Chick Murder Mysteries

What’s in plain sight

It has not been uncommon to find my chick radios along the levee roads. Birds stop there to finish their snacks, and weasel burrows love to hide my little radio’s from view.

So one day I quickly determine from the direction of my signal, that yet another one of my chicks has become someone’s supper. Next it’s up to me to figure out who.

I narrowed the location down to a 4’ square patch, which happened to be full of pickleweed and some small brush. First I checked higher in the weeds, in case the transmitter was simply dropped when plucked off the back of my chick. A thorough search gave me nothing. I checked the holes, and the sound faded whenever I sent my antennae chord into their depths. Still determined, I looked under the brush and found a little rabbit patch, but no radio. Twenty minutes, and I feel as if I’ve searched over every inch of this spot, and still no radio.

Frustrated, I narrow it down to a square foot area, sit down and start to pull up the plants with the receiver on so I can hear any movement I might cause in my radio.

As I roll the pickleweed and brush over, my signal increases in strength, so I continue looking until . . . the ground precisely at my side begins to uncoil.

Fast as I can, I hop up and take a step back. The brush falls back down covering the inch diameter of snake that is turning around in it’s place. I figure that after 20 minutes of me harassing it, it’s not happy, so I poke through the brush with my antennae, hoping for a better glimpse of the species, but it had already had quite enough for me and vanished into the soil, taking my signal with it.


Gulls

A few weeks into searching for chicks, we had an influx of gulls into one of our ponds. I had been told that a few ponds away was a large colony of California gulls, so I decided to head over that way and listen. Sure enough, a chick that had gone missing the day before could be heard in the colony.

I mentioned this to Josh, and we both thought this was interesting. I said that since we knew the gulls hadn’t adopted this chick as their own, we could assume it had been munched. He wasn’t so sure, considering some of the scientific parameters of telemetry, that we wouldn’t be questioned by that assumption. When I seemed to hesitate, he said that picking up that radio would “be good data.”

That is the magical phrase that sends me deep into cliff ridden valleys in the Olympic Peninsula, or spending months searching for an animal that is thought not to be in the area, because what we scientists want is “good data”. And with that phrase, my adventure began.

I had Sara, one of our SFBBO interns, come along and promised Ross that I’d bring the kayak back to him shortly. Now, if you look at that picture of the gull colony above, you should consider a few things. One, that stretch of water that you can see, was only the first of many that lay in our path. Second, that is not the whole span of the colony. If you had three such pictures side by side you still wouldn’t have that colony captured on film, as there are 17,000 gulls residing there.

As you can imagine, these gulls do not appreciate you driving up to their nesting colony. They’re even less thrilled when you get out of the car. Cross that first ditch and set foot on their colony, and you’ve got a dive-bombing screeching flock just above your head. Of course, when you have super-duty headphones on your ears, you don’t realize just how deafening it is until you’re in the first nesting core, having just switched the receiver off with your little chick radio in hand.

But I made a poor assumption, and it wasn’t until I was back to the vehicle that I thought of it. What if, in the day since I’d been here, the gulls had eaten more of my chicks? Sure enough, as soon as I listened to my list of chicks, I heard 2 more out in the colony.

So with Sara’s help I disembarked and returned to the colony. This time we took a canal that wound into the heart of the colony, trying to dodge the white ‘bombs’ the gulls continued to drop on us (if “Hitchcock” hasn’t come to mind by now, at least you’ve thought of “Finding Nemo”, right?). Once we got on land, Sara was hit by one of the gulls (ok, maybe because I picked up one of the rolly-polly gull chicks to check it out), and we both had a few wet stains on our shirts.

After a little hike and searching, we found the transmitter. Unfortunately, the third was further still. I sent Sara back with the kayak, and told her to drive around to a closer spot. Meanwhile I continued to hike amidst the shrieking swirl of gulls. The radio signal was pounding, which, means I was quite close, when I came upon another ditch. This one wasn’t quite as big as the one pictured above, and there was a little boardwalk to the North. So I kept hiking, and ducking, keeping my hand held antennae above my head to ward off the dives of angry parents.

Unfortunately, after another ten minutes of hiking, my path was crossed by another ditch. Even if Sara hadn’t taken the kayak back, I’d traveled further than I’d want to drag that kayak over land. I sat there, assessing the time it would take to hike out, go around, and come back in from another point, but suddenly that phrase came to mind, and I decided that having come this far I wasn’t about to turn around.

I was wearing hip waders, so I searched for a narrow spot in the ditch. I found a spot that was about 10’ across, moved all my electronic gear out of my pockets and into the receiver’s case (it’s slung over my shoulder), and tentatively entered the water.

Fortunately, it was not very deep, so I began to cross with tentative steps. These are salt ponds, so the water is highly alkaline, and tends to be lovely brown or reddish in hue. It also doesn’t smell very good. On top of that, this was gull colony soup, with intestines and regurgitated chick food floating all around me.

I’m half way across and the water is mid-calf, but the next step brought on the disaster. As soon as I shifted my weight, I broke through the top of the mud and into some black oily slime that was up to mid thigh. Being off balance, I lurched forward with the other foot, and it too sunk in, nearly to the top of my boots.

I caught my breath, this was not what I’d wanted to happen. I worked to pull one boot out of the muck, and with that shift in weight, the other leg went under, and that lovely water poured into my wader. At this point, the water is up to my ribcage, both my waders are full of mud thickened water, and the oozy mud is still creeping up. I soon realized that struggling made it worse, so I stopped to breath and assess my situation.

I consider our petite intern, Lindsay, and how I’d had to haul her out when just one foot was stuck, and how this situation would have worked for her, then I started worrying that I to might not get out. I had my left arm holding all my expensive gear safely on my shoulder, and with my right arm I worked one foot free, then an inch forward, and sunk it down so I could work the other free. Again and again I’d move an inch or two forward, slowly mucking through the last 4’ of my crossing.

Needless to say, I smelled wonderful. After emptying my boots I as best I could, I slogged back south to find my radio, then managed my way to the boardwalk and out to where Sara was waiting.

Fortunately Terry had a change of clothes, so I spent the rest of the day wearing an oversized brown F&W uniform, complete with the belt off his body. He & Collin also insisted that we have a pizza & beer night since I’d taken one for the team (with Josh, and his ‘good data’ footing the bill).

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