Meanwhile, Back Home in the Puget Sound Area

I sometimes think that one of the reasons I love going to distant places like Malheur or The Canyonlands is that I see home in a new light when I return. Don’t get me wrong, I love visiting different places, but there’s no place like home, and by home I mean the Puget Sound area.

On returning to Theler Wetlands I was greeted by a Great Blue Heron,

Great Blue Heron

though I’m not sure it was actually welcoming me back.

I was surprised by a small flock of Black-Bellied Plovers,

Black-Bellied Plover

the first I’ve ever seen at Theler.

I managed to get my first decent shot of a Rufous Hummingbird,

Rufous Hummingbird

though they’ve been around for a while now.

I also saw my first American Goldfinch,

 American Goldfinch

and was repeatedly serenaded by Orange-Crowned Warblers.

 Orange-Crowned Warbler

It was enough to make me wonder why I would ever want to leave the area when there was so much beauty at hand.

Leopold’s Wilderness

I was as strong advocate of Wilderness areas long before I read Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River, but his short essay reminded me of many reasons why all of us, even if we never visit a wilderness areas, should be wilderness supporters. As a life-long city dweller whose relatives have been farmers, I could identify with Leopold when he pointed out that:

To the laborer in the sweat of his labor, the raw stuff on his anvil is an adversary to be conquered. So was wilderness an adversary to the pioneer.

But to the laborer in repose, able for the moment to cast a philosophical eye on his world, that same raw stuff is something to be loved and cherished, because it gives definition and meaning to his life. This is a plea for the preservation of some tag-ends of wilderness, as museum pieces, for the edification of those who may one day wish to see, feel, or study the origins of their cultural inheritance.

Anyone who has ever read Giants in the Earth realizes just how hard it was for pioneer farmers to survive. Small wonder, then, that many of them came to see wilderness as an enemy to be conquered, an oft-repeated theme in American literature. Modern farmers have it much easier, but even under the best of conditions it continues to be a tough job as shown by the number of farm children who end up in large cities rather than taking over the family farm.

For a city-slicker like me, though, the wilderness has been a god-send. My fondest adult memories are inextricably linked to Wilderness Areas in Washington, Oregon, and Montana.

Wilderness areas are first of all a series of sanctuaries for the primitive arts of wilderness travel, especially canoeing and packing. I suppose some will wish to debate whether it is important to keep these primitive arts alive. I shall not debate it. Either you know it in your bones, or you are very, very old. European hunting and fishing are largely devoid of the thing that wilderness areas might be the means of preserving in this country. Europeans do not camp, cook, or do their own work in the woods if they can avoid doing so. Work chores are delegated to beaters and servants, and a hunt carries the atmosphere of a picnic, rather than of pioneering. The test of skill is confined largely to the actual taking of game or fish. There are those who decry wilderness sports as ‘undemocratic’ because the recreational carrying capacity of a wilderness is small, as compared with a golf links or a tourist camp. The basic error in such argument is that it applies the philosophy of mass-production to what is intended to counteract mass-production. The value of recreation is not a matter of ciphers. Recreation is valuable in proportion to the intensity of its experiences, and to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life. By these criteria, mechanized outings are at best a milk-and-water affair. Mechanized recreation already has seized nine-tenths of the woods and mountains; a decent respect for minorities should dedicate the other tenth to wilderness.

I feel blessed to live in an area that has only recently seen the kind of growth that threatens to destroy what little wilderness is left, especially since those living in the East have realized what they have already lost and have made attempts to preserve more land in the West. Washington State has a large number of National Parks and Wilderness Areas, as well it should have, and there’s no place in the world I’d rather be than high up in the Cascades on a crisp, sunny morning.

I’ve spent considerable time signing petitions and sending comments on recent attempts in America to not only delist wolves from the endangered species list but to totally eradicate them from some states. Sure enough, years ago Leopold saw the dangers of eliminating predators:

One of the most insidious invasions of wilderness is via predator control. It works thus: wolves and lions are cleaned out of a wilderness area in the interest of big-game management. The big-game herds (usually deer or elk) then increase to the point of overbrowsing the range. Hunters must then be encouraged to harvest the surplus, but modern hunters refuse to operate far from a car; hence a road must be built to provide access to the surplus game. Again and again, wilderness areas have been split by this process, but it still continues.

I’ve long felt cheated that I’ve never managed to hear, much less see, wolves in any of my many backpacking trips to wilderness areas. Nor have I managed to see a mountain lion. But even if I never see one I would feel better knowing that they are there.

Permanent grizzly ranges and permanent wilderness areas are of course two names for one problem. Enthusiasm about either requires a long view of conservation, and a historical perspective. Only those able to see the pageant of evolution can be expected to value its theater, the wilderness, or its outstanding achievement, the grizzly. But if education really educates, there will, in time, be more and more citizens who understand that relics of the old West add meaning and value to the new. Youth yet unborn will pole up the Missouri with Lewis and Clark, or climb the Sierras with James Capen Adams, and each generation in turn will ask: Where is the big white bear? It will be a sorry answer to say he went under while conservationists weren’t looking.

