Mountains and Rivers: Pelicans and Other Birds
June 26, 2009
By Norm Klobetanz
JK, my wife, shot some pelicans the other day. She was up river chasing rafters. The river is still high enough that Lake Creek Rapids was the best place to get the money shots. Usually, unless the rafters are spaced wrongly, we can shot them in Ruby Rapid first. They are a little far away and it can be hard to get good face shots. Then we drop down ¼ mile to Lake Creek Rapid. We can go out on the bridge and get good action shots and face shots up close. If we’ve learned one thing, face shots are important for sales. However, if people are cold or the guide or clients don’t want to risk going for the gusto, they go around the big stuff and we don’t get good action shots.
In any case JK shot some pelicans. So far we’ve heard of only one other person seeing them and people thought he had been mistaken, but Jeannette has the pictures to prove it. They’re white pelicans (brown pelicans seem to be salt water birds only) and they can be seen on lakes and rivers in a variety of western states, but I’ve never seen them here on the Salmon River in Idaho. White pelicans are big with a wingspan up to nine and a half feet. They scoop up fish with their big bills while swimming. The Salmon River, when they were here, was fairly muddy from run off. Hard to imagine them getting fish, but maybe they got into smolts. Salmon and steelhead smolts migrate down river riding the spring flush trying to get out to the ocean. I have seen them schooled and breaking the surface before. But it doesn’t seem likely since I’ve never seen Pelicans before—they were probably just passing through.
Years ago I saw pelicans on the Bighorn River in Montana. For several years in late March or April when guiding was slow here, some of us would make the long drive to Fort Smith and fish the Bighorn. The Bighorn was a world-class trout fishery and we would stay with friends who guided and managed a fly shop there. The fishing was great, but it could also be crowded even on weekdays. And this was before the movie A River Runs Through It came out. I was surprised to see Pelicans there. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and it wasn’t until going to the Bighorn that I learned they inhabited a variety of fresh water places in the west.
The pelicans made me pull my bird book form the shelf, A Field Guide to Western Birds, by Roger Tory Peterson. I noticed inside the cover I had written my name and the date “1983”. I bought it the second year I guided in Idaho. In the book is a checklist to mark off the species as they are identified. I have not kept it updated. I quickly added a few like turkey, no less, (I’ve shot 10 or so and not with a camera), and sand hill cranes which are really cool birds that I sometimes saw when driving into the Middle Fork of the Salmon for river trips. In the huge remote meadows of Bear Valley one or two would hop and dance out there—large, long-legged and necked--otherworldly in form and sound. I was surprised I hadn’t checked California quail, we also call them valley quail. I often see them in my yard as they are common here in Riggins. They are great to watch scurry around and interact while often clucking or whiporwilling at each other. I’ve seen cats and hawks hunt them; the quail scream an alarm. They flush into the thick and jaggery blackberry bushes lining the other side of the irrigation ditch and hide out, twittering and tisking loudly. It reminds me of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch from Disney’s cartoons of the Uncle Remus tales, except the quail seem more serious.
I also had not checked mountain quail in the book; they are rare and protected. I have seen them in five or so different places not very far from Riggins and I see posters around placed by the Fish and Game asking to report sightings of them. I always assume that other people have seen them and already reported them. Mountain quail have a long almost straight narrow black head plume like a slightly curved sword and their throat patch is brown instead of black like a valley quail. The valley quail has a curved head plume falling forward. The sides of the valley quail have a scaled pattern while the mountain quail is barred, chukar like, with white and brown. The mountain quail are native to here; I’m not sure about the valley quail.
Chukar and huns like quail are also local game birds. They were introduced. The huns (or Hungarian partridge or gray partridge) can be found mostly on the broad grassy slopes and benches. Like all game birds their population cycles apparently for a variety of reasons with weather conditions at hatching and rearing being sited most often. The literature claims that predation and hunting does not have a big effect on overall populations. To me it seems there are very few huns right now. Our in-town quail populations seem down too compared to five years ago when they were everywhere.
