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We picked our new location of Klamath Falls somewhat randomly, but there were several factors we considered. First, it was just about the right distance for us to travel—we like to keep our mileage around 200 miles if we can. Second, Lance had read that there was pretty good birding in the area, and finally, it was close enough to Crater Lake National Park that we could make a day trip out of it. Since we’d never even been to this part of Oregon before, we weren’t sure just what to expect from the small town of roughly 20,000 people.

Imagine our excitement when we realized that Klamath Falls, located near the center of the Klamath Basin, is a bird and wildlife watcher’s paradise. The area is a major stopover point for birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway during both their Spring and Fall migrations. At one time the Basin contained over 200,000 acres of wetlands, ponds, and marshes which offered food and shelter to wildlife. In 1906 the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation drastically altered the landscape—draining the wetlands, damming the rivers, and constructing extensive canal networks—all in an effort to create a fertile agricultural zone. The wetlands that the migrating hordes depended on were almost obliterated.

Thankfully, Theodore Roosevelt was President at the time, and as an avid outdoorsman he understood the important role habitat plays in sustaining wildlife populations. In 1908 he established our country’s first refuge for waterfowl, the Lower Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge. It probably helped that TR had visited the Basin and purportedly claimed Upper Klamath Lake to be one of his favorite fishing spots. Now the Basin is home to six National Wildlife Refuges: Upper Klamath, Klamath Marsh, Bear Valley, Clear Lake, Tule Lake, and the Lower Klamath Lake. The first three are located in Oregon, while the last three are just south of the border in California. Along with all the refuges there are numerous parks, acres of U.S. Forest Service land, and nearby Crater Lake National Park. We would have plenty of things to do!

First stop, that great storehouse of local knowledge, the Visitor Center. While it is true that many of the tourist brochures and magazines are full of glossy ads for things we could care less about, like shopping or golf for example, by carefully sifting through them I can usually find a few interesting things. Our best find was the well-crafted Klamath Basin Birding Trail brochure which listed 47 sites throughout the Basin where various bird species could be observed. Though it was too late for us to witness the peak of Spring migration, when waterfowl numbering over a million inundate the area (far outnumbering the local human population), our timing did allow us to witness various intriguing mating rituals, the beginning of nesting, and the frenetic pace of early parenthood.

The hardest part with having so many choices was deciding where to start. We opted to do a loop around Upper Klamath Lake, Oregon’s largest body of fresh water. A relatively shallow lake with numerous inlets and coves, the lake is about twenty miles long and eight miles wide. The lake is popular not only with wildlife, but anglers, sailboaters, and water sports fans. Since it was early in the season we ran into relatively few people out there. It is beautiful country! The lake lies at roughly 4,000’, so the riparian areas were lined with willow, aspen, and cottonwoods that had just leafed out. The low hills were covered with heat and drought tolerant plants like sagebrush, bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata), rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus sp.), grasses, and juniper. Higher up, the slopes of the neighboring mountains were forested with ponderosa and lodgepole pines, Douglas fir, spruce, and hemlock interspersed with open meadows. Quite a wide variety of habitats.

We took our time meandering around the lake, stopping at lookouts, bird hotspots, and historical markers. With our insatiable curiosity it was a good thing the sun didn’t go down until well after 8PM! At our first stop we were rewarded with a fantastic showing of grebe “dancing.” It was something you would see in a nature documentary, and to see it in person was amazing. Upper Klamath Lake is home to hundreds of Western and Clark’s Grebes which were in the process of pairing off. Part of their mating routine includes synchronized head-bobbing and water-flicking which seems to go on endlessly. Suddenly, at some hidden signal that only they know, the pair stretches their long necks out to their full extent, and they both surge out of the water. With loud splashes the pair proceeds to run along the top of the water at full speed. After a few moments, one of the grebes dives underwater and the dance is over. How this helps a grebe select a mate, or what this dance proves about the participants’ abilities, we do not understand. We only know that it is visually stunning and we feel lucky to have witnessed it.

