8 December 1988
Dear Friends and Family,
Well, we've survived another year and so are writing another
Christmas letter, after 2 1/2 years here in Rochester. I continue to enjoy my job here at
Kodak, which involves fascinating research, and has allowed Eileen and me to
learn a lot about photography. I will start work in a new group in January,
which studies entire photographic systems (photographer, camera, film,
processor, printer, etc., and their interactions) as opposed to just film, like
my previous group. This should allow me to do research which is of even greater
interest to me, as I particularly like systems analysis. I will continue to do
computer modeling, but will in addition have to shoot and analyze many picture
tests, learn more about cameras and printers, etc. I have a technician starting
work in January also, which should help me catch up on projects I've been having to put off due to lack of time.
Eileen has completed her masters
degree in education and has received her permanent certification for teaching
secondary level social studies in New
York state. She is currently doing substitute
teaching in several local school districts. She likes the substitute work
because of the flexible schedule (you only work when you want to) and because
there is no work to take home at night. This gives us a lot more time to spend
doing things together, and makes it much easier to plan trips. She usually
works 3 or 4 days per week.
We did a lot of weekend trips this year as well as several
longer trips. Early in the year, we skied in the Adirondacks nearly every
weekend, using Tupper
Lake as a base, and
taking different trails each time. We saw a lot of beautiful country this way,
as well as redpolls, gray jays, white-winged crossbills, and barred owls. We saw
snowshoe rabbit tracks but never did see any of the animals in their pure white
winter coats.
Later in the year, Eileen took an interesting trip along the
Santa Fe Trail for her final project for her
degree. She drove the length of the trail (starting in central Missouri and ending in Santa Fe, a distance of about a thousand
miles) and visited historic sites along the way. This trail was used from about
1820 to 1860 by traders who traveled the trail repeatedly to trade goods with
the Mexicans (who were in possession of Santa
Fe at that time). After a week on the trail, she
continued south to El Paso
and spent a week with her family before driving home. For her project, she
prepared a report and a narrated slide show for use in the classroom.
Our big trip of the year was a 16-day sojourn to southern Florida, where I saw 13
of 16 possible new bird species, bringing my total list to 632 species
(excluding introduced birds). Eileen had something like 60 new species, and we
both had five new species of mammals (my first new ones since moving east).
Sorting the 1400+ slides we took was quite a chore, but we got some very nice
pictures, and have given talks about the trip to a local bird club and a group
here at Kodak. Our trip is described at the end of this letter.
Our major project this year was to find, identify, and
photograph as many species of native wildflowers as possible in our region. Our
goal was 200 species, which we finally managed to exceed in mid-September,
finishing the year with 204 species. We learned many new plants this way, and I
regained familiarity with a number of species I hadn't seen in my five years
out west. Next year we plan to study trees and shrubs so as to better round out
our natural history knowledge.
Our most enjoyable trip of the summer was a 9-day canoe trip
to Algonquin Provincial
Park (about 200 miles north of Toronto) over the
Fourth-of-July week. This park is about 50 x 75 miles, with the majority of the
park more than one full day from any type of road. Access to the interior is
usually by canoe, though occasionally people hike,
ski, or snowshoe in. Due to very low water levels, we did not canoe as far into
the park as we would have liked, but we still got a large lake to ourselves.
Our campsite was a delight, complete with sand beach and a family of sapsuckers
whose sap-laden workings attracted hummingbirds and butterflies. We had 21
moose, including bulls, cows, and calves, some at very close range. Loons
called dozens of times per day in the best vocal displays I have ever heard. A
family of four mink came through our campsite, twice--a new mammal for Eileen.
We had both bear and moose in the campsite, though minimal damage was done. We
had many frogs, including a new species for us, the mink frog, whose call
sounds exactly like someone hammering!
Later in the summer we visited my dad, aunt, and uncle in Vermont and got to see the Green
Mountains, where we found many nice wildflowers, including
purple-fringed orchis. In the fall we visited the Adirondacks each weekend to enjoy and photograph the fall
color. Eileen took a week-long trip to South Carolina
and Georgia
to meet up with her parents and see her brother Paul graduate from Army Basic
Training. We visited my Mom over Thanksgiving, and were able to see my two
brothers and my dad as well.
Now it's too late in the year to camp, and too early in the
winter to ski. This is the time of year we catch up on what we have neglected
the rest of the year, which is quite a bit! We hope your year has been a good
one, and look forward to hearing from you soon!
Florida Trip 1988
We began our trip by flying into Miami,
getting a rental car, and heading north along the coast to John Prince
Park. By the time we
found a nearby camping area (the park gates were closed),
it was 2:30, so we didn't get much sleep! At dawn we returned to the park,
where we easily found the advertised Limpkins, new species (hereafter
"lifer") # 1. This bird, related to the cranes and rails, is
nocturnal and secretive; although we found 6 at this park, and obtained
excellent photos, we only glimpsed limpkin one other time on the whole trip.
