Klamath Basin

This weekend I went to the Klamath Basin. It was a birthday celebration that happened to coincide with the Winter Wings Festival. I attended the festival last year but came to the conclusion that I am not really a bird festival kind of person. Now, maybe it was the setting, the timing or the place I'm at in my life. Maybe it is because bird festivals seem so serious and the word festival makes me think of playing, celebrating and festivities. You know, carnivals, face painting and the like. Who knows. Anyway, this year I didn't have the money to take any classes or go on any field trips. My intention was just to bird.

The Klamath Basin is an area of Oregon with an interesting and often tumultuous history. So, I may have gone just to bird but I didn't just pay attention to the birds. I contemplated the people that lived there thousands of years ago, when Petroglyph Point was just an island in Tule Lake. I contemplated the people that came into the Basin and drained the lakes, the farmers that live there and lastly the large numbers of people that come to the basin for Winter Wings every year. Birding festivals are part of ethno-ornithology that I find particularly fascinating. Bird watching in general is a really interesting aspect of people and birds.

My first day in the basin I hung out at the Veteran's Memorial Park. While there I encountered throngs of Northern coots, domestic duck variations, gray-lag geese and a Chinese goose (both are domestic varieties of geese). As usual there were a plethora of gulls and so I was able to practice my gull identification. There were ring-billed gulls, California gulls and two glaucous-winged juveniles (I overheard some birders with scopes say there were adults out in the middle of the lake). Additionally there were several buffleheads, common goldeneyes, common mergansers and lesser scaup. I also saw my first winter flock of bushtits, which was happy and odd as I encountered them commonly in the Willamette Valley and always expect to here. There were the usual suspects too, European starlings, American robins, mountain chickadees and gold-crowned kinglets. There were only four or five other birders at the park that day, I'm sure the cold had driven most everyone inside.

The following morning (February 20, 2011), I headed toward the Tule Lake Auto Tour Route and Visitor Center and the northern/north-eastern area of the Lava Beds National Monument. It was snowing and overcast and I felt a terrible sadness as it seemed likely I would not have ideal birding conditions. At the visitor's center they have a feeding station. At the feeding station I saw house sparrows, European starlings, house finches, gold-crowned sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, California towhee, spotted towhee, dark-eyed junco of the Oregon and slate-colored (the slate-colored was a first for me!) varieties, California quail and a nesting great-horned owl! At the reclamation wetlands (a discovery marsh of sorts) there were most of the afore mentioned birds plus bufflehead, northern pintail, western meadowlark, red-breasted sapsuckers, American kestrel, red-tailed hawk, song sparrow, American robin, common goldeneye, coot ring-neck pheasant, greater white-front geese, cacklers and a juvenile bald eagle (three or four years old based on plumage). Along the auto tour route is where the REAL fun began. I saw my first ever rough-legged hawk (and then another six on top of that one)! Additionally, I saw tundra swan, northern shoveler, lesser scaup, ring-neck duck, greater white-fronts, cacklers, red-winged blackbird, common goldeneye, ruddy duck, heard black-billed magpie (delightful) and a canyon wren, saw house finch, brewer's blackbird, northern ravens, white-crowned sparrow, mourning and rock doves, pine siskin, lesser goldfinch, say's phoebe, a flock of at least 30 horned lark, ring-billed gull, Clark's grebe, common merganser, coot, canvasback, northern harrier, western meadowlark, prairie falcon, norther flicker, gadwall, snow geese by the hundreds, blue-winged teal, many bald eagles of varying ages, great-horned owls and a rock wren. Finally, I feel quite certain I saw some band-tailed pigeons. The sighting was brief and they have not been sighted often in the Klamath Basin (1-3 times in the last 25 years). Now, that doesn't mean they couldn't have been band-tails, but it does mean that it is unlikely. I'd like to believe they snuck in there topping off the awesomeness!

There were many more birders out on Sunday, all on the auto tour route and at the visitors center. The interesting thing about birders in situations like this is that they all flock to the areas where birds have been seen, particularly people that keep life lists. I understand life lists and wanting to see what there is to see, but I'd rather do it on my own (and my list is in my head, nothing formal, as the goal for me is just to see birds, any birds, and enjoy them). There is something amazing about watching scads of waterfowl with other people that are just as excited as I am. But...in the long run, I'd rather be there alone watching the birds. Silently paying homage to these feathered extra-ordinary beings. I find myself wondering if the other people birding there think about the folks that came before. If when they are at Captain Jack's Stronghold, looking for prairie falcons, they think about the Modoc and the events that unfolded there. How amazing that band of Modoc were, how well they knew their homeland, how tragic the outcome of that stand-off. When they are looking for nesting owls and golden eagles at Petroglyph Point do they stop to look at the petroglyphs? Do they wonder, like I do, what the symbols mean? Do they marvel at the tenacity of individuals to canoe all the way to the island and stand, in a canoe to carve these symbols into the rock? Can they appreciate the struggles of the salmon and sucker fish, sacred to the First Nations tribes of the area, to survive in an overly irrigated area (meaning in a river that is often too low, slow, polluted or warm)? We come together at these festivals to celebrate the wild awesomeness that birds are. These bits of nature that find us in even the most urban areas. That call to our souls, to our subconscious. That sing songs we recognize in the deep recesses of our brains. But do we think of how we are destroying their world? Do we think, as we celebrate, that this could be the last year we see them? That as we clear, fill, burn and develop we homogenize the beings that we pursue for their heterogeneity? I know I do, constantly. Even when I am shouting with glee about my first ever rough-legged hawk sighting.