Friends,
At 8:55 AM on Feb. 12, 2005, I turned off I-84 at Exit 123 to Philippi
Canyon in Gilliam County. I was there to start a raptor route for my friend
Jeff Fleischer because we didn't know any other birder who would do it.
Riding shotgun was my new friend Carol Karlen. She wanted to see this part
of Oregon and had been willing to meet me in Beaverton at 6 AM on a Saturday
morning to do this.
Throughout that day and the next she exclaimed "Oh Wow! Oh, Wow!" repeatedly
as we shared vistas of the Sisters, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and
Mt. Rainier to the west and the Blue Mountains to the east, drove past snowy
wheat fields and down through sculptured rimrock canyons, through Lonerock,
Mikkalo, Olex, and Mayille.
We did the north and south Gilliam County routes until Dec. 2006, then took
a break because the routes did not yield many raptors. We resumed in Nov.
2011 and continued until we again hung it up in Feb. 2015. Each run
involved 560-600 miles, a stay in a motel in Condon overnight, and some
searching for meals in Condon, where restaurants struggle to stay open.
Carol packed countless lunches, breakfasts, and warm clothes. She kept the
checklists and recorded the number of deer and passing cars in the margin
(there were always more deer). Fortunately, we never got stuck or had car
trouble.
We explored abandoned homesteads with a glorious view of Mt. Hood and
watched derelict buildings crumble over the years. We saw a forest of wind
turbines grow across the wheat fields and talked to the local folks about
the changes coming to their county. We saw whole hillsides of junipers cut
down and burned. Fencelines thick with tumbleweeds are burned. Abandoned
machinery crumbles into weeds. The landscape evolves.
We saw a SNOWY OWL, a PEREGRINE and a GYRFALCON once each, a GOSHAWK a
couple times, a LONG-EARED OWL a couple times, a few FERRUGINOUS HAWKS, some
Great Horned and Barn Owls in nooks of cliffs. We drove 40 miles sometimes
to find our first Red-tail of the day. Only on one amazing trip in Nov.
2011 did we find 87 Red-tails, 27 Kestrels, 35 N. Harriers, and 30
Rough-legs.
We had a ritual of checking cracks in cliffs, trees at old homesteads, and
streams for a dipper we never found. We enjoyed Horned Larks flying off the
road in twos and two-hundreds, Mountain Bluebirds on junipers, a flock of
G-c Rosy Finches, and Chukars crossing the road. Our most memorable
sighting was a BOBCAT in a hawk nest on a cliff east of Condon.
We always wound up in Arlington at the end of an afternoon. Carol called
her sister Bea to let her know we made it. Then we drove home down the
Columbia River Gorge in the sunset.
I just ran the routes one last time these last couple days. I saw modest
numbers of redtails-kestrels-harriers-loggerhead shrikes, good numbers of
rough-legs, a FERUGINOUS HAWK, and a Great Horned Owl on a nest. I saw old
buildings burned down and a restaurant reopened. It was a good trip.
I arrived back at Arlington at 5:45 PM PDT on Saturday evening, satisfied
with another good run and lots of memories.
Good birding, everyone,
Paul Sullivan