EXPERIENCE

Bob and Adrienne Lockett are avid bird watchers who we met when we lived in Jamaica and they were Peace Corps workers.  American Peace Corps volunteers around the world are not allowed to own or drive a vehicle, but may get around locally on bicycles or public transport.  We took them birding at some of our favorite places in Jamaica and it was our turn to visit their patch.  Using our frequent flier Delta miles, we flew to Portland, Oregon where fortunately it was raining when we arrived.  Huge areas of forest fires had been raging and the smoke had spread for hundreds of miles, so the rain helped to clear the air in Portland.

Bob didn’t waste any time in taking us birding, and the next morning we set off for Crystal Spring, not far from home.  I was elated at seeing so many pairs of Wood Duck close by, as when we’d seen them in the swamps in Louisiana they were very shy, and you only glimpsed them briefly before they disappeared. Wearing every color of the rainbow, the males are beautiful and look as if an artist has painted them.  We got three lifers there before moving on to Vanport Wetlands – California Scrub-Jay (that used to be called Western Scrub-Jay but was split into California and Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jays), Steller’s Jay and Band-tailed Pigeon.

We stood enthralled watching a Green Heron trying to eat a frog.  It maneuvered the frog with its long bill, trying to get it into the right position to swallow, and once it had succeeded, it looked at us as if to say, “I did it”!

Later that day we packed a picnic and headed for Chapman Elementary School where, late in August every year, a spectacular natural event begins: thousands of Vaux’s Swifts gather in the sky above an old chimney before diving into it to roost for the night.  It’s the largest known roost for migrating Vaux’s Swifts in the world.

Once used in the school’s heating system, the chimney developed cracks and should have been demolished.  To ensure that the swifts could continue roosting in the chimney and because watching the phenomenon had become a social event in Portland, once central heating had been installed in the school, metal supporting cables were joined around the chimney to support it.

Hundreds of people sit on the hillside every evening in September to watch the spectacle.

Audubon Society of Portland volunteers with binoculars and telescopes, set up tables and give out pamphlets to educate the public on the swifts’ migration.

We arrived an hour before sunset, sat on our picnic blanket on the hillside and peered into the sky above the chimney.

A few “flying cigars” arrived, then more and more birds joined them and started circling.  Soon there were thousands of black dots swirling around and above the chimney.

We even spotted a Peregrine Falcon on a rooftop nearby waiting to swoop down and grab a meal.  Suddenly, and with enthusiastic applause from all the spectators, they started descending into the chimney.

About half an hour after sunset it was all over, and the sky was clear. That evening, 6,500 Vaux’s Swifts were counted being swallowed up by the chimney.

By the end of our first day in Portland we’d seen nine species of birds that we’d never seen before.  Our “life list” was growing fast!

Founded in 1902, the Audubon Society of Portland is said to be the largest chapter in the country with 15,000 members and 31 permanent staff members – they even have their own vehicles!  Bob took us birding at the Audubon Sanctuary – their headquarters – on a well-wooded hillside with beautiful clear streams crisscrossing the pathways.  We had lovely views of a bright yellow Wilson’s Warbler wearing its round black cap, and a gray and white Warbling Vireo with white eye-stripes that we would never have identified if we’d been birding on our own.  Two more lifers!

Passing Reed College, we walked to Trader Joe’s, an up-market supermarket chain that we’d heard so much about and don’t have in Pensacola, and passed a shop with a signature green cross painted on the outside.  They sold cannabis/marijuana – legal in Oregon – and I thought that it was perfectly placed for the students.  We were taken to the Columbia sportswear factory shop where I bought a pair of short-length, light-weight trousers, two short-sleeved blouses and Steve got a long-sleeved shirt in the same soft, polyester fabric.  They’ll all be cool to wear whilst we’re out bird watching in the Florida heat – and Steve’s shirt will keep the mozzies out too.

