ENHS Nature Trails February 2005 Article 4

Rattlers, Trumpeters, the Malheur
by Tom Titus

If you haven't been to the Malheur Wildlife Refuge/Steens Mountain area of southeastern Oregon, you really don't know what you're missing. The region is physiographically, climatologically, and politically as far from Eugene as one can get while staying within the geopolitical boundaries of Oregon.

Last June a group of intrepid ENHS members and their associates packed up and left for a four-day adventure to Malheur and Steens. We left Eugene from Evelyn McConnaughey's house on a beautiful Thursday afternoon for the six hour drive to Malheur Field Station. All went smoothly except for a missed turn off Hwy 205 that took us 15 miles out of our way. (Where in the world did that RV park and restaurant come from?) Eventually four separate groups managed to arrive at the station by the appointed time. We settled in for the night in four, old, single-wide trailers operated by the Field Station.

The dining hall serves cafeteria-style food, basic but filling, with variations on a theme: eggs, sausage, toast, pancakes, yogurt and fruit. If you push away from the table hungry, you either weren't paying attention or are an extremely picky eater. A table is set up at one side of the hall offering brown bag lunch fixings, so there is no need to interrupt a good day's birding for something as trivial as finding food.

After breakfast the first morning, we headed out the gravel drive from the Field Station and started east on the paved road toward Malheur Refuge Headquarters. The flooded fields along the road supply habitat for a variety of water-loving birds. The black terns are one of my favorites, with their somewhat erratic flight reminding me more of a bat than a bird.

Just up from this stop is Refuge Headquarters, protected by a perimeter shield of large trees and low bushes, an island of vertical structure in a sea of grass and sagebrush that provides a rest stop for a variety of migrating song birds as well as a permanent home to residents such as great horned owls. The large pond at the foot of the hill always contains waterfowl. There is a bird registry where unusual sightings are listed, and of course the grounds are crawling with well-seasoned birders, many of whom are happy to share their expertise with those of us who are less obsessed, er, I mean experienced. It's always worth spending a couple of hours at Headquarters walking the entire perimeter. For me, the highlight of the stop was a female rose-breasted grosbeak.

From Headquarters we struck out on the Central Patrol Road, a well-maintained gravel lane that bisects the heart of the refuge from North to South. It travels along willow-lined canals, full of singing yellow warblers, and abuts an occasional large pond with various ducks and other waterfowl. Eventually the road forks to the right passing Buena Vista Pond, perhaps more suitably called a lake because of its large size. There are maintenance buildings and a restroom near Hwy 205, and it was here that we had the requisite flat tire for the trip. Amazingly, it wasn't on my rig. Some of us got good and filthy crawling around in the dust changing the tire.

After driving a short segment south on Hwy 205, our fearless leader turned too soon to the east to get back to the Central Patrol Road. (Where did they find this guy, anyway?) A map-savvy person in the back seat soon discovered the mistake but not until we had stopped with a vantage point over a flooded field. There were a number of wading birds plying the wet pasture, the most spectacular of which were sandhill cranes and their chicks.

The Central Patrol Road eventually converges with a gravel road from Frenchglen that leads to Page Springs Campground and continues on to the summit of Steens Mountain. Near the campground is a large spring that empties into the Blitzen River.

The willows and alders offer excellent habitat for songbirds, and visitors can often spot great horned owls on the cliffs rimming the campground. Perhaps the most exciting find was a western rattlesnake crossing the campground road, but in true rattlesnake form, it escaped into some long grass before we could get a good look.

After breakfast and lunch packing the following day, we drove east to Hwy 78, then southeast toward Steens Mountain. We crossed Steens at the low elevation south end and soon turned onto the Fields-Denio Road. This is a well-maintained gravel road that runs south and a little west, closely following the foot of the Steens Mountain escarpment. The drive itself is spectacular. Steens Mountain rises sharply from the desert floor, culminating in a long ridge breaching 9,000 feet in places. Snowdrifts with streams of snowmelt at their feet are visible all summer.

We made a restroom stop at Mann Lake, famous for its population of Lahontan cutthroat trout, and for us it sported a flock of white pelicans. Back in our vehicles, we turned onto the road leading to Mickey Springs. This natural geothermal area is Oregon's very tiny copy of Yellowstone. There are bubbling mud pots, fumaroles, and pools of clear, hot water. The desert floor is also home to an assemblage of lizards that occur nowhere else within the geopolitical boundaries of Oregon. I handed a lizard noose to John Carter, an experienced fly fisher, and he successfully stalked and noosed a long-nosed leopard lizard, one of the highlights of his trip! (Some people just love to catch stuff.)

We continued south to Pike Creek, a willow and cottonwood-lined perennial stream flowing from the snowfields on the upper flanks of Steens. The stream supports a protected population of redband trout, a variety of rainbow trout endemic to southeastern Oregon, and the riparian zone offers habitat to a variety of bird species, such as the rufous-sided towhees that are otherwise rare in the arid steppe and desert. The stream is always cold and was a nice place to rinse off the dust following an afternoon on the desert floor.

The Fields-Denio Road eventually intersects Hwy 205 which we followed north along the east side of Catlow Valley, one of the snakiest stretches of road I know. (That's "snaky" as in "a good place to find snakes.") We stopped to admire a gopher snake taking advantage of the evening warmth retained by the pavement--perhaps it was readying for an evening hunt. The highway next descends from a juniper ridge to the refuge valley floor at Frenchglen, following the west side of the refuge to the North. Here vigilant eyes spotted a pair of trumpeter swans paddling down one of the canals.

As we neared the turnoff to the Field Station, an ominous dark cloud appeared on the western horizon. Thunderstorm? Volcanic eruption? The Apocalypse? Turns out it was a large dust storm kicked off from Harney Basin by the gusty evening winds. Tired and hungry, we still managed to celebrate our trip by partying late into the night.

The following day was reserved for the long haul home. In all, we saw about (depending on who was counting and in which vehicle) 86 species of birds, three species of lizard, two species of snake, untold (because I don't count them) cool plants, and some of the finest country Oregon has to offer, and I can't imagine a more interested, intelligent, and congenial group of people with whom to share it.

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