Into the Mountains, Part 2

Let us return now to the Labor Day camping excursion we took in the mountains (see Part 1 here). The great birds we had in passing through Sisters each way were but the appetizer and dessert for an epic trip. While we would have more great birds throughout the long weekend, it was the unforgettable scenery that made for some truly mind-blowing moments. Among our destinations would be two of the Seven Wonders of Oregon. Among our oft-repeated refrains would be “I can’t believe this is in Oregon.”

We made camp at Prineville Reservoir State Park in the early evening, with enough sunlight left for us to do a bit of exploring. It was around the reservoir that we picked up a lifer lagomorph: about a dozen Black-tailed Jackrabbits spread out along the edge of a clearing. Huge animals, compared with their cuddly cousins the cottontails. And fast. Later, a group of them would pass in an instant through the campground, at but a fraction of the top speed (30-35 mph).

Black-tailed Jackrabbit

The next morning we slipped out early to start on the long drive to John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. John Day has three units, spread far apart from one another, and each with its own unique natural attractions. It was to see the Painted Hills that we planned our holiday around this region of the state, checking off one of the 7 Wonders in the process. Although we’d seen a whole lot of landscape this year during our roadtrip across the country, there’s just nothing that compares to the bizarre beauty of the Painted Hills. 

Red and gold clays layered on top of one another, with flecks of black thrown in for good measure. It’s an extraterrestrial-looking sight. “I can’t believe this is in Oregon,” we’d say for the hundredth time. We could barely keep in mind that it was on Planet Earth. It was here, too, that we found a striking female Snakeweed Grasshopper, one of the coolest, most boldly patterned grasshoppers we’ve seen anywhere.

Snakeweed Grasshopper

From here we passed on to another of John Day’s units: Sheep Rock. While there wasn’t much birding to do at the Painted Hills, we set ourselves a couple of target species at Sheep Rock, being in range for both Rock and Canyon Wrens. The view here wasn’t colorful like at the Painted Hills, but it was extraordinary nonetheless, and decidedly eerie. The hike through the steep greenish-blue claystone gave the impression of wandering through the Forbidden Zone, stranded on the Planet of the Apes.

Along the Blue Basin trail was some tricky uphill climbing. To get as high up as we managed was worth it just for the views, although it was pretty quiet by that time in the afternoon. After unsuccessfully straining to identify a distant eagle we climbed back down to try a more level path, right through the claystone formations. A hyperactive Rock Wren bobbed and fed and jumped around near a burrow entrance, dug or molded into the clay. It seemed such a desolate place to make a living, but there are much worse, to be sure.

On the drive back to Prineville, just a few miles outside of the campsite, a flash of sky blue alongside the road convinced me to pull over. We found ourselves at the entrance to an RV park of all places, where had had some of the best birds of the day. A flurry of Mountain Bluebirds mixed in with equal numbers of Cassin’s Finches represented some damn fine mountain birding, which is precisely what we'd wanted. 

Mountain Bluebird

Common Ravens were much more common in the mountains than they are west of the Cascades

These Ravens were not on speaking terms

We left nice and early the next morning, but not before we spotted another Rock Wren on the way out of the campground. This one was much more cooperative than the one at John Day, but like the one a day earlier, mostly kept near the entrance to a little hideaway in the rocks. 

Rock Wren

Lark Sparrow

And in keeping with the rock theme of the post, we made one last stop before returning to Sisters, where we began and ended our adventure. Smith Rock State Park was the second of the great Wonders of Oregon this trip. Renowned as a rock-climbing playground for adrenaline junkies, it also turns up White-throated Swifts (as it did for us), Black-billed Magpies, and some of the most acrobatic Canada Geese we've ever seen -- the place inspires daredevilry in the even most unlikely creatures. 

Black-billed Magpie

Magpies

Smith Rock State Park

Wherever we looked we would find people dotted along the tops of all these massive rock formations, having pulled themselves up by means entirely beyond my understanding. Our understanding was further stretched when we encountered our first lizard since moving here ("I can't believe this is in Oregon"). West of the Cascades, where we live, it's a very, very different place from the desert country we found ourselves in now, and lizards were just not on our radar. 

Western Fence Lizard?

One final critter I'll mention is a would-be hitchhiker that tried to abscond in Maureen's hat. She had it in her hands for a minute and a tiger moth flew in. Tiger moths are a beautiful group, and I've been wanting to see one since I started my moth kick last year. What I didn't realize is how difficult the group can be to identify: I posted this one on BugGuide.net for ID help three different species were suggested.

Grammia sp.

This trip gave us a sense for how much bigger Oregon is than you might suspect from looking at a map. There's more to see and do here than we even guessed than when we first moved out here, and this adventure over the mountains has got us wondering what we'll find the next time we go exploring!

