BIRDING THE LOWER KLAMATH NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

Today Nancy and I decided to go check out the daybreak fly out of Bald Eagles at the Bear Valley Roost. The Bear Valley Roost is in the Klamath Basin, approximately one mile from the intersection of highway 97 and the southern Oregon border, in Oregon.

The Convocation of Eagles we expected did not appear. We did spot a couple of Mature and a couple of Immature Baldies, several unidentified Hawks, two Mule Deer, a Jack Rabbit, and three Coyotes hunting rodents in a vast field of stubble.

We are a couple of weeks too early: the more than two hundred mating pairs of Bald Eagles that come to this roosting spot have not arrived in significant numbers yet. Their peak numbers are through the months of January and February. During these months one can view up to fifty or one hundred Bald Eagles flying out from the Roost eastward over the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuges on a given sunrise. The Klamath Basin, in general, has in excess of eight hundred wintering Bald Eagles every winter.

From the Bear Valley fly out spot we went directly across the highway to the Worden Truck Stop for breakfast and then out to the Lower Klamath Wildlife Refuges to see what was to be seen.

We took the short loop through the Refuge. The first half was, for the most part, uneventful; but the second half was a bonanza: The last half mile of the loop has a tree line opposite the canal that parallels the road. Just before the tree line we spotted four Ring Necked Pheasant Cocks meandering along the roadside. They were brilliant with the early morning sun glinting of their feathers in gold, bronze, green, and red hues. As we got closer to them they flushed away across the canal, and in the process, flushing the entire Bouquet of twenty or thirty others, both Cocks and Hens, hitherto unseen. Just after the Pheasants started the tree line; along the tree line we counted twenty-five, mature, Bald Eagles! Intermixed with the Eagles in the trees were approximately twenty Red Tailed and Rough Legged Hawks. One does not fully appreciate just how large a Bald Eagle is until one see them perched next to a large Hawk; the Eagles are twice the size of the Hawks!
At the end of the tree line is the highway home and the end of this days birding of the LKNWR. What a great day it turned out to be. We were back home by 9:30 AM and JBIB’d for a nice Sunday morning nap!