March 30, 2003

Greetings all, I woke up in Los Osos yesterday morning (an unusual occurrence for me lately) and got a call from Nick Todd who also happened to be in Los Osos with Jan Hamber. Anyone who was outside yesterday can attest to what a beautiful one it was, and Jan suggested a drive up to Hi Mt. Along with Lisa and Henry Ponterelli, we took an unusually smooth drive up the hill to the Lookout. It was...

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Hi Notes

Yesterday, Wed. March 26, 2003, was a slow day for Condor tracking…there were no signals all day. The most memorable bird sighting for the day was a Belted Kinfisher on a telephone wire just south of the Las Pilitas turn off on Santa Margarita Lake road. For any of you who are thinking of driving up to the lookout you will be pleased to know that the road has been expertly graded by the Forest Service...

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Hi Mountain

The Cal Poly Crew is getting ready to start up another round of field work at Hi Mountain…we love spring. Towards that goal I spend Saturday afternoon and evening around the lookout. Things are not as quiet as that were a month or so ago. Many of the wintering birds have begun to vocalize. There was an abundance of American Robins working the Toyon berries. The California Trashers seemed to be much...

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Sunday 3-23-03 at Hi Mt.

Today was our first day of actual monitoring after having been checked out by Steve Schubert a while back. Kathleen Intorf was good enough to meet us at the ranger station early to get us access to the telemetry equipment. It was foggy in the Pozo valley at first but cleared off later. Scanning at 1000 Hr produced nothing but later at 1330 we picked up signals from Condor Y194 at a bearing of 330...

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Hi Notes

Wednesday, March 19, 2003 was spent ‘observing’ one intrepid lady Condor! I picked up the signal from just one bird, but was able to follow her from the Ventana Wilderness area, through Atascadero, and all the way to Hopper Mt. I tried my best to find her with my binoculars, but could only make out a group of about 6 Turkey Vultures in the direction of the signals I was receiving from Condor W231....

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Hi Notes

It was a beautiful day at the lookout yesterday, March 12, 2003…but no Condor activity to report. I talked to Pam at Hopper Mt. and she said that two of the birds I had received signals from last week (Y194 & OR209) stayed at Hopper Mt. and that W231 & OR199 returned to Ventana. In addition to the usual bird population at the lookout, I had two human visitors: One bicyclist (Bob) and one...

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Hi Notes

Hi Notes Finally, after several months of not receiving signals from the Condors, I picked up signals from four birds on Wednesday March 6. They all seemed to be together, travelling from North to South (perhaps from the Ventana Wilderness area to the Hopper Mountain area). The four birds were Y194, OR209, OR199 and W231. It was a sunny but somewhat chilly day at the lookout. The drive to the lookout...

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