Let's talk about BIRD WATCHING!

We're taking a break from the Central Oregon A-to-Zs to discuss a topic near and dear to our hearts: BIRD WATCHING. Our Naturalist Guides are all pretty nerdy about our local birds, and many of them enjoy venturing out into the wilderness to observe them in their natural habitat. 

A Yellow-Headed Blackbird. Photo by Chaney Swiney. 

BIRD TALES

Wanderlust Tours founder, Dave Nissen recalls his favorite bird sighting, on the Deschutes River right in the heart of Bend. Right in the middle of the town, he witnessed a Bald Eagle careening down from the sky to strike at a mallard (and, unfortunately for the mallard, it was eaten!). 

He recounts another Bald Eagle sighting: 

"The eagle was prowling the waters up on one of the Cascade Lakes, where there were about 10,000 coots on the water. After seven overhead passes, the eagle had picked its prey, swooped down, and nabbed one coot while the other 10,000 took off in flight. The sound of flapping wings and feet running on the water surface was incredible."

Wanderlust Tours Founder Dave Nissen

"One of my favorite summer Cascade Lakes activities is watching the Bald Eagles and Osprey fight over fish.  The Osprey does the work of poaching a trout out of the lake, then the Bald Eagle comes swooping in to spar with the Osprey. The Osprey, in order to protect itself in-flight, releases the fish, then goes talons-up to battle with the Eagle. Then, the Eagle dives away from the bird in order to catch the fish mid-air and retreats with its prize!"

BIRD SOUNDS

Naturalist Guide Danny Walden has been birding for years, has some tips for beginners: 

"It's a common misconception that, to identify a bird, you have to see its colors. That's not true! Bird watching (or "birding") is only partially done by sight, and even then there are a myriad of ways - size, shape, behavior, habitat, range - that positive IDs are made.

I don't even see all of the birds I identify, using their unique songs and calls instead. At the very least, sound tells me where a bird is so I can find it and identify it by sight.

Naturalist Guide Danny Walden

"My favorite sounds are mechanical, that is, not produced with the bird's vocal cords: male snipes, for example, woo females with an eerie winnowing brought to life by their outer flight feathers. Nighthawks occasionally enter a dive and create a boom like a truck roaring by, a sound that at first seems to be the work of an elk or a moose, not of this diminutive flier. Hearing this bird, especially over busy urban areas, always brings a smile to my face."

TIPS ON BIRDING

Danny suggests that you don't try to "get" anywhere. He suggests moving slowly and quietly with alertness, keeping eyes up and ears open.

"If you quietly stand in any natural habitat and take it all in: you'll be surprised at how much is out there! If you want to get a little more advanced: wake up early. Go with someone more knowledgeable than yourself or join a local birding group like The Audubon Society. Learn the sounds; websites like xeno-canto are a great resource. Get good at using your binoculars. Enjoy migrations in spring and fall."

A Clark's Nutracker. Photo by Chaney Swiney.

Birding is an easy way to engage with your natural surroundings, and anyone can do it. Just bring along your passion for birds, and (ideally) some binoculars! If you're looking for a new pair and need some advice, When Outdoors has an excellent reference guide on their blog here-- and be sure to check out their other blog posts for more advice on adventure gear!

The most importantly advice? Stick with it! The payoff is real. 

"Learning about birds has enriched my life immensely. Hearing and seeing what few others do makes me feel like I have superpowers. Knowing the bird life of an area helps me connect with that place deeply!" -- Danny
 

BIRDING RESOURCES

Naturalist Guide Chaney Swiney has some pretty specific favorites when it comes to birds. Chaney's favorites, according to habitat are:

• Sagebrush flats: American Kestrel
• Ponderosa woodlands: Olive-Sided Flycatcher
• Cascade Lakes (two-way tie): Pied-billed Grebe and Sandhill Crane

And the unlikeliest bird he's seen in Central Oregon? The Emperor goose, which is native to coastal Alaska and Siberia, but occasionally strays down the Pacific Coast.

Naturalist Guide Chaney Swiney

To keep track of their birding notes, both Danny and Chaney use eBird.org to log their daily sightings, and to see what others have written. 

