Photo of Marin Headlands' Rodeo Lagoon courtesy Phil Eager.

On Sunday, the day of the premiere of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, we spent the day birding in the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco, neatly combining a couple of recent blog topics in one outing: some birding in the National Parks (the Marin Headlands are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area) and some hawk watching on Hawk Hill in the headlands.

Even though the day was a bit slow in terms of raptor migration, it wasn’t foggy, which is one of the main hazards of fall birding along the Northern California coast. In fact, the afternoon turned out to be downright hot on top of Hawk Hill, with the temperatures reaching into the low 90s.

Along with the expected hawks (including close views of Broad-winged, Sharp-shinned, and Cooper’s), our most interesting fly-by was actually a songbird, a Lapland Longspur, which was truly unexpected at that spot and in apparent migration. Wandering through other spots in the headlands, we searched patches of cypress trees for migrant songbirds, but the weather was actually too clear to trap any interesting strays (oftentimes, it’s the foggy weather that throws off the migration path of songbirds and which causes interesting things to show up). And there was a nice collection of shorebirds on the shores of Rodeo Lagoon, including Pectoral and Spotted Sandpipers. Wilson’s Snipe, and Long-billed Dowitchers.

Thirty-one years ago, 18-year-old Daryn Dodge and three friends, all fresh out of high school, climbed Clouds Rest and Half Dome in Yosemite National Park—losing much of their food and a night's sleep to hungry bears in the process.

Little did he know what those two youthful ascents would lead to: On July 25 this year, Dodge, now 49 and a family man, became the 67th Sierra Club member to summit all 248 peaks on the Sierra Peaks Section list when he reached the summit of Cirque Peak, near Mt. Whitney. Below, Dodge nears the summit of Disappointment Peak in the eastern Sierra.

"I guess I'm sort of a goal-oriented person," says Dodge, an EPA toxicologist in Sacramento and a former competitive long-distance cyclist. Before that sport took a toll on his knees, he was regularly a top finisher in doublecentury (200-mile) races in Northern California, and he completed four Paris-Brest-Paris "brevets," covering 745 miles in 90 hours or less.

Dodge says he enjoyed short hikes with his dad when he was growing up in the Bay Area, but what really opened his eyes was a high school trip with the Yosemite Institute. "That was the beginning of everything," he says, "when I took a weeklong trip to Yosemite with other high school kids in 1977. After that I was hooked."

Dodge became a committed peak-bagger the following year with his ascents of Clouds Rest and Half Dome. "During the summers I'd try to get out every other weekend for 3-4 days, which was usually enough time to climb several peaks," he says. "I discovered the Sierra Peaks Section online in 1994, and it really fit in with what I wanted to do."

The Peaks Section was created in 1955 by the Sierra Club's Angeles Chapter, with the goal of focusing—some might say re-focusing—on mountaineering in the range that gave the organization its name. At first, even members of the group didn't think anyone would climb all 248 summits-until Sierra Club member Andy Smatko completed the list in 1964.

John Muir's study desk (L: actual desk, R: sketched plans) would automatically light his lamp and fire, open the right book to study, and then change books after half an hour. Sierra Club Library Collection, all rights restricted.

Appearing on The Colbert Report last night, Ken Burns said "I hope every superintendent of every national park is angry at us after this, because they have so many people and don't know what to do." 

After viewing a clip of grizzly bears fishing in a river, Colbert , a known arctophobe, admitted that despite his fear, he wanted to get out and see the parks, too. "Aren't you afraid you're going to load up our national parks with too many tourists? ... Because even I want to be in that beautiful stream."

And if Ken Burns can get the man who once described bears as "giant, marauding, godless killing machines" to commune with nature, expect the parks to be deluged with visitors for years to come.

If you want to run out to a park this weekend before the swarms descend, we have entries for over 100 trails in our national parks (and many, many more if you count national monuments, seashores, forests etc.)

And be sure to share your thoughts on the show in our forums, and join our group here on Trails!

Photo of blue skies over Glacier National Park courtesy Kelly Whitt.

