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April 27, 2025April 27, 2025

A New Spot on the Flyway

It’s the height of migration and the wetlands along the Pacific Flyway are filling with all types of birds.

Usually we visit Summer Lake a few times during April and May. These trips often get extended east to Abert Lake. It’s prime birding time and locations.

Last year the Klamath River was in the news as several dams were removed. What followed was the nearly instant return of ocean-reared salmon to the lower river.

We’ve been charting a trip to Northern California and southern Oregon to see early stages of this rehab project.

In that planning process, we discovered a wetland refuge to the east of Crater Lake.

Klamath Lake Wildlife Refuge is south of the park, and while it’s a large area, we’ve not had much luck finding good birding sites.

Klamath Marsh Wildlife Refuge on the other hand, is a smaller track of wetland directly east of Crater Lake. Until this week, unexplored.

A wide expanse of natural meadow borders the marsh on the Crater Lake side. Ponderosa pine forest lines it’s western edge.

The great part of this birding spot is you can drive right through the middle of it. This makes it very much like an experience at Summer Lake.

Also, like Summer Lake, it’s only about an hour’s drive from the house. Our early morning arrival was met with a wall of fog rising off the marsh. The sun burned off these clouds, but not before we captured some great footage.

The road through the marsh takes off from Highway 97 and is a dozen miles north of Klamath Lake. It continues onto OR 31 at Silver Lake, which is about 30 minutes from Summer Lake, making it a perfect birding loop.

April 20, 2025April 19, 2025

A Brief Period of Green

The John Day River banks swollen with snow melt

Spring hits different on the high desert. The Cascades remain capped with snow, while the sage steppe sprouts wildflowers . . . and puts on a cloak of green.

The weather app showed nothing but sunshine, there were no appointments, so we headed north to Spring Basin Wilderness.

As it turns out we seem to have skipped spring and gone right to summer.

Canyons frame the trailhead leading into the the Spring Basin Wilderness

A nearly treeless set of rock-topped hills, Spring Basin is sandwiched between the Clarno Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds and the John Day River.

There is just a bit more than six thousand acres of what, on the surface, seems an unlikely plot for wilderness designation.

There are some rare plant species to be found on the slopes of these hills, Yellow-Hairy Paint Brush and Fuzzytongue Penstemon are two.

However, we’ve make this trip nearly every spring hoping to find a Hedgehog cactus in bloom.

Not a lot of wildflowers out yet . . . but it was a gorgeous day and the loop from 97 through Antelope, Fossil, Service Creek and then down to Mitchel where it hits Highway 26 has many points of interest.

Banded clays glow across the Painted Hills

We cross the John Day River a couple of times. There are also two units to the Fossil Beds, Clarno and Painted hills.

It made for a great day . . . have made note to return for another chance at the Hedgehog Cactus.

April 13, 2025April 13, 2025

Winter Melts Away

Winter has begun to loosen its grip. We are at a point in the season marked by high stream flow, winter run off.

Now, in the past few years snow pack was below historical levels and by mid-April our streams were fishing . . . not this year.

This year Oregon ‘enjoyed’ above average snow pack. I say enjoyed because that means reservoirs will still have water well into the fall.

A below average winter run off would fail to fill reservoirs, the result would be low river levels at the end of season and to fish that is a much worse scenario.

Since the runoff started, the Lower Deschutes, John Day and Crooked River have been running at record high levels. Snow melt will do that, but not to this extent . . . the Crooked River is running at 300 percent of normal flow.

Snow has disappeared at lower elevations, replaced with a fresh carpet of spring colors taking over the high desert.

What’s not as typical is how much snow is still covering the Cascade Range peaks. Which means we have a while before river levels return to normal spring flows.

I would like to be fishing, but for the next few weeks we’ll take in spring fresh growth, migratory birding and open roads. There will be plenty of time to wet a line later.

April 6, 2025April 6, 2025

. . . out like a Lamb

We made a quick stop at Fort Rock to enjoy the sunrise, then continued our trek to Summer Lake

This week really seemed like spring had arrived to Central Oregon. March softened its edge as April took over . . . and not anytime too soon.

The arrival of spring requires at least one trip to Summer Lake (likely more) to check on what the Pacific Flyway has deposited on the briny marsh land.

We caught lots of flashes of Osprey, Eagles and Hawks.

Hunting is always good (if you are a raptor) with spring fledglings popping about.

There was a squadron of Pelicans swimming in formation, a pair of Sandhill Cranes and flocks of White-fronted Geese.

American White Pelicans ruffling their feathers

The avocets were just starting to show up, however no Snowy Plover, yet.

Red-winged Blackbird singing his heart out

The reeds were full of Red-winged Blackbirds calling for mates and most of the swallow houses had occupants.

The season is on and we were treated to lots of activity.

Summer lake is such an easy trip and usually the valley has great photo ops.

We are planning a run further out to check on Abert Lake, as well as a trip through Klamath Marsh sometime later in the spring. Birding is a great excuse to do some traveling . . .

March 30, 2025April 5, 2025

Inaugural Flight

Waiting for something more exciting than drone flying

Something we don’t post a lot about is the technology used in making this blog.

That’s not going to change, however this week we do want to offer a brief ‘Behind the Scene’ look.

In addition to laptops and tablets, our smart phones and cameras are critical to managing content.

To these primary tools we have support pieces that get hauled along on nearly every journey. We recently updated one of these . . . a drone, which is the focus of this post.

For those who are interested, it’s a DJI Mini4 Pro . . . and what it does is bring a unique prospective to our video productions.

Technology, in various forms, allows this blog to exist. It’s existed for nearly seven years in the current iteration. What we’d like to avoid is for any technology to become the focus of “That’ll Do”.

The drone, like any other camera just helps us tell a better story. That story will always be about what we did this week and we hope you’ll continue to be a reader . . . thanks.