1/04/2016   New Years Weekend  
My last bird of 2015 was a Barn Owl which Darchelle and I flushed as we are driving back to her folks' place from Sally's. 2015 was not just about birding. Darchelle and I got married, albeit privately. I ran 13 marathons, albeit slowly. We did a bunch of hiking and picked a bunch of morels. By the numbers though, birding predominated. On eBird, I finished the year in second place in Washington state with 331 species and and 33rd place in the country with 528 species. My 422 checklists are the most I've done in a single year to date. I counted and photographed birds in North Dakota and Texas and Arizona as well as Washington and New England. Some of those trips were long-held (and scarcely acknowledged) dreams and I'm grateful that I did them while I could still travel on my own, still use the camera (or at least a camera), still record my sightings in eBird.
I don't yet know what 2016 will be about but in case it is about birding, I'm going to get off to a running start. I may not be able to use binoculars but I can still carry the scope and I can still drive, even if I can't zip up my coat when I get there.
My first bird of 2016 was an American Kestrel which I spotted as I looked out our bedroom window down towards the sewage treatment plant. By the end of the weekend I had 50 species, including an American Tree Sparrow at Sudbury Road where our battery went dead again and we had to hang out for an extra hour so waiting for AAA, and a Tricolored Blackbird at Dodd Road where our battery fortunately did not go dead.
On our last morning in Walla Walla we drove up into the Blues and got above the fog layer into the sunshine. Not many birds but it was a scenic drive.

1/06/2016   Tacoma  
Drove down to Tacoma today try to catch the Slaty-backed Gull. No luck but I did get a few photos.

1/07/2016   Union Bay Natural Area  
It was a gray but calm day at the UBNA. In Yesler Swamp Hooded Mergansers were competing for a Bullhead while over at the Fill the Wood Ducks were looking really good.

1/08/2016   New Hampshire  
Since Darchelle didn't make it back for Christmas, she and I took the redeye back to Boston for a long weekend. As we were landing at Logan I spotted two Snowy Owls still hanging out between the runways. We drove north along the coast Stopping first at Salisbury Beach State Reservation then at Hampton Harbor and at Hampton Beach State Park. I verified a life bird, my first Razorbill, in photographs of a big line of White-winged Scoters in the channel. My hands were very cold but I managed to brace the camera on a stump to get the photos. A few miles to the north I was startled to find an adult Glaucous Gull on the public pier along with a Herring Gull. At first I thought the Herring was a Ring-billed because it was so much smaller than the other gull. I was pretty excited; it was the first adult Glaucous Gull I had ever seen. at Hampton Beach State Park, where we found A flock of horned larks foraging in the parking lot, I mentioned the Glaucous Gull to another birder who said, "Oh, that's Bill. He's been coming back to the same spot for nine years now."
We enjoyed a nice quiet visit with Mom and John. They are spending the winter in Jackson instead of driving down to Florida. Sarah and Roger are in Sweden for the winter so they are feeling a bit more on their own then they would like but Eric helps out with shoveling and such.
On the way home we stopped by Marblehead and met up with Stacy, Allison and Donna for a few hours.

1/18/2016   Green Lake & Rosario  
A flock of Common Redpolls has been hanging out in the birches around Green Lake, delighting local birders. A Cooper's Hawk was out birdwatching as well. We ran into Ed and Delia there and invited them to come north with us to Rosario for the afternoon but predictably they were busy.
As usual Rosario offered numerous dramatic seascapes which were difficult to compose into images. The placid waters below the headlands offered up a few new year birds including Black Oystercatchers and Harlequin Ducks, putting me just over 100 in Washington for the year so far.

1/24/2016   Walla Walla  
White-winged Crossbills have been reported in Ellensburg recently so we stopped by on our way to Walla Walla. We found them in spruce trees near the high school. Also reported recently were several rare gulls at Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River at the far north edge of Walla Walla County. On the way out there from McNary we spent a pleasant hour searching for Saw-whet Owls at Fishhook Park, ultimately finding one perched 3 feet off the ground in a dense low Juniper bush. The sun was getting low by the time we reached Lower Monumental Dam but we scoped the gulls hanging out on the concrete bulwark above the dam and managed to find the Lesser Black-backed Gull but not the Glaucous or Slaty-backed Gull. We couldn't find any Rosy Finches in the gravel pit nearby; maybe they had all gone to bed.
There is a dramatic simplicity to the landscapes of the Palouse Hills in northern Walla Walla County at sunset.
Sunday morning I drove over to the Whitman Mission National Historic Site and birded in the sunshine for an hour or so. With no snow and a temperature around 45F it hardly felt like winter.
In the afternoon Darchelle and I made the long drive back up to Lower Monumental Dam and managed to get photos of the Lesser Black-backed Gull and the Rosy Finches but still did not find the other gulls.
We drove home via the Gorge on Monday in order to search for a couple other rare birds. Along Old Hwy 8 at Biggers Road a couple of miles West of Lyle we found both Acorn and Lewis's woodpeckers, neither unexpected but both good to see. At Skamania Landing we caught an ever so brief glimpse of the previously reported Harris's Sparrow. We did not find the Tufted Duck among the hundreds of Scaup in the Columbia River off Marine Park. I actually thought I had seen one earlier from the car in one of the little lakes along the road west of Lyle but didn't stop, then spent the rest of the day regretting that decision.

