Itinerant Air-Cooled

Central Oregon has its wildlife wonders
by The Associated Press Saturday March 01, 2008, 2:41 PM
The Oregonian/2007

Bird-watching opportunities extend south through central Oregon to the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, where members of the conservation group Oregon Wild enjoy the view during an outing last November.
By Chester Allen
The (Olympia) Olympian

I've spent a lot of time driving the beautiful country from The Dalles to Maupin in 22 years of fishing trips to the lower Deschutes River. But I've never spent much time exploring the rolling, creek-laced landscape of sagebrush, ponderosa pine, oak trees, juniper and millions and millions of rocks.

What a mistake that was.

The country, like most of central Oregon, looks arid and hardscrabble from the road. But a closer look shows a land rich in wildlife and beauty.

The land toward the tiny ranching town of Wamic is wrinkled and buckled in every direction. The White River, which flows directly off Mount Hood's glacial slopes, boils through craggy canyons.
A few ranches and the odd fruit orchard soften the land and provide extra food for local deer and elk.

I was eager to find local birds for the Audubon Society's Backyard Bird Count, which allows anyone to count birds anywhere, but a good friend took me to the nearby White River Wildlife Area, which is a big chunk of beautiful land.

Josh Moulton of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife manages the land and lives on it, too. Moulton was nice enough to take some time on a Saturday afternoon and talk about this special place.

Thousands of deer and elk migrate from the snowy high country of Mount Hood to winter on the land, and it also has a good population of wild turkeys, Moulton said.

Deer and elk need lower-elevation land during the winter, as the snow piles up in the high country and makes finding food impossible. A lot of people come to the area this time of year to collect the antlers that buck deer and bull elk shed toward the end of winter, Moulton said.

I never knew so many people collected shed antlers, but Moulton said it's a big deal.

"If it's a hard winter, we'll close down parts of the area to shed hunters, as we don't want to stress the animals," Moulton said.

The thermometer read 47 degrees, but it was a shirtsleeve-warm day if you stood in the sun. It was time to count birds. I'll visit the White River Wildlife Area again soon.

We jitterbugged all over that big country, and flocks of robins fluttered along the roadsides in little bursts of wings and flashes of orange bellies.

I counted a lot of Canada geese feeding on the new, electric-green grass in fields and rafting up in little ponds. I also saw a few cackling geese, which look like smaller Canada geese but have a stumpier bill.

It's fun to hike new country, but sitting in one spot for a few minutes, say on a sun-warmed rock, sometimes results in more birds.

We found some friendly rocks near a tiny creek -- one this small is always called a "crick" in this part of the world -- that trickled through big rocks and under a mixed forest of orange-barked ponderosa pine and leafless oak trees.

I was almost dozing off when a bigger bird landed on the trunk of a dead oak tree.

I had never seen a woodpecker with a pink belly before, and I snapped a few out-of-focus shots -- yes, my hands were shaking a little bit -- before it flapped off down the creek.

I dug out my National Geographic "Complete Birds of North America," and found that I've now seen my first Lewis's woodpecker. These birds, which are rare on the west side of the Cascades because so much of the oak woods have been cut, look almost tropical in weak winter sunlight.

These woodpeckers are a glossy, iridescent black on the head, back and wings, but their faces are blood red, and they have a gray breast and gaudy pink belly.

Wow.

Here's my full bird count for Wamic:

• 120 or so Canada geese
• Seven cackling geese
• 40 robins
• Six juncos
• Nine house sparrows
• 17 crows clustered in a field
• Two drake pintail ducks
• Five Gadwall ducks.
• One Lewis's woodpecker

A lot of people say a trip to Oregon's high desert is a great way to get out of the rain, but it's also fascinating country that tempts you to keep walking and stopping and looking.

For more information on the White River Wildlife Area, call 541-544-2126 or go to www.dfw.state.or.us.

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