The Quail Diaires–Cuarto, Second Postscript

In the place of the burn, more than one year later, some things have grown.  Still, there are places absence of vegetation.  Through these places run the tracks of innumerable mammals and birds and the unseen prints of insects.

It is the season of fire in California.  But I am in Seattle.

Yet, I am in the west.  Time is different in the west than in the east.

The space of the west, linked, as space in general is, to time, is expansiveness.  Even the edge of the land the Pacific Ocean is really a beginning, not an end–space.

But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,

Marianne Wigginson in “The Shadow Catcher” talks about ancient times being more apparent to people in the west geologic force are so visible–for example the layout of the freeways of Los Angeles is constrained by the ranges being pushed by crashing of tectonic plates.  In the west we see and sometimes feel the slow dynamism of the earth in a way those on the east or midwest or south cannot.

It is an interesting point–and I agree to some extent.  But Wigginson does not point out how European historical timelines expand in the west and contract in the east.  We’ve occupied the east for a longer period of time so recent history feels more ancient in the west.  It is the issue of relative time.

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up

In the west, the structures of the Europeans are younger than in the east–but they’ve been turned ghostly because of the spaces and the flash of events.  When an entire town less than two hundred years old is turned over to ghosts, the time of its existence feels more ancient than a building twice as old but still occupied.

It sounded as if the Streets were running

Like, for example Bodie .    

And then -- the Streets stood still --

Though, really, too much care has been taken to preserving Bodie for it to be truly haunted.

do you, by the way, believe in ghosts?

I have been haunted by a little quail, little feather, little wing.

and by the woodrat in her mound

***

In fall I can feel the time moving.  People say that in southern California the seasons desert us.  But that is not true.  One can feel the seasons and the movement of time, especially in fall, by the shift in light.

Eclipse -- was all we could see at the Window
And Awe -- was all we could feel.

Even in San Diego, that most homogenous of climates–we’ve our Santa Anas and our fire to complement the sun’s shift in the sky.

By and by -- the boldest stole out of his Covert
To see if Time was there --
Nature was in an Opal Apron,
Mixing fresher Air.

The memory and desire of spring are overlaid by something else in fall--that whole decay thing.

This used to be a dirt path.  My quail walked it.  Those quail are long dead.

This is what is left:

*************************

quotes from the poet of the fall (and the spring as well) Emily Dickinson

The Quail Diaries–Cuarto. First Postscript

The female G/Pc L.

She was the last bird I trapped before returning to Seattle. And now I miss her.

Who shall tell

I guarantee she does not miss me.

how many centuries

******

I mentioned in my last post that I walked down the fire zone.  I felt ghosts…blah blah blah…(but I did!)…and saw footprints.

I also saw poison oak

and nearly stepped in it–(look directly above my foot in this photo–YIKES!).  I also almost grabbed it. It clearly likes the burned zone–it is one of the most pervasive colonizers on the site as far as I can tell

Here we found decidedly a “hard road to travel,”

****

This is burned glass

among and over rocks,

I like the burned glass.  The burned cans are still there, socks etc.  The plants have yet to move in and obscure the place.  They never will in the way that they did.

through thick chaparral of manzanita

That is the thing.  In observing the lives of other animals, I’ve such a strange sense of time and of the tragedy that emerges from the distinction between human-time and non-human (quail, manzanita, ant) time.

a dense cloud of dust rises from it

an opaque white veil that shuts out the view

******************

quotes are from Brewer’s journals

The Quail Diaires Cuarto–four

My son asked me to name the spirits around here.

I let him answer his own question, because, oddly enough, I do not have an answer.

The tree in the photograph above is burned and peeling.  It is in the burned area–more than one year old–and I walked down there today.

Heed not the coldness of the water if it is soft.

There was a place where I felt ghosts.  It was the eastern part of the path, at the base of the wash, by some reeds and tangled brush.  I get creeped out and I was creeped out here.  (My husband never feels it, but my son has felt it in places–is it real or is it in our heads, and isn’t that real also?)

it is a low marsh, surrounded with bulrushes and saline incrustations and emits a most disagreeable effluvia; the water cannot be used for man or beast

Here was also a footprint.  Perhaps that is why I felt something.   I walked the path to the sidewalk off a road, and the footprints continued, though they had gone the other way, into the brush.

****

I caught R K/K today.  I have not seen her recently and was very happy to discover her in the trap.  She is apparently doing well as she is rather stout.

I also caught the same juvenile twice–once at 5:45 pm and once at 6:50 pm.  I caught him yesterday as well.

What a sweet boy.  I will have photographs after my return when I am reunited with my cable.

and all the distance is over a coat of dry ashy earth, so soft

***

We leave tomorrow night.  I will likely not write again until I am in Seattle.

But you never know.

***********************

quotes are from Ware 1949

The Quail Diaries Cuarto–three

Hope is

This little bird in my hand is a juvenile female

the thing with

She and her possible siblings gave distress calls when I caught them–4 juveniles and one adult.

feathers

The adult is the female that I mentioned yesterday–with the male-like feathers.  I banded her last year, trapped her yesterday then trapped her again today.  I also trapped a juvenile male banded yesterday again today.

All those birds, even after I’d seen the rear end of the bobcat disappearing into the brush–the quail were not happy at its movement across their range.  They gave their sharp little pits to consolidate their groups and then sat still.

But a bobcat is not a cooper’s hawk and they soon re-emerged, in what appear to be the same three groups (communal families?) that I have seen the past two days.

And did I mention–yesterday we saw a coyote and a roadrunner–so sweet.

*********

May every just hope be satisfied

Embarking upon this The Quail Diaries, I’d originally hoped to do a sort of real time exploration of my re-entry into my field work with this population of quail.  Then came the fire, the notebook and my collection of detritus–objects left behind.  Now I am moving into an exploration of California itself.  It is part of this big piece I’m making–you may or may not bear with me.

There are more insane in this state, by far, in proportion to the whole population, than any other state in the union.

The issues of indigency, the border, and, perhaps most importantly to me, the wildlands of California are, as far as I can tell, as they stand, the natural offshoot of the origins of this as a state of the United States.

Which of us…did not at some level share in the shameful but entrenched conviction that to be weak or bothersome was to warrant abandonment?

Perhaps  I am far too swayed by the arguments of Joan Didion.

Were not such abandonments the very heart and soul of the crossing story

My great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth J. Senger crossed from Pennsylvania to California when she was !6.  This is what I know of her today.

Jettison weight?

This and the fact that she hid in a cupboard from the Indians.

Keep moving?

What does this have to do with quail–It has to do what I see when I look out over their island of a habitat.  Everything broken up by roads and houses and strip malls.  And they are here in this little piece of land, constrained with the bobcat I saw today.  And the roadrunner and the coyote.

I am complicit in this vision and am tortured by it.  If I could step into Elizabeth, who lived to be ninety and had three husbands, perhaps I could see this state with different eyes and maybe I’d feel better (or worse).

Bury the dead in the trail and run the wagons over it?

And of course, what is the state bird of California, and the creature for whom roads and apartments are named, shopping centers and wines–all those places where the bird has, at least partially, been displaced by that very thing that has stolen its name.

the thing with feathers

Anyway…I know…none of this fits.  But it is.

One thing we would enjoin particularly, get up early when on the route; start your cattle up to feed as early as 3 o’clock–start on your journey at 4–travel till the sun gets high–camp till the heat is over.  Then start again and travel till dark–do most of your heavy cooking at the noon camp.  Never travel on the Sabbath; we will guarantee that if you lay by on the Sabbath, and rest yourselves and teams , that you will get to California 20 days sooner than those who travel seven days in the week.

——–

Quotes are from Emily Dickinson, Ware’s 1949 Emigrant’s Guide, William H. Brewer’s Journal Up and Down California, and Joan Didion.

The Quail Diaries Cuarto–two

This little volume is most respectfully dedicated; from a conviction that the warm interest manifested by you on every occasion, in behalf of the inhabitatnts of the new territories of the southwest, will not be abated by a perusal of this feeble attempt to guide the feet of the hardy sons of the west, to the fertile vales, and gold hills, of our recently acquired possessions on the great Pacific.

This is the boy I trapped yesterday.  He is a young male–hatched sometimes this summer.  Do you see the beginnings of white and black markings on his sweet face?

I caught this female today.  And yes, there is something odd–she too has beginnings of white and black on her face.  I have a better camera but I do not have the cable with me so you get my iphone photos–but you should still be able to see the markings.  Sometimes females develop male-like plumage–this is because female plumage occurs through estrogen suppression of male plumage.  Therefore, if the estrogen levels are low at some point a female might develop male plumage.  She is very cute I think–I first banded her as a juvenile last summer.

