Going with the FLOW

For the last two weeks I've been helping out on IBO's Flammulated Owl crew. The project is focused on discovering abundance and distribution, as well as habitat associations of Flammulated Owls in Idaho. A new twist for this year’s project was breaking free of the beaten path and doing a majority of backcountry-style surveys (vs. road surveys). Which means I spent the last two weeks battling Ceanothus, chokecherry, and other conspiring shrubbery, and scrambling, falling, or crawling (mostly this) through the mountains to keep pace with my field partner, Rob. While sane people hunkered down for some shut-eye, we spent 5 to 11 hours a night traipsing across scree slopes and fallen trees in the darkness to reach each survey point. Who comes up with these ideas?

After dusk you see in tunnel vision, black and white. It’s an odd segregation of senses. One is contained in the pinpoint of light from a headlamp, and the other reverberates off mountain walls and through drainages. Occasionally our lights pick up the eye-shine of other animals in the woods. Once we came across twin fawns, bedded down for the night in a subalpine fir and aspen forest. Sometimes the focused light, plus crawling around in underbrush has other advantages. On a lucky escapade I collected and managed to stuff two morels into my pack. When I dried them, they left spore prints in the attic of my tent.

Nighttime and an aural-oriented survey makes sounds jump out even more. Clattering deer hooves on talus, Rob and I crashing through shrubs and dead branches, both juxtaposed with a night of cattle hacking phlegm as they awkwardly stampede away from us. Until the nostalgia wears off, when I trip across the talus fields it reminds me of a clinking box of sidewalk chalk.

Before blasting the playback call at one point, I watched as a small owl soundlessly landed on a branch less than 5 meters from where we were sitting. It was too dark to see more than a silhouette. I whisper something to Rob, to the effect of “Gahghgh!! Do you see that?” He does, and says, “Switch on your headlamp.” There in the spotlight is a Northern Saw-whet Owl. Saw-whets are similar in size to flams (why we needed some brief light)…tiny! About 8’’ long with a wingspan less than a foot and a half. She (just assuming the ‘she’ part) moves her head shoulder to shoulder, diva style. She inspects us with big yellow eyes. We click off our lights, the playback call comes on and starts blasting the mellow hoots of the Flammulated Owl. I watch her silhouette flutter to the trees behind us. When the caller stops, she makes squeaky wheel sounds in agitation. The squeaky scolding and her size is about as threatening as a hamster with cardiac issues. When the 10 minute survey is up, we hurry to the next point all the same. Besides being unbelievably cute, she was also very distracting. But so worth the distraction!

The whole thing was quite a departure from my usual desk-job-in-comparison of stalking Long-billed Curlews. I got some nasty blisters, alpine prickly currant thorns lodged in my hands, mosquito bites, a solid layer of dust and charcoal on my skin, and had soreness everywhere for a couple days; ‘bone weary’…to steal a phrase from Kerouac. My shoes and gators took a hit, too. Still, owling was great! I’m very impressed that Rob and Jack haven’t worn through every tendon in their legs, since they’ve been traversing side-hills for 8 weeks now. Hopefully the information we collected will provide some insight and understanding about the mysterious flam. Curlew data entry awaits….