Adventure and Misadventure

April 17
I took a morning shower with my blanket, which had somehow acquired a slight lantern-oil smell. A sparrow singing in the bushes planted its jazzy song (kind of Pink-Pather-esque) in our brains, and we dorkily sang it all day, finger-snapping along. How much further can we sink? I just don’t know. We visited Patrick’s Point State Park to look for rocky shorebirds one more time. It was beautiful there, with the rather-large waves lapping the rocks, but our target birds were not to be found. We stopped in Brookings for supplies and proceeded on to the campground. I don’t have much else to report about this day, except that if I didn’t wait a week to write about things, I suppose I had would have more to say. Go figure.

April 18
We woke up at “Jessie B. Honeyman State Park Campground” and headed over to the Safeway to use the internet in preparation for our big pelagic trip the following day! Whoopee! Oh wait, sorry, it’s canceled. Dangerous off-shore winds. Well, I guess there was nothing we could have done about this, but this was kind of devastating, given that we’d planned so much around this one day, speeding up our California segment and replanning our house-visits to accommodate a day with the Albatrosses of Newport, OR. Not to be. We tried to readjust some plans and cheer ourselves up. It didn’t work too well.
So we walked along a sandy beach and talked out the rest of the trip, in vague terms. Cape Perpetua, a later stop in the rain, was pretty cool and lifted spirits a little. Eventually we arrived in Newport itself and found a campground (not hard: there’s an embarrassment of state parks on the Oregon coast) where Abby whipped up a sinful one-pot dessert. The remains of this chocolate dessert she somehow secretly sculpted into a turd, which she planted in front of the tent, where I later discovered it. She couldn’t have planned it better had she tried, because I found a group of raccoons and thought they had left it (when in reality they’d been attracted by it). Then there was a bunch of hail, and we went to bed…hoping tomorrow would bring better news, better weather, or maybe even both.

April 19
We stayed in camp, still getting hailed on, until about 1PM. This was our first completely indulgent sleep-in of the trip, I’d have to say. And it was fun. We read and wrote and took our darn time. The weather being so bad gave us a nifty excuse, and we ran with it. We did decide to go see some birds, if there were birds, but there really weren’t many. At Boiler Bay, one of the many high-way pullouts along the Oregon coast, we pulled in right behind a cop who inexplicably pulled a gun on a guy standing next to a pick-up truck. We stayed in the car, confused, nervous, and a little curious. We never got an explanation. Instead, we got a bunch of Glaucous-winged Gulls and another hailstorm.
We headed over to Corvallis in the afternoon, where we were welcomed by Abby’s Uncle Greg and his wife Kristin. We had some excellent carrot soup for dinner and took a short walk with the neighbor’s dog before heading to bed.

April 20
Breakfast was a carnival of heathen delights. We made banana waffles, a huge pepper and mushroom omelette, bacon, and apple sausages. The whole affair lasted a solid two hours, never mind the ongoing digestive marathon. Greg’s associate, Howard, joined us for a bird walk at Finley wildlife refuge, where we didn’t see very many waterfowl, as expected, but we did see a good number of songbirds, especially swallows of all kinds. A few pairs of Wood Duck were also a very cool surprise. The weather was still a little funky, but we made the most of it.
In the afternoon, we met up with Kristin, who showed us the raptors at the wildlife rehab center where she works. The assortment of hawks and owls included a female Rough-legged Hawk. Technically, a birder can’t “count” a captive species, but this thing was just amazing, list or no list. Its irreparably broken wing meant that prospects were not good. It would never fly again, but it caught my imagination in a big way, as I stood there in the rain not wanting to leave it like that but having no choice.
We went out to dinner (which again was a decadent affair), this time with a great view of the river running through town. Kristin told stories of being a rafting guide in the Grand Canyon, which made us want to float as far as the water would take us. Or at least that’s the way I felt.