At this point a great many will undoubtedly direct their course to the Gold mines

In total, I have trapped four quail–three newly banded juveniles and one previously trapped female.  I’ve also observed at least 20 more birds wandering around up near the traps–both banded and unbanded adults as well as new juveniles with whom it is a pleasure to become acquainted.

whilst other having agricultural objects in view, will seek themselves out a suitable piece of land on which to build their future happy home

I might perhaps have more luck at catching these unbanded adults and juveniles were it not for the ravages of the naughty ground squirrels who–as I have mentioned previously–know how to get in and out of the traps.  No one else wants to go in a trap with a ground squirrel.

May every just hope be satisfied.

This one has very full cheeks:

I would like my hopes to be satisfied.  In some ways, however, I am trying to live outside of hope.  (Does that make any sense–clarity seems not to be in full force this evening).

I just want to get up and see the quail in the morning.  (and for my children to live through the night and be safe and for my husband, way up there in Seattle to also survive the night and for and for and for and for and for….)  So not really.   There are other things I wish for–hope for.

And what about all those creatures?

—

Quotes are from Ware’s Emigrants’ Guide to California

The Quail Diaries Cuarto–first

I am back in California

Why I

failed

or rather why am I failing.

I trapped two young males today.  I will post their lovely pictures tomorrow.  I also observed three of my banded birds out with large families–all of the juveniles seem to be @ two months old.  The boys are just starting to get male plumage.

for Beauty.

When I trap them, I examine the moult of their primary and secondary wing feathers and this gives me some sense of how old they are.

[I can hear coyotes--two yips]

We’ve been down in California for a few days. The moment I stepped outside the airport, I smelled the sea.  I forget how I miss it until it is just there.

Why I failed

With the birds, the quail, I feel more of a sense of vocation than in anything else.  This is hard for me to explain.

she didn’t understand most people never even looked at them

I assume everyone has that same sense of the infinite when watching a bird do…and I am surprised when my obsession appears to be peculiar.  Obviously, I continue to be quite naive.  I continue to exist outside.

And my kids seem to straddle my peculiarity and the world’s indifference quite easily, which is a good thing.

I wander.

**

In the run up to this trip I happened to read some books that touch on the history of California and it occurred to me how deeply my roots go in this strange state.  Late 1800’s–not deep in deep time sense, but deep in the life of a state.  And deep in the sense that my family has been as entrenched in what has formed this strange place as anyone else.

If you have room to spare fill up with additional provision, as they will be scarce after you get through

Including–the cross country migration in covered wagon, the lumberjacks, the farmers, the shipboard captain and the builder of the empire state.

And now I am an ex-pat from the Golden State.

What does this mean for my quail–perhaps not much–but The Quail Diaries are, of course, more about me.

If I could truly give them voice I would…but I know that is impossible and arrogant to think on).

If we have erred in our description in any one point, we are sure it is a trivial one, and one of judgement, rather than intent.

—

quotes are from Emily Dickinson, Anne Perry and Joseph E .Ware’s Emigrants’ Guide to California

Reptile stories

This lizard was cold.  Do you remember when I wrote about it (about him/her). It is not venomous–lizards were once thought venomous.  It is the influence of the heart-headed snakes.

We go to California next week.  I will find my quail (I hope).   I will have a short time with them and then back up to Seattle.  I am bringing the radio transmitters and receiver though I suspect they will not work–there is an issue as far as I can tell.  I am technologically idiotic and therefore cannot solve the situation on my own.

I have this much money to do this research:  $0.

Boo hoo.  What a time for a person of comfortable means–WITH A JOB, with insurance and a house–to be whining.    I apologize.

Maybe I will, at some point, be able to submit my own grant proposals and then I will, perhaps, get some support for the quail work, other than, of course, my own credit cards.  (I’m too old for this).

But speaking about snakes, I’ve never seen a rattlesnake on my site, although I have seen them on other habitat patches nearby.  This is a nice quail story:  Once a man was trapping quail so he could learn about their behavior.  He would set one trap then wander to another trap and set it, finally returning to the first once all traps were set.  On this particular day, when he returned to the first trap, he discovered a rattlesnake had entered 1/2way through the mesh–its head inside the trap, its tail outside.

What is more, it had swallowed a trapped bird which had started to travel down the snake’s body, so it could not back out.

The man was lucky.  He had wire cutters in his pack and he was able to cut the snake out–full of feathers and flesh.

Such a pretty bird, such a pretty snake.

I miss you all.

I miss the little boy quail

My Laurelhurst friend has vanished.

The little male quail that I kept encountering in strange places on my run no longer cow calls from rooftops down by the water.