1/26/2016   My friend Jesus  
I have a friend named Jesus. Sometimes we play hide and seek. He hides and I seek. The problem is I never find him. He just keeps on hiding so we never get to play the part where I hide and he seeks me. It doesn't seem like he wants to be found. It has gotten to the point now where I can't tell if he is even playing.
Perhaps the problem is that he's really busy. He's a lot richer than I am and I'm sure he has a lot to do, managing all his assets. He told me to ask him for anything I want, and he would give it to me. "Ask and you will receive", he said. I used to ask him for more things then I do now. Over time I realized that if I asked for little things he'd sometimes do them for me, but if I asked for big things I never heard back from him. Some of the big things were even things he wanted, like that I would be a more loving person, or that I would love him more and be a better friend to him. I don't talk to him much anymore. I realized that often when I thought I was hearing back from him it was just me talking back to myself. That was okay I guess. I gave myself some pretty good answers sometimes.
Now that I'm not trying so hard to be his friend anymore I'm a lot happier. I love people more too. Still, sometimes I miss him. I wish there really was someone named Jesus who would be loving and kind and wise, a real friend, and who would heal me of ALS, and with whom we could live together in peace after I die.

1/31/2016   Fort Flagler  
I think I was looking for a Yellow-billed Loon. I drove out to Fort Flagler and Point Wilson on my own yesterday then Ed, Delia, Darchelle and I drove out there again today. Yesterday was a pleasant day, not too windy, temp in the low 50s; today was not quite as nice but still tolerable. No loon but we did see lots of both types of Murrelets off Point Wilson. Ed had a hard time distinguishing the Ancient Murrelets as they flew past the scope view but I think in the end he was satisfied that he had seen them.

2/01/2016   Alone  
A dream:
At the time I didn't have any idea what this dream was about. Several years and many dreams later I think I understand it at least at a high level. It appears to be an answer to the question "How did I get here?" with a particular focus on the difficulties I encountered in my teenage years. It was a time of estrangement and alienation from myself beginning in junior high school. Being transported away from my place then separated from my son Daniel in order to avoid a confrontation symbolizes the separation from my childhood self I experienced when I internalized a critical father image in order to avoid confronting the sadness I felt when he left our family. I diverted my sadness into anger at myself. The tennis court recalls childhood; the kids snapping towels reminds me of gym class in junior high school. My open fly represents my shame about not being as sexually experienced as my friends seemed to be in high school. I felt painfully self-conscious at times during those years and saw a therapist for a year or so for my depression (feeling sad and alone).
After high school I traveled to the Middle East (the Mexican women) with my friend Tim and stayed several months with his parents in Lebanon where they were missionaries for the Southern Baptist church (the black preacher). That was the beginning of my 40 year dalliance with Christianity (looking at the verse, followed by the Komodo dragon) from which I released myself (fending off the Dragon) after I was diagnosed with ALS.

2/02/2016   Nisqually, Tacoma  
Daniel and I drove down to Nisqually today, he having graciously agreed to go birding with me. It's not his favorite thing to do but I appreciate his help with driving and zipping up my coat and carrying the scope some of the time. So as to not have him wait for me too much, I did not do a checklist but I did get some pretty good photos, in particular the one of the four Golden-crowned Sparrows lined up on a young alder sapling.
We stopped in Tacoma on the way home. He had an errand to run in Old Town and I wanted to try again for the Black Scoters still being reported along the waterfront. I got lucky this time. They were right off the pier at the Silver Cloud Inn, two males and two females. It was close to sunset so I had a hard time getting sharp photos with my shaky hands. I tried to brace the camera on the railing of the pier but but even with support my arms were generally too weak to aim the camera at the birds, and it didn't help that they were moving too.
A dream last night:
I think this is another dream expressing my anger about ALS. The kitten, innocent yet also oblivious to external influence, seems to represent my body with its withering muscles, making a mess of the things in my life. Just as in the dream the urine does not actually damage anything, my increasing disability has yet to take away anything of true importance in my life, though it threatens imminently to do so. In the dream acting on my anger causes actual harm to the kitten. Acting on my anger in real life has the potential to call me actual harm as well.
Who is the authority with whom I could get in trouble for that? God? It is Susan in the dream who might draw the attention of the authorities to my case. In reality her recourse in our case is likely to God since the law failed her in its fairness. Perhaps the dream indicates that I still fear God even as I generally doubt His Existence.

