The Chase is On! – Winter Wings Festival, Day 3

For our last official day of the Winter Wings Festival, we selected to partake in the “Chase Tour” to search for some target species and rarities. Two of the birds on the list were species we had already found on our first day out – Trumpeter Swan and Eurasian Wigeon.

Sunrise

A group of fourteen birders headed out early on a large white school bus to start the chase. First stop was Putnam’s Point in search of California Towhees and Red-Breasted Merganser. No luck finding either bird, but we found plenty of RBME’s cousin, Common Merganser. And we got some great looks at Common and Barrow’s Goldeneyes. We first noticed a pair of Barrows Goldeneyes swimming by. We were so excited to see this handsome male with his bright white comma on his face, but the female was in a weird position, and she didn’t move from that position for what seemed like a couple of minutes. We briefly had the horrible thought that maybe she was dead and floating with her head just sitting above water. And then we were even more horrified when the male proceeded to nip her behind the neck and mate with her. Ahhh! But then she snapped up after “the deed” and sat up like normal. Phew! We laughed at ourselves, but were gladly relieved that she was not dead, not a victim of necrophilia, and she had been just "presenting" herself.

Onward we went to Moore Park to seek Red-Naped Sapsucker and Oak Titmouse. There was the very, very slight chance of getting the extremely similar-looking Juniper Titmouse as their ranges can overlap a bit in this area. We dipped on those species, but did pick up a Red-Breasted Sapsucker. We wished we could have spent a little more time in this area to do more searching, but the trip leader was trying to get us to some other spots before the end of the day. 

We then went up to Upper Klamath Lake to relocate the Trumpeter Swan and Eurasion Wigeon we had found on Day 1. As finding that first Trumpeter was already a needle in a haystack situation, we did not have the same fortune this time. But we did luck out in finding three Eurasion Wigeon – 2 more than we had found the first day! That was certainly a nice treat to spot these cinammony heads popping out amongst the brownish-grey and green heads of the American Wigeons.

Our next stop is one in which we spent a good chunk of our time – Running Y Ranch. This is a resort area with a golf course and big fancy residential homes set in a woodsy, natural area with great hilltop views of the Klamath basin. A nice adult Bald Eagle was kind enough to pose for photos as we all scooted to one side of the parked bus to bask in its majesty. CORRECTION: What I thought was foot of a prey bird is actually the eagle's own foot dangling. Maybe he got a foot cramp. Haha. =P

As we wondered the neighborhood trying not to be too invasive in people’s yards (although most homes seemed like temporarily empty vacation homes), we spotted a few nice passerines, including Cassin’s Finch, Western Bluebirds, White-Breasted Nuthatch, and adorable Pygmy Nuthatches. 

White-Breasted Nuthatch

Cassin's Finch

We were given permission to hang out on the deck of one of the homeowners at Running Y Ranch, and what a deck it was. I wish I could just camp out for a week on that upstairs deck that bumped up against a huge cedar tree right at the center that was stringing about a dozen very active bird feeders. It was a dream! 

We didn’t have luck finding the Barred Owl that was supposed to live in the yard, but we got quite a spectacular, up-close and personal show of Pine Siskins, Mountain Chickadees, White-Breasted Nuthatches, and the prized bird of the yard – Evening Grosbeaks. 

A little feeder squabble between a Pine Siskin and an Evening Grosbeak.

Our final hours of our chase tour took us to Lower Klamath Lake and the border of Oregon and California. Here, we were on the lookout for raptors. And that’s exactly what we got! Our first stop along the road that winded through large farm fields led us to a cliff where we spotted three Golden Eagles soaring high above. Here we learned that a pair of Golden Eagles can build about half a dozen satellite or decoy nests. All along the road, Red-Tailed Hawks appeared regularly almost every half a mile. We got some amazing close looks at curious juvenile Red-Tail who put on a short, low to the ground flight display.

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk in flight.

Other highlights were lots of Snow and Ross's Geese, a DOZEN Rough-Legged Hawks, which were recent lifers for us and still super awesome to see, and a Great-Horned Owl sitting on a nest. All I could see were its little “ear” tufts peaking out amongst the bare branches. And we also picked up a life mammal – Muskrat. We watched one swim in one of the channels alongside the road, moving its laterally compressed, eel-like tail in a serpentine manner to propel itself in the water. Cool and a little icky at the same time. 

Ross's Geese seen along the OR-CA border.

Look closely for the Great Horned Owls "ear" tufts. 

Muskrat smimming

Once we got back from our field trip, Nick and I wanted to still use up some of the precious remaining daylight to see if we could find some of those birds we dipped on – Oak Titmouse and California Towhee. We did not succeed in finding them that day, but we still ended the festival happy at all of the awesome things we had seen in the Klamath Basin this trip. We’ll definitely come back to Klamath Falls, especially since they are known to have dancing grebes there – a spectacle I long to see.