Wilderness really doesn’t seem like “wilderness” without all those species that evolved with us and recent studies seem to show that predators play a vital part in maintaining a healthy wilderness ( see this informative video on the role of the wolves in Yellowstone: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dysa5OBhXz-Q .

Leopold also argues that is not only those of us who would experience life at its most primitive level that lose when wildernesses are lost. Scientists can learn much about nature from studying wilderness,

Paleontology offers abundant evidence that wilderness maintained itself for immensely long periods; that its component species were rarely lost, neither did they get out of hand; that weather and water built soil as fast or faster than it was carried away. Wilderness, then, assumes unexpected importance as a laboratory for the study of land-health.

and what they learn can help us learn to farm more productively.

While even the largest wilderness areas become partially deranged, it required only a few wild acres for J. E. Weaver to discover why the prairie flora is more drouth-resistant than the agronomic flora which has supplanted it. Weaver found that the prairie species practice ‘team work’ underground by distributing their root-systems to cover all levels, whereas the species comprising the agronomic rotation overdraw one level and neglect another, thus building up cumulative deficits. An important agronomic principle emerged from Weaver’s researches.

It would be hard to find a better rational for preserving the few wildernesses that are left than this essay, especially when read in the context of Leopold’s whole book.

Avocets in Burns

Although seeing the Sage Grouse Lek made my trip, my last day was capped off when I found several Avocets just south of Burns, a place I’ve never looked before. As I mentioned earlier the refuge itself is in the throes of a drought, but it had rained hard the week before I was there and the farms fields, probably because they been watered regularly during the drought, were all flooded, as well as the fields directly next to the sewage plant.

And, although I didn’t see the number of Avocets I’ve seen on the refuge in previous years, I got a lot closer to them than I’ve previously been able to do on the refuge. Even the sun seemed to be cooperating as I made my way home.

I usually see Avocets in shallower water than this, so I wonder if the water didn’t give them a greater sense of safety because instead of skittering away from me, they proceeded to swim directly toward me.

Avocet

and then turn just in time to offer a good profile shot.

Avocet

Although they seemed to become a little more cautious as they approached, they continued to wade toward me,

 Avocet

making it relatively easy to get some of the best shots I’ve ever gotten of them before.

 Avocet

In the end I had so many good shots that I had a hard time deciding which ones to put up, a problem I’d be more than happy to have all the time.

Malheur’s Sage Grouse

My long-held belief that Malheur Wildlife Refuge is Sacred Ground was reinforced by my early morning trip to a Sage Grouse Lek on my last day there. Ever since I began telling birders that Malheur is one of my favorite birding destinations, they have asked me if I’ve visited the Lek. I haven’t largely because getting up at 3:30 AM is pretty brutal for me and because I was never convinced that I would be able to find the Lek in the dark in the middle of the desert. In fact, I didn’t think I would visit this year either until I met Mark in the campground and he asked me if I was going there. Mark had been birding for forty years and knew where the Lek was. I told him my reservations and he told me he knew where it was but he wasn’t sure his Prius could handle the back roads. So we agreed to go in my truck at 4:00 AM.

Even with his experience we ended up slightly off, probably because there had been a major fire two years ago and the Sage Grouse had relocated slightly. Luckily, a ranger drove a ways past where we were waiting, spotted the grouse and backed up and directed us to where they were.

There was something “magical” about watching male Sage Grouse emerge from the darkness one by one and begin to perform their dance. All I could see with the naked eye was the white ruff around the neck at first. As it turns out, the magic of RAW shots and Photoshop makes the bird actually appear clearer than it did in the early morning light.

 Sage Grouse

Since I had to shoot at an ISO of 3200, I had to use a plug-in to remove some of the noise from the shot. I could have adjusted the colors, too, but I wanted the shots to remain as true to life as possible.

Luckily, the grouse actually moved closer as the light increased, making better and better shots possible as the morning went on, though none of mine approach the quality of some I’ve found on the internet. They are, to say the least, fascinating birds with their huge fan-shaped tails, their white ruffs, and their bright yellow air sacks they inflate to attract females.

 Sage Grouse

There were five or six males displaying on the Lek

 Sage Grouse

and several female Sage Grouse ran across the Lek throughout the performance.

 female Sage Grouse

Time passed rapidly sitting there listening to their odd, thunking calls and before long it was sunrise, which made photographs much easer to get, though it still wasn’t ideal conditions because the sun was behind them. What it did do, though, was give a wonderful glow to those brilliant tail feathers

 Sage Grouse

and those large, yellow air sacks that produced those haunting calls.

 Sage Grouse

I’m already looking forward to next year’s trip to the Lek, or, perhaps, to other Leks. Until then, I’ll have to be satisfied with this shot.

 Sage Grouse

If you ever get the chance to visit a Lek, don’t wait like I did; it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.