Chasing Waterfalls for American Dippers

One of the reasons we moved out West was to see different birds. Granted, some of these are just Western analogs of birds that we found regularly in Georgia or Florida: Black Oystercatcher, instead of American Oystercatcher; or Western Wood-pewee, instead of Eastern Wood-pewee. But the ones we get most excited about are the birds that are make their living in ways that are very different to the what we’re used to (birds that nest in deserts and along rocky shorelines come to mind). And more than any other bird, the one I just wouldn’t shut up about from the moment we arrived in Oregon was our only aquatic songbird: the American Dipper.

Dippers nest behind or near waterfalls, using the spray to keep their mossy nests moist and verdant. Silver Falls State Park seemed like our best bet nearby for finding the our target bird, and so, cavalierly defying TLC’s sage and timeless advice, we went chasing American Dippers. The park itself is a temperate rainforest in the foothills of the Cascades (how do we only live half an hour from rainforest?!). It’s best known for it’s “Trail of Ten Falls”, a 9-mile loop that takes you past all manner of waterfall, ranging between from between 27 ft. and 178 ft. We managed to knock four miles off our hike by cutting out two of the falls, but five miles is plenty far to lug a spotting scope, let me tell you.

The caves here were formed after the organic matter underneath ancient lava flows eroded, leaving only basalt

Close-up of the basalt

Lichen-covered rocks

Our first good bird of the day was from an observation lookout on the road in: two Common Ravens circled us overhead, close side by side one another. Other than a fleeting glimpse of a raven on our drive up Oregon two months ago, these were our first, and our first opportunity to really study and enjoy them. I’ll admit that I may have jumped the gun once or twice before this, when I let myself believe that a distant crow might — just might — have been a raven. Now we could clearly make out their wedge-shaped tails, and hear the reverberation of their hollow, throaty croaks. Not to mention that we could finally fully appreciate just how huge they really are.

Common Ravens

Once we got inside the park grounds, we were delighted to see a handsome Violet-green Swallow resting atop the bathroom roof. Of all the swallows species out here, this one seems to be the one we see perched the least often. Then again, maybe that’s only been our perception because it’s a new swallow for us, and we’ve been anxious to get a good look at it. In any case, this was our chance, and we happily seized it.

Violet-green Swallow

After we finally started along the Trail of Ten Falls, we heard Pacific Wrens singing everywhere. The entire day they gave the American Robins stiff competition for most numerous bird, but they rarely popped up for us to see them well. A strong contingent of Wilson’s Warblers was out, too, and mostly concentrated around a single bridge, flying circles all around us while somehow managing to keep their little toupee’s securely fastened.

Wilson's Warbler

Steller's Jay

Non-birds included an adorable Townsend’s Chipmunk. In New York there’s only one species (Eastern Chipmunk), and so growing up I always just thought chipmunks were chipmunks, but in the West there is a huge diversity of species, and in all of North America there are as many as two dozen altogether.

Townsend's Chipmunk

Another group we’re becoming more familiar with are crane flies. Most crane flies look like gigantic mosquitos. I mean HUGE, prehistoric-looking mosquitos. But they’re not mosquitos, and they’re actually quite harmless. This Tiger Crane Fly doesn’t look much like a mosquito at all, but rather more like a robber fly. Notable Leps. we saw on our hike were a worn Echo Azure, and a neat black and white Rheumaptera moth.

Tiger Crane Fly

Echo Azure

Rheumaptera sp.

Salmonberries! There were quite a lot of these along the trails (and they're delicious)

When we eventually did see an American Dipper, we were lucky enough to find two together. One of them was feeding the other, and we’d naturally assumed in the moment that we were watching an adult and a juvenile, but now I’m not so sure: as part of Dippers’ courtship, “the male may feed the female after she begs from a crouched position with quivering wings, following which the male often sings with neck and bill stretched upward” (Knight, 2001, p. 447). I think this is what we witnessed (it was in late May) — it doesn’t look to me like a juvenile, but it’s hard to say with certainty. This is supposed to be followed by a flight chase, but unfortunately a group of rowdy teenagers (does that make me sound old?) went down into the stream to splash around, and scared the Dippers off.

American Dippers

But the Dippers didn’t disappoint my crazy high expectations for them to dazzle and amaze; we were even able to make out those bright white feathered eyelids of theirs from our spot high above them. We encountered a couple more Dippers farther along, but only in flight, and we didn’t manage looks that were nearly as satisfying. By the end of the day the narrow 5-mile trail we were on started to feel like the line for Splash Mountain, with so many thousands of people coming to see the waterfalls. Somebody forgot to tell them that there’s something that makes waterfalls even more spectacular, and that’s American Dippers.

White, feathered eyelids!

I have the wingspan of a Turkey Vulture...

... and Maureen's is the same as a Great Blue Heron

Reference:

The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior. Illustrated by David Allen Sibley. Edited by Chris Elphick, John B. Dunning, and D. A. Sibley. 2001 by Chanticleer Press. Essay written by Thomas Knight.