Next, we searched for lifer # 2, a staked-out Bahama
mockingbird on Hypoluxo Island (about half a dozen United States records this
century). This took several hours to find, but we finally saw and heard it
well. At Loxahatchie National Wildlife Refuge, 3
hours of hiking the dikes finally yielded a small group of anis (lifer # 3),
which we also encountered only one other time on the trip. We saw our first
alligators here, and large turtles of several species were in abundance. Major
thunderstorms completely soaked all our gear while we exchanged rental cars
since the air conditioning didn't work. so, we ended
up in a motel that night, after visiting Jonathan Dickinson
State Park, one of the
few locations where the native pine scrub vegetation has been preserved. The
slash pines and saw palmettos were beautiful, and we were thrilled to see our
first life mammal, armadillo.
The next day we birded in the prairie region of south-central
Florida,
where several western species (burrowing owl, scrub jay, sandhill
crane, and crested caracara) have disjunct
populations. We found each of these species fairly easily, and then headed for
Highlands Hammock, the largest and most beautiful hammock ("island"
of trees in an open expanse) we saw on our trip. The subtropical nature of
southern Florida
was obvious as we looked at many species of ferns (some 6 feet high), palms,
and bromeliads. We then headed south to the Old Venus area, which harbors the
southernmost longleaf pine stand in the state. This is consequently more or
less the southernmost breeding point for Bachman's sparrow and red-cockaded
woodpecker, both of which we found. We camped in the Fisheating
Creek area, which usually has a nesting pair of mythical short-tailed hawks. We
were unable to find this bird in most of a day of searching, though we did
locate lifer # 4, swallow-tailed kite, one of the most elegant and graceful of
North American birds (eventually we saw about 75 kites in many locations). Late
in the afternoon we headed for Sanibel (on the gulf coast), where Ding Darling
National Wildlife Refuge provided excellent photographic opportunities,
particularly of wading birds like roseate spoonbill (this was the only place we
saw reddish egret). Next we visited Corkscrew
Swamp, which had nesting wood storks,
and then continued to the western Everglades,
where we took a boat out to the Ten Thousand Islands. This extensive series of
islands are composed of silt held together by mangroves, which readily grow
with their roots in salt water. Here we saw many nesting osprey and a flock of
black skimmers. At night we conducted one of many "mammal runs" of
the trip in which we drove on back roads for several hours in search of nocturnal
mammals. This particular night we covered the Fakahatchee
Strand and nearby areas, where the last 30 or so panthers in the east remain.
Although we had no luck with panther, we did find several species of mammals,
including river otter.
At dawn we visited Marco Island,
where we found mangrove cuckoo (lifer # 5), which we also had on No Name Key
later in the trip. Continuing east along the north edge of the Everglades, we found 6 snail kites (lifer # 6) on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation. We found this very rare
species, which feeds primarily on apple snails, nowhere else on the trip. A
tram ride into the Shark
Valley was fairly
interesting, with many alligators. The next day, refreshed after a night in a
motel, we headed into the heart of the Everglades
(on the road to Flamingo). The Everglades are a roughly 50 mile wide shallow, sawgrass-congested river flowing from Lake
Okeechobee to the Gulf. We watched two bobcats for several minutes
as they hunted at dusk near Flamingo. We camped at Flamingo that night, just
before they closed the area to camping due to insects. At dawn we drove the
length of the Flamingo road to see marsh rabbit, our second life mammal (we
found two). Later that day we reached the Florida Keys and drove to Key West,
finding black-whiskered vireo (lifer # 7) as well as Wurdemann's
heron, gray kingbird, and other Florida Key specialties. At the Marathon Airport
at dusk we heard and saw Antillean nighthawk (lifer # 8), which we also found
on the Dry Tortugas.
The next day we joined the Florida Ornithological Society
for a 3-day boat trip to the Dry Tortugas, 75 miles west of Key West. On the trip out we got two new
mammals, spotted and Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, as well as some birds I had
not seen in many years, like bridled tern and Audubon's shearwater. The Dry
Tortugas are small coral islands which are famous for their seabird colonies
and as being the site of Fort
Jefferson. There are no
facilities on the Tortugas (you have to bring all your own water and food), so
we were surprised to find about 100 people already occupying the roughly 100 by
200 yard camping area! There are 40,000 sooty terns (lifer # 9) and 4,000 brown
noddies (lifer # 10, another type of tern) nesting
here, and masked boobies (lifer # 11) rested on nearby Hospital Key, hardly
more than a sandbar. We were very fortunate in seeing the only known black noddy (lifer # 12) in the US, which we found at dusk when it
came in to roost. Despite diligent searching, we did not see two potential
lifers: tropicbird (a rare but regular species here) and shiny cowbird, a
Caribbean species which had been seen recently. We had fun photographing the
several hundred trans-Gulf migrant songbirds which were downed on the island by
thunderstorms. The fort itself was interesting to investigate, and we spent one
afternoon snorkeling.
Upon returning to Key
West, we quickly located white-crowned pigeon (lifer #
13). Thus, after 8 days we had only one potential lifer left on the
"mainland": short-tailed hawk. We spent most of the remainder of the
trip unsuccessfully searching for this species. However, in the Fisheating Creek area we had excellent luck with mammals,
particularly armadillos, gray fox, and our fifth life mammal, spotted skunk. We
saw the latter as it raided live-traps we put out to try to catch mice. We also
had chuck-will's-widow and barred owl in this campsite, so it was quite an
exciting place at night!