2/05/2016   Black-headed Gull  
A rare Black-headed Gull was found in the fields outside of Monroe last week. Darchelle and I drove out to look for it and succeeded thanks to other birders. We followed the rule of twitching that when seeking a rarity, look first for the birders rather than for the bird. Other people apparently had great views but while we were there the bird kept its distance. Andy and Ellen showed up and saw it too, then we drove together over to the parking lot at the south end of Crescent Lake. While we looking for a Swamp Sparrow maybe a quarter-mile from the parking lot, someone broke into Andy and Ellen's car and stole a scope and tripod. We believe we saw the culprit in the parking area shortly before the break-in but we aren't sure. A man in his 30s, he was hanging out over by the edge of the water but did not appear to be involved in any of the usual activities - dog-walking, fishing or birding - that usually attract people to the spot. Darchelle had an uncomfortable feeling about him but did not take it seriously.

2/08/2016   Slaty-backed Gull  
Today we tried again for another rare gull - the Slaty-backed Gull down in Tacoma. We spent three hours scrutinizing gulls at Gog-Le-Hi-Te and in the river and though we thought we might have seen it a couple of times we weren't sure. I had given up and we were driving back across the Lincoln Avenue bridge when we spotted a small group of gulls in the river just upstream. Darchelle wanted to stop; I didn't but she was driving. When we climbed over the dike for a closer view I immediately recognized our target. Once again, Darchelle's persistence pays off.

2/15/2016   Okanogan Trip  
We managed to persuade Ed and Delia to venture across the pass in winter to join us on a four day trip to the Okanogan with Andy and Ellen and Eric Heisey. Over the four days we recorded 30 checklists and saw or heard 77 species. We missed a few targets, the Great Gray Owl being the most notable of them. We met in Ellensburg on Friday morning and drove north through the Grand Coulee to the Waterville Plateau, where the snow and fog began. The ground was snow-covered for the rest of the trip but fortunately the fog cleared once we dropped down into Bridgeport. Our last stop of the day was at the state park where we located five Saw-whet Owls, each in its own Spruce tree, and one Barn Owl.
Saturday was a big day in the Okanogan - lots of birds and lots of birders. I was really pleased to get some good photos, particularly of the Ruffed Grouse at the Nealy road feeders and of two of the five Northern Pygmy Owls we saw during the day.
Along Mary Ann Creek Road we found Pine Grosbeaks but not White-winged Crossbills.
Sunday we returned to the Havillah area early in the morning and spent much of the day searching unsuccessfully for a Great Gray Owl before following Nine Mile Road from Molson out to Orville and thus Similkameen River up to Palmer Lake. We were right along the Canadian border but much of the area had burned and we didn't find much in the way of birds.
Monday morning we drove the Cameron Lake Road and at the Tree Sparrow ranch we found no Tree Sparrows but had great views of a juvenile Goshawk pursuing a Collared Dove for what seemed like five minutes before finally giving up the chase. I didn't get any photos of that but I did manage to get Snow buntings along Timentwa Road.
We devoted Monday afternoon to a search for a Snowy Owl on the Waterville Plateau. We eventually succeeded in spotting a white bump on a distant ridge. I was pleased because it was right where I had theorized it would be. Darchelle was delighted because she had never seen one before.