National parks do more than just preserve the animal and plant life of a region. They also help to protect the dark night skies above. A glimpse at a map of the Earth at night reveals that the few areas in the United States that still have truly dark skies often correspond with locations of national parks. The parks out west, such as Glacier, Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon, and Death Valley, among others, have some of the least light-polluted skies.

Many national parks have ranger-led observing programs. For example, in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, visitors can do solar observing, join in a night sky program, or go on a ranger-led full moon hike. Bryce Canyon’s skies are so dark that 7,500 stars can be seen on a typical night, as compared with 2,500 in most rural areas of the United States. Some parks, such as Yosemite, have local astronomy groups that host star parties within the parks. Death Valley has an excellent observing program that was the highlight of the trip my parents took to that park this year.  

Note: Please welcome J Gould, who will be writing a thought-provoking -- and, for some of us, a poetry-provoking -- blog post each Thursday on Trails.
                                                            -- Tioga Jenny

Who Will You Carry Into the Outdoors?

Photo courtesy J Gould.

The love of books

is for children

who glimpse in them

a life to come, but

I have come

to that life and

feel uneasy

with the love of books.

This is my life,

time islanded

in poems of dwindled time….

                 --  Robert Hass, from “Songs to Survive the Summer,” Praise.

Robert Hass has big, meaty hands that flower around his face like a protea when he’s sitting, contemplating.

I saw him a few years back at the Sierra Summit -- waiting to address a bunch of environmentalists and read some poems. He was calm, magisterial, like you would expect from a former poet laureate.

Half Dome as seen from the John Muir Trail, Yosemite National Park. Photo courtesy Tom Valtin.

In case you hadn't noticed, Sunday is the premiere of the much-anticipated new documentary series from Ken Burns, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. I hope you're planning to spend your evenings in front of the TV next week.

I thought that was a good excuse to talk a bit about birding in our national parks -- not that an excuse is ever really needed to talk about and plan your next trip to a national park. The national park system truly is a national resource, and it’s one that holds within it a vast range of habitat and scenery, stretching from Maine’s Acadia National Park to Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida, and from Denali National Park in Alaska to Hawaii’s Haleakala National Park.

Although it's unclear if the regional law is legal (Switzerland's parliament removed public nudity from the penal code in 1991), nude-hiking enthusiasts in Germany will soon have a trail to call their own. The 11-mile trail begins in the village of Dankerode and runs along the Harz Mountains, and will feature signs warning hikers that they may encounter unclothed hikers. The project to create the trail was headed by a local campsite owner, who hopes the trail will promote tourism in the region.

The practice of hiking sans clothing isn't completely foreign to America, either. Each year, some hikers on the Appalachian Trail celebrate the summer solstice as "Naked Hiking Day," although the tradition is officially discouraged.

What do you think, readers? Do we need clothing-optional trails in our favorite wilderness areas? Or should getting back to nature have a dress code?

The Muir's March group started in Tuolumne Meadows, followed the Tuolumne River down its isolated gorge (sometimes called "The Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne"), and over to the rim of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. They'll finish at 1 p.m. on Saturday at the top of the O’Shaughnessy Dam and will be greeted by a crowd of supporters and speakers, including actor Lee Stetson as John Muir.

Politics aside, if you've never seen photos of what Hetch Hetchy Valley looked like before it was flooded, check out this slide show -- and you'll feel Muir's pain.

Photo of Tree Swallows courtesy Phil Eager.

For a good part of our vacation last week, the weather in Ocean City, New Jersey was impacted by a slow-moving storm that lurked off the Atlantic coast, bringing high tides, strong easterly winds, and off-and-on rain. Conditions like these aren't good for songbird or hawk migration, but they did give us a good excuse for birding off our back deck overlooking a large coastal salt marsh.

This gave us a front row seat on a migration phenomenon that doesn't get as much birding press as the warblers or the hawks, but is still fascinating in its own way: the fall migration of Tree Swallows to their wintering grounds of southern North America and Central America.

 
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Every six years, Jupiter and Earth align such that the plane of the Jovian moons points straight at us, allowing viewers to watch Jupiter’s satellites eclipse and occult one another. Three of these events happen on three consecutive Tuesdays in September. A modest telescope or steadily held pair of binoculars will allow you to see the moons as they pass in front of and block the light from each other.

