Dawn broke cold and cloudless, the sky an impossible gradient of gold to lavender. I had to remind myself that I needn’t keep a death grip on the steering wheel. Our roads here are so seldom icy. I’m going to be late but it’s slow going along Bohemian Highway. There were even crews putting down sand.
South of Tomales, there’s a little spot at Walker Creek that’s our sunrise meeting spot for the annual Point Reyes Christmas Bird Count (“CBC” for short). It’s a microclimate that always feels like an icebox, but even more so this year with the temperature around 27°F.
Margot arrived early enough to catch owls and the dawn chorus. Throughout the day I’ll be grateful for her expertise. Every year I say I’m going to learn duck and shorebird IDs for sure, and every year I neglect to do it. COVID stole Bruce away from our team this year, a disappointment for him and for us. Not only because I’d been so happy to have a world-class Birder on the team again finally, but also because Bruce is just a lovely human to spend time with.
Margot and I cross the icy bridge and begin some light trespassing as the tradition warrants, listening and watching for birds as the sun comes up.
The property changes every year. This year there are a lot of brush piles and a sense of clearing. Defensible space, no doubt. We kept hearing a bird song; Margot recognizes it as Meadowlark, and when I hear it clearly I am surprised to know that song as Meadowlark, too (I didn’t know I knew Meadowlark song). The problem is, though, that birds “sing” during the breeding season (and “call” throughout the year). A Meadowlark (a grassland bird) singing in the tall Eucalyptus trees in December is nonsensical in all ways. We realize it’s a European Starling mimicking the song.
There are some starlings here every year, but there were more this year. Each year is a little different. One Townsends Warbler this year; we used to get lots of them, until one year they were just gone. Now we get a few, and are grateful for each one. Margot finds a Lincoln’s Sparrow, something we seldom find.
We trespass here mostly to find Rufous-Crowned Sparrows, surprisingly charismatic dwellers of little dry canyons. Usually, we’re able to call in two or three. This year none. Very likely (hopefully) hunkered down and waiting for warmth of the sun. We, too, needed to retreat from the icebox, back to the luxury of a remotely-started pre-warmed truck.
After warming the cold from our bones, we make a second pass along the creek and trees, finding a very handsome set of Common Mergansers—one male with four females, which look so different that it’s still a little astonishing to me that these are the same species. No sign of river otters this year.
High overhead, a raptor in pink morning light soars to the north. We know it’s an eagle, almost certainly a Bald Eagle given the location, but aren’t able to make the definite call based on the angle and what we see.
Margot and I finish up at the icebox, and head for Tomales where we’ll have a break at the bakery and meet up with Barton and Constance to form the rest of our team.
The bakery has always had only outdoor seating, and it’s a gem not only for it’s delicious breads and treats, but also for the easy morning conversations among the mix of locals and visitors hanging out. Wearing binoculars, we are recognized as those people who do the Christmas Bird Count. This year, a soft-silver hen meanders under our table, looking for handouts. I talk to a motorcyclist who survived the morning ride up from Point Reyes, slipping only once and knocking on several wooden things when I ask him about it.
We head out toward Tom’s Point, an Audubon Preserve that makes up the rest of our area. Here, too, I notice changes from year to year. Driving through the ranch to get to the gate into the preserve, there odd bales that look like white paper, next to regular hay bales. More beehives, too, every year. It’s funny what you recall and notice when visiting a place once a year; as if some memories are left in place, only to be retrieved when you return.
We’re equipped with a lock combination that’s been handed down through the years, and I pray every time that it still works to get us through the gate. With happiness we pass through the gate, and drive like privileged royalty into a place few ever get to visit: welcome to Tom’s Point Preserve.
Here we an start counting again. We make our way to a ravine and Eucalyptus grove. With each passing year, it becomes denser with coyote brush. In the past, we’ve hiked all the way back to the creek, but this year I can’t even get to the rocky outcrop, where I’ve sometimes climbed to the top and found a mysterious cache of empty snail shells.
It’s quiet today, except for the wind through the eucalyptus, and not many birds. We decide to head down to the ruins of an old homestead, a more sheltered area. It’s indeed more birdy here, and we pass a leisurely hour or two puttering around. The boats of birders covering Tomales Bay pass, but we’re too far inland for them to notice us and wave to each other this year.
Yes, we are counting birds, but it’s the puttering that I adore. The little conversations. The endlessly fascinating things we see—or hear, touch, smell, feel—that aren’t birds. The stories we collect...”One year, it was raining like hell and...” Small conversations that seem easy in the fresh air.
We head for the pond, and a lunch break. Deer are alternately focused on us and utterly unconcerned. There are maybe 50 Mallards and a few American Wigeon who rise from the pond before we get to it. There is little more except for sparrows and Marsh Wrens. At least there’s water this year. (In addition to the less common sparrow species, throughout the day we’ll also find Song Sparrows, Golden-Crowned Sparrows, White-Crowned Sparrows, and Savannah Sparrows).