2/19/2016   The Dictator  
I have been very angry all week since coming home from the birding trip Monday evening when I realized both how much I enjoyed participating in a community of expert birders and how my increasing disability is going to exclude me from that community. That has been a recurring theme in my recent experience as I have been breaking out of the prison of fear which has constrained me all my life. Just as I move to engage with life, I am thwarted by my increasing disability. I am pursuing my passion for birding but can no longer use binoculars. I have found the love of my life and am dying. Now I find community and it too will be taken away.
I know it is unreasonable, but I feel that it is my hands which are at fault. My hands are failing. They're shutting down and as they stop functioning they rob me of the things that I love. They are also robbing me of my independence. I am losing the ability to drive myself, to dress myself, to feed myself, to bathe myself, to pump gas or shop for groceries.
On Wednesday, I was so angry I slammed my right hand against the wall several times. It felt good to punish the hand that offended me. I held onto that hard anger inside me because if I let it go I would sink into grief and despair.
On Thursday I determined to drive down to Enumclaw after my therapy appointment. I wanted to go bird watching, to look for a rare Gyrfalcon which has been seen there from time to time. Never mind that I can barely turn the key in the ignition and barely crank the steering wheel to park the car. I would force myself to do it anyway. In therapy we talked about my anger and I did not know what to do with it. I was agitated, anxious and also excited about driving myself to go bird watching.
My outing was a success. Though I did not find the Gyrfalcon, I saw 30 or so other species including several of new birds for the year and got a few photos to remember the occasion. I particularly enjoyed being out alone. Driving was not a problem; perhaps my anger gave me a little extra strength.

Last night I remembered a dream:
I think the dream was a restatement of what we discussed in therapy, that my hands are not the problem. ALS is the problem but I can't reach it. I can't locate it, I can't negotiate with it, I can't affect it in any way. Nevertheless, to punish my hands is not right. The dictator represents my anger, or my executive function overtaken by anger. I object to the unfairness of punishing my hands, then as it has so often throughout my life, my anger turns against myself. But now, armed with self-love, I resist that impulse to anger. The rusty spade recalls gardening and rockhounding, the two activities in which I found joy and satisfaction in myself untainted by the self-condemnation and sense of inadequacy which informed my roles in work, family and church. With love I fend off the anger, and accept the grief that so often seems to lurk in the wings of love.

One more thing. My ex-wife recently accused me of being lucky all my life, in that I had never been exposed to the pain and loss that had been her lot since childhood. Lucky perhaps, but I do concede that I, a wealthy white male, have enjoyed the privilege accorded to that class in our society and that moreover, there are worse fates than to die of ALS in the comforts afforded by money and love. Those are not my fates though, and in sharing my pain it is not my intention to diminish yours. If your lot is worse than mine I am sorry, and if not, that is good.

2/29/2016   Walla Walla  
Alicia has been staying with us for a while but now she is going to visit her parents for a week or two so we drove her over to Walla Walla with, of course, birding stops along the way. In the sagebrush along Durr road we found both bluebirds and I unexpectedly picked up a Chuckar for the year as well, chucking out in the Sage. In Yakima we found only Cedar Waxwings where the Mockingbird was supposed to be.
On the way home we stopped in the Yakima River Canyon and heard three owl species - Screech, Great horned and Saw-whet.

3/05/2016   Westport  

3/07/2016   On being male  
A dream:
Okay, this one was a puzzler. I didn't understand it at the time, and now, several years later, I can only guess at the meaning. This turns out to have been final time I recorded a dream in which the two men, one stocky and one slender, showed up. Although in previous dreams they have pestered me, this is most aggressive they have ever been and the most assertive I have been in response. They interrupt an intimate moment between Darchelle and me and I force them to back off and perhaps to acknowledge the legitimacy of our relationship. They then treat me with kindness and I am very grateful. The only family with two children that comes to mind is my own, with Susan. How exactly they help me with ALS, I'm not clear.
It is quite possible that Lynn and I discussed this dream because I dimly recall her saying something to the effect that the two men represent for me different models of masculinity. One could be called the rapist model, the man who forces the woman to satisfy his own desires. Another is the protector who joins with his wife and defends her against external threats. A third model is characterized by compassion, a man who treats others (and himself) with kindness and helps them in their need. I have long feared, though with little justification, that the rapist might be hidden within me and that the protector might have been permanently shriveled. Darchelle has shown me otherwise and I am profoundly grateful for the kindness and strength and love that she has uncovered within me. Meanwhile the quiet slender man maybe the one who observes all this and understands.

