A Wet and Wonderful? Day

We had wild weather for our Upper Nestucca Christmas Bird Count this year. We usually have wild weather but this year's seemed exceptionally wild. It didn't start out too badly with some light rain or just-gray skies. But it quickly deteriorated to thunder and lightning followed by hail with the occasional rain and/or wind storm thrown in. The ground was frequently covered with white hailstones which melted in the rain only to return with the next round of thunder/lightning/hail.

Not many birds were out in that weather. But some didn't seem to mind, like this Varied Thrush that was busily finding something to eat along the road.
















Most of my long hike, early in the day, into the area where I had found a Wrentit on our scouting trip was in pretty decent weather, that is, not too much hail. But the Wrentit refused to speak to me, much less appear. A couple vocal Gray Jays were my consolation prize, along with the usual Pacific Wrens, and a flock of Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Golden-crowned Kinglets.

By the time I headed back to where Johnny waited with the pickup (his sciatica started acting up again a few days ago so he was not doing much walking), my knees were starting to give out. I stupidly forgot to wear my knee supports. Between the weather and my knees, I spent most of the rest of the day being chauffered from point to point slowly in the pickup, stopping and hiking on offroads that looked promising. Mostly, I just heard Pacific Wrens giving their one and two note alarm calls as I hobbled past with my bamboo walking sticks click clicking.

One of the last roads I hiked had amazing sculptures along it. With time, all the snags in this northwest rain forest grow bonnets of ferns or salal on their tops. I took photos, between hailstorms, of two of them. You can't tell it from the dark photo, but this short snag with the bouffant salal hairdo is coated with moss and riddled with woodpecker holes. Too bad the woodpeckers were not around to be counted.



Here's another favorite that made me laugh out loud. (Remember, this was near the end of a long, wet, cold, fairly birdless day punctuated with knee pain. I was hungry for some comic relief.)



I was also just plain hungry. And I knew that a sumptious meal awaited all of us crazy birders-in-the-hail at the wrap-up, where we share our day's adventures and misadventures, good birds and missed birds. Linda Leavitt, who lives within our count circle (a 15-mile diameter circle plunked in the middle of the coastal mountains), provides the meal in her warm, inviting house.

Johnny and I arrived at Linda and David's house after dark, when some of the participants had already partaken and gone home, others were eating, but a few were yet to drag in. What a meal Linda provided! Before filling my plate, I took photos of the two laden buffet tables, because, at that hungry and tired moment, Linda's food appeared to be the highlight of the day. And it did taste wonderful.











Once fed, warm, and rested, with good company to share the day's stories with, the 26th Upper Nestucca Christmas Bird Count seemed more like an adventure and less like an ordeal.

It is, after all, a rare and wonderful thing to spend a whole day in a vast forest with no noise except the wind in the trees and the occasional bird sound. And thunder. Well, okay, so the hail on the roof of the pickup was sometimes pretty loud. And my rain pants made swishing sounds as I clicked along with my bamboo hiking sticks. But those are comforting sounds... the rain pants were getting wet, not me, and better the pickup should get hit with hail than my face.

For once I did not take photos of the myriads of cascading streams... I didn't want to get my camera wet and the sky was usually precipitating. However at one break in the wet stuff, I took a photo of a vista... miles and miles of trees... probably full of birds too smart to come out from cover to be counted.



Johnny and I found ten species. But altogether over fifty species were found in this coastal rain forest on a wild and, in retrospect, wonderful day.

Salmon Poisoning!

It's been a stressful beginning to a normally festive time of year. On Monday, Nov. 29, Mr. McCoy, our 7 1/2 month old Great Pyrenees, took the 25 mile car ride to our vet's office to be neutered. Livestock Guardian Dogs do not like to leave their family (goats, in Mr. McCoy's case). LGD's are submissive by nature (except when protecting their family) and show their submission to their goats, people, sheep, whatever, by sitting or lying down. Mr. McCoy went into submissive overdrive at the vet's office, refusing to get up and walk into the building. The vet's assistant had to pick up and carry that 70 pound lanky white blob of fur from the front walk into the office. McCoy was not any happier about getting back into the car to come home later that afternoon, when I came to retrieve him after his surgery. Again the assistant carried him and stuffed him into the back seat. He barely fit.

