Meandering on the Way — September 6-12, 2023

Wednesday, September 6

We went for a hike to Drift Creek Falls, which is in the Coast Range near the town of Lincoln City. We hadn’t been there in ten years or so and we found some “improvements” to the trail and to the trailhead parking area. The were a lot of people on the trail and how could you blame them? It was the perfect day for hiking, partly cloudy with the temperature in the low seventies.

Friday, September 8

E went for another walk with her friend Asher, this time up to Cronemiller Lake near the OSU Arboretum. It was another fine early fall day, clear and calm.

Saturday, September 8

We got up early today, E well before 6:00 and M soon after. We’d signed up for a tour at a State Natural Area twenty miles away and we were supposed to get there before 8:00. By the time we finished our breakfast, decided what to wear, and packed up our water bottles and binoculars, it was just past 7:15. Off we went, gliding along in the Ioniq 5. We got to the parking area at 7:45 and found that we were among the last to arrive. Our tour mates were no sluggards, despite their combined ages running well into the four figure range.

After a general presentation by staff of the Luckiamute Watershed Council in the parking area, we walked a couple of hundred yards to our first stop, a bird banding operation in full swing. The banding team included Josée Rousseau, a post doc fellow at the Ornithology Lab at Cornell who got her PhD here in Corvallis. She was doing the examination and banding. Other team members included a data recorder, who made a record of Rousseau’s observations, and a group of five or six runners. The runners’ job was to set up the mist nets and then check them at regular intervals. When they found birds, they would extricate them from the net and put them into small cloth bags for transport to the banding station. At the station Rousseau measured each bird and looked for various clues that would allow her to determine the bird’s age. As she announced her findings, another team member entered them into a ledger.

Banding groups such as this one get the bands from the North American Bird Banding Laboratory of the U. S. Geological Survey. The NABBL keeps a database of band numbers that includes a history of all encounters with banded birds. People who run across banded birds (alive or not) can check that database to see where and when the bird was first banded. They are also asked to go to the NABBL website and enter the details of their own encounter.

After spending about 45 minutes at the banding station, we left the banding team to their work and started off on a loop tour of the restoration area. The North Luckiamute State Natural Area ( NLSNAT) includes a total of 615 acres at the confluence the Luckiamute and the Willamette rivers. The entire area is a natural flood plain, but of course some areas are lower than others. About 275 acres are so low that they are flooded almost every year. These sections have never been used for agriculture and remain in their natural state, with towering cottonwoods and a thick understory of smaller trees and shrubs. This kind of riverside forest is called a gallery forest and once grew on both sides of the Willamette along the entire length of the valley. Very little of this forest remains because in most places farmers were able to extend their fields right up to the edge of the river.

In addition to the 275 acres of habitat that was never cleared, various conservation initiatives have allowed for the purchase of 340 additional nearby acres. This land had been used for agriculture for over a hundred years. This agricultural use ended in 2012 and restoration began. The restoration work was done in five phases and our tour guides were able to show us the results. Our first stop was Phase 5, the most recent one, which consists of one 60 acre field that was planted with native species trees and shrubs in 2020. The plants there are now just one to three feet tall and since they were planted in rows the area still resembles a cultivated field. The older phases, however, show what such a ‘field’ can become. Cottonwood trees planted just ten years ago are already twenty feet tall and protrude from a dense ten foot high understory. They have already become a native species forest.

We were passing through one of these areas when M caught a glimpse of sudden movement just beside the trail. When he stopped to take a good look, whatever it was seemed to have disappeared. But he finally made it out. It was a very well camouflaged frog:

When we pointed it out to the others, one of our guides identified it as a Northern Red-legged Frog (Rana aurora) and told us that it was listed as a “Species of Concern” by federal and state agencies due to habitat loss and displacement by invasive American bullfrogs. It was nice to see evidence that this newly created habitat was doing its job.

We got home from our tour at around noon, in time to rest up for our next event of the day, a birthday party for our friend J, who recently got herself some shiny new shoulder hardware. She’s been working hard on PT and we wish her well as she faces the challenges of regaining her full range of motion. At the party, we all sat in her nicely shaded back yard enjoying good food and great conversation.

Monday, September 11

Errands and appointments today, plus grocery shopping. E had Zoom yoga. M took the Ioniq 5 for its first wash.

Tuesday, September 12

It was time for a meeting of E’s THEPAJ group, this one hosted by P at her cottage on the coast. The other members usually carpool to and from, and it was E’s turn to drive, which was fine with her since she’d get to show off her new car. The car lived up to expectations, making it there and back with 132 miles of charge still left.