Chukars here in the Salmon River canyon are ubiquitous and our most sought game bird. They sometimes form very large coveys. They were introduced here in the 1930’s and have done well. They like warm grass slopes with lots of rock outcrops, so the Salmon River is prime for them (Hells Canyon too). They are known for doing well in very dry country. They are distinctive looking with their black bandit’s mask like Zorro that sweeps around to the front under its neck. They have dark and white sidebars and orange or red legs and beak. The very rugged and steep terrain they live in and their ability to swoop down it at Mach speed makes them infamous among hunters. It is quite common to hear their calls, a chuc-chuck-cuck chuuckkaaar chuuckkaaar, especially greeting the dawn like a barnyard chicken. Chukar populations are down somewhat from what they can be here.
Up in the pine forests we also have blue, spruce, and the more common rough grouse. These birds (especially spruce grouse) sometimes act so tame they reportedly can be knocked out of a tree with a club and some of us have wondered why they haven’t died out due to predation. After being hunted a little they can become much tougher to get. Pennsylvania rough grouse are always a very challenging bird to hunt, flushing unexpectedly and quickly putting bush or tree between them and the hunter not to be seen again. Our grouse like to fly into a near by tree and will often sit until you find them. Chukar and rough grouse make excellent table fare.
I have guided summer rafters and anglers in drift boats in the fall, winter, and spring for many years in central Idaho. Over time I’ve seen a tremendous number of birds. One of may favorites, heard more often than seen, is the little brown canyon wren with its police whistle voice—teee teee tee tee tee-yew tee-yew tee-yew-- pearcing high and clear and whistling then dropping down the scale, cascading octave by octave then sometimes rising up again at the end—tew tew tew. It likes to live in the rocks eating insects.
It’s always great to see the swallows back each spring. They’ve returned from Capistrano or where ever! They live in colonies and swirl in groups over the river catching flying insects. Their flying ability is marvelous—so nimble, quick, and acrobatic. I noticed that I had three species checked in my bird book—cliff, bank, and tree swallows. The cliff swallows build upside-down mud nests shaped like a small jug or gourd along riverside bluffs under rock overhangs or under bridges, in a colony like a bunch of condominiums. The openings point out the side and down—don’t have to leave the nest to potty. There is quite the flurry of activity when feeding the young, as parents come and go in a tizzy of seeming chaos, and we have wondered if a tired or confused bird ever enters the boudoir of the wrong spouse. Hey, when floating along one’s mind can wonder—often in inane directions. Once when small mouth bass fishing we floated into a cove with deep slow bass water that was over arched with a rock bluff covered with swallow nests. The birds came boiling out so we kept easing down the river, but we were followed by an excited and apparently angry whirl of swallows. It was a little like being in the eye of a tornado. I pulled my video camera and documented it.
Water ouzels or dippers are also among my favorites. When standing on streamside rocks they bounce or dip up and down in a nervous like dance. I’ve seen them splash around, even in frigid conditions, wading and popping under water to swim or, according to Peterson in his field guide, walk on the bottom to get insects, aquatic invertebrates, and small fish. They have landed on my fishing rods propped in my drift boat and erratically flown close by us seemingly surprised at us sitting out on the water in their way. They blink and their eyes flash silver. They have a transparent membrane they can cover their eyes with while underwater. They are a small gray round plump bird found on fast flowing mountain streams and rivers. Their nests are huts made with moss stripped from riverside rocks. The nests have small openings on the side and are perched on small cliffside ledges four to ten feet above the rushing water below. I have several different good video clips of these birds from the Selway River though I’ve seen them virtually everywhere on waterways in central Idaho.
Then there are the eagles including the osprey, a fish hawk. I see osprey on the Salmon but I have not seen their distinctive nests here around Riggins. The Selway River has many osprey and nests and is a highlight for rafters. Of course the Selway period is a huge highlight for rafters. Osprey nests are quite large, made out of sticks and sit atop trees, often tall dead pine or cedar snags. They feed exclusively on fish from what I can tell, which on the Selway means beautiful wild west-slope cutthroat trout. Once while floating on the Salmon, I saw a golden eagle dive bomb a flying osprey. The osprey dropped the fish it was carrying in its talons (its great how they aerodynamically carry fish with the head pointing forward). The golden eagle shot by the osprey and caught the falling fish in its talons before hitting the water. The golden flew off with a sad osprey following behind.