Chaney, on eBird: eBird is an app (and website) that allows people to create checklists of birds they've seen and thus participate in "the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science project." I use eBird on almost every paddling trip I lead, whether on the Deschutes River, or up at one of the Cascade Lakes, contributing to this massive and growing database of bird populations and distribution. Plus, it helps me keep track of species I've seen, automatically generating a life list along with records for each state, county, and hotspot where I've made a list. However, eBird doesn't serve as a field guide, so if you need help on bird identification, download eBird's sibling app, Merlin. Learn the species around you, and once you recognize them by sight or sound, get out there and make your own checklists!

The A-to-Zs of Central Oregon: L is for LOGGING

The history of logging in Central Oregon might as well be a history of Bend! Heard of the Old Mill District? As the name implies, it was originally a sawmill, one of the biggest in the world at the time. How about Drake Park? Today it’s one of our favorite green spaces along the Deschutes River. It’s named after Alexander Drake, the entrepreneur behind the first lumber mill in Bend. 

Image courtesy of TrainWeb.org. 

The Early Days

Okay, we weren’t completely truthful above; a history of Bend’s really early days would be mostly about ranching. But after the ranchers were established, there were a few forward-thinkers who secretly realized that the vast virgin forests of central Oregon held riches within. With the supply of jack pines and Douglas-firs from the Great Lakes and the western Cascades regions almost completely depleted, there was a need for new reservoirs of lumber. The eastern Cascades would be one of them.

These pioneers also realized that, without railroads extending into central Oregon, they wouldn’t be able to do anything with the lumber after they cut it! So, instead of developing mills and hiring workers, they waited patiently and acquired hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland. Much of that land, acquired through a legal loophole, would later be returned to the federal government and incorporated into our beloved backyard: the Deschutes National Forest.

Alexander Drake. Image courtesy of the Deschutes Historical Museum

The turn of the century saw Alexander Drake, a middle-aged businessman, pick up and move his family from Minnesota to Oregon – in a covered wagon, no less. Must have been a pretty severe midlife crisis! Upon arrival, he immediately formed the Pilot Butte Development Company, which built irrigation canals (some of which are still in use), buildings, and – you guessed it – Bend’s first commercial sawmill. The Columbia Southern railroad ended over 80 miles away, so the Pilot Butte Company still dealt with the challenge of exporting the logs they cut. With all this development, the city of Bend was incorporated in 1904.

Image courtesy of OSU Special Collections

The Boom Years

In 1916, just a few years after the railroad finally reached the tiny town of Bend, two corporations from Minnesota followed in Drake’s footsteps and opened up two of the largest mills in the world – one just months after the other – on the banks of the Deschutes River just south of downtown. Bend’s population ballooned from 500 to 5,000 in just a few years, a growth attributable almost entirely to lumber.

Image courtesy of OSU Special Collections

Logging eventually came to Prineville, Chemult, Sisters, and other towns in central Oregon, but the largest production by far came from the areas around Bend. That’s where the mills were! Smaller mills supplemented the two behemoths because the forests around Bend were perfect for logging. Our native ponderosa pines were straight, tall, and so open that you could drive a Model T through the forest without a road. Still, you can’t carry lumber on a Model T. Rail was the way to go. By 1930, logging railroads ribboned in every direction from Bend. Lumberjacks, leaving clear-cuts in their wake, moved to where the trees were, and their houses, built to be portable by rail with lightweight materials and foldable porches, went with them. The Deschutes River, which the mills used as a retaining pond, became choked with logs.

Such rabid production could not last. By the late 1940s, the environmental realities of so much clearcutting began to catch up with the mills. At peak production, the 500 million board feet sawed per year by the big mills in Bend had been over six times what the forests in the area could sustainably support. The Shevlin-Hixon mill sawed its last log in 1950.

The old Brooks-Scanlon saw mill. Image courtesy of OSU Special Collections. 

Transition

Brooks-Scanlon, Bend’s other mill, absorbed Shevlin-Hixon’s operations and continued cutting away until the early 1990s. By then, timber harvests had declined significantly, and almost all the other mills had closed as well. Only one mill currently remains in central Oregon, about 50 miles south of Bend in the former company town of Gilchrist. And, though there are no mills here anymore to process the timber, there is still logging in the Bend area as well. The legacy of our industrious beginnings lives on.

