
trip, we spent about 26 days doing field work in the Moose River Plains this
year, and were able to extend our coverage to a number of new blocks.
Especially interesting new species in the area included one-flowered cancerroot, humped bladderwort, and slender
ladies'-tresses. If you remember the description of specimen 220 in last year's
Christmas letter (purple bladderwort), you will be relieved to hear that we
finally did collect the species in flower this year, although, remarkably, the
flowers were definitely white rather than the anticipated purple. By extending
our field season a bit later than last year, we added several asters and other
plants that we had missed previously.
Several exciting finds this year were of ferns. We found a
magnificent stand of Clinton's
fern containing dozens of large plants in a swampy area, creating quite a
sight. The published New York state record for species of ferns in a 1-mile
radius circle is 26 species; at the end of last year we had 25 in a circle in
the Moose River Plains, and there were two species that we had found not far
outside our circle that we thought probably occurred within the circle, but not
in areas accessible by trail or road. One species, rusty woodsia,
likes sunny cliffs; the other, mountain woodfern,
prefers higher elevations. We selected the highest areas within our circle that
had cliffs, based on topographic maps, and took three bushwhacks (cross-country
hikes in areas with no trails) during the course of the year to look for these
two ferns. To give you an idea of the hiking difficulty, on the second hike, on
which we did find two mountain woodfern plants, it
took us five hours to cover one mile, but the record was tied. The third hike
finally succeeded in reaching some partly open cliffs and a few straggling
rusty woodsias were sighted, breaking the record. We
will write this up this winter.
A trip to Algonquin Provincial Park over Labor Day yielded a
black bear in a bog, our second in a natural setting (i.e. not at a dump) in a
few weeks (the earlier one had been on a bog in the Adirondacks that we had visited
to see yellow-eyed grass). Also seen were spruce grouse (our third sighting
ever) and Case's ladies'-tresses, a new orchid for us. Since the end of the
camping season in mid-October, when the tamaracks were superb in the Moose
River Plains, we have been doing yard work, finishing up work on the aquatic
flora publication (which did not quite get done before the field season started
this year), and preparing to start work on the new specimens.
I scheduled a trip to El
Paso for Thanksgiving without telling Eileen so she
would not worry about flying for months ahead of time. We had a very enjoyable
visit with Eileen's parents and her brother and sister-in-law, Rob and Mahrla. In addition to a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, some
fine games of Anagrams, and innumerable authentic Mexican meals in various
local restaurants, we took several day trips to interesting areas. In the Monihans Dunes near Pecos,
we sledded down the dune slip faces and photographed the remarkable shin oaks
that, despite being just a few feet high, supposedly can send down roots as far
as 90 feet to reach reliable water. Near Deming,
NM we walked through interesting
rock formations and looked for semi-precious stones, finding mostly jasper, but
also seeing golden eagle and prairie falcon beautifully. The solar observatory
at Sunspot, NM (cute name), near Cloudcroft, was interesting and the scenery
was pretty, and we enjoyed visiting nearby Three Petroglyphs
as well. Finally, a trip to Bosque del Apache National
Wildlife Refuge near the peak of the snow goose and sandhill
crane numbers was impressive. We had great looks at Ross' goose, olivaceous cormorant, and porcupine as well; the goose was
Eileen's 621st species.
Finally, we're looking forward to a week in Charlottesville visiting my family over
Christmas. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a rewarding and
enjoyable year in 1997.
Pacific
Northwest Trip
During the course of this 30-day trip we drove 9925 miles,
and visited locations in Idaho, northern California, Oregon, and Washington, which was
our fiftieth state! We had our highest list of conifers ever for a single trip,
an excellent 30 species. There are 98 species of conifers in North
America north of the Mexican border, and after this trip, where I
encountered four or five new species, I had seen 88 of them (Eileen has seen
about 82). While quoting statistics, we visited four new national parks, and
have now been to all but seven in the Lower 48. This was probably our best trip
ever for wildflowers, with Mt.
Ranier
being the single most notable location. Camping was very nice, including an
unbroken stretch of 18 nights. The weather was excellent except on the Olympic
Peninsula, where it was rainy and foggy, which we blamed on Eileen's parents,
who had just joined us for a week. Of the 20 mammal species, three (all
chipmunks) were new to us. I got one new bird, probably the commonest North
American species I was missing (Manx shearwater), although it normally belongs
in the Atlantic, not Pacific, Ocean. Eileen
had ten new birds, including Laysan albatross and
marbled murrelet.
We drove from Rochester to
Craters of the Moon NM in Idaho
in three days (a bit under 2300 miles). This was the first of many fascinating
volcanic areas we visited during the trip. Next was the Sawtooth
NRA, with its lovely subalpine meadows full of
shooting stars and other colorful flowers. Malheur NWR and the surrounding area
in southeast Oregon
was very interesting; a favorite flower was the sensational Clarkia pulchella. We saw the wild mustang herd most closely
resembling the original Spanish stallions of all New World
herds. While we were photographing, a female calliope hummingbird (the smallest
American species) flew into our car and had to be rescued. Near Bend, OR
we hiked in a lava tube with headlamps for several miles; it was quite eerie.