For the first two days after getting home, McCoy seemed fine... but a bit subdued... I thought because of his operation. The site of the operation looked fine... no heat, swelling, redness... so I figured McCoy would soon be back to normal. Thursday morning when I gave him the anti-inflammatory pill I was giving him morning and night, he threw it up along with whatever else was in his stomach. That was the beginning of a downhill slide. Our big white normally exuberant pup grew lethargic and totally stopped eating.

I thought McCoy might be having a reaction to the anti-inflammatory and would recover now that I'd quit giving it to him (no point since he threw it up). But he had not rallied on Friday so I called the vet. She said I'd have to bring him in for her to see what was going on. The thought of dragging that poor dog to the vet clinic again was enough to make me wait until Saturday to see how he was doing. He seemed a little brighter on Saturday although still not eating. Same on Sunday. Something, I knew not what, was very wrong. I was very worried. Monday I took Mr. McCoy back in to the clinic, much to his dismay.

We learned that Mr. McCoy had all the symptoms of salmon poisoning: swollen glands, fever, diarrhea, no appetite. But he could not have been around fish since he had been locked in the goat pasture for weeks. And the vet could find no flukes in his feces. He was also slightly anemic. She gave him a penicillin-derivative antibiotic, thinking, I suppose, that he must have some sort of infection going on, although salmon poisoning had seemed most likely to her, as this is the time of year for it. She just couldn't find the telltale flukes, necessary for diagnosis. The vet asked if our other dog could have shared some fish with him and explained how very infectious the flukes are. One dog that has licked the blood of an infected fish can give it to another just by touching noses. Apparently, virtually all trout/salmon family fish that come into fresh water to spawn in the Pacific Northwest, west of the cascades, are infected.

We have never seen spawned-out salmon dying in our creek frontage, but we know that this year is a better salmon run than usual and anything is possible. Shirley does have access to the creek and I suggested I bring her in to check her feces. Shirley seemed a bit depressed the last few days but I thought that was because all my attention and worry had been going to McCoy and she was jealous. Maybe, though, she was starting to get sick...

The next day, Tuesday, I hauled another very reluctant livestock guardian dog 25 miles to the vet and that same assistant had to pick a flat-on-the floor Shirley up (at least Shirley walked into the clinic on her own before realizing this was not where she wanted to be) and carry her in to the examining room. Shirley had a normal temperature, no swollen glands, but a touch of diarrhea. The vet put the feces under a microscope and soon came back triumphant... Shirley had flukes!

Salmon poisoning is caused by a microorganism that lives in snails that are common in the Pacific Northwest. When the snails are eaten by fish (salmon or trout that come into fresh water to spawn), that microorganism creates a cyst in a common fish parasite. When a dog (or coyote/wolf/fox) eats the fish, it ingests that infected parasite. 90% of dogs that develop the disease and are not treated, die. The good news is that most dogs that recover are immune from then on.

The treatment is tetracycline. Shirley got an IV of tetracycline and I got pills to give her morning and night. As soon as I got home, I turned around and took Mr. McCoy back in for his tetracycline shot as he almost certainly had salmon poisoning, too. Who knows why the flukes didn't show up in his feces. That made trip number 3 across the coast mountains to the vet clinic in 2 days.

The turnaround for both dogs has been fast and wonderful. On Wednesday, both dogs ate their treats and Shirley cooperated by eating her tetracycline pills hidden within the treats. McCoy had to have his pills thrown down his throat... and still does. Today, Friday, McCoy is back to his bouncy self, gobbling everything in sight (except the pills). Shirley has had a bit of swelling in her leg from the IV but is moving around better now and eating fine. I have slept well the last two nights for the first time since this whole mess began.

With the dogs on the mend yesterday, I took a stress-relieving trip to Egan Gardens with two friends to view the spectacular poinsettia plants. Wow! What a picker-upper! Rather than photos of sick or recovering dogs, here are photos of the Egan greenhouse full of poinsettias and a couple that I bought. Life is good again. Let the festivities begin!








This is all one plant! And a new variety for Egans this year.


















This one is very young, yet, and small. But oh so pretty! I bought several... couldn't help myself.

It's for a good cause: Egans is donating everything above their cost to a food bank.