As the temperature climbed the grebes quieted down, resting their heads on their backs as they settled in for a floating nap. We continued on our way, excited about the other possibilities that lay before us. Our next stop was a historical marker that explained the origin of the name of Denny Creek that feeds into the lake. In 1846 John C. Frémont’s expedition, led by guide Kit Carson, was exploring the area. On May 5th, the group “skirmished” with a local Modoc tribe, resulting in the death of three of Frémont’s men, one of whom was named Denny. The plaque’s description ended there but the rest of the story is that a few days later, in retaliation, Frémont’s party descended upon a Klamath village and massacred all the inhabitants, including women and children.

That the Klamath people were not the same as those who attacked Frémont’s expedition didn’t seem to matter. The Modoc and Klamath people are related tribes but they rarely mingled, as the Modoc lived in the south around Tule and Lower Klamath Lakes, while the Klamath lived in the north near Upper Klamath Lake. The tribes also had different ways of dealing with newcomers: the Klamath engaged in mostly peaceful trade with white traders, while the Modoc were aggressive towards them. The Modocs’ open hostility was in response to the extensive damage their land sustained as a result of the thousands of settlers who traveled through on the Oregon Trail. The “white men” were drawn in droves to Oregon by the promise of free land. Unfortunately, much of the “free” land was already occupied by native people, which led to numerous conflicts, especially in the Klamath Basin. We’ll get more into that part of the story next time.

Our next stop was a side trip down a long, graveled road which rewarded us with the first Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) sighting of our trip. It was a bit hard to identify since it was a juvenile. The immature of both Golden and Bald Eagles look deceptively alike, especially if you only see them from a distance. Of course, adult Bald Eagles are immediately recognizable with their bright white heads and immense size, but they don’t get the white head until their fourth or fifth year of life—if they live that long.

The Bald Eagle has served as our national symbol since 1782 when close to half a million soared across North American skies. Our symbol almost disappeared in the 1970s when just over 400 nesting pairs were counted. There were several culprits including human encroachment on and destruction of habitat, but the most damaging was extensive use of the pesticide DDT. In 1972 the U.S. banned the use of DDT with Canada following suit in 1989. The once endangered species has made an admirable recovery with well over 100,000 individuals counted recently in North America. In 2007 the Bald Eagle was delisted, one of few species to make it off the Endangered and Threatened Species roster.

Currently the main hazards facing large raptors in the U.S. are power lines and lead poisoning. I am not using “lead poisoning” euphemistically, although some birds are illegally shot every year. Instead I am referring to when eagles absorb lead as a result of devouring waterfowl, one of their primary food sources in the winter. The waterfowl ingest the lead as they dabble underwater looking for food and grit for their gizzards. Lead shot is no longer allowed for hunting waterfowl, but there is still plenty of lead shot out there, so it will continue to be a problem.

The Klamath Basin is an important roosting area for Bald Eagles with close to 1,000 nesting pairs. The Bear Valley National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1978 to protect a section of old-growth forest with a large concentration of Bald Eagle nests. Though closed to the public, we read that during the winter you can park nearby, early in the morning, and watch the majestic birds fly out to begin their day of hunting and scavenging. That would be quite a sight to see! I would just like to see one of their nests; Bald Eagles build the largest nests in North America, measuring up to eight feet across and weighing over 3,000 pounds. No wonder they need old-growth forest, where else would you find a tree that can support that kind of structure?

The day was sunny, hot, and cloudless, which afforded us great views of the surrounding mountains. Looming ever closer in the west was the snow-capped, pyramidal Mount McLoughlin, a stratovolcano named after an official with the Hudson’s Bay Company, who later earned the title “Father of Oregon,” John McLoughlin. North of us was the jagged rim of the Mount Mazama caldera where Crater Lake resides. We were excited about our plans to visit there the next day.

As we rounded the north end of the lake we stopped to watch a coyote who was intently watching a juvenile sandhill crane who was intently feeding. At the sound of our car, the coyote hastily retreated to the far edge of the field. Coyotes are still considered to be threats to livestock and are hunted aggressively in the west. The engine noise also caused the sandhill to look up. Tilting its head, the crane pondered the new sound briefly before resuming its search for food. Clearly the coyote had an easy mark there. Continuing on we wondered if the sandhill would survive the night.

