by Gary Lee
The forest fires out west are still raging out of control with not much relief in sight. The first New York crew that was in Oregon is just returning this week and a second crew will be heading west that same day.
Three firefighters lost their lives last week when their vehicle crashed and they were overtaken by flames in the Twist River Fire between Twist and Winthrop, WA. This fire grew over 100,000 acres in just one day. Those lost were Tom Zbyszenwski, 20, Andrew Zajac, 23, and Richard Wheeler, 31—all part of an engine crew.
Seven other firefighters were also caught in the firestorm but survived. Some of them were badly burned.
Closer to home, I recently lost a special friend, Dorothy Crumb, 92, of the Syracuse area.
Dorothy was the coordinator for the 80-85 NYS Bird Breeding Atlas for Region 5 (Herkimer, Oneida, Onondaga, Oswego and Madison Counties.) She was co-coordinator for the 2000–05 Atlas also. She kept regional and state lists each year so she made many trips to the Adirondacks to see the local boreal birds. We had many good birding trips over the years.
Once there was a spruce grouse with young in the Moose River Recreation Area and she went out of region to see them.
She had lots of wildflowers around her home. Once she told me she was going to take out all the white giant lobelia in her backyard, and that same day I went down and filled the back of my pickup with the flowers. There were a few blue ones mixed in.
That weekend we had a root exchange in Indian Lake and now many of the members of the Garden Club there has both colors blooming in their flower gardens. This plant is deer resistant and just started to bloom in my garden this week.
Dorothy was very instrumental in getting the boardwalk in Ferd’s Bog. Ferdinand LaFrance, whom the bog was named after, was a special friend of hers.
DEC had taken the funds for the project and put them in another fund, but Dorothy fought to get them back and the boardwalk was built in the fall of 1998. Ferd passed away that year so he didn’t get to see the completed project. It was dedicated on September 25, 1999 and Dorothy was there to deliver the dedication.
The loons for the last three days of banding didn’t cooperate much better than they did the first three.
The first night we went to Catamont Lake above Tupper Lake where we only heard one bird calling and never saw one. From there we went to Cranberry Lake for the rest of the night.
There was only one pair in South Bay that had chicks but we never saw any of them so traveled back down the lake in light rain.
The next night we started at Lake Durant. A t-storm came through just as it got dark which made everything a foggy mess.
Durant is very weedy and we found the female and chick not far from the launch. She was banded and took a dive just before I could net her. She didn’t dive deep so we could follow her wake in the water.
Once she came right for boat just under the surface and I thought I had her but just before the net she dove into the weeds and I missed. We never got close to her again.
From there we traveled to Lowes Lake which is in wilderness so there was lots of paddling in dense fog.
We traveled by GPS for the rest of the night seeing the shoreline sometimes and bumping into logs and stumps several times. That is a little scary in the dark with three in the canoe. We heard loons again but never saw them. The other team had the same luck. We had some darkness left so we traveled to Long Pond by Massaweppi Lake.
By the time we got in the water I could see the pair and chick at the far end of the lake.
A half hour earlier and we would have had a shot. At least I got to see a bird.
The third night we first went to Rollins Pond, where I fell in a couple years ago. We found the male and chick right away. This was the bird I went after when I took the dip.
Well, I got him into the net but he climbed out the side of it before I got him into the boat and never saw him again.
We found another pair that we nearly had a shot at, but they had no chicks.
From there we went to Upper St. Regis Lake and into Spitfire Lake while the other crew went from there into Lower St. Regis.
We found the banded male and a chick. The male crossed in front of the boat and I had a shot at him.
I hit the lighter with the net handle and only got part of the bird in the net…another miss. My percentage is in the toilet now.
We went into Lower St Regis and had a bird in the light several times but never got him close to the boat.
We saw the sunrise as we were loading the boats for the last time this season.
Monarchs. Seen any? But that’s another story. See ya.