Next on the agenda was Crater Lake NP, the only place in the trip where we had
trouble getting a campsite. Half the loop road was
still closed due to snow when we were there on 5-7 July. Vidae Falls had an excellent wildflower
display, including columbines and bleeding hearts. Crater
Lake had extensive forests of my favorite tree, mountain hemlock.
We headed south to the California
border, where we had fun photographing many birds with young, especially stilts
and avocets, in the Klamath
Basin refuges. After a
brief tour of Lava Beds NM we continued south to the Mt. Shasta
area. Although this mountain is magnificant from a
distance, and figures prominently in early botanical records, we found it less
interesting than other montane locations we visited.
Our southernmost point on the trip was at Lassen Volcanic NP (still far north
in California), which we enjoyed a great deal, not least because we saw many
familiar species from our southern California tenure, here near the northern
extent of their range. From Lassen we cut over to the coast and the redwoods
parks. The drive across the state at this latitude is quite slow but rather
scenic; we took some side roads up the canyons and to viewpoints, hoping for weeping
spruce. Although unsuccessful, we saw superb examples of madrone
and slopes covered with the unique digger pine.
After the obligatory hike through Fern Gully, and the
expected view-camera photography of the towering redwood forests, we headed for
the remote Siskiyou Mts. to look for the rare weeping spruce. This is a
mysterious conifer with graceful, pendant branches, that
grows at fairly high elevations in dry situations within a very small region
(perhaps 100 miles in diameter). The road along the South Fork of the Smith River
eventually degenerated into a one-lane bedrock road with terrifying dropoffs. Eileen hung up a blanket so she could not see
where we were going. I constantly checked the altimiter
and the GPS, which indicated that we had long ago taken leave of any road shown
on any map we had. In nearly a day of travel, we saw no other vehicles after
leaving the river (thank goodness). At one memorable stop, we parked next to a
huge Port Orford Cedar, and in short order saw the
bizarre cobra plant (a restricted pitcher plant), a new orchid, and a new lily.
At the top of the ridge a weather station explained the reason for the road.
Just below this weather station we finally encountered a scattered stand of
about 15 weeping spruces, mixed with hundreds of other conifers in an area many
acres in extent on a steep north-facing slope. At our feet was a delicate
endemic bleeding heart. This road was the most exciting part of the entire trip
for me.
Working our way north along the coast we visited several
seabird colonies, where the nesting birds had already started to disperse, reducing numbers. Near Cape Arago,
at a well-known overlook, we were treated to scope views of four pinnipeds, and I had my best comparisons ever of the two
sea lion species. Mt.
Hood was mostly
disappointing due to the intensive clear-cutting nearly surrounding the
mountain, but finally, after many hours of dirt roads, we emerged to a superb
view from the north a few hours before sunset, and so decided to camp there for
the night. This might be the most impressive view we have ever had from a
campsite.
From Mt.
Hood we briefly visited
the Columbia River Gorge. The basalt formations were impressive and the falls
very pleasant, but we needed more time and fewer people to see the area well.
Returning to the coast, we visited the scenic Ecola
SP, which had very good birding, and saw tufted puffins nesting on Haystack
Rock in the town of Cannon
Beach. That day we crossed over into Washington
and took a photo of ourselves to commemorate our arrival in our fiftieth state.
We stayed on the Olympic Peninsula for several days, where Eileen's parents met
us. The temperate rainforests in three valleys on the west side of the Olympic
Peninsula are unique in North America; the only other worldwide occurrences are
in Chile and New Zealand. In
some areas the rainfall is around 200 inches per year, whereas rainfall just a
few tens of air miles away, in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mts., is only 17
inches in places. Eileen and I took a pelagic trip out of Westport, on which we had many excellent
looks at uncommon species. I was very sick but was pleased at what we saw.
Mt.
Ranier,
next on the itinerary, had thrilling displays of alpine wildflowers (of which
the magenta paintbrush was a favorite) and beautiful views. The Grove of the
Patriarchs Nature Trail had male fern and Pacific yew; the latter, never
especially common, has become harder to find since the discovery of the
promising anti-cancer compound taxol, derived from
this species. Mt.
St. Helens was largely
closed off due to road damage, but we studied it using a telescope from 13
miles away at Bear Meadow. On our way to our final location, Hell's Canyon, we
passed through the Blue Mts. of Oregon,
hoping to encounter Washoe pine (which we did not). Although Hell's Canyon is
listed as the deepest gorge in the states, the readily accessible views
certainly do not compare with those of many other places. Nonetheless, it is a
very scenic area, and was an enjoyable final stop. We drove home in 3.5 days at
our usual pace of about 800 miles per day, finishing the trip in 30 days.