Wattensaw

We decided to explore some new areas of Wattensaw by foot, we normally had taken our kayak. We hiked right through the middle of the park from West to East for maybe a little over a mile. There are some very big trees in there, really good habitat. The trees were large enough that underbrush was essentially nonexistent, this may be the closest thing to "old growth" we will ever know. There was some semi-interesting scaling, and I'm sure we'll find better scaling in the coming weeks. Next time we will see if we can find a place for camera traps.

Something really interesting happened on this visit. We came upon a group of deer, and when they spotted us and ran off a bobcat jumped from the bushes and took off after them! Worth the trip just to see that.

Still birding...

We never really stopped birding, we just stopped IBWO hunting for a while. Last November my dad and I visited the Galapagos islands. We saw almost every subspecies (island locale) of tortoise, except for Lonesome George's race, which of course died before our visit. We also saw many of Darwin's finches. I expected to have to hike up into the hills to see finches, but they are as common as house sparrows are here. The smaller finchs were most common. We also saw large cactus, small ground, and large ground finches. Below are images of a large ground finch eating a mangrove seed. Look at the massive bill...This is my favorite of the finches....

Long Absence

Well, it's been over two years since we have been searching regularly. I just wanted to make a post to say we are getting back into it. We stopped searching mostly because of a health problem that had me scared for quite a while, along with some false sightings we had reported.

 From now on, even if we have a sighting, it will not be reported unless we have definitive evidence. I will just be posting pictures of the swamp and of bark scaling at this point.

The only possible encounters I believe we have had at this point are the following. We saw a bird in 2009 that I cannot explain. A loud double knock in Wattensaw, 2010. Finally, a set of 2 double knocks heard with Frank Wiley, 2011. We have found good bark scaling only in Wattensaw.

P.S. We are also throwing around a trip to Cuba, or Mexico. So, sign up for that.....