Easter Chicks All Grown Up

Today was a rain break day, so I took down and cleaned out all the swallow nest gourds (20 of them) and then, not feeling terribly ambitious, took photos of the chickens. Last spring I bought 2 pullets each of 5 breeds. Neighbor Irv raised them from babies for me until they were old enough to not likely die on me. I am not as dedicated as he is to wiping chick bottoms and making sure the fragile little things are warm and eating. However, a predator got into our chicken house one night and killed one of the two Buckeyes, so I'm down to nine pullets. We also lost Mighty Mouse, our wonderful Bantam Rooster, to a predator. We lock the chickens in every night now.

Although I have not watched to see who is laying which egg (pictured in a previous blog: Deviled Eggs and Drippy Weather), I'm sure the Americaunas lay the blue and green eggs, and I'm fairly sure the Buff Orpingtons lay the lighter brown eggs. The SexLinks lay something in between, I'm guessing. Below is a Sexlink on the left, Americauna in the center, and Buff Orpington on the right.



The Barred Rock must lay a typical brown egg because we have one old Barred Rock and her eggs are your standard brown.









The Buckeye has a pea comb, which is a flat comb with bumps on it. I think she lays the darkest brown egg.














We also have, from a previous year's purchases, one "exotic" rooster. At least, he was supposedly an "exotic chick" thrown in for free with my 25 fryers. He looks a lot like a Rhode Island Red to me. He doesn't lay eggs but he does make sure they're fertile. Neighbor Irv took some of my eggs that were fertilized by this handsome fellow and got all red chicks. It will be interesting to see what they grow up to look like, with a mixed group of hens for their mamas.






This is the peachick that our banty hen raised. We gave her the four peafowl eggs after some predator killed the peahen when she was on her nest in the arboretum. Only one egg hatched. The banty hen doesn't seem to notice that her baby is now at least three times as big as she is.





The turkeys spend most of their time in the chicken yard, too, although they are perfectly capable of flying out. Perhaps they like the protection afforded by the sentinel Buff Orpington. This hen seems to think it her duty to sound out an alarm whenever, well, whenever she feels like it. I could not see any danger today when she began her warning cackles and jumped on her pile of goat manure to alert everyone about... something. They certainly listened when she headed to her mound saying, "Attention!"



Who knows? Maybe there was a hawk overhead that I didn't see. Or maybe she just likes having all those turkeys and chickens paying attention when she climbs up on her rostrum and speaks.

Scouting the Upper Nestucca CBC

It's almost that time of year again, when hardy souls head out into the deep woods of the Coast Range to count birds for the Upper Nestucca Christmas Bird Count. Well, in my case, to hike through the woods and enjoy the scenery. Birds are an added bonus if they decide to show up. And some always do.

Our count this year is on December 14. Today Johnny and I scouted some old logging roads in my sector of the count that we have not traversed on count days past. Our map showed that one went all the way through to the 14 road, where most of my territory lies. So I hiked in while Johnny drove around to the far end.

The map lied. I came to a dead end. Johnny saw me from across a deep ravine where he had hiked in from the 14 road. It took me a half hour of scrambling through sword ferns and salal and downed trees to get to the other side of the ravine and up to the 14 with Johnny. I won't do that on count day... I'll walk the 2 miles back the way I came. I must walk because the "road" is suitable only for a 4-wheel drive vehicle, which we don't have, although Johnny drove the pickup on it after I joined him on the 14. He says never again.

It's worth a 4 mile round trip on foot because I found not only the usual high country birds but also a Wrentit. The only other Wrentits I know of in Yamhill County are on or near our farm. I'd love to log a Wrentit on count day! They are quite territorial so with luck, a pair of Wrentits will give their ratchety scold calls and pop up to look at the intruder, as they did this afternoon, when I invade their territory. Besides Wrentits, there were plenty of Pacific Wrens (which were Winter Wrens until a few months ago when their name was changed), Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Golden-crowned Kinglets, Varied Thrushes, and others. Even if it had no birds, my sector would be a lovely place to hike with bubbling streams, woodpecker-bored snags, big trees, and plenty of ferns and salal.






















Some areas still show the devastation from our wild wind and snow storm of two years ago. Alder tops were lopped off in that storm as though cut by a helicopter flying upside down.















Here's hoping we have as nice a day on the 14th for our count as we had today. It would not be quite so much fun in snow or pouring rain.