During each of these events, the volcanic moon Io will first pass in front of the icy moon Europa over the course of ten minutes, followed more than an hour later by Io casting its shadow on Europa and dimming its light. The timing of the first event favors those in the eastern United States and the second and third events are better suited to observers in the west.

"Brig" wildlife refuge with Atlantic City in the background. Photo courtesy Phil Eager.

With the cool cloudy weather on Tuesday morning not portending a good beach day, my wife and I headed north from our vacation spot in Ocean City, New Jersey to the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge (commonly referred to by its location, Brigantine or Brig). In pretty much any season, Brigantine and its eight mile loop road (and several walking trails) hosts a vast number of birds in its diverse habitat mix, whether it’s thousands of Snow Geese and Brant in the winter or masses of shorebirds during fall migration.

Brigantine is the next town up from Atlantic City, so one of the odd sights from the refuge is the lights and towers of the casinos looming just across the bay from acres of marshes. As impressive as the coastal habitat already is, a juxtaposition like this always helps remind you of just how important open spaces like this truly are, especially in a heavily populated region like the middle Atlantic coast.

Recently I was writing an article that explains how September’s full moon is not always called the Harvest Moon, depending on what month’s full moon is closest to the equinox. This year, for example, the full moon on October 4 is closest to the first day of fall on September 22, therefore it gets the title of the Harvest Moon.

This September’s full moon is instead called the Corn Moon. All the full moons have been given names, often more than one name, and these titles were largely bestowed by Native Americans. The full moon names coincided with what was happening in nature and was a way to mark the seasons. The following are some of the most common names for the full moon of each month.

• January – Wolf Moon
• February – Snow Moon
• March – Worm Moon
• April – Pink Moon
• May – Flower Moon
• June – Strawberry Moon
• July – Buck Moon
• August – Sturgeon Moon
• September – Harvest Moon/Corn Moon
• October – Hunter’s Moon/Harvest Moon
• November – Beaver Moon/Hunter’s Moon
• December – Cold Moon

You’ll notice that these names most accurately describe conditions for U.S. residents of the northeast or Midwest. I think people should be able to name the full moon with whatever is relevant to them. New Mexico might have a Monsoon Moon in the summer, while Southern California could have a Santa Ana Moon in the fall and Florida gets a “Snowbirds” Moon for one of the winter months. The full moon occurring on Friday, September 4, should definitely be given the name of High School Football Moon, because thousands of people across America will be sitting in stadiums, cheering on their team, when they see the giant orb rising.

What name would you give to a full moon?

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Kelly Kizer Whitt loves clean, clear, and dark skies. Kelly studied English and Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked for Astronomy magazine. She is currently the Feature Writer for Astronomy and Space at Suite101.com. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/Astronomommy.

One of the Sierra Club's early battles was to protect the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemitee National Park. Despite the efforts of John Muir and others, a damn was built in the valley to store water for the city of San Francisco. But Muir's spirit lives on, and this month a group of dedicated citizens will be walking from Tuolumne Meadows to the O'Shaughnessy Dam to raise awareness and money in hopes of bringing the valley back.

You can get involved by pledging to one or more of the participants. You can also meet the participants at the O'Shaughnessy Dam on September 19th. Contact Jonathan Silverman at jonathan@hetchhetchy.org to arrange rides and for more information.

For me, one of the highlights of fall migration is the southbound migration of hawks, falcons, and other raptors, which is starting up now and really starts to peak in mid-September through November in most places.

It may be because the first organized birding event that I attended was a fall hawk migration workshop given by the Cape May Bird Observatory in New Jersey, an experience which really got me "hooked" on birding. But it's probably just as much because the raptors moving past are so iconic, powerful, and majestic. You might find yourself staring at a Bald Eagle soaring overhead one moment, and then being buzzed by a Peregrine Falcon the next. Sometimes it's simply the sheer numbers of a particular species, like Sharp-shinned Hawk, even if the bird itself is fairly common and might not garner a second look if you saw a single bird over a nearby field.

