Upper Nestucca Christmas Bird Count

Our postponed-because-of-stormy-weather Christmas Bird Count finally happened on January 2nd under clear, cold skies. My sector was still snowed in with only a mile of road in three directions passable. So I walked.

Ten miles.

Johnny dropped me off  at the edge of the count circle early, in the dark, then drove home to do chores. It was a lovely, moonlit night.

I hoped to hear owls before the sun came up. I did not. Nor did I see any birds when the sky began to lighten. In one mile, I reached the junction of the 2283 road that we come in on and the 14 road, which was only passable for a mile in each direction. There would be no driving to Bible Creek Road as we usually do.

  
I had not yet seen or heard any birds. I wondered if I was going to see a bird that day. This count, and particularly my heavily wooded sector, is not known for high numbers, but Pacific Wrens, at least, have always kept me company.
 
As I stood at the junction of the 14 and 2283 roads and listened to the silence, I saw my first two birds of the day: ducks! I never see ducks up in the deep woods. But there they were, two Hooded Mergansers, winging swiftly from somewhere to somewhere over my head. My day had begun.

I walked across the 14 on the 2283, a road we would not drive at all because of snow, snow now frozen solid. In a short distance, a Pacific Wren popped up onto a mossy log by the side of the road and I attempted to take its picture. Naturally, it disappeared behind the log before the shutter clicked.  This was to be my experience all day while trying to photograph the birds I saw.

 After begging the wren to reappear with no results, I sighed and looked up the snowy road ahead of me. There, staring back, was a bobcat. This was the first of many mammals spotted this bird count day.

  I kept snapping pictures since the cat seemed uninterested in going anywhere. Here it is zoomed up.

I couldn't stand there all day taking pictures of an immobile (except for one ear) bobcat, so I started to walk closer. The bobcat was gone in an instant.

When I reached the spot where it had sat, tracks frozen in the snow told stories of many earlier bobcat and snowshoe hare encounters. Perhaps the cat was waiting for its breakfast to appear. All along the 2283 road were bobcat and snowshoe hare tracks, as well as elk.

 
A short distance beyond the bobcat spot, a cow elk went crashing through the brush beside the road. She stopped and looked at me but not long enough for a photo.

Although the sun was out, it did not make it through the thick trees to me... except in one spot where the trees thinned along the road. I was so excited to see my shadow that I took its picture.

After about three miles, I turned around and started back, not having found the Sapsucker tree or attendant Sapsucker that I had seen on our first scouting trip, before the snowfall. Johnny called me on the radio (cell phones don't work up there) to say he had returned from chores and was parked at the junction. He left the van and began walking toward me. In a very short time, he found himself following a porcupine that was ambling down the middle of the road away from him. He called to tell me the porcupine was headed my way. However, just before I rounded a corner where I would have seen it, the quilled beast ambled off the road and disappeared into the woods. Too bad Johnny didn't have a camera.

And so it went all day. We saw a few birds, mostly Pacific Wrens, Chestnut-backed Chickadees and Golden-crowned Kinglets with a few Hairy Woodpeckers thrown in here and there. And plenty of mammals.

Chickarees (Douglas Squirrels) scolded us everywhere we went.

A coyote approached, but fled as soon as we were in sight. Birds kept refusing to stay put for my camera.

Since we could not drive the 14 road to the count down, we returned the way we had come and drove around the long way, arriving at Linda Leavitt's house within the count circle in time to eat the wonderful buffet she prepares for the count participants every year. We arrived too late, though, to see the Northern Pygmy Owl one count participant had called out of a tree right by Linda's house.

In spite of the paucity of birds, Johnny and I had a good time, as we always do when we're up in the woods. He was excited to follow a porcupine for an eighth of a mile and I was excited to trade stares with a bobcat... and gets its picture. We were both happy to not get the van stuck in the snow like we had three days earlier, while scouting for this count.

My hips were sore for a day from all the walking, but I look forward to doing it again next Christmas Count season. Who knows what might appear next year in the high forest of my count sector.