As you can see from this little mural on a random utility box, the dancing Western Grebes are a source of local pride.

Sunset

Welcoming Waterfowl and Snowless Snowshoeing: Winter Wings Festival, Day 1

Klamath Falls is a small town near the Oregon / California border that gave us some of our first impressions of Oregon on our drive up last April. Although we'd done our birding exclusively from the car at the time, we'd still picked up great birds like Black-billed Magpie and Common Raven. We knew we'd be back someday, given its proximity to Crater Lake, and we were happy that the occasion of our return was their annual Presidents' Day weekend birding festival a couple of weeks ago, Winter Wings.

Ruddy Duck

Common Merganser

This merganser was either practicing to be a bittern...

… or a rock star

This was only the second birding festival we'd attended, and it was considerably smaller than Florida's massive Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. Even so, there were some great events scheduled, and the Klamath Basin is a helluva playground. We had one trip booked for our first day, but we started off our morning at lake in town at Veterans Park, just the two of us. Right away, we knew we were going to have a fantastic weekend. We got excited at the very first Common Goldeneye, which we can find in small numbers along the coast where we regularly visit, but not as close as this. Another popped up right beside it -- a female. Then another -- a first-winter male. Then another and another.

Common Goldeneye

1st winter male Common Goldeneye

Nicely illustrating the three plumages shown in Sibley. Why can't all birds do that?

Overhead, 15 or so Black-crowned Night-herons were either coming from or going to their roost site. It had been so long since we'd even seen one, so a whole flock at once was a real treat. We crossed the road, leaving the park, and hit the night-heron jackpot: their roosting site, right in someone's backyard (oh, to be so lucky) housing at least 50, and probably more. Not only that, but lots more Goldeneyes… BOTH kinds! Barrow's Goldeneyes were our first of several lifers this trip, and we saw enough of them to forever put us past our anxiety of figuring out which Goldeneye is which (I hope).

Black-crowned Night-heron

Barrow's Goldeneye

Male and female Barrow's

As for the field trip, unfortunately it largely fell casualty to our uncharacteristically mild winter. This was billed as a snowshoeing hike, with an emphasis on identifying wildlife tracks, but instead of the anticipated 3' of snow they usually enjoy, we had to settle for tramping around in the mud. It was still fun, but we'd been looking forward to snowshoeing, which would have been new for us. There were plenty of scat, bones, and hoof prints along the way, although the only mammal we actually saw was a lone coyote tracking across a field. One other notable find was a swarm of Thatch Ants that Maureen spotted. These ants can apparently construct impressively huge mounds of plant material, which we didn't manage to come across.

Mt. McLaughlin

Coyote

Lichen-covered snag

I forget which ungulate this belonged to. I want to say Elk

Thatch Ant

On the way to the snowshoeing / not-snowshoeing trip, we'd passed a lake that seemed to have hundreds, if not thousands, of Tundra Swans. We filed it in the back of our minds for future use, and headed straight there once we left the return bus. Besides swans, Upper Klamath Lake was chockablock with Northern Pintails, Greater White-fronted Geese, and assorted other waterfowl. Maureen somehow managed to find a Eurasian Wigeon. I picked out a swan from the multitudes that looked bigger than the surrounding Tundras, with no yellow on the lores, that I tentatively called a Trumpeter. So far nobody's contradicted us, but feel free shatter our illusions if you see fit.

With 10 Bald Eagles patrolling the premises, its no wonder the waterfowl were jittery

Tundra Swans and Greater White-fronted Geese

Trumpeter Swan (back left) with Tundra Swans

The #1 field trip we wanted to attend at the festival was the Klamath Falls Owl Prowl. Oregon has everything from Great Gray Owl, to Northern Pygmy, Northern Saw-whet, Spotted, Flammulated… The only owls we've managed to see here in the past 9 months are species that are common enough back East (Barred and Burrowing Owls), so we were hungry for something new, and this would have been our best shot for rounding up a whole bunch of Oregon's owls in one fell swoop. Even though we registered for the festival on only the second day, the trip had already maxed out. This was a bummer, obviously, but we managed to get the inside scoop on exactly where the trip had been successful a night earlier, and we decided to head there ourselves.

Astoundingly, we'd neglected to bring a flashlight with us, so tracking one down was our first priority. Next, the drive from Klamath Falls to Klamath Marsh NWR was unexpectedly long, and we were getting nervous, since we had no assurance that we weren't going to run into any locked gates or No-Trespassing-After-Hours signs. Fortunately, neither difficulty manifested, and we took the long, straight Silver Lake Rd. into the refuge. Along the way, our car flushed a large bird from the side of the road while we drove, which took off across the dike, and over the marsh. My first throughout was night-heron, but as Maureen expertly got the light on it, we knew we had a Short-eared Owl. We'd flush three more on the way to the refuge. Try as we might, we never turned up any other species once we got to the refuge, but for us, we were happy to count our owl excursion an unqualified success!