It was late in the afternoon when we were thwarted by snow on one of our side trips. We had marveled at small patches of it here and there in the shade throughout the day, but as we climbed in elevation the snow increased until the road was impassable. Our car is equipped with four-wheel drive, but we didn’t want to test it. After all we were in the middle of nowhere, no one knew where we were, we were out of cell phone range, and we didn’t have any means of extracting ourselves should we did get stuck. We would have been up a snowy mountain without a shovel, if you know what I mean. The snow in the road was actually a good thing since it prompted us to turn off the car, get out, and play. During our good-natured snowball fight (which Lance won, of course) we heard a distinctive, low, booming sound. Though we never saw them we knew we were listening to the lekking of at least two male Blue Grouse, calling out for a mate.

All the snow did not bode well for our adventure to Crater Lake National Park the next day, but we went anyway. The park keeps the south entrance road open year-round, but the Rim Road was only open to Discovery Point—about a mile from Rim Village. Since the park receives roughly 44’ of snow a year, the other roads don’t usually open until June and sometimes as late as July. Since it was so early in the season we missed out on the many hiking trails, the boat tours of the lake, and the opportunity swim in the lake. That would’ve been something to brag about, “I swam in the deepest lake in the U.S.!”

The lake and the surrounding rock formations owe their existence to the collapse of Mount Mazama, a large stratovolcano that erupted 7,700 years ago. Mount Mazama exploded with a force 42 times more powerful than the eruption of Mount St. Helens. It was catastrophic. The Klamath people have legends handed down through thousands of years that tell of the earth-shattering devastation from the eruption. Spent, Mount Mazama collapsed in on itself, cooled, and soon rainwater and snowmelt began to fill the caldera. It took several thousand years for the lake to reach its current depth of 1,949’. The lake level remains constant since water loss through evaporation and seepage roughly equals the amount gained through precipitation.

The first non-indigenous person to see the lake was John Wesley Hillman, a gold prospector, in 1853. Located in a remote section of Oregon, the lake remained relatively undisturbed for years. In 1885 when William Gladstone Steel gazed over the rim into the azure waters, he resolved to see Crater Lake protected as a national park. It took the eccentric, and by some accounts, difficult, man seventeen years to achieve his goal; in 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt added Crater Lake as our fifth national park.

We weren’t too disappointed with all the snow and road closures since we did get to gaze down at the gorgeous, deep blue lake. On the positive side, it certainly wasn’t crowded, and we were able to get close shots of a Clark’s Nutcracker. It was a perfect day to visit: the temperature was warm and it was sunny with a few high clouds. We took a short, enjoyable snow-hike although we were a bit envious of the ease with which snowshoers made their way across the snow. We made the most of the beautiful day, and good thing we did since it was one of last nice days for quite a while.

Wildlife sightings:

• Roosevelt Elk
• Mule Deer
• Coyote
• American Mink
• Yellow-bellied Marmot
• Sandhill Crane
• Willet
• Black-crowned Night-Heron
• Great Blue Heron
• Great Egret
• Killdeer
• Wilson’s Snipe
• American White Pelican
• Mallard
• Green Heron
• Black-necked Stilt
• American Avocet
• Eared Grebe
• Clark’s Grebe
• Western Grebe
• Double-crested Cormorant
• Common Merganser
• Wood Duck
• Ruddy Duck
• Ring-necked Duck
• Gadwall
• Cinnamon Teal
• Canvasback
• Bufflehead
• Lesser Scaup
• Greater White-fronted Goose
• Canada Goose
• Belted Kingfisher

• Red-tailed Hawk
• Bald Eagle
• Golden Eagle
• American Kestrel
• Osprey
• Northern Harrier
• Turkey Vulture
• Mountain Chickadee
• Yellow-headed Blackbird
• Red-winged Blackbird
• Downy Woodpecker
• Clark’s Nutcracker
• Stellar Jay
• Gray Jay
• Black-billed Magpie
• Bullock’s Oriole
• Black-headed Grosbeak
• Western Tanager
• Yellow Warbler
• Yellow-rumped Warbler
• Wilson’s Warbler
• Mountain Bluebird
• American Coot
• Common Raven
• American Robin
• Barn Swallow
• Cliff Swallow
• European Starling
• House Finch
• House Sparrow
• Rock Pigeon
• Mourning Dove
• Blue Grouse (heard lekking)

Photos: View our photos from Klamath Basin.

Notes: We stayed in Klamath Falls from 05/11/08 to 05/25/08.