There’s no sales tax in Oregon so we made the most of shopping there.  Adrienne took us to the picturesque store painted dark cherry red which is the world headquarters of Bob’s Red Mill in Milwaukie, not far from their home.  (It’s spelt correctly with an “ie” at the end, unlike the spelling of better-known Milwaukee in Wisconsin).  Set out like a supermarket, on the shelves are every kind of packaged grain, dried bean and stone-milled flour imaginable, including teff which is the size of a poppy seed and high in minerals and protein, and teff flour, used to make injera.  There are also numbered bins filled with different mixtures of dried grains and legumes, and you can scoop as much as you want into a bag.  (I chose three different mixes to make soup with.)

When we lived at Kilombero we used to frequent an Ethiopian restaurant in Dar-es-Salaam which we loved, and had seen a traditional flat, clay injera stove in Addis Ababa on a stop-over on our way to India.  Fortuitously we’d had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant the night before, and were served injera, the spongy, porous unleavened bread that you tear a piece off and eat your delicious spiced stew with, using your hands.  In Bob’s Red Mill store there was also a restaurant, as well as an historic, imported stone grinding wheel, laboratory, manufacturing plant and distribution center.

Bob and Adrienne have a lovely glassed-in porch at the back of their house which overlooks their vegetable garden and a garden with indigenous plants in it, in the middle of which is a suet feeder.  Having breakfast, we sat and watched dark-coloured Song Sparrows scratching in the undergrowth, gorgeous Anna’s Hummingbirds with rose red throats and crowns in the rhododendrons, and small flocks of Bushtits (small, plain and gray-brown), Red-breasted Nuthatches, Steller’s Jays (bluer than our Blue Jay, with a dark, crested head), and a Red-shafted Northern Flicker eagerly pecking at the suet.

The eastern/northern form that we have here is Yellow-shafted – with bright yellow under wings and tail, clearly seen when it flies, as well as a red crescent on the back of its head, absent in the western, Red-shafted Northern Flicker.  But, Northern Flickers are one race, whether they’re yellow or red shafted, so that wasn’t a lifer.

A couple of days later we hired a car – and were upgraded and given a very comfortable Nissan Altima – and we all set off for Newport on the pacific coast to spend a couple of nights in the beautiful home of friends of Bob and Adrienne’s, who’d vacated it specially for us.

Having got used to having to pump our own fuel in Florida, we had it pumped for us in Oregon – and Bob told us that you’re not allowed to pump it there either.  Adrienne drove ahead and saw Bob and Cindy before they left, and Bob Lockett came with us.  We stopped at Bay City, on an inlet north of Tillamook Bay and had fresh, fried oysters for lunch at The Fish Peddler – they were at least 7” (18cms) long!

They were, without a doubt, the biggest oysters I’ve ever seen, and from our table in the restaurant behind a large glass window, we could see a line of white-coated, hair-netted workers shucking them as they were brought in.  We also had to do some bird watching and identified a Glaucous-winged Gull (one that we’d seen before in Vancouver, Canada but which was a new US bird for us), and added three more lifers to our life list – Western Gull, California Gull and Brewer’s Blackbird.

Later, driving south towards Newport, we stopped at Depoe Bay to see what we could find – and saw a Marbled Murrelet, Common Murre, Brandt’s Cormorant which was larger than the Pelagic Cormorant which we also saw, and which was identifiable by its small head.  (We have the Double-crested Cormorant in Pensacola, saw the Neotropic Cormorant in Brownsville, Texas, as well as in Ecuador – and in South Africa have seen Cape, Bank, Reed and White-breasted Cormorants!  We’ve also seen Great and Little Cormorants in Nepal and India.)

Bob and Cindy’s home was lovely, with views across to Yaquina Head lighthouse, Gray Whales blowing and breaching close to shore, chipmunks in the garden that were fed sunflower seeds, and as Cindy’s an artist, her artwork was everywhere.  She picks up things that have washed up onto the shore, sorts them into colours and sizes, strings them together and makes beautiful, hanging “jellyfish” lights.  The bodies are made using washed-up upside-down funnels, plastic bottles or anything else suitable that she finds on the beach.  They sounded like such a lovely and interesting couple and I was sorry that we didn’t meet them.

