Every few years, often when the lemming population is sparce, the Snowy Owl makes a foray southward from its home in the Arctic. It goes searching for food and has been spotted in places as far away as Alabama and Georgia. It’s journey is called irruptive, and birders often wait to see unusual visitors from [...]]]>

Every few years, often when the lemming population is sparce, the Snowy Owl makes a foray southward from its home in the Arctic. It goes searching for food and has been spotted in places as far away as Alabama and Georgia. It’s journey is called irruptive, and birders often wait to see unusual visitors from the north.

The Snowy Owl is the heaviest of all the owls, weighing in at four pounds, compared with just over three pounds for the Great Horned owl. The wingspan of the Snowy Owl is five feet!

About ten days ago a Snowy Owl was spotted at the Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport, formerly known at the Mt. Comfort airport.  I have birded at the airport before; in fact I got my first view of the Upland sandpiper at this airport.  I learned of the bird at the airport on Sunday evening, so by Monday morning I was there, in the rain.  Nobody else was, and I did not see the owl. But I went back in the afternoon and was able to see it.  The next day I was there again, and the owl was sitting on a nearby building.  Twice in the next several days I went again, and yesterday (Saturday) the owl was sitting in a field and I was able to get the other photograph.

Here is what John Stott wrote about the Snowy Owl when he finally got the opportunity to see one. “How can I capture in words the excitement of sitting in a hide, or blind, for hour after hour only a few yards from the bird of my dreams?!  . . . It was a fantastic experience to eavesdrop on the domestic life of this majestic but elusive bird. She stared at me (although of course she could not see me), and I stared back. I could even watch mosquitos crawling on her feathered face until she blinked and shook her head vigorously to dislodge them. One of her eight white eggs had hatched, and another followed two days later.”  (taken from The Birds Our Teachers: Biblical Lessons from a Lifelong Bird-watcher, page 32).

The Snowy owl—a great Christmas present to be sure.

1-3  I heard that the three largest ‘stand alone’ rocks in the world are the Rock of Gibraltar, Haystack Rock on the Oregon coast, and Beacon Rock on the Washington side [...]]]> I’ve been fortunate to have done a bit of traveling, so I thought I would share my top ten rocks, in no special order. 

1-3  I heard that the three largest ‘stand alone’ rocks in the world are the Rock of Gibraltar, Haystack Rock on the Oregon coast, and Beacon Rock on the Washington side of the Columbia River.  I’ve been to each of these locations.  In 1966 we took a ship to Ethiopia, and passed by the Rock of Gibraltar.  In 2007 I made a special birding trip to Haystack Rock, though I had seen it before.  Lifers at the time were the Black oystercatcher, the Harlequin duck, and the Tufted puffin.  In 2002 I drove (paved road and freeway) from St. Louis to Astoria, Oregon, following the Lewis and Clark trail.  They stopped at Beacon Rock.  Last week I visited Beacon Rock again.  There is a path to the top, and someday I will walk that path.

4.  Petra, Jordan.  A fantastic place to visit.  You go through a narrow path between two cliffs of rock, and when you arrive at the main area, you see wonderful buildings carved out of rock.  The visit was also in 1966 on the way to Ethiopia.

5.  Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.  Africa’s tallest mountain, and I climbed to Gilsen’s Peak, 18,595 ft., with my good friend Greg Johnson, in 1983. 

6.  Rift Valley, Kenya.  One of the largest fissures in the earth, stretching from the southern part of Africa all the way up into Israel.  Outside of Nairobi you reach the escarpment, a gorgeous view of the valley.  Then you drive down the escarpment to get to the valley.  Spectacular.

7.  Pompei’s Peak, Montana.  Not a large rock, but famous because William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) carved his name on the rock, and it is still visible two hundred years later.  The sign says that this is the only place along the entire trail where such documentation occurs (and remains).  They stopped lots of places, like Beacon Rock, but only here is the evidence that they were really there.

8.  Big Bend National Park.  Lots of rocks here.  The scenery is fabulous, probably to me because I’ve not spent that much time in this sort of desert.  Wonderful plants all over the park, and great birds too, including the Colima warbler, which took a long walk.

9.  Yosemite.  What is there to say.  You’ve seen the photos.  Beautiful, and John Muir too.

10.  Diamond Peak, Oregon.  I have to put this one down for sentimental reasons.  Robyn and I climbed this mountain when we were engaged, and no, I did not propose when we got there.  We had not gone a mile before Robyn developed blisters, but she gamely kept walking for many more miles.  The mosquitos were terrible.  We were basically in tennis shoes, and no special clothing.  On the way down we met some “real climbers” (with all the trimmings).  I am sure it ticked them off that we got to the peak before they did, that we were just novices, and that we spoiled their pristine adventure.  Loved it!

I jumped at [...]]]> Terry O’Casey is the minister of the High Lakes Christian Church in La Pine, Oregon.  He is also the President of the 2010 Oregon Christian Convention.  Terry knew I would be driving from Califorina to Oregon to participate in the Spring Rally for the Convention and he invited me to spend the night.

I jumped at the chance, because I sense Terry and I are kindred spirits.  It was Terry who let me know that John Muir came from a Restoration movement background and who was a solid believer in God’s amazing work in Creation.  As I result, I read a couple of books on Muir; one a biography and the other some samples of his writing.  Of course anybody who has been out of doors in California is well acquainted with Muir.

Terry also is an avid student of the Bible and taught me quite a bit in the one day we had together.  I met one son, Isaac, but the rest of the family was away, including his wife who was working up in Willapa Bay in Washington.  She is an avid outdoors person herself and I hope to meet her some day.

We went birding soon after my arrival and I was able to see two lifers within an hour — Barrow’s Goldeneye and the long sought American Dipper, also known as the water ouzel.  The ouzel was John Muir’s favorite bird.  The dipper was building a nest, going after moss along the river and swimming/flying it back to the nest construction under a walking bridge.  We crawled down almost into the river to see the nest under construction.

The next morning we went into the woods and sure enough, another two lifers for my list: Jameson’s Sapsucker and the Northern Saw-whet owl.

Central Oregon is a beautiful area with lots of different geographical features: lava flows, Ponderosa pines, Cascade lakes, mountains and waterfalls, pumice, obsidian, bluffs and tufts.  Well worth a visit in the late spring.  It was a week or two early for the songbird migration to be fully underway, but a joy to see what we did.