This is, in general, what it means to be a quail biologist.  Quail are nonterritorial.  Their ties to any one locale are not dictated by the need to maintain a piece of land but rather are driven by the pull of other quail and the density of resources.  This little quail was alone in this region, as far as I knew, and, unless there were two males, had moved a quarter mile in a week that I’d seen him.  He was soliciting but receiving, likely, no replies and perhaps kept moving trying to figure out where all the other birds were.

Or perhaps he was killed.

Of course, I am assuming there is not a larger silent population in the area.  It is possible that several other birds, paired or singlets, the components of a covey, were (and are) all around me as I ran through the neighborhood.

As a scientist, I have to drop the first story and embrace the second, the one of all possibility, until it is dis-proven or until I’ve found no support for the latter but substantial support for the former.   We cannot take our own narratives as true.

Although, to some extent, we still do–we are imperfect prisms and things of the world are separated and then bent on their way into our consciousness.

My Laurelhurst Friend

This time he was on the top of the hill rather than at the foot. No longer soliciting over the ship canal, he was calling from the roof of someone’s house. I used my iphone to both take this very poor picture of him (so poor, in fact, that he cannot be seen) and to make a low quality recording of him. This is a picture of the recording (and more about this in a future post):

A couple walked by and I told them he was a California quail. It made me happy that now just a few more folks know about him. I did not want to leave him.

Here is a link to another bird giving a “cow” call (at some point I’ll be able to upload sound, but not today):  Cow_Call Cow because it sounds like that is what he is saying. Solicitation because it has been assumed that these calls are to solicit females (though yelling “cow” at them is questionable technique). Indeed, the males I’ve seen giving this call are generally not males associating with females. And I have seen a bit of copulation-related skirmish between a cow-calling male and a female associating with a different male. I, however, found no evidence that “cow” calling males were more likely to father young (in an initial molecular analysis).

I am hesitant to trust the label “solicitation” call until this function has actually been tested—something I would actually like to do.

We assume too much. We think we are seeing through their eyes when we do not even have the functional ability to see what they see. This is mechanics wise, I mean—this is opsin proteins and colored oil droplets.

But I digress.

The cow call is also related to testosterone level as is another typically male only call—the squill call. Another call whose function I want to study—especially as males seem to use it to jam females “rally” calls. But this is for another day.

The politics of quail intersexual behaviors is still beyond me but is clearly something of interest—at least to me. Perhaps to you?

And what exactly am I spending my time doing? Not finding quail up here, other than this lone male who’ve I stumbled upon accidentally.

Perhaps I’m getting ready.

Yes, that’s it.

Getting ready.

Set….

…….

A Searchin’ the Quail

This is a little park near the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island.

I thought I could feel the quail here. But I neither saw nor heard them (nor smelt them…nor touched, nor tasted them).

Vancouver Island has California quail. As does San Juan Island, and parts North, East, South of Seattle–of where I sit at this one particular moment.

And why, you as, am I wasting energy telling you this? (Why indeed, when I should be reading the books I just picked up on Animal Social Networks and Animal Social Behavior and actually I cannot wait to read them but I feel compelled to write this…)

And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.

The little house sparrow is not a quail–but sometimes it may delight me in the same manner. Alive as it is in the middle of the city.

“Quails are coming down the ventilator”, said the second assistant

“Then cover them gently with a cloth”

I decided not to apply for an NSF grant this summer. I am, currently, not allowed to serve as a PI and so, therefore, have decided to try for a different situation so that I may be PI. This will allow me to spend many years submitting grants which will be rejected until I complete and publish the research and then, perhaps I will get a grant to do the research.
This is how it is done.

In August, we will go south again and I will try little radio transmitters on my quail. And next year, we may, just may get a dog, and wouldn’t it be nice if that dog could also help me track quail nests. But that may be too much to ask one little perro, for we need it to withstand the onslaught of children and the scratchiness of cats…and not eat the chickens. Poor little doggy, and we haven’t even adopted it yet.

As for the quails there was no question at all.

I will be, however, striking out about the local region for quail populations dense enough to make my research a mite less frustrating. This is, sadly, not the case right in the city, where populations exists but not in great numbers and I fear working with them might drive me mad.

dropping on deck in their hundreds

And Vancouver Island may host just one such population. And San Juan, and perhaps Orcas (and I hope I am not letting the promise of sea air cloud my judgement).

“Come….The birds will come to no harm at present.”

And if you have any thoughts on the quail round here, or elsewhere, let me know.

******

Quotes are from Exodus and Patrick O’Brian