Bob had his telescope out early the following morning and called us to see what he’d found – a Surf Scoter, Black Scoter, Western Grebe and Red-crested Grebe – four lifers for us before breakfast!  Later we drove across to Yaquina Head lighthouse and had lovely sightings of a Peregrine Falcon pair that were nesting in the rockface above the carpark.  The rugged coastline around the lighthouse was reminiscent of the coastline around Cape Point in South Africa, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.

A family of Harbor Seals swam amongst the rocks below, and one jumped up onto a rock to sunbathe.  Again, we had great birding there, adding Black Turnstone, Rhinocerous and Cassin’s Auklet and magnificent Harlequin Duck to our life list, as well as Black Oystercatcher to our US list.  We had lunch at Yaquina Head, walking up the road first, to Port Dock One, to see at least a hundred Steller’s Sea Lions lounging on platforms in the sea near the restaurant.  There’s a cage tied up close to the platforms enabling injured sea lions to be isolated and treated.

Early on the morning of 14^th September, we bade Bob and Adrienne farewell and set off on Highway 20 for Salmon, Idaho to visit an old Chaplin school friend of mine, and her husband – also a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean.  It was a two-day drive and Bob had told us to call in at Camp Sherman in the Cascades to try and find a White-headed Woodpecker, which occurs in mountain pine forest of the Pacific states.  Sadly, the air was thick with smoke from forest fires and we were told that the woodpecker had left the area.  However, we did see the first of many, very pretty, sky blue Mountain Bluebirds.  With Ponderosa Pines covering the hillsides, the scenery going over the Cascade Range was spectacular, but our views of Three-fingered Jack and Mt Washington were marred by the smoke haze.  We had lunch off the beaten track in Bend, at a small family owned restaurant called The Ramen, and discovered that our waitress was Australian.  Dishes using Ramen noodles are their specialty.  The terrain flattened out and we drove for miles and miles through the “Badlands” where the only vegetation was Sage Brush, and not a tree in sight.  It reminded me of the Karoo in South Africa.  Pushing on further, so that we wouldn’t have too far to drive the next day, we spent the night at Motel 6 in Ontario, Oregon – not far from the Idaho border.

As we always do when driving in the States, we called in at the Idaho Welcome Center which was located on the picturesque and historic Snake River, to get maps and information on places of special interest.  We learned that the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-06) was the first American group to cross the Rocky Mountains and sail down the Snake and Columbia rivers to the Pacific Ocean.  Meriwether Lewis supposedly became the first American to see the Snake River drainage basin after he crossed the mountains a few days ahead of his party, on August 12, 1805, and saw the Salmon River valley (a major Snake tributary) from Lemhi Pass, a few miles from the present-day site of Salmon, Idaho.

We now had to pay sales tax and pump our own gas.  My navigation skills completely failed and after driving for a couple of hours we arrived in the town of Cascade – 40 miles out of our way!  We had brunch at Gramma’s, and we both had delicious Sausage Biscuits and Gravy – my favorite American breakfast which is like scones smothered in a savoury gravy with small pieces of sausage in it – and then turned around and drove back to Banks.  When we got there, I was forgiven as where we should have turned right, instead of going on the bigger, left-hand fork that took us to Cascade, we discovered that there are no signposts to Crouch, the next town on our route.  We arrived at Dulcie and John’s in Salmon around 7pm – and it was still light!

We had a wonderful welcome from Shaka (an American Staffordshire Terrier) and Marley (a Yorkie) – both “rescue” dogs.  A rescue dog is one that has been rescued from possible euthanasia after being found as a stray, or saved from an abusive or neglectful home, and taken to an animal shelter.  John and Dulcie hadn’t changed a bit since we last saw them in Johannesburg whilst waiting for our American visas to come through.  How wonderful it is to meet up with old friends who speak the same language!

We’ve now been residents for three years, and they’ve been here two.  John’s brother-in-law and sister, Nick and Helen Bertram, also live in Salmon and own and run Bertram’s Brewery in town, and were dying to meet us.  We put our gear down and headed for the local watering hole.  Everyone knows everybody else and we were treated like long-lost family members with people coming up to us and chatting.

