~ By Vicky ~
The lady and I had some difficult decisions to make: Go to Eastern Oregon for songbird migration, or to Klamath for more waterfowl adventures? And which months would prove to be the more lucrative: April or May? There's a lot happening in these two months, what with passerines and songbirds coming through and resident waterfowl beginning to nest and ready themselves to breed. Specifically, we have been wanting to see the Western Grebe perform their ritual mating dance across water. We missed them last year due to the death of our beloved Laila and needing to cancel our trip to Klamath Falls. We have also been wanting to make a return trip to Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the Oregon High Desert.
Klamath had the advantage of being closer and more familiar to us since we have been there several times. So originally for the month of April, we prioritized seeing the Western Grebes. Finding specific information about breeding times was challenging. Most websites use vague terms such as "springtime" or "mid-to late-spring". We had heard from an expert birder that March was the time to see the grebes mating dance. But then other sources would say April or even May. Finally, I stumbled upon a site written about Klamath Falls that noted May to be the time for "racing grebes" and that description nailed it for me. So after all that, we decided to wait until May to go to Klamath National Wildlife Refuge for racing grebes, and in April to go to Malheur to see passerines. Simple!
With that decision set and inscribed into our holy Google Calendar, I started to read into what to expect from Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Songbirds and warblers a-plenty. But what's this...the gaudy mating display of the Greater Sage Grouse males! Malheur had its chase theme - the Greater Sage Grouse! I poured over webpages to see where they could be found. Then I read about their mating grounds called leks. Leks are large open areas surrounded by sagebrush where GSG risk gathering in big numbers. The males strut and defend a small territory on the lek. Breeding males are fantastical creatures with two breast-balloon sacs that inflate and bounce about like the best of boobies. The strut is paired with the males' bubbly calls that attract females.
This sounded great, but further reading revealed that Greater Sage Grouse were becoming rarer and rarer. They are now scarce or absent in areas where they were once abundant because of the loss of vast tracts of sagebrush lands to agricultural development as well as hunting. These grouse are not adaptable and need the very specific living conditions of vast acres of sagebrush to survive. On top of that, their broods have a low survival rate. So, the Greater Sage Grouse population has dwindled fast and even has been extirpated from several U.S states. Today, the GSG have been forced to survive mostly in the furthest corners of Southeastern Oregon; they remain barely viable in 11 of the 16 original U.S states they used to inhabit.
Part of the appeal of any great bird chase is the exploration of new areas. I thought it unlikely that we would find leks on the Malheur NWR auto tour, and that led me to explore the area using Google Maps and the E-bird species finder. I figured our best chances to find GSG would be on the lesser traveled roads leading into sagebrush land east of Malheur. Fortunately, much of the area around Malheur was BLM land, which means we would not be trespassing. We would, however, be traveling on gravel and dirt roads where likely we would not encounter other vehicles. With our atlas, Google Maps, and E-bird, I mapped out a general route for us to explore. With only two full days in the area, and only one day dedicated to finding the GSG, I made my best educated estimate of where we should go. The expected distance would be about 30 miles out and back. I decided to forego side-road exploration for safety since I would not able to do any of the technical off-road driving (a lingering limitation from the broken ankle) that S. is uncomfortable with and ordinarily leaves to me.
We woke well before sunrise in order to be out there just before dawn. At least that was the plan. All the best-laid plans cannot beat S's OCD fear of leaving an appliance on. So we were out but then had to turn around to be sure that the coffee maker in our rental cabin was shut off. I suppose being behind schedule is better that returning to find we've carelessly burned downed our rental and all the headache and restitution money that kind of disaster entails.
The day started off clear and cool with temperature in the 20's, but was expected to be warm up to the 60's. We like the desert for this reason: the temperature can be in the teens or twenties, but as a dry cold, it doesn't feel anywhere as bone-chilling as it does with damp cold in the 30's or 40's. We had plenty of water, food and snacks, and a full tank of gas. I was hopeful we would spot greater sage grouse but realistic that our chances weren't great: GSG mating happens anywhere from March to April; we weren't exactly sure what a lek would look like or if we'd find one; we have never seen GSG and even though they are about the size of wild turkeys, in all this open land they'd probably be hard to spot; if they were mating, the window of time was short - they like to do it early dawn. Then there's the matter of their scarcity. With that reality check in mind, our priority was safety, and of course making new species sightings.
Now that S. and I are more into bird watching, we have made it a point while on vacation to have some really early days to go birding. I really love this because the early hours are usually the most pleasant in terms of waking light warming the scenery, the sense of solitude, and that feeling of rousing alongside the wilderness. S. drove slowly for fear of critters crossing the road and so we got to soak in the pleasant drive along the Frenchglen highway. Once we hit the off-roading area, we stopped to take a look. It was a good solid gravel road that went straight up into the rise before us, then was lost to sight in the distant hills and plateaus. Whether we saw GSG or not, we knew this was going to be a memorable trip.
There were several places that to our eager imaginations could be leks, but we couldn't know for sure since they were barren of grouse. We did see three new species: Sage Thrasher, Sagebrush Sparrow, and Vesper Sparrow. We also got more familiar with spotting the Ferruginous Hawk. In the end, we did not see any Greater Sage Grouse but we did get the best treat of our birding lives so far - dozens of Horned Larks!
We reached an elevation where the sagebrush thinned out to gently rolling dried grass meadows. We had turned off the gravel road onto a dirt track when we spotted the first Horned Lark. Now S. and I had spent quite a long time looking for this cute devil-horned guy prior to our first sighting of him in Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge. So we were shocked to see them here. At first we just saw one or two, but then in the first ten minutes our count jumped to 10, then 15, then 20, and by the end of an hour of driving and looking, we had reached 50! That was just what we could see from the road and within a three-mile drive. Their abundance lead me to confidently say that there must have been hundreds of them out there in that area. We love Horned Larks! They are so unbelievably cute with their black feathered devil horns and bandit mask.
They are also rare to spot in most places that have them. So this truly was a spectacle, one that more that makes up for not seeing a single grouse. This landscape was the Horned Larks' true home environment, unlike the man-made fields we have seen them in. Here in the desert highlands flying boldly about in numbers, they seemed so much more wild and vivacious compared to their plump hayfield cousins who mostly walk and forage low to the ground afeared of being seen.
We could have gone on for hours on that gravel road, but we knew the time to turn back was now. We didn't see the Greater Sage Grouse this trip, but we got more familiar with the area and even explored Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge which has given us many reasons to return - pristine camping grounds with hot springs, riparian trails and aspen groves, and another chance to chase the Greater Sage Grouse in the Oregon high desert.
Glad you enjoy sharing in our adventures!
Wow, I didn't know the sage grouse was so rare. I've never seen a horned lark I bet it was cool to be around hundreds of them! You ladies sound like you know how to have a good time! Keep up the good posts, I love hearing about your adventures.