Our second annual May birding trip to eastern Oregon (2022) began with
a few days at Summer Lake Wildlife Area. Here are some of the highlights… 

It was thanks to Craig’s Aunt Doris that we found ourselves in Eastern Oregon last month for a birding expedition. Attending her 100th birthday party in January 2020, Craig got reacquainted with his cousin Ron, whom he had not seen in more than fifty years. As Ron shared photos from the trip he and his wife Linda had recently taken to the Galápagos Islands, he and Craig discovered their mutual love of the outdoors and a shared interest in birds.

Ron is a pro — literally: he became a devoted birder at age five and had a long career as a wildlife biologist. He and Linda have traveled widely to see new birds and experience other places and cultures. For several years, Ron has organized a trip to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon in May, when lots of migratory birds are passing through, and he invited us to join the group for the next trip. Prudence made us skip the 2020 trip, with regret, but we joined the group in 2021 — and then again this past month. Both were wonderful trips and we look forward to going back next year!

The road north

Eastern Oregon is a long drive in our camper, so Craig and I broke up the trip and spent the first night in Klamath Falls, where we had located a sports bar and a campground, in that order. The Golden State Warriors, our hometown team, were playing in the NBA Western Conference finals, and we were determined to miss as few games as possible. Which is how we found ourselves at The Red Zone, a local dive bar with lots of TVs, where we drank mediocre margaritas and cheered on Steph and Klay and Draymond and the rest.

At halftime a couple of thirty-something local women, both well into their cups, ambled over to try to figure out what two strangers were doing there amidst a crowd of Friday-night locals. “You don’t look like you’re from around here,” the first woman informed us, “so I decided to come over and talk with you.” The two quizzed us about our origins and intentions and were amused to learn of our fondness for hiking and birding — and especially to discover that we had driven all the way up to Oregon for no better purpose!

Out to Summer Lake

The next morning we took a short hike on the Queen of the Lake trail, which skirts the western shore of Upper Klamath Lake.

Our destination that day was Summer Lake Wildlife Area, a protected swath of nearly 30 square miles in south-central Oregon. We were spending three nights here before continuing on to the better-known Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where we met last year. Like Malheur, Summer Lake’s meadows and wetlands are a vital waypoint for migratory birds along the Pacific Flyway.

We pulled into the Ana Reservoir RV park around three o’clock, where Ron and Linda greeted us with warmth and packets of insect repellant — the latter an ominous sign, I thought. Our group included several other couples, most of whom had already arrived and settled in.

Good eats

Ron and Linda had organized a treat for our first night: a meal at The Cowboy Dinner Tree. This quirky, family-run restaurant sits on the site where a chuck wagon once fed the hungry cowboys who drove their herds from Paisley, Summer Lake, and Silver Lake up to the grasslands of Sycan Marsh. It’s located about four miles outside Silver Lake — in other words, beyond the back of beyond, or so it seemed to us. The restaurant keeps limited hours, especially in the off season, and reservations are required. But it’s worth the effort to include this unusual spot in your itinerary: the food is tasty and the portions are startlingly enormous — we dined for a week on the leftovers.

CDT offers a set menu, beginning with a fresh green salad with homemade dressing, followed by cowboy beans (delicious — and I’m not a huge bean fan) with freshly baked rolls and a bowlful of butter. At this point, I had already had an ample sufficiency, but then came the entrée — your one choice on the menu. We all picked the two-pound grilled steak (eight pounds of beef for the table!); the other option was an entire roasted chicken. And a baked potato each… no surprise that doggie bags were handed out with the entrées. A dish of strawberry shortcake rounded out our repast, the whole washed down with iced tea and lemonade. Oof.

Whenever we take a camping trip, it’s my job to plan the meals and stock the refrigerator. I always overdo it, and this time the fridge was positively stuffed with ingredients for four mostly-vegetarian dinners (plus leftovers), with turkey or chicken sandwiches for lunch and/or breakfast. Healthy eating — that’s the ticket, I thought.

Did we eat these healthy meals? We did not. With more than three pounds of steak left over from our feast at the CDT, we ended up eating steak sandwiches for breakfast and/or dinner every day. Can’t let that good meat go to waste, right? And when we went out for dinner it was cheeseburgers and fries and milkshakes. Oy. Our only saving grace was that we ate very little in the middle of the day, since we spent all our time driving around looking for birds.

Birding at Summer Lake

We had two full days at Summer Lake, and we made the most of them. As they had done last year, Ron and Linda took us under their wing, driving us around these wetlands and serving as our birding guides. These are the people you want with you when you’re trying to find birds — or trying to identify the birds you have found. They are amazing! Ron drove and Linda kept a running list of the birds we saw, and they both helped us see and hear many, many more birds than we would have seen on our own. Plus, they are delightful companions, and we had a great time sharing this experience with them.

Both Linda and I have an interest in photography, and Ron enjoys editing the photos Linda takes, so they always had a set of beautiful shots to share after a day in the marshes. I, on the other hand, was not so well organized. I had decided not to bring my computer, forgetting that we would be staying in campgrounds with electricity, so I saved my photos for later editing, doing only a cursory cull at the end of each day. This is partly why it has taken me so long to publish this post: by the end of the trip, I had more than 1200 photos to edit and a sheaf of handwritten notes to sort through. Live and learn.

Day 1

We began our tour at the rest area in Summer Lake, where we had heard that great-horned owls were nesting. Sure enough, we hadn’t even stopped the car when Linda recognized the brown lumps in the trees as owls. We hopped out for a look, and sure enough…

All told, we saw about a dozen great horned owls on this trip, including several fluffy youngsters like these. In one area, a visitor had pulled up his RV right in front of the owls’ tree, and he didn’t take kindly to my standing on “his” picnic table to get a better shot of the birds!