People were very generous and we weren’t allowed to pay for a thing.  Nick and Helen (also both ex Rhodesians who we’d never met before) treated us to snacks, drinks and supper.  Known as an IPA (India Pale Ale) brewery, Nick makes craft beers that he puts into kegs and sells to shops in the area.  John cooked us salmon for dinner twice – the second time we had it was when the retired Salmon Fire Chief and his wife – also Steve and Cindy – who we’d just met at Bertram’s Brewery, brought a piece over for us.  They’d just got back from Alaska.

Salmon is 3944ft above sea level and John and Dulcie had a beautiful view of the snow-capped Bitterroot Mountains from their house.  It was cold!  The closest airport to Salmon is in Missoula, Montana, three hours away.  That is also where people do their major grocery shopping – there’s no Walmart in Salmon!  We spent the next couple of days exploring the area.

The Salmon River runs through the town winding its way through valleys with hills rising above it on both sides.  Floating or rafting is a favorite pastime and we watched a couple of groups as they navigated the rapids in inflatable zodiacs.  We went to the very interesting Sacajawea Interpretive Center and learned that Sacajawea, a Shoshone Indian, had a baby by and married a French Canadian, Toussaint Charbonneau, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the Northwest.

She was the guide and Shoshone interpreter for the expedition and her baby traveled with her.  Lewis’s brief from President Thomas Jefferson was to find a navigable passage to the Pacific Ocean.  Sacajawea died when she was only twenty-five and Clark adopted her two children.

We drove up to William’s Lake, a gorgeous natural lake 4,500ft above sea level where we found a Mule Deer resting in the shade of a Lodgepole Pine, and saw our first Clark’s Nutcracker, named after explorer William Clark of Lewis and Clark Expedition fame, as well as Townsend’s Solitaire.

John and Dulcie took us to The Country Store which is Amish-owned and run.  You can buy their homemade preserves (apple butter is very good), bread mixes, pickled produce and desserts.  Two horse-drawn buggies were parked outside, and the ladies in the shop wore traditional plain, full-length dresses and white bonnets.

For a few months we’d been planning a trip to Yellowstone National Park, and Helen booked our accommodation through Airbnb as well as organizing our daily routes through the park.  Nick and Helen had just bought a new, luxury Ford F150 truck (bakkie) and John, Dulcie, Steve, Helen and I set off in it for another adventure.  It had a large tray in the back which rolled out for you to put your luggage onto – so much easier than having to climb in to reach your suitcase from the back.  Sadly, Nick couldn’t get away from the brewery to join us.  We had to stop whilst a cowboy on horseback drove his cattle past us, saw herds of Pronghorn (not an antelope, its closest relatives are giraffe and okapi) and went from Idaho into Montana where we stayed in a WorldMark by Wyndham resort in the town of West Yellowstone.  It had been snowing but as we arrived around mid-day, we drove into Yellowstone NP and were very excited when we saw our first Bison and some Elk

As a super-volcano sitting on one of the foremost hotspots on earth, Yellowstone hosts some of the premier geothermal features found anywhere on the planet.  These geysers, hot springs, and steam vents offer geologists and visitors a vivid peak into the center of our world.  From acidic soils to waterlogged valleys, the environment on this on this super-heated plateau shapes the lives of the plants and animals that call the park home, and has made it one of the leading wildlife destinations in North America.

Bubbling, steaming and churning within Yellowstone’s caldera (cooking pot) 30 miles wide and 45 miles long, are thousands of mudpots, fumaroles, hot springs and geysers.  The hottest of Yellowstone’s geothermal features are steam vents or fumaroles.  Fumaroles in the Norris Geyser Basin have measured 280˚F (138˚C).  In the basin water accumulates underground.  Heated by the Yellowstone Volcano, the water travels upward to erupt from acidic geysers, rise from steaming fumaroles, and simmer in shimmering pools.  Micro organisms thrive in the heat and are perfectly adapted to live in geysers and their runoff channels.  A huge variety of microbes and bacteria thrive in these extreme waters, tolerating heat, extremely acidic or alkaline conditions and toxic minerals.  One such species has yielded an important enzyme crucial to DNA fingerprinting tests.  Other research is revealing important clues about the origins of life on earth and survival of life in outer space.