The Old Mill today. 

It is because of logging that…

• Many Forest Service roads, having been built on the old logging railroad grades, exist where they are.

• Scandinavian millworkers first came to the Cascades, bringing sports like alpine skiing with them.
• The iconic smokestacks of Bend’s Old Mill District exist; they are the original smokestacks from the powerhouse of Brooks-Scanlon’s Mill B. Today they adorn and give historical context to REI.

So in the Central Oregon A-to-Zs, how could L not be for logging! We could go on and on about the operations of the mills in Bend, or the groundbreaking legislation that opened the American West, or how logging and fire interrelate on our National Forest land.

Come on a tour with us and learn more!

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Guest post by Naturalist Guide Danny! Check out his adventure blog here. 

Sources:

http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/bslco.html

https://oregonhistoryproject.org/

The A-to-Zs of Central Oregon: K is for KAYAKING

Kayaking is one of our FAVORITE activities in Central Oregon, and we try to get out on the Deschutes River or the Cascade Lakes as often as we can. You can join, too! We'll discuss a bit of the history and nuances of kayaking in this post. 

KAYAKING: SINCE THE STONE AGE

We owe kayaks to the Inuit in the northern Arctic. The word kayak translates to "hunter's boat," and that's exactly what they used these small, covered vessels for-- hunting and fishing to provide food for their families. The design of the kayak allowed Inuit hunters to sneak up behind their prey without alerting them. 

The Inuit people used many materials to construct their kayaks, but most often the frames were constructed from whalebone, with animal (usually seal) skin to create the body. After gaining popularity among Europeans in the mid-1800s, the design and materials of kayaks began to change in order to incorporate recreational desires. In the 1950s, the first fiberglass kayaks were developed, followed by polyethylene plastic kayaks in the 1980s. 

The sport is now considered one of the most popular water sports in the world, with 10 different white water kayaking events in the Olympics! 

The Basics: What's the Difference
Between Canoeing and Kayaking? 

Apart from the obvious difference in appearance, canoeing and kayaking require different techniques, and gear. Canoes traditionally have an open-top construction, and kayaks are typically closed on top (though you'll notice Wanderlust Tours actually uses an open-top kayak-- we'll get into that later on). 

When canoeing, the paddlers use a single-bladed paddle, paddling on opposite sides of each other for balance. Conversely, kayaking utilizes a double-bladed paddle, and riders paddle on both sides to move forward and backward. Paddlers in canoes generally sit on a wooden bar that crosses the boat, or they kneel on the bottom of the canoe. Kayakers are almost always seated, with their legs stretched out in front of them. Canoes are generally used to carry more people and supplies than kayaks. For this reason, kayaks are often easier to maneuver. 

This sport is so dynamic; there are lots of varieties of kayak, and kayaking! Here are a few: 

Surf Kayaking

Surf kayaking is exactly what you think it is: surfing waves on a specially-designed kayak! This has become a popular sport in areas where traditional board surfing occurs. These kayaks are often designed with a flat planing bottom, and a sharp, surfboard-like nose to help crest waves.

Sea Kayaking

Sea (or "Touring") Kayaks are, as their name suggests, seaworthy, and are generally designed for longer journeys out on the water. These kayaks are less maneuverable than other kayaks, favoring a more elongated shape to increase cruising speed and o allow for more cargo. These kayaks can be used for marine journeys around the world, and can usually accommodate up to three paddlers. 

Whitewater Kayaking

This is perhaps the most common type of kayaking that comes to mind. There are several genres of whitewater kayaking, but the basic idea is to tackle the more difficult rivers, streams, and creeks where rapids (creating "white water") are present. There are several whitewater kayak designs, depending on the desired

Photo courtesy of Mega Kayaks

Sit-On-Top Kayaking

This is the type of kayak we use on our Kayaking Tours! These are great kayaks for general recreation, and work great for specialized activities like fishing, diving, swimming, and even surfing! These are easily used by all skill-levels, as they are easy to paddle and very stable. The shape of these kayaks is similar to other traditional kayak shapes, but rather than sitting within the kayak, you're seated in a molded depression on top of the kayak. For this reason, these kayaks are generally more comfortable, accommodating nearly all body sizes and types.