birding – Let's Take This Outside

The word is actually Santispac. It seems too harsh to be a Spanish word but it is the name of a beach/campground/gorgeous slice of the Bahia de Concepcion about 12 miles south of the town of Mulege (pronounced moo-ley-hey – which I love to say. Mooleyhey, mooleyhey, mooleyhey) where we dry camped for three days. It can be terribly windy but when it is calm, the kayaking and paddleboarding can’t be beat. The water is so clear that you can watch sting rays and fish carry on below as you paddle between the rocky, cactus-covered islands. Stings rays and some little fish – that’s all that I saw when I went kayaking for a couple of hours one morning. Mitch went out after me (stupidly, we only brought one kayak, one paddleboard, and one bike so we can’t do anything together. Hmmm….) and he saw sting rays, fish, AND sea lions, AND a pod of about 100 dolphins feeding and jumping and going crazy! Not fair!

supyakweb — Friendly people on Santispac beach. I was chatting with a kayaker from Alaska.

sea_lion — The sea lion that Mitch saw from his kayak.

santispac_island — One of the islands dotting the bay

Because we have a truck camper we were able to get to the best spot on the beach. We were tucked into a cove right next to a little mangrove estuary where you could hear the fish jumping all night long. Mitch walked 10 feet from our camper, made one cast, and caught a decent-sized bass! Snowy egrets, oyster catchers, reddish egrets, tri-colored herons, and one bird we couldn’t identify feasted at the mouth of the tide run at low tide. And we had friendly neighbors (two from Canada and one from California) who stay in this same spot every winter and filled us in on the area telling us that this past November there were 28 whalesharks right here, off Santispac. The Californian, Eric, even took Mitch for a boat ride and showed him a few of the different beaches spread down the bay.

If you are looking for your very own secluded, quiet beachfront campsite – this is not it. At least not in the wintertime. Every inch of waterfront had wheels parked on it. A steady stream of uber-tanned retired folks paddled past us in ancient Ocean Kayaks without seat backs from their swanky development the next cove up. There were two restaurants/bars on the beach and on Friday night we went to sleep with “She’s a Brick House” echoing through the cove punctuated with the air brakes of the 18-wheelers slowing for the hairpin curves on Highway One just above us.

After three days of 30-second showers and a dog and a cat frolicking on the beach, we needed to upend our camper to get all the sand out. But even with the close neighbors, engine brakes, and “Brick House”, we had a hard time leaving. Luckily, we’ll be coming back here on our way north for a couple more nights.

If you either live in Nebraska or are a birder, you have heard of the annual spring migration of the Sandhill Cranes. It is an incredible sight to behold – huge flocks lifting from the Platte River with the morning light, forming flight lines criss-crossing the sky, and then settling down into the surrounding fields like blankets of fog. And the noise! They have so much to talk about – comparing wintering stories, their hopes for the summer, new found aches and pains, how the kids are so different nowadays. Their unique voices combine into one loud, confusing, melodious banter.

A lesser known spring spectacle is the mating dance of the Prairie Chicken. Maybe the reason fewer people know about it is because one state can not claim them as its own – the Prairie Chicken range is from northern Kansas and Colorado up through the Dakotas with a little side-step into Minnesota. Also, their story is definitely not as romantic as that of the cranes. The Sandhill Cranes winter in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico and then all converge on the Platte for about a month to fatten up and hook up (if they have lost their mate over the winter), and then fly north to either Minnesota or the Arctic, depending on the subspecies. They’ve been covering this same route for millions of years, even before the Platte River existed. In contrast, the stubborn Prairie Chickens stay put, somehow surviving the bitter Great Plains winters. And then, of course, there’s the name – Sandhill Crane vs. Prairie Chicken?! How fair is that?

However, this normally indistinct, fat, little ground bird puts on quite a production every March. And I had never seen it before. Like with the Sandhill Cranes, I had to move away from my home state to want to come back to witness it.

The Prairie Chickens have specific criteria for their stage ,which is known as their “booming territory”. They need a hill ridge with short grass that is at least a quarter of a mile from roads or power lines (not a problem in Nebraska). My dad knows which ridges on our farm are good viewing areas. So we put up a small camouflaged tent during the day in preparation for the sunset and then the sunrise performance.

Mitch went that evening but didn’t have much luck. The prairie chickens congregated too far from the tent to get good photos and were spooked away by a hawk early on. The next morning, before morning really, I headed out on my own. Dad had told us that we should be in place and settled at least a half an hour before sunrise or sunset. So by 6:30 am, temperature of 14 degrees, I was making my way through the cold darkness to the tent on the top of the ridge.

I crawled in the tent, situated myself with the blankets and my thermos of coffee, and waited…and waited. Frost formed on the part of the blanket that was covering my legs. My coffee was dwindling. And then I heard a noise – it almost sounded like a kazoo, a flutter of wings, and then another kazoo. Soon the kazoos surrounded the tent. The show was beginning.

It was truly hilarious to watch and to hear. The Prairie Chickens started flying in from all directions. As soon as they landed, they looked around for someone to impress. Their “booming” is a three note song that sounds almost like a bamboo flute but then it is punctuated occasionally with a louder, monkey-sounding call. They inflate bright orange sacks at their throats as they are booming – the sacks are most inflated with the last note. As their necks inflate, these two crazy feathers rise up from behind their heads and look like rabbit ears and their tail feathers stick straight up. Then, when they are fully outfitted, they start to stamp their feet and sometimes take off running. While all of the males are trying to out-do each other, the females are off on the sides of the ridges, completely ignoring them.

Mitch had to go out again that evening to see if they would land as close as they had for me. They did, and he got some great photos!