We headed for Old Faithful the morning after our arrival, one of nearly 500, and the most famous, geyser in Yellowstone.  Park rangers can predict the time of its eruptions, approximately half an hour apart.  The area is fenced off with seating next to the railing, and it’s also visible from the Old Faithful Visitor Center.  The first eruption we watched was a non-event with very little steam let off, so we had lunch and hot chocolate whilst waiting 45 minutes for the next eruption.  It snowed on and off all day and the second eruption was hard to see in the white-out.

As you drive around the park you can stop at designated areas of interest and walk along boardwalks, stairs and pathways which lead you through the amazing steaming, bubbling geological features.  Some of the roads were closed, but we were able to drive to Sapphire Spring, a hot spring, which was beautiful.  We stopped at Gibbon Falls, Dragon’s Mouth Spring – where we heard the rumbling sounds caused by steam and other gases exploding through the water, causing it to crash against the walls of the hidden caverns.  We also stopped at Sour Lake, and Sulphur Caldron that is ten times more acidic than lemon juice.  This bubbling, muddy pool is teeming with life.  Billions of thermoacidophiles convert the pools hydrogen sulfide gas into sulphuric acid – and we could smell it.  When the snow was cleared off the road to Grand Prismatic Spring and it was open again we called in, but because of the cold, cloudy weather all we could see was steam rising from a navy blue pool, so we could only imagine its brilliance on a sunny day.

It continued snowing throughout our second night but in the morning, we drove the South Loop, through the Hayden Valley, and along the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake.  It was spectacular, and we saw a pair of Trumpeter Swans (another lifer), lots of Bison herds close by and more Elk.  Nearly driven to extinction in the 1800s by homesteaders, hunters and the US government, Bison thrive here today.  Most migrate to lower elevations in winter in search of food.  Only the strongest, furriest and fattest can survive a bitter Hayden winter.

On our way back to West Yellowstone we drove over the Continental Divide, and at an elevation of 8262ft, the rivers now all flow westwards towards the Pacific Ocean.  We’d really hoped to see a bear, so on our last morning -it was still snowing – we went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone.

We had great views of two Grizzlies, a couple of Gray Wolves, a beautiful and huge Golden Eagle with a broken wing, and a Rough-legged Hawk.  Rather than put down the Grizzlies that had become a nuisance in their search for food, wandering around neighborhoods and breaking into trash cans, they were captured and brought to the center.  They were much bigger than I’d imagined and were very restless.  A plastic sealed container about two feet square was in their enclosure and we watched as one of them picked it up and threw it down a few times, then stamped on it and then with its alarmingly long claws tried to open the box.  We guessed that it must have had food inside it, and was put into the enclosure to stave off boredom.  The seemingly empty enclosure for Ground Squirrels had a notice inside it saying “See you in Spring”.

We drove back to Portland on a different route to the one we’d taken going to Salmon, and rather than driving on the interstate on the opposite side of the Columbia River in Oregon, we could stop frequently to admire the beautiful views driving along the main road in Washington State.

We passed miles and miles of wind turbines lining the skyline which generate much-needed electricity for Man, but raptors often come short trying to perch on them.  We discovered that the covers and a lot of the components are made at General Electric’s wind energy plant in Pensacola.  The Columbia River is navigable with locks along its route to the Pacific, and is also used for irrigation.  We saw peach and pear orchards, vineyards and wineries, but as time was short, we couldn’t do any wine tasting.

Back in Portland with Bob and Adrienne we did more birding at Sauvie Island where we saw hundreds of Sandhill Cranes, a flock of California Quail that have a forward-curving topknot, and Bob found us a Golden-crowned Sparrow.  We had sent our American bird list to Bob before we left home, and he’d gone to so much trouble finding new birds for us, enriching our visit.  Despite the fact that it was a bad time of year for bird watching as the fall migration was in full swing and many birds were heading south for warmer climes, we’d seen 37 “lifers” and our US bird list was growing.

By Cindy Coster

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