Sunshine!

Sunday Feb. 9, 2020, was the first of predicted four days of sunshine. Oh happiness. Rain is good and necessary but a little moderation would be nice. At least we have not had the flooding some areas have had.

Today was beautiful. Agency Creek, which has been a raging, muddy torrent, calmed and cleaned up a little today.

On Friday, before the rain quit...

Same scene today, Sunday...

On Friday, no Dippers were to be seen anywhere... and no rocks visible in the high water for them to perch on. Today, Dippers were visible in many of their known territories.

The Chutes is an area of white water where the creek flows over a rock ledge and through a narrow rock channel. It looked way too wild for Dippers but a pair didn't agree. Johnny spotted them diving off a log into the white water and popping back up to the periodically underwater log. Amazing.

The Chutes

Brave Chutes Dipper

 

We did not see the resident Yoncalla Bridge Dippers on our way up but on our way back, one had caught something at the edge of the stream upstream from the bridge.

Farther up, Johnny took a nap while I hiked onward, finding a Dipper above Asinine Bridge near their nest stump. It was perched on a log in the middle of the stream. Hard to see in this distant shot.

Here it is closer...

And from upstream looking back at it.

Johnny eventually woke up and drove to find me, which he did at the above pictured Dipper. We drove upstream to the 6 mile culvert, where we found another Dipper, near where friends Carol and Mary and I had seen a pair of Hooded Mergansers, but no Dipper, on Friday. The Dipper is the dark dot in the river beyond the alders.

Also on Friday, we saw a Scaup (jury is still out on whether it was a Lesser or Greater) on the quarry pond. (Very broad bill says Greater; purplish head and likelihood inland on a small body of water says Lesser.)

The Scaup puzzle (plus sunshine) is the incentive that got me back up there Sunday. Johnny's incentive was to get a better view of the logging operation we hear from our farm. He dropped me off at the quarry. But there was no Scaup or any other bird in sight, just glorious sunshine and magnificent reflections of the cliff in the water.

What a beautiful, Dipper-full, day!