San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Pass this test, see wildlife in nature
The final exam for your summer course in the University of Nature can be taken in your own outdoor laboratory.
That might be in the backyard, local park or open space. For the ambitious, it can be in alpine wilderness or even beyond into the wilds of Alaska. The goal is simple: Can you pass nature’s test to see wildlife?
Can you sight birds and wildlife without being detected?
Can you understand the language of the wild?
If you want to see more birds and wildlife, do you know what to plant in your yard or what to look for in the wild?
Your final test is to trek along a game trail in the woods and try to walk in such perfect quiet that a jay does not squawk nor does a squirrel chatter to alert other wildlife of an intruder’s presence. Any squawk, any chatter and you fail the test. All the big critters will leave.
The good news is that when you enroll in the University of Nature, you can take the final exam over and over. This is how it works:
Stealth
The ethic of wildlife photographers is to capture images without being detected or causing any change in the behavior of the wildlife being photographed. The goal is for each photo to provide a glimpse into a secret world where most people cannot gain entry. Sometimes you can do this in your backyard, if you get occasional visits from critters. Set up a secret vantage point to capture these moments. In the wild, you need to be a combination of a wildlife detective (to find the animals), safecracker (to operate in stealth under a sense of time pressure) and athlete (to venture into areas with the highest wildlife numbers).
A personal tale: In Katmai National Park in Alaska, I was flyfishing for giant rainbow trout on Moraine Creek, where the strategy is to hike trails along the water to sight-andstalk the best spots. It suddenly hit me the “hiking trail” was actually a bear route. I broke off the trail and emerged at a bluff top over the creek. Straight across were several giant Alaskan brown bears, fishing for sockeye salmon, and I was able to watch and live in their world for a while, and take several photos in the process. They never knew I was there.
Language
Start by tuning out the background noise — the phone, the music, all the talking — and instead tune into the sounds of nature. You will hear the language of the wild and it often tells a story. Jays and squirrels are the sentinels, on guard for intruders, and when they go off, your cover is blown. You will find that most wildlife tend to talk only to others like them from the same area. Coyotes have a complex language, and the most common call is a chirping for a friend, often in the early night. In the mating calls of many birds, especially owls, you can hear the yearning in the male’s hoots and the cautious responses from the females. Every animal speaks its own language. In Golden Gate Park, it was determined that local songbirds had their own dialect compared to migratory songbirds of the same species; and even though they looked the same, the locals shunned the migrants. In the cases of waterfowl, owls, bald eagles, hawks and some shorebirds, you can simulate their calls and try to get a response.
A personal tale: From year to year, I’ve had hummingbirds show up outside my office window, hover and squeak at me, as if to say, “The feeder is empty. Get your act together.” For several years, I believe the same set of three hummingbirds have shown outside my window on the same day each spring, like a shout-out to get the feeders going. These three get along fine, and stay through summer. Now in late July and joined by migrants from distant locations, we put out five or six feeders to reduce competition, and they turn into combatants. Their little screeches are warnings to the new arrivals, and they buzz around and dive on them from trees 50 feet
away. It’s quite the show.
Habitat
You can convert your yard to a mini wildlife preserve with the right plants and a mini pond. Hummingbirds are drawn to monarda (bee balm), monarch butterflies want perennial milkweeds, other butterflies are attracted to dianthus, many pollinators, including honeybees, are drawn to clover, black-eyed Susan, salvia and others. My wife Denese has planted all of these. Songbirds are attracted to seeding plants, commercial birdseed blends and uncooked oatmeal. You can certify your yard as a “Garden For Wildlife” with the National Wildlife Federation at www. nwf.org/certifytoday. For big game, match the habitat with landscape and food to find the critter. This is why you can find Sierra bighorn sheep up the headwaters of Sawmill Creek out of Bishop in the eastern Sierra, Roosevelt elk in the meadows near Prairie Creek Redwood State Park in the Redwood Empire, and Alaskan brown bears on the Brooks River in Alaska. Once you identify what each species eats, you have the best chance to identify where to see them or what to plant to draw them in.
A personal tale: A GPS radio collar study on bears in Northern California by the Department of Fish and Wildlife found that many bears migrate according to the food available. In the fall, some bears will migrate out of forests and the high country and descend into areas where oaks are shedding acorns. Last fall, on a hike down a river corridor, Denese and I turned a corner and found a 300-pound black bear, 20 feet away straight ahead, vacuuming up acorns. The bear appeared indifferent, then ambled up the ridge about 25 feet, and we walked past. We turned to watch it come right back down, return to the site and go back to the business of gobbling up those acorns.