April 21
It was a very uneventful day bird-wise. We got a late start, trying to cram in as much stupid planning online as we could before we left. The drive from Corvallis down to Medford was tiresome. We got to the farm in decent time though, and we got a grand tour of the estate from our college friend, Avery Briggs. The tour included a brush with poison oak, only now beginning to show its full extent (days later). We also got a close look at a Red-tailed Hawk, making a Xena Warrior Princess-esque noise in response to our proximity to its nest. The strange thing about the Dunbar farm property is that it is situated within Medford’s city limits, an agricultural plot sandwiched between suburban housing developments. Pretty cool, though odd. We had a lovely tostada dinner and had fun meeting the other young farmers, all with interesting stories to tell. We tried to remember embarrassing stories from Avery’s past to pass on. The farmhand housing is on the raised land adjacent to an irrigation canal. Our tent fit right in, and it began to rain as soon as we got in our tents. Good timing on our part, for once.

April 22
After a delightful breakfast at Chez Avery, we headed out for the Klamath Lakes, which involved the navigation of a snowy pass through the Cascades. We like snow, but we had a lot of it this winter. It would be okay if it didn’t snow on us for a while. The gloomy weather (snow turned to hail to rain and back again, through many intergrade forms as well) seemed to indicate another lackluster birding day ahead. But it was not to be so! In fact, we saw thousands upon thousands of waterfowl. The largest numbers were Greater White-fronted Geese and Ross’s Geese, but there were Canada, Cackling, and Snow Geese too. And there were Teal, Mallards, Shovelers, Coots, Avocets, Stilts, and Sandpipers galore. We even saw Wilson’s Phalarope, a new one for us, in their rusty breeding plumage. The habitat there was just great for wintering fowl, I suppose. Lakes, reeds, and wetlands all around. Even a non-birder would have been astounded at the sheer numbers. The sky tried to get a little sunny on the way back but never fully broke out and shined. Ah well.
Abby added some drama to the evening by accidentally putting the corner of Avery’s car door into her eyeball. This was pretty scary. However, it could have been a lot worse, as the damage turned out to be superficial. Now, she merely has a strange mascara-esque bruise. And we can all laugh and blame Avery for sicking his car on poor Abby.
Dinner was a hearty affair, with two different pizza types (one with feta and spinach, one with mushrooms and onions) and an intense green salad. The youthful company of Avery’s CSA co-farmers was much welcome. We finished off with a semi-local “mudslide” ice cream.

April 23
We left the Dunbar farm after watching some Snipe working the fields for a while. Avery gave us a wildly-gestured farewell and went back to pulling nails out of the house he’s recently torn down. So destructive! We drove to Crater Lake, as the snow drifted higher and higher around us (due to rising elevation, not current precipitation). We made it all the way to the Visitor Center, a mere three miles from the lake rim, only to find that the last leg was closed for plowing. We were told to wait an hour and it would probably be open again. But wouldn’t you know—the plow itself broke down. No more Lake for us...and we were so close!
Somewhere during the drive down, our righthand rear wheel ran across something tougher than it could handle. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the tire must have been slowly letting out air the whole way down. Probably better that I didn’t know, since I would’ve been pretty darn stressed if I’d discovered it then. As it turned out, no damage was done to the wheel and by the time it got weird enough to notice, we were only three miles from a repair center. Another potentially time and money-consuming incident passed with a ridiculously fair $10. I hear a lot about tourists getting gouged by mechanics. But that has been the opposite of my experience so far. Good thing, too. The newly-patched wheel brought us the final hour or so to Deschutes National Forest for the night. We set up camp in the snow, but it wasn’t as cold as I had been dreading.

April 24
We woke up to a surprisingly dry tent. A short walk through the Ponderosa Pines turned up a couple neat-o new birds. The Mountain Chickadee is stripy-headed, and sings a bratty imitation of the Black-capped song. The Varied Thrush (cover bird of the Western Sibley guide) turned out to be a loose variation of the other thrushes, with its bright orange stripes. The morning was pretty nice, but the temperamental precipitation just won’t quit. We drove up to Portland, where we stayed with Abby’s aunt Lindsey for the night. She took us out to a Mexican restaurant she knows pretty well, because she’s their PR person. I had a margarita with ginger and pomegranate in it, and it was clear from the color in my face that I have not been drinking lately. Afterward, we took “Chartley” (an elderly golden retriever named after a neighborhood in Norton, MA) for a walk…during which she marked just about every lawn in this section of town. Good for her.