As a bonus, hawk watching can be a social event, especially on slower days. Unlike warbler migration when birders and the birds are constantly on the move, or shorebird migration where most of the time is spent puzzling over the fall plumage of "peeps", hawk watching has a fairly steady ebb and flow to it, not unlike a good baseball game. Unless, of course, you happen to be at the hawk watch during a "good flight", in which case your head will be spinning at the sheer number and variety of birds.

The websites of the following hawk watches have a wealth of information about the logistics and ideal timing of visits and the differing mixes of raptors you'll see at any given point during the fall. Even if you don’t go to one of the ones listed, a lot of the information will come in handy with any spot you might pick.

Cape May, New Jersey. Cape May bills itself as the "Raptor Capitol of America”, and it hosts a very active and very “birdy” hawk watch each fall. Different from many hawk watches that have a geologic advantage (usually a mountain or ridge to concentrate the thermals on which raptors rise and soar), Cape May has a geographic advantage at the end of the state, which helps concentrate the southbound hawks when they confront the vast expanse of Delaware Bay. And, yes, they still do offer the hawk migration workshop (see the online calendar for details).

Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania. The official count at Hawk Mountain started in the 1930s, and it’s a particularly well-established hawk watch with miles of trails (check out the great Trails entry by David Meiser), several lookouts, and a visitor center. Hawks here move past you at eye level or even below you, giving you a much different perspective than at places like Cape May. It’s also an important spot in the history of bird conservation: the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was established to help stop the slaughter of the hawks and other raptors that enthusiasts now gather there to enjoy.

Hawk Ridge, Duluth, Minnesota. Taking advantage of a ridge along Skyline Parkway outside of Duluth, which helps to concentrate the "thermals" on which raptors soar, Hawk Ridge is one of the major hawk watching spots in the Midwest and has been conducting its official count since 1974. The Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory staffs the hawk watch with interpretative staff during the peak months of September and October, and they host a hawk weekend scheduled for mid-September.

Veracruz, Mexico. Each year, up to 2 million Broad-winged Hawks and 1 million Swainson’s Hawks funnel through Veracruz on their way to wintering grounds in Central and South America, giving the phenomenon the apt nickname of "River of Raptors" (so well described by Rob Bierregaard on his website). It's become a very popular destination for birders who want to admire the spectacle while enjoying some great overall birding in the area. The American Birding Association is organizing a conference there this fall, timed to coincide with the River of Raptors.

Hawk Hill, Marin County, California. Located in the Marin Headlands, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, Hawk Hill combines the “funnel” aspect of a place like Cape May (with the birds confronted with San Francisco Bay) and the elevation of some of the other hawk watches. In addition to organizing one of the more prominent hawk watches on the West Coast, Golden Gate Raptor Observatory has a very active banding and tracking project to gather invaluable data about long-term trends and the migration routes that the birds take.

These are just a few of the major hawk watches, and the Hawk Migration Association of North America has a location tool on its website to help you find a local hawk watch.

OK, now that you’ve figured out where you want to go, there are many resources to help with raptor identification. For simple ID guides to get you started or to stuff in your pocket for a trip out into the field, be sure to check out those on the websites of the Hawk Migration Association of North America and the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory. The Hawk Mountain website has a great resource page with a bunch of information and ID guides, including a coloring book!

For more in-depth coverage, a couple of my favorite books are Hawks in Flight by Pete Dunne, David Sibley, and Clay Sutton, and The Photographic Guide to North American Raptors by Brian Wheeler and William Clark.

Even if you don’t have time to study up beforehand, many of the organized hawk watches have interpretative staff or volunteers to help visitors spot and identify the birds, so don’t let your lack of experience keep you away from your local hawk watch. Trust me, the excitement is infectious: you will learn a lot on your first trip while having an amazingly fun time!

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Birding Phil started birding in Cape May, N.J. and Central Park in New York City more than 10 years ago. Since then, his birding adventures (with his wife, Mimi Calter) have included trips to Alaska, Belize, and mainland Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands, along with a bunch of other hotspots in the continental U.S., including Florida, Texas, and Arizona). Phil was included in Chris Santella's book "Fifty Places to Go Birding Before You Die: Birding Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations," in which Phil talked about Pt. Reyes, CA. Birdwatchers -- head on over and join the Birdwatchers group on Trails.