My Favorite Photos of 2012, Part Two

My Favorite Photos of 2012, Part One

The Ups and Downs of Christmas Week, Part Three

On Sunday, December 30, we headed up the road to load the back of the van with rocks for my arboretum plantings, and to provide ballast for our trip into the Christmas Bird Count circle in case of snowy roads. We found snowy roads. But others had been there before us and the first mile into the circle on Forest Service road 2283 was easily navigated. Johnny had put snow tires on the van before we ventured out.

 We turned west at the 14 road, a rather main road up in the woods, to drive to the end of our sector where a clearing would let us have a beautiful vista on this sunny, clear day. But before we had gone a mile on this road, we came to a tree completely blocking the road. A big tree. 24 inches in diameter, in fact. Johnny had brought two chainsaws, including one big enough to tackle this tree, which he did.Cleverly figuring how to cut through the log without getting his chainsaw stuck, he worked from both sides. And succeeded, only getting the saw stuck once.

Then he used the van to push the separated log section to where we could roll it, downhill, off the road. Mission successful! We drove onward.

But did not get far. No one had driven on the far side of the log except one tracked vehicle that had apparently rolled right over top of the log, but turned around shortly thereafter and went back across again. The road beyond looked like an elk superhighway. There were deer and coyote and rabbit tracts, too, but mostly elk.

Our van is not four-wheel drive and we didn't think we could make it up the 14 road hill to our destination even with chains, so we turned around and went back through the log and down to the 2283. Next we tried going north on the 2283, toward the trail to Niagara Lake. Someone else had provided tracks to follow. However, in half a mile the tracks turned around and headed back and so did we.

Next we went east on the 14 road, intending to drive all the way out to Bible Creek Road, as we had done last scouting day. Soon we had to chain up as the snow was icy and deeper, although there were quite a few tracks of no doubt 4-wheel drive rigs. In several places, we noted, even they had slipped sideways. Not a good sign.

At milepost 2.7, we met our waterloo. The van's rear end slid toward the steep dropoff on the north side of the road... and off the road. We each said a few bad words, climbed out and assessed the situation. It was grim. Having been in such situations before, I grabbed the shovel and started shoveling snow and mud away from the tires while Johnny tried to figure out what to do. His first several attempts landed us closer to tipping off the edge. Clearly, we needed help, I thought. But cell phones don't work up there. Johnny thought some more. Eventually, he rigged up a come-along to a tree on the south side of the road and attached it under the front of the vehicle. To do that he had to jack the front up, allowing it to tip frighteningly (in my opinion) toward the abyss. And I was enlisted to get *in* the van and take it out of gear, keeping the wheels from whipping the wrong direction. I sure hoped Johnny knew what he was doing.

Apparently, he did. He tightened the come-along bringing the front of the van little by little toward the center of the road until it fell off the jack. Then he replaced the jack and did it again, each time warning me when the jack was about to fall so I didn't have a nervous breakdown... or bale out the window. His system worked. Soon the front tires were on solid ground. Then he did it all again at the back of the van. This time I had to turn on the motor and use the brake to keep the wheels from going backward when he tightened the come-along, now affixed to a tree closer to the rear of the van. I kept looking at these puny alders he was using to keep us (me specifically) from going over the edge and hoping they stayed where they were.

Little by tense little, the rear of the van was pulled away from the precipice. Soon Johnny had me put it in low and drive slowly forward as he tightened the come-along to keep the tension sideways on the back of the van. And then, two hours after the saga began, we were back on the road and I could breathe again. I did not get any photos as I was too busy either shoveling or praying. I did take a photo after the fact. You cannot tell from this how far off the road we were; how tipped the van was; or how steep the precipice. It's just as well.

 
A few yards farther was a place to turn around, which we did, and headed back to the 2283 and home. The snow was out of the tracks on the 2283 where we stopped to take off chains and the evening sky lovely. I was so glad we were driving instead of walking the long way home.

Johnny said, "Reminds me of when I got stuck in Wyoming in the snow and ice, while working for the forest service. That time the drop off I almost went over was 200 feet down. Took me 8 hours to get out of there." I am so glad he did not tell me when we were stuck up on the 14. His was not a story to inspire confidence. But, all's well that ends well, as they say. However, I will be walking my sector on count day, not driving. Johnny just has to get me to the edge of the count circle. I've had quite enough excitement for one bird count season.