Category: General

Posted on

The Equinox

Take’n flight

This week we marked the first day of spring. The earth has started it’s annual tilt toward our galaxy’s brightest star, making the light part of our day slowly get longer.

The seasonal shift also means there will be increased activity at Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge. That is where we headed on the first of what will be a couple of spring drives to this excellent birding spot.

Fremont Point (right), located west of Summer Lake and Abert Rim (upper left) is south

Over the course of a few months the population at Summer Lake ebbs and flows. various groups of migratory flocks move in, stay a few days, then move on. From late March to May. northern movement is at its peak.

Swans on a migratory layover.
Coots are residents of Summer Lake year round.

Early in the morning you can find a wide variety of birds resting up for their next journey. By midday the migration starts. Conversely, at the end of the day you catch new arrivals settling in.

Trumpeter swans and Canada Geese at Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge

There was enough wind to push clouds of mosquitoes out of our way. A light cloud cover allowed the sun to warm the day to shirtsleeve weather. Perfect conditions for a birding expedition.

These reeds offer good cover for nesting birds.

It’s still early in the season, but Red-winged Blackkbirds have started staking claim to patches of reeds and cat tails along the canals. Trumpeter Swan numbers have grown since January.

We also caught sight of a pair of Sand Hill Cranes and watched flocks of Red-billed Gulls perform aerial acrobatics in the sky overhead.

There are still a large variety of ducks paddling and diving in the ponds. Though this close to the end of hunting season means they’re still rather skittish.

There are a couple of camp sites where you can scan groves of willow and poplar trees for a variety of small birds. This trip we didn’t take the time to do much of that type of counting. Did catch sight of some flickers and followed the flight of some raptors. By the time we headed home we’d noted a couple dozen different bird species.

Posted on

A Search for Moon Photos

Cloud bank moving our way

This week we chased weather and a moon rise. After a rather snowy start to the new year, Mother Nature made an adjustment and gave us sunny days. Time to head out on an atmosphere focused photo mission.

There had been a new moon, considered a super moon, in the sky January 2nd. Unfortunately, that moon had been obscured by clouds. The full moon was set for the 17th of January and those days were supposed to be under clear skies.

A frosty evening in the high desert

A cool fact about winter’s shorter days is the sun can be setting as the moon rises. As the sun slips across the horizon a warm glow offers ‘cinematic’ lighting on any geographic features the moon is rising over. The feature we’re interested in is Fort Rock, a volcanic extrusion jutting up into a high desert landscape.

The mission actually turned into a couple of evening drives. Fort Rock is a half hours drive onto the high desert, but in that short distance there can be significant weather shifts.

Looks like we have some weather ahead

Where the Fremont Highway drops down the southeastern edge of Paulina Peak, a bank of low clouds covered portions of the desert. Inside that fog the temperature dropped ten degrees.

The result was a coating of frost over trees, sage brush and even the fence line. This highlighting remained even after the clouds moved on. Along the edge of the cloud, sunlight penetrated enough to offer up some excellent photographic moments.

We’ve been to the area armed with camera gear enough to have marked out specific  locations. This makes it easier to time these expeditions. The down side is that when conditions aren’t what had been expected, a shift in agenda is necessary. Actually, that is often the case.

First day we see the moon rise over Ft. Rock Oregon with clouds as back drop.

On the first day we missed a perfect alignment of moon to the Fort Rock escarpment, close … but not perfect. Atmospheric conditions that day made for an interesting backdrop.

Second day we’re literally in the weather.

On the second day the cloud bank had shifted west obscuring Fort Rock as well as the moon. However, the frost coating and cloudy veil presented us with  a very different look. Didn’t get the type of photo we’d been hunting, but managed some interesting images.

 

Posted on

Deschutes River Trip

Lower Deschutes River at Maupin, OR

Road trip this week takes us south to Maupin and the Lower Deschutes River. The summer drought caused Oregon Fisheries people to cancel steelhead fishing. This means there are fewer people on the river, with plenty of fish to be caught, and a beautiful canyon to enjoy.

Fall colors paint the canyon walls

Fall weather has muted any remaining green and added yellow and orange hues to the hillsides.

The river level is down, but at this point the Deschutes is still a big river. Our strategy is to drive, park, and fish. However, the first order of business is to find a starting point downstream.

We break open the lunch, brew fresh coffee, and enjoy the rush of river. A month ago this spot would have been baking in summer sun, today we are dressed in flannel and clouds flash intermittent bursts of sunlight.

We rig fly rods to the car rack and start the journey back upriver, stopping at select spots. The October caddis fly hatch offers dry fly fishing and nice big Redband rainbows.

Confluence of White River and the Deschutes

As we are breaking down rods, a bank of rain clouds crests the canyon. We wind our way out of Maupin and the Deschutes River canyon as the rains hit.

Posted on

More Rocks

Highway 20 ,,, clean air as far as the eye can see

Two things have happened . . . the air has cleared and daytime temps have dropped. So it is perfect weather to do some rockhounding.

There is no shortage of places to find fossils, minerals and rocks in Central Oregon, but all are nearly void of shade. Any roads near these sites will quickly become impassable with a day or two of rain. That in mind fall is an ideal season.

We’re headed east on US 20 to a dirt road just west of highway marker 77. Glass Butte and Little Glass Butte are six thousand acres open to public collection of a ‘reasonable’ daily amount of obsidian. The state defines reasonable as less than 250 pounds . . . no problem there.

The two low hills look like most of the hight desert landscape between Bend and Burns. A few patches of scrub pine and juniper amid large swaths of sage and rabbit bush.

Drive up the gravel road a few miles and quickly you start to see the glint of black rock scattered between the sage brush. Obsidian is typically black but at the Glass Buttes area you can find red, snowflake, green, and a number of other color combinations. This makes this a popular rockhounding site.

Shards of obsidian … this volcanic glass is hard, brittle and fractures with sharp edges.

We found a spot away from the crowds in the Little Butte area. It didn’t take too long to fill our bucket with marble sized pieces, perfect for the tumbler, and a few larger chunks as well. The material we picked up was mostly black but there are some with red and mahogany streaks. All were picked up off the surface with only minimal digging.

Once back home we rinsed the desert dust, inspected our finds and separated a load to polish in the tumbler. In addition to obsidian, we found some samples of petrified wood.

We’re thumbing through the Oregon Rockhounding book and plan more fall expeditions in the future.
Posted on

Smokey Daze

This week smoke from all those wildfires settled over Central Oregon. The nation’s largest wildfire burns just an hour south of us and a stormfront  brought hundreds of lightning strikes and of course, more fires. Nearly all the “hot spots” have been extinguished, but the big blazes in Southern Oregon and Northern California resist efforts to contain them.

All trips to the river result in a wet dog.

Mostly we stay indoors and out of the thick air. One day, when the air quality got a bit better we did the Cascade Highway loop. This takes us right by a favorite spot on the upper Deschutes.

Tip got to do some swimming and we had a brief picnic lunch before the smoke settled back down on us. The weatherman suggests air quality might get better next week.  But we have to keep in mind that August is peak wildfire season so we’re not holding out much hope. Glad we managed a few moments on the river.