3/09/2016   Ridgefield  
My arms and hands are tired today. I considered trying to do some painting but it feels like too much effort so I'll try journaling instead. I can do that by dictating into my phone.
Alicia needed a ride to Portland yesterday. She could have taken the train but since I wanted to do some birding in the Vancouver area, I gave her a ride down. Actually she drove. We stopped first in Longview where I relocated the northern mockingbird that Laurel and I found last November. Year bird number 177 and a difficult one to get, it alone made the trip worthwhile. It was in a modest neighborhood a few blocks west of the south end of Lake Sacajawea, not more than 100 feet from where I first saw it.
After searching without success for a recently reported Glaucous Gull in Kalama and Rusty Blackbird in Woodland, I dropped Alicia off at a Starbucks in Vancouver. I should have had Alicia back in to park because turning around in the parking lot was one of the hardest things I did all day.
I drove the Loop Road at Ridgefield NWR late in the afternoon under a dark gray sky. The rain fortunately let up a little soon after I started. I thought I had the place to myself when I stopped in the middle of the road and got out to pee, only to have a white pickup truck pull up behind me. Fortunately not official, and they on their way out anyway. The birding was pretty good considering the conditions though without binoculars I couldn't identify the more distant ducks. That may have cost me Cinnamon Teal but I did pick up a Wilson's Snipe and a White-breasted Nuthatch for my year list. That nuthatch is often a difficult bird for me to find.
Having not seen Pat and Shirley for almost 2 years, I stopped by on my way home. Pat has gained a fair amount of weight and his face has become much more round, which I found disturbing. We talked mostly about our health problems for an hour or so in their living room. He has chronic severe chest congestion due to excess mucus production in his sinuses. His doctors cannot stop the mucous so they are managing the congestion to some extent with prednisone, but Pat still finds himself often unable to get enough air. Meanwhile the prednisone weakens his immune system leading to severe sinus infections so he is also on immunoglobulin therapy. He is getting his money's worth out of his health insurance but finding it difficult to get much done in a day. That sounded familiar. They asked how I was doing and I told them about my weak hands and arms, my difficulty driving and such. I told them I can't do anything with rocks anymore, then Pat and I spent the last hour of my visit looking at the rock sanding and polishing machines he is building and reminiscing about agate hunting locations. Apparently many of them are now off-limits to collectors. He seemed reluctant to say goodbye so I lingered outside talking with him until my hands and arms were so chilled I could not turn the key in the car. He had to do it for me.

3/12/2016   Edmonds  

3/16/2016   Westport  

3/18/2016   Walla Walla  

3/22/2016   Vantage  

3/25/2016   New Hampshire  

3/30/2016   Othello  

3/31/2016   Interlaken Park and a baptism dream  
A dream with John: Considering the dream while I was still half-asleep, I concluded that my baptism represented my wedding with Darchelle, and I was worried about my lack of feeling about it. The baptism was an impulsive yet thoughtful decision, made only for myself and not to satisfy other's expectations or spiritual authorities. The experience was uniquely mine, as indicated by the empty waiting room afterwards. As with my actual baptism and with my wedding to Darchelle, I did not feel the significance at the time. Our wedding was an impromptu affair arranged only a few hours in advance. It was ours alone; we told very few other people about it. The room was cold. There was little apparent change in our lives after our wedding as compared with beforehand.
A week or two later though, I realized that I had come to regard that snowy afternoon, that unheated room with its Victorian decor lit up by the low winter sun, Darchelle's parents bearing witness to our pre-scripted vows, as a holy place and a sacred time. Sacred for us alone and not primarily because God was there sanctifying the proceedings, but because there we consecrated the love that we receive uniquely from one another, both of us knowing (for the first time) ourselves worthy to receive that love, and by receiving it empowered to love the other as we've never before loved another. We love as peers, free to give or receive, grieve or comfort, spill or hold, be a child or be a parent, be ourselves and be for the other. The two women at the end of my dream I associated in therapy with my mother and Darchelle - the one who loves me as I need to be loved and the one whom I love as I need to love. How blessed I am that both are the same person - my wife.
I've been looking for Barred Owls because they been reported in several places around town and I haven't seen one yet this year. I've tried a couple times at Carkeek Park and once at Seward Park and once or twice at Interlaken Park. This evening while Darchelle was at work Alicia drove me back over Interlaken Park. We arrived about a half hour before sunset and immediately I heard a Townsend's Warbler singing in the top of a cedar tree at the edge of the park. Another year bird. We hiked the trails which traverse the forested hillsides of the park and ended up back down on the road about a quarter mile up from the east entrance. There Alicia found the owl for me at dusk, sitting on a maple branch silhouetted against the pale sky. A man with his two grade-school daughters bicycled up to us so I pointed out the owl to them. The girls were excited. One of them was currently studying owls in school and even knew the "who cooks for you" call. They showed me a large dark cavity in a big cottonwood at the bend in the road and speculated that perhaps the owl lived there. I think they might have been right, particularly since a few minutes after they left another owl flew over us, followed shortly by the first owl. Neither of them called.