Now that the
Peru Birding Rally Challenge is behind me, I’m busy formatting the bird lists
to upload to eBird, but I’m also looking ahead to my upcoming tours and also
slowly getting caught up in editing and labeling photos from past trips (and
that backlog dates back a few years for some trips).
In the
Looking Ahead category, my back-to-back Oregon in Late Summer and Birds and Shakespeare tours could use some more sign-ups. I know huge number of people
who read my blog can only dream of going on a birding tour (and I’m sure there
are a few who wouldn’t dream of going
on one), but I thought maybe explaining what the tours are like and spreading
the word might help.
The mating
Hydaspe Fritillaries in the photo above were taken on my Birds &
Shakespeare tour in southwestern Oregon a few years ago. I’ve done this tour
four times previously, and all have been hugely successful and highly rated by
the participants. It’s a successful mix of nature and culture in a part of the
world that is surprisingly both wild and civilized. This year’s tour is
September 5-11.
The rugged
mountains here have a complex geologic history, and while we don’t go into any
details (that’s a different tour), we do get to enjoy the scenery. This is from
near the summit of Mount Ashland.
We visit a
variety of forest types on our morning birding outings, including open pine
forests, such as the one that contains this tallest Western White Pine in the
world.
And below
Mount Ashland are some alpine-like meadows and stands of true fir and
Douglas-fir.
We start
every day with a picnic breakfast in a gorgeous surrounding.
And then we
see what birds are around, not necessarily looking for target species, but
certainly keeping our search images sharp for regional specialties such as
White-headed Woodpecker.
Mountain
Quail occurs in coveys this time of year, so bumping into a group is more
likely than in the spring when they are nesting.
If we have a
chance to bird the lower elevation valleys, Wrentit would be a possible
sighting. This amazing bird seems more like a tropical species in so many ways
– males and females sing (the songs are slightly different), they form
permanent pair bonds, they have small territories, and they disperse only very
short distances from their natal area to form new territories. I could go on
about Wrentits, but that could be the subject of another blog.
On four of
the days after our morning of birding, we go to a play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival – either an
afternoon or an evening performance. The link is to their snazzy website. In
the past we’ve seen as many as seven plays during the tour, but we’ve shortened
the tour and limited it to two Shakespeare plays and two others. But what I feel I need to stress the most is that OSF is not a festival – it’s a full-time,
world-class, professional acting company. I’d heard about it since I
was in grade school, but somehow I never did take a class field trip there even
though it is only 4 ½ hours south of where I grew up. And of course as a high
school student I couldn’t stand Shakespeare, even though we had the relatively
easy Taming of the Shrew as our
assignment. So for the longest time I imagined it was a summer stage set up in
a park with a troupe of locals who practiced for a few weeks to perform one month
each year. It turns out this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The acting
company has a huge staff and dozens of full-time, union actors who live in
Ashland. They boast impressive backgrounds of training and experience from
Broadway and Hollywood, stage, movie, and TV careers. There are three theaters
in the complex, and at any one time during the 8 ½ moth season there are as
many as nine different plays being performed during each week. Only four of
them are Shakespeare, and the rest are an impressive variety of standard works,
some more modern, some even older than Shakespeare, and some even commissioned
for OSF.
When booking
plays I try to choose two Shakespeare plays that complement each other – one
comedy and one more serious, but this year the schedule worked out to have two
lighter comedies: The Two Gentlemen of
Verona and The Comedy of Errors.
The first of
the two non-Shakespeare plays we’ll be seeing is The Great Society By Robert Schenkkan. It’s a continuation of the
fabulous play we saw two years ago about Lyndon Johnson’s presidency; I’m
really looking forward to it. The other is Water by the Spoonful by Alegría
Hudes, also a serious play but one that looks to be interesting. It was hard to
pick and choose from the nine plays offered during the time of the tour, and
I’d love to see all the rest. Many play fanatics come here every year, stay for
four or five days, seeing two each day.
Monday is a
day with no plays, so we take off that day for the Klamath Basin and its
wildlife refuges, huge mountain meadows, and fabulous scenery. We spend the
night near Fort Klamath in a quaint, friendly motel and I prepare a grilled
dinner for the group. On passing though the Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge,
we’ll stop at a spot where we might spot a roosting Barn Owl such as this one.
Then a real
highlight for some is the next day as we drive back to Ashland via the stunning
Crater Lake – mostly for the scenery, but also with some nice birds such as
Gray Jay and Clark’s Nutcracker. Last year these two Red-tailed Hawks soared
below us at one of the many overlooks on the Rim Drive.
On the way back to
Ashland we stopped by a reservoir and saw a couple Great-tailed Grackles, a
rare bird in Oregon.
We then have
two more nights in Ashland, and if we haven’t spotted a Great Gray Owl in our
wandering the forests during the day, there’s the option of an evening outing.
Last year, all participants were bushed and happy with what we all saw. So was
I, but I was still curious how easy they might be at night, since I had never
tried it then. I made the drive on my own, about 35 minutes from our hotel, and
instantly found this begging juvenile Great Gray Owl. While I watched it for a
few minutes, an adult flew in, fed it, and flew off. It did make for a long
day, so I do hope we’ll find one during the day this year.
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