July Trip, 2022

Like most summers, this year I took a trip in late June/early July, ostensibly to save Shadow from the horrors of 4th of July fireworks.  And once again, I found myself on border between northern California, northern Nevada, and southern Oregon.  It was a good trip, with a few breezes, but overall good weather, no wildfires to dodge, and no Shadow misadventures.

Our first stop along the way was at Independence Lake, north of Truckee.  I set up a recording device (passive acoustic monitor, or PAM) to record for the next few months.  This spot may become part of the acoustic monitoring program I am working with The Nature Conservancy on (see Comings and goings at a northern Nevada wetland).  I’ll be providing more updates as I get the recordings analyzed.

From there, we headed to Susanville, then northwest toward Adin.  I had noticed on the map and intriguing little mountain range with a couple of campgrounds.  We arrived at the Ash Creek campground around 5 pm.  The campground wasn’t much, but Ash Creek itself was lovely, and flowed through a beautiful meadow spotted with Jeffrey Pines.  I set up a couple of recorders to run overnight; nothing too exciting with robins and Western Wood-pewees dominating the recordings and a ton of commercial jets flying over.  

But one recorder set next to the creek captured this lovely dawn chorus and the complexities of the stream (please use headphones for best listening).  As I was fixing breakfast the next morning, I glanced over at the creek and was treated to the sight of a bald eagle slowly flying upstream.  What a great way to start the day.

The next day we headed for the northern Warner Mountains in Oregon. Usually this is a pretty good place to get away from the crowds. Most of the campgrounds are pretty small, with just a few sites rather close together. The site I often stay at, Twin Springs, was occupied by a large camping trailer and horse trailer. Couldn’t have gotten in there if I wanted to. I knew there was another campground about 15 miles down the road, so I headed in that direction. Not sure why, but there are few to no dispersed camping areas in this part of the national forest. Anyway, I managed to take a wrong turn on my way to the campground, and ended up following an old logging road until it dead-ended near the top of the ridge. There was a nice flat turn-around, which looked like a good campsite to me.

The birds were singing like crazy, including a few birds I haven’t recorded before. I managed to set one recorder quite close to a flammulated owl nest, and the pair called back and forth all night and into the dawn, and were joined briefly by a northern Saw-whet owl.

The wind picked up a little over night, somewhat masking an otherwise great dawn chorus, with a huge diversity of mountain birds, including hermit thrush, western tanager, dusky flycatcher, yellow-rumped warbler, dark-eyed junco, black-headed grosbeak, and common raven.

This area is normally full of cows, but this year they had not yet been turned loose in their mountain pastures, so the meadows were full of colorful wildflowers.

From there, the dog and I headed east to the rugged and beautiful Santa Rosa mountains where recording was a bit hindered by persistent winds. So we reversed direction, and headed west to the Sheldon National Antelope Refuge, one of my favorite places to record and get away from people. We ended up spending several days there, and I managed to get some nice recordings of sage birds. During the peak of the breeding season (just about over by the 4th of July), the sage sparrows (Brewer’s, sagebrush, vesper), plus the sage thrasher, gray flycatcher, and northern mockingbird, create a magnificent symphony that buzzes and trills throughout the sagebrush from before dawn to after dusk and often through the night. This time I even managed to record a short-eared owl! I made a short video to try to capture the sights and sounds at this time of year:

Then it was time to head in the direction of home. I decided to check out another campground in the hills near Adin. Upper Rush Creek campground was empty when I arrived, so the dog and I explored and enjoyed the forest of really tall pines, firs, and cedars. A lovely, but loud, creek runs next to the campground. I found a couple of spots to set mics overnight and fell asleep to the sound of the creek. Unfortunately, the recordings were marred by the loud whoosh of the creek, loud jets flying over (seemed to be amplified by the canyon), the sound of the distant highway, and by a loud camper that pulled in at 3 am. But it was a beautiful spot, nonetheless, and I may go back sometime to do some hiking and search for better spots to set up some microphones.