I’ve seen golden eagles virtually everywhere that I’ve traveled and floated out west. They are common here and wonderful to watch soaring slowly on thermals, crossing the canyon high up at warp speed, and gliding along the mountainsides following the terrain with wingtips just of the ground barely missing rock bluffs and mountain mahogany bushes, obviously hunting for prey. Logically the prey on those canyon sides would most often be chukars. While drift boating I’ve witnessed a fair number attacks by golden eagles on chukars. Sometimes they score and sometimes they don’t. When the eagles double-team them success goes up. The first eagle dives in and flushes the covey in a screaming explosion of birds, but that eagle often does not connect. The second eagle watches from above and dials in where one of the flushed chukars lands to hide. As Kurt Vonnegut said, “So it goes.”
I usually only see bald eagles here in the late fall, winter, and early spring. They apparently prefer to nest more north of here. Here they like to sit in large riverside ponderosa pines, and sometimes on the main river road above Riggins where the road is cut into the steep canyon, a 100 feet above the river, you can drive up virtually beside a bald eagle sitting in a snag between you and the river. It often will give you a good view and picture-op--up close and personal before launching and gliding away. One morning we sat in my drift boat pulling plugs for steelhead and watched a bald eagle high in a tree ripping a part and feeding on what seemed to be a rock pigeon (or feral pigeon), which are common along the river. There was a very slight breeze and feathers wafted down and one of my anglers put out his hand and let a downy gray feather land on it. There always seems to be a pecking order. Another guide witnessed a bald eagle attack a golden eagle, and I guess the bald kicked the golden’s butt bad. So it goes.
An older fellow dropped into our photo shop the other day with expensive looking binoculars hanging from around his neck. He announced that he and his wife were birders and tomorrow they here going into the mountains towards the Devils to see what they could find. But today looking over the bank, they had seen birds flitting along the river’s edge through the trees and bushes, and he wanted to know where there was a good place to access the river bank and walk along it. I explained how there really wasn’t a trail right along the bank, that is was steep and rocky and river levels varied. Of course a person could hump up over the ridge to access the trail on the other side of Time Zone Bridge and Rapid, but that is a major task. And they didn’t want to drive through the construction up river. I recommended places to access the river and beaches; however, theere weren’t places to easily walk along the bank for any distances. He thanked me and left. I read about a survey once that categorized people into the outdoor activities they participated in. It was an economic analysis determining how much each group or category contributed or spent. Fishing always seems to rank high in these things, but bird watching was the number one group in this particular survey. In all my years of being around hikers, hunters, boaters, anglers, swimmers, backpackers, ATVers, snow mobilers, skiers, and the like, I only ran into one or two folks who considered themselves a bird watcher first. Heck, we all are bird watchers and it makes me think it really is all about how a person words the survey. You know--the survey says, “Please check the following, all that apply.”
It is spring now and time to keep an eye out for the colorful little guys. More of them seem to travel through along the river and the mountains in the spring and early summer. Birds such as the mountain blue bird (our state bird), Lazuli bunting (also bright blue but with cinnamon underneath), evening grosbeak, American gold finch, Bullock’s oriole, and (everyone’s favorite) the western tanager can be seen with their bright colors in our area. The males anyway, females as usual when it comes to birds are more somber or washed out in terms of color and I struggle to identify them.
There are many more birds marked on my book’s checklist than mentioned here. As I thumbed through it, I checked off a few more including the white pelican because of my Montana sightings. But I’ve never seen them here on Idaho’s Salmon River--just pictures of them.
Addendum—June 29, 2009: Low and behold I just saw pelicans. I was driving just past the rodeo grounds and a single white pelican was flying up from the Salmon River over the water beside the Old Mill site. I had a great view—a large white bird with black primary feathers and a big long yellow bill, slightly spoon shaped. By the time I remembered I had a camera with me and pulled over and jumped out, the bird had circled over me and was flying away over the center of town. Even though it was already too far I started taking pictures. (Ya gotta like the digital for not wasting film.) It flew straight to the far side of town against the canyon wall and started circling, climbing higher. This hillside had been the first in the direct sun that morning and it was generating the most heat. The bird knew where to find rising air. It flew higher and higher circling above the horizon into the cloudless blue sky. Suddenly I saw six more pelicans flying in single file just above Riggins coming from the north. They too went to the same place and started circling tight to the canyon wall climbing on thermals coming off the steep hillside. They too eventually rose into the blue sky at time forming a single file. The last I saw them they broke from single file to again circle higher disappearing to the south up the Little Salmon River drainage.
Be the first to rate this post
- Currently 0/5 Stars.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5