We saw lots of swallows throughout the trip — barn, cliff, and tree swallows swooped gracefully through the air, snapping up insects and just plain enjoying themselves, or so it seemed to me.

Nesting boxes near the Summer Lake rest area and at our campground provided accommodation for tree swallows like these and the one pictured at the top of this page.

These unassuming little flycatchers with the amusing name of Western wood-peewee were a common sight. I spied this one at the Summer Lake rest area.

After getting our fill of the birds at the rest stop, we piled back into the truck and headed out on the drive through the Summer Lake wetlands.

Scarcely had we turned onto the gravel road when we spotted a pair of Lewis’s woodpeckers. This was one of the birds I was hoping to see — yay! This colorful woodpecker has an iridescent green back and head, a pinkish-red face and breast, and a wide white/grey collar. This pair was hanging out in the bare branches at the top of a tree way out across the meadow — close enough to recognize but too far away for a good look even with my binoculars, never mind with the camera. But at least we’d seen them, and surely we’d find more over the next few days…

And so we did — several times — but every single time, the dang birds were too far away to see or photograph clearly. It began to seem like they were deliberately taunting us, always keeping too far away for a good photo. Or backlit. Or refusing to sit still long enough for a clear focus. Or all of these at once. So I took some bad pictures and later did this drawing. Best I could do under the circumstances.

For comparison, here are some of my unsatisfactory woodpecker pictures:

A flat gravel road meanders through the Summer Lake preserve. We drove slowly, watching and listening for birds and stopping when someone thought they saw something on the shore, in the water, in the reeds, or in the air. There were lots of birds to see!

Marsh wrens are usually shy and hard to spot. Last year we only ever glimpsed them as a flash of movement, as they flew in and out of the reeds. Ron and Linda knew their song and could identify them that way, but I wanted to see one for myself.

Happily, this fellow must have heard my silent wish, for he perched on a reed and sang his heart out for a few minutes, while we watched and clicked away from the discreet distance of the truck. For a tiny bird, this guy made a lot of noise!

We spied this trumpeter swan swimming serenely down the channel.

Notice the swan’s identifying band, No. 705. Ron and Linda thought this might have been the same bird that they’d seen here on a previous trip.

A little later this white pelican swam by, sporting the conspicuous but temporary beak-bump that both sexes develop in breeding season.

The sora is an inconspicuous marsh-dwelling bird with a bright yellow bill. Although they are the most abundant and widespread of all rails in North America, soras are not easy to spot. But this day we were lucky: others in our group had seen one feeding in the mud in a particular spot, so we made our way there to try our luck.

Sure enough, after a few minutes this brave little fellow ventured out of the reeds. He wandered around on his long-toed yellow-green feet, and we happily clicked away.

I love this description of the sora’s movements, from The Cornell Lab’s “All About Birds” site: “The Sora walks slowly through shallow wetlands a bit like a chicken that has had too much coffee, nervously flicking its tail and exposing the white feathers below.”

American avocets are beautiful and graceful birds, and they’re abundant at Summer Lake. We saw them frequently, stalking along in knee-high water, pausing to dip in their beaks in case there was something worth eating.

Avocets also nest at Summer Lake — if you can call it that. An unremarkable patch of sand serves the purpose for these elegant shorebirds.

Our first day’s drive ended at an old barn where a colony of cliff swallows makes its home. Their mud nests were built right into the peak of the rafters, and they flew constantly in and out in search of bugs — which were not hard to find!

Day 2

Our plan for Day 2 was to head up to Fremont’s Point, which overlooks Summer Lake. But before climbing the hill, we made a stop at the Summer Lake Lodge to see what we could see. In a snag next to the parking lot, this male brown-headed cowbird (left) was showing off for a potential mate (right).

And on an opposite branch of the same tree, this handsome red-winged blackbird was taking in the view.

Behind the lodge was a lovely little pond.

We saw some cormorants and ducks, along with these horses, who were enjoying a leisurely breakfast.

I spotted this house wren (or its mate) carrying twigs much longer than its body up to a cavity in a corner of the lodge, where it was apparently building a nest.

The bird had disappeared by the time I brought the rest of the group over to confirm the ID. So Ron played a recording of the house wren’s song to encourage the bird to show itself. This little guy was outraged at the prospect of another house wren horning in on his territory (as he thought), so he flew up to this branch and scolded for all he was worth — eventually succeeding in driving his importunate visitors away!

Duly chastened, we set off up the hill to Fremont Point on Winter Ridge, which overlooks Summer Lake.

In 1843, Captain John C. Frémont, who was leading a mapping expedition through central Oregon, looked down from the snow-covered ridge to the green valley and lake below and gave these places their names:

At our feet — more than a thousand feet below — we looked into a green prairie country, in which a beautiful lake, some twenty miles in length, was spread along the foot of the mountains, its shores bordered with green grass. Just then the sun broke out among the clouds, and illuminated the country below, while around us the storm raged fiercely. Not a particle of ice was to be seen on the lake, or snow on its borders, and all was like summer or spring. The glow of the sun in the valley below brightened up our hearts with sudden pleasure; and we made the words ring with joyful shouts to those behind; and gradually, as each came up, he stopped to enjoy the unexpected scene. Shivering in snow three feet deep, and stiffening in a cold north wind, we exclaimed once that the names of Summer Lake and Winter Ridge should be applied to these two proximate places of such sudden and violent contrast. (from Frémont’s Report, Second Expedition)