I looked back through the eBird record from 2019, when a very young birder, one of those pre-college phenoms, joined me for the day. I hadn’t realized he’d included charming notes of what we found that year, and in them he named this the “Pond of Togetherness” or POT. Whether it was just a joke acronym or a real description of how the ducks gather here, it will now remain for me the Pond of Togetherness.
We’ve loosely timed ourselves to hit the Tom’s Point itself—the little peninsula that juts out into Tomales Bay—at low tide, to sort through the flocks of shorebirds that forage in the mud. More accurately, for Margot to sort those out because another year passed and I did not learn my shorebird and peep IDs. (“peeps” is a nickname for the various sandpiper and related species, I did a really terrible job trying to identify them last year.)
There’s no longer a Barn Owl in the tree up the hill, just a Nuttall’s Woodpecker who we keep pushing forward along the trail in front of us. The tide is out, the mud flats exposed, and....
...there are no birds. No peeps. Not much of anything except a dead seal in the distance.
I guard my expression behind a facade of science. You can’t make assumptions about one year, maybe the tide is too low and they just moved somewhere else where foraging is especially good right now. Maybe it was too cold for good foraging and these arctic migrants just moved further south. I say these kinds of words out loud but also am holding back fear. I want some kind of knowing, but the only thing I have is a sense of limitation. I’m not actually capable of knowing if the lack of peeps is apocalyptic or just a fluke of weather, or a bit of both, or something else.
We putter and count at the edge of the bay. We are literally right on top of the San Andreas fault, which bifurcates Tom’s Point here (we once arrived to find a van of geologists parked up top). Margot does an expert job at sorting out the shorebirds we do have. A pair of deer look down the cliff face, contemplating Barton, then look at me and find their way down along a path behind us, tails bouncing along.
The tide is the lowest I’ve seen here before. But also the birds are the fewest. No Osprey, no Peregrine (of course, because no peeps). Hopefully, when we hear of what other teams saw, we’ll learn of unusual concentrations in their areas and be able to say, “Oh! That’s where they were!”.
We head back to the trailhead; it’s time for Barton and Constance to head home, and Margot and I will finish up one more spot near the entrance gate.
There is something skulking around in the lupine; yellow. Margot gets Yellowthroat. But something else is with it, and the extremely quick look I get at it makes no sense. I wish for a better look, but never get it. More mystery.
I see a raptor and get focused on that, assuming it will be one of our Red-tailed Hawks, but quickly it resolves into a glorious adult Bald Eagle. Margot soon spots a second one circling with it. It’s a gratifying moment of excitement, and I wish we’d seen them before Barton and Constance left.
Back over the gate (the combination to this one forgotten years ago) and to our cars, where I note with satisfaction the mud on my new truck. “Comet” is a ridiculously pretty “Hot Pepper Red” 2022 Ford Ranger, a replacement for Thirsty who brought good trade-in value (quickly before the entire used car market crashes back to normal). I even got to try out Comet’s four-wheel drive momentarily on this day. She’ll get an OVRLND Camper pop-top in March, and (hopefully) provide new adventures to come as well as (certainly) an appropriate money-pit to lend extra meaning to employment.
I didn’t want a red truck…but the color is growing on me. Whatever judgment I hold against myself for having such an extravagant thing fades with the goofy grin I wear behind the wheel.
My life is so different now than it was when I started doing the CBC seventeen years ago, and since getting sober thirteen years ago. For me very personally, this Saturday, which always falls on or between the 15th and the solstice on the 21st, invites me to reflect on my life and the passage of time. A holiday of respite for the introvert, for the ones who struggle to hold onto something wild in themselves, rare and skulking in the brush. A day for quiet curiosity and wonder; a day for laughter and maybe even tears.
The Pond of Togetherness holds water this year. The mudflats are empty. The Townsends Warblers are holding on, barely. A planet spins and revolves around the sun that warms us.
Margot and I head back out of the preserve, and for the hill that’s our last stop. Here we hope to see a Burrowing Owl or two, but they’re not to be found this year. The hill is changing, too—this is part of a sheep ranch adjoining the preserve, and where it was once mostly bare, it has overgrown a bit and maybe doesn’t hold the same appeal for the owls.
Here we add Western Bluebirds, more Butter Butts, actual (non-singing) Meadowlarks, and are thrilled to add a juvenile Ferruginous Hawk and juvenile Bald Eagle to our tally sheet.
The afternoon sun throws long shadows across the scrubland, adds eye-watering reflections to Tomales Bay. Tomales Point lays to the west, dwarfing tiny Tom’s Point.
I think about the first few years I came here, grateful to Bob for including me. Every year, too, the mix of humans is a little different, and I learn from them, too. Here I have learned that ritual doesn’t have to mean formality, that joy and sadness can coexist—and so can science and spirituality.
I’ll hang on to this annual pilgrimage as tightly as I can. If I’m really lucky, maybe some December long from now, the Townsend’s Warblers and Least Sandpipers will wonder where that emotional human went.
Our checklists for the day, with many thanks to Margot. I think we tallied a respectable 67 species: