[birding] Birds (mostly plastic) from the flood zone

[Joel Geier]

Hi folks,

As part of yesterday's Airlie CBC, my son Wil and I set off to bird
Luckiamute State Natural Area. We should have taken a hint from Randy
Campbell and brought a canoe. Wil did in fact remind me of this several
times during the day.

Flood waters from Luckiamute River were lapping at the fog line on the
west side of Buena Vista Road, and the timber bridge into the Luckiamute
Landing unit was under about 3 feet of water. We considered wading over
the bridge but decided against it, since when the river's up like that,
there are bound to be even deeper waters to cross just a short way in.
Most of the Vanderpool Tract was also blocked by hip-deep and deeper
flood waters.

So instead we birded the Baker Tract unit and ODFW's North Luckiamute
Cooperative Management Area (NLCMA) which adjoins the State Natural
Area. These were also mostly underwater, and full of duck & goose
hunters to boot. 

As we couldn't get within 100 yards of most of the good sparrow habitat,
we resorted to pishing from the shoreline and recording the few sparrows
that popped up 100 yards across the water. A WHITE-TAILED KITE hover-
hunting over the grassland restoration was the most notable bird.

We did see a remarkable diversity of hunting decoys including supersized
subspecies of: Wood Duck, Mallard, American Green-winged Teal, Eurasian
Wigeon, American Wigeon, as well as Giant Canada Goose, Even-Gianter
Canada Goose, and Positively-Humongous Canada Goose. The last ones were
big enough to give a grass-seed farmer flashbacks for five years. 

There was one other decoy that I could swear was supposed to be a
PLASTIC BAIKAL TEAL. Maybe that's why hunters are the only ones who ever
find Baikal Teal in the Willamette Valley.

The closest thing to good dickey-birding was along the high bank of the
Luckiamute River at the west edge of the NLCMA, where LINCOLN'S SPARROWS
were pushed up into the blackberries & dogwoods. We found nearly all of
our 16 Lincoln's Sparrows for the day, in this one 400-yard stretch of
riverbank.

We did get a great tour of a property on the bluff that overlooks the
extremely swollen confluence of the Luckiamute, Santiam, and Willamette
Rivers, from a watershed council member who has a tree farm up there.
That's where we picked up most of our forest birds, to make up for lack
of access to Luckiamute Landing.

Toward the end of the day, my daughter Martha (age 10) and I decided to
wade into Vanderpool Tract (i.e. I waded, she piggybacked, and our
border collie swam behind us). That got us onto an island of about five
acres. The junco numbers were impressive but we didn't find much else;
most of the good sparrow habitat was well beyond, in chest-wader or
snorkeling territory. 

Two MALLARDS and four WIGEONS that flew over must have been fired on by
five different hunters who were floating in rubber dinghies, but all of
them missed since the ducks were flying too high. Despite all the
commotion, a GREAT EGRET flew in to roost over the south slough while we
were there.

Martha and I spent the rest of the afternoon birding along roads in the
Palestine area, with six ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS (one dark morph) and one
adult COOPER'S HAWK perched in an oak as the most exciting birds. 

I guess the moral of this story is that, when birding the bottomlands in
winter, you can have either good weather or good access to habitat, but
not both. Yesterday's weather sure was nice!

Happy birding,
Joel

P.S. In the category of owling non-results, I spent over one hour before
dawn calling unsuccessfully for Northern Saw-whet Owl around the edges
of Mac-Dunn Forest, and then over an hour after sundown calling
unsuccessfully for Western Screech-Owl in the bottomlands. I think I set
a personal record for owling futility, aside from the ubiquitous Great
Horned Owls, and one drive-by BARN OWL along Sauerkraut Rd.

On the positive side, I didn't drive into the drink where Wigrich Road
disappeared into floodwaters in the American Bottom area. Cheryl
Whelchel had warned me that this road was under water. However, I was
still surprised at how far up the water had come. I tried tooting into
the fog & darkness, but it must have been at least half a mile over
water, to the cottonwoods where the screech-owls usually hang out.

Yesterday morning's very heavy METEOR SHOWER was worth getting up for,
though!

--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis