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Given the continued need for coronavirus precautions, we’ve put off planning in-person programs and events. Please sign up for the KAS email HOOT OUT or follow the Kalmiopsis Audubon Facebook page for upcoming virtual events and opportunities related to nature and conservation.

November–December 2020, Kalmiopsis Audubon Society Annual Raffle

Please keep your eyes out for this year’s annual raffle mailing, which will be sent in late November.

Storm Petrel Kalmiopsis Audubon Society

Curry County, Oregon Volume 43, Number 4 Fall 2020

Birds of the South Coast

Photographs by Rowly Willis

▲ Belted Kingfisher

Red-shouldered Hawk ►

Peregrine Falcon bathing at Arizona Beach ▼

T he tens of thousands of Cackling Geese flying south overhead signal the turn of time as we get

ready to welcome the season of rain and green, mushrooms and salmon, kinglets and varied thrushes, shorter days and longer nights. I hope that everyone is weathering the challenges of the coronavirus pan-demic as well as possible.

With many people having more time at home, simple pleasures, including watching birds, seem all the

more important. Despite an overwhelming onslaught of bad news in the human realm this year, watching birds — or botanizing or fishing or stargazing —reminds us that life in a larger natural world persists with an indomitable aim to thrive: hummingbirds dipping into blossoms; owls hooting at dusk; osprey busy with a fish in tow; the towhees scuffling around the yard. “Tuning in” to that other realm is a balm for the spirit that nature lovers know well. Rachel Car-son put it best: “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

In this issue of the Storm Petrel, you’ll read about redwoods bursting with life after fires, more new bird species than ever seen before, ungainly Brown Peli-cans and delightful hummingbirds — as well as our ongoing conservation efforts. Helping to keep the natural world thriving in our special corner of Ore-gon is what drives our ongoing efforts to conserve habitats from fragmentation and degradation, and to support policies that help birds, fish, and wildlife.

In the last issue, I shared the sad news that Kalmi-opsis Audubon Society (KAS) founder and long-time Petrel contributor Jim Rogers would be signing off from writing his beloved columns, Bird Notes and Curry Mammals, owing to difficulties related to Parkinson’s disease. We’ll miss Jim’s writings, but last month, we welcomed Joy Wolf to take on the job of compiling our quarterly Bird Notes (with the help

of expert birder Tim Rodenkirk). In this issue, I am pleased to welcome Mark Lanier, who will be writ-ing a new column about local birds called “Winging It.” Mark began birding in his teens, tromping around his grandparents’ central Oklahoma farms. He worked for 25 years on six National Wildlife Refuges in the Rocky Mountains, taught high school science for a couple of years in Montana, and has been dabbling in writing and enjoying the South Coast with his wife Tina, since moving here in 2013. With writings about news and natural history, birds and plants, policy and poetry, it’s our aspiration that the Storm Petrel will connect, inform, and inspire us all in many ways.

By the time you read this, it will be close to election day 2020, a day perhaps more fateful for the environ-ment than any in my lifetime. One way or another, we’ll get through these turbulent times together. Please stay healthy, and enjoy autumn! – Ann Vileisis

The Storm Petrel Page 2 Fall 2020

The Storm Petrel is the quarterly newsletter of Kalmiopsis

Audubon Society, P.O. Box 1265, Port Orford, OR 97465, in

Curry County, Oregon. Kalmiopsis Audubon Society is a chapter

of the National Audubon Society.

Permission to reprint articles in this publication is granted,

provided credit is given to both the author and the newsletter,

unless the article is under copyright.

The KAS board meets quarterly. Visitors are always welcome at

meetings and other functions. Please call any of the listed officers

for the date and location of the board meeting.

Officers President Ann Vileisis (541) 332-0261 Vice President Foncy Prescott (541) 332-1032 Secretary Max Beeken (541) 373-1599 Treasurer Sara Lovendahl (541) 366-2063

Coordinators Conservation Chair Ann Vileisis (541) 332-0261 The Storm Petrel Penny Suess (541) 332-3017 Membership Linda Tarr (541) 332-1032 Dark Skies Al Geiser (541) 332-6720 Let’s Go Birding Gary Maschmeyer (541) 412-0806

Directors Max Beeken 2018 - 2022 maxbeeken@gmail.com Deborah Buitron 2020 - 2024 grebes@frontier.com Al Geiser 2018 - 2022 oneocean@frontier.com Joan Geiser 2018 - 2022 oneocean@frontier.com Sara Lovendahl 2017 - 2021 sjlovendahl@charter.net Tim Palmer 2019 - 2023 tim@timpalmer.org Foncy Prescott 2019 - 2023 foncyprescott@frontier.com Penny Suess 2017 - 2021 penny@net-gain.us Linda Tarr 2019 - 2023 lindatarr@frontier.com Ann Vileisis 2020 - 2024 ann@kalmiopsisaudubon.org

KAS Website http://www.kalmiopsisaudubon.org

From the President’s Desk

Those who contemplate the

beauty of the earth find reserves

of strength that will endure as

long as life lasts. — Rachel Carson

Ways You Can Help Kalmiopsis Audubon As a grassroots group, Kalmiopsis Audubon relies almost entirely on our members’ donations and vol-unteering to do our work. Under the CARES Act, everyone is now eligible for up to $300 in tax credit for donations made in 2020 to qualified charitable non-profits, even if they don’t normally itemize de-ductions. The deduction is only for gifts of cash made in calendar year 2020. Please keep KAS in mind as you consider year-end donations this year.

Also, if you shop on Amazon, you can designate Kal-miopsis Audubon as your charity of choice by sign-ing up with AmazonSmile. Amazon will make a small donation to us every time you make a purchase.

Finally, please keep an eye out for our Annual Raffle mailing, which will be sent in late November. The raffle is our fun way of raising money for KAS and a good time to send an annual donation or to renew your membership if it’s overdue.

The Storm Petrel Fall 2020 Page 3

Please Help Save Us Postage.

Notify Us When You Move!

Membership Report by Linda Tarr

Our Kalmiopsis Audubon membership continues to grow slowly but steadily. Thanks to our long-time members for your patience as we process the details to keep the renewals flowing. Of course, we forgive you if you forget to renew promptly, as we hope you will forgive us if we sometimes make errors on your correct renewal notices. Let’s all keep doing our best to keep it together! May I suggest passing along your Petrel, after you read it, to a friend. Let’s get as much from that paper as we can. Giving a Petrel to one of the many newcomers to our area might be a good way to invite them into a deeper knowledge of this place and of ways to protect its nature. Let us contin-ue to grow slowly and steadily together. ■

Join the Nest Egg Club!

Would you like your support of Kalmiopsis Audubon to have a lasting impact on the protection of our precious South Coast wildlife and natural resources for future generations? If so, you may wish to become a part of our new “Nest Egg Club” by including KAS in your estate or retirement planning. By making a planned gift to KAS, you help to build a lasting legacy of critical educational and advoca-cy efforts to sustain the beauty and environmental health of our region.

The most common way to make a planned gift is by leaving a bequest through your will or living trust. Simply include language in your document stating that you “bequeath ($ amount) to the Kalmiopsis Audubon Society, a not-for-profit organization located at P.O. Box 1265, Port Orford, Oregon 97465 (federal tax ID #93-1018752) for its ongoing conservation and education programs.” If you’d like, you can let us know that you have bequeathed a gift to KAS so that we may thank you. Of course, your gift will be anonymous unless you wish to be openly acknowledged.

If you would like more information about these or other planned giving opportunities, please contact KAS vice president Foncy Prescott at foncyprescott@frontier.com. Thank you so much for your invaluable on-going support! ■ Great Egret: Mary Lundeberg/Audubon Photography Awards

Conservation News by Ann Vileisis

Port Orford’s Dark Sky, Update

KAS has continued to participate in the City of Port Orford’s effort to upgrade its “dark sky” Outdoor Lighting Code to account for changes in technology. The basic principle of dark sky lighting is to point lights down or properly shield them to reduce sky glow and light trespass into other people’s yards. However, new LED fixtures pose new challenges, requiring us all to learn a new language of illumina-tion. Watts remain the energy required per second; lumens are the measure of light output (brightness); and kelvins describe a light’s “color temperature” on

a scale from 2700 kelvins (k), describing the warmest LED fixtures (the color of incandescent bulbs), to 3000k (cool white), to 3200k (fluorescent bulb–like), and beyond, with lights rated at 4000k and above having blue elements experienced as extremely cool and bright.

While LED fixtures are excellent for conserving electricity, lights that are too blue and bright can have unintended impacts to human health and wild-life. Reports from the American Medical Association (AMA) have raised concerns about possible adverse effects of shorter wavelength blue light that can suppress melatonin during night. According to the AMA, recent large surveys found brighter residential nighttime lighting associated with reduced sleep times, dissatisfaction with sleep quality, excessive sleepi-ness, impaired daytime functioning, and obesity. The AMA concluded that communities should be careful “to minimize and control blue-rich environmental lighting by using the lowest emission of blue light

possible” and recommended using fixtures no higher than 3000k. Beyond human health, studies have found impacts of excessively bright lights on birds, wildlife, pollinating insects, and more. The capacity for new LED fixtures to emit such bright, blue, glar-ing light prompted KAS to urge a cap on kelvins.

This has particular relevance for the streetlights on Highway 101. ODOT has plans to repave and reline Highway 101 through Port Orford and says it must now apply national crosswalk safety standards. This will require six new pairs of lights mounted on 30-foot poles, taller than what we currently have (a mot-ley collection from 20 to 28 feet). The small town of Port Orford has low pedestrian use and low traffic at night. We’ve long had crosswalks without lights, and so many have questioned whether new lights are tru-ly needed, worried that our main street will end up looking like a Walmart parking lot. ODOT’s answer is simply that all crosswalks now need to meet na-tional safety standards.

Other coastal cities have met the safety requirements by footing the sizable bill for greater numbers of low, decorative lights, but Port Orford doesn’t have the budget or inclination for that. Initially, the ODOT lighting design called for 3000k lights. Fortunately, in response to strong public concern, ODOT’s engi-neer has now approved use of warm lights (2700k) with full cutoff fixtures to meet Port Orford’s dark sky goals, as long as lights can be mounted high on the 30-foot poles, but it remains unclear whether Coos-Curry Electric Coop will be able and willing to source these dark sky– compliant fixtures. They say not all fixtures can stand up to coastal conditions. KAS has pressed for use of warm-colored lights and has also asked the City Council (CC) to urge ODOT to consider other options for pedestrian safety, such as lights that come on only when someone needs to use a crosswalk.

In August, the Port Orford Planning Commission (PC) passed its upgraded Outdoor Lighting Code and recommended it to the CC, which voted unanimously to pass it in September. But then, during a “second reading,” CC members decided to make some chang-es to address concerns about placement of security lights and how fines would be levied. Owing to out-standing questions related to the ODOT-required lights on Highway 101, the CC has sent the code back to the PC and is now waiting for answers before considering a final version. A huge thanks to all KAS members who are helping to work on this issue. It’s not over yet, so if you want to help, please send me an email.

Salmon on the South Coast

ODFW is currently developing a plan to manage sev-eral fisheries on the South Coast. The public process

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Lunar Eclipse, April 14 – 15, 2014

Photo by Lois Miller

has been limited this time primarily to angler stake-holders, with the exception of the Lower Rogue Watershed Council, but KAS has participated to advocate for the local species that are not fished for (threatened Coho), for birds unfairly vilified because they are fish predators (cormorants), and for stronger consideration of climate change impacts to our local fish runs. Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Coho is a threatened species that has already been reduced to perilously low levels, and ODFW scien-tists have said that our cherished rivers will come under far greater stresses with climate change, including lower flows and higher temperatures.

This new plan will deal with steelhead, Coho, and cutthroat trout from Elk River south (two other plans deal with Chinook and rivers from the Elk north), and aims to specify “harvest” levels and hatchery output, as well as some goals for habitat improve-ment. Some fish conservation groups are pressing ODFW to allow anglers to harvest steelhead only if there is sufficient monitoring and data to demonstrate that populations can handle fishing pressure. There has also been discussion about the need to evaluate both harvest goals and hatchery programs in light of climate challenges, recognizing that natural origin fish will have greater genetic capacity to adapt to new conditions. Planning ahead for how we will have resilient salmon and steelhead populations and fisher-ies into the future will likely require a more precau-tionary approach from ODFW.

If ODFW doesn’t take climate change seriously in all aspects of its work, it will be harder to ask individu-als who own riverfront properties to actively engage in the river stewardship and restoration activities that will also be critical, such as conserving water if you tap into groundwater or river flows for irrigation or lawn watering, planting trees and native plants that can help provide shade to cool the water temperature, or allowing beavers to recolonize in tributary streams. If you are a riverfront property owner and want to help to do more to help our rivers prepare for climate change, contact Curry Watersheds Partner-ship (541-247-2755, ext. 0), to learn more. Also, if you are new to our area, you may not be aware that Curry County has a Riparian Buffer Corridor Over-lay Zone (50 to 75 feet from rivers and streams, de-pending on flow) that prohibits permanent clearing of riparian vegetation, a policy that helps to protect wa-ter quality and fish habitat. It’s going to take us all supporting conservation policies and restoration of riparian habitats if we want to keep our birds and fish into the future.

Oregon’s Rocky Habitat Plan Update

The state of Oregon is currently updating and revis-ing its policies to protect rocky coastal habitat areas

for the first time in 25 years. Rocky coastal habitats include offshore rocks and islands, tidepools, and headlands — features that provide natural beauty but also outsized ecological values to so many creatures that depend on them for food and shelter, from unique invertebrates to our beloved Black Oyster-catchers and turnstones.

The Rocky Habitat Management Strategy will pro-vide for three new types of protective designations —Marine Conservation, Marine Gardens (focusing on education), and Marine Research — to safeguard these unique habitats into the future.

To develop the new Rocky Habitat Management Strategy, the state of Oregon has asked citizens and communities to nominate rocky sites that deserve protection. At this point community groups have formed up and down the coast and are in the process of developing substantial, site-specific proposals based on input received earlier this summer. Full proposals, which will go to state agencies and decision-making bodies for review, are due at the end of the year.

On the South Coast, Shoreline Education for Aware-ness, South Coast Rocky Shores Group, Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (based at Oregon State University), the Oregon Kelp Alli-ance, and Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition have taken the lead to develop site-specific proposals for Coquille Point, Blacklock Point, Cape Blanco, Port Orford Heads, Rocky Point, and Crook Point.

You can help support these designations by writing letters of support, sharing observations

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about proposed sites you regularly visit, and participating in community meetings to support

the site designation process (which is currently being held online). To learn more about sites that are being considered for designation in our area, and how you can get involved, please contact CoastWatch Vol-unteer Coordinator Jesse Jones (503-989-7244, jesse @oregonshores.org).

More information on the Rocky Habitat Management Strategy, which nests within the state’s Territorial Sea Plan, can be found at: https://www.oregonocean.info/index.php/tsp-rocky-shores-amendment.

Shasta-Agness Project

In late July, the Rogue River–Siskiyou National For-est released the Record of Decision for its Shasta-Agness Landscape Restoration Project, a plan that will guide management of nearly 7,000 acres of pub-lic lands in the vicinity of Agness. The idea for this project started many years ago, with Forest Service planners and the Forest Collaborative aiming to find common ground on logging that could provide tim-ber but also accomplish conservation goals, such as restoring oak savannas, while supporting recreation opportunities.

Owing to fire suppression, the landscape around Ag-ness in particular has been shifting from oak savanna vegetation to Douglas firs. But the warming climate may now be making it harder for Douglas firs to thrive in thin soils. Already some have died owing to persistent drought. According to the Forest Service, thinning in areas with encroaching firs, plus pre-scribed fires, could help shift the ecosystem back to white oaks; then revenues generated from timber could fund positive conservation actions such as re-placing old culverts and decommissioning old log-ging roads that still spill sediment into tributaries. However, one controversial aspect of this plan is to log some firs in LSR (late-seral reserve) areas that are now more than 80 years old — and so already well on the way to providing the kind of big-tree hab-itat that is more resistant to fire and that is needed by some forest birds and wildlife. The plan includes 3,770 acres of commercial logging in oak woodlands, pine forests, and riparian zones.

This project, like all public-lands projects, has gone through a NEPA public process designed to identify environmental impacts and consider different op-tions. (NEPA is the National Environmental Planning Act.) KAS has submitted comments throughout the entire public process. We supported thinning of plan-tations (already logged areas that are now thick and fire-prone) and all actions related to stream restora-tion. We supported restoration of oak savannas but

urged a cautious approach, especially with regard to hazards of invasive plants taking over in the wake of logging, questioning the feasibility of how prescribed burns could actually be implemented, asking for more explicit plans for how restoration will actually be accomplished after logging is done, and under-scoring the need for adaptive management, since this type of restoration is new to this area. We questioned the need for commercial logging in riparian areas and serpentine pine areas, where mineralized soils al-ready create a mosaic of habitat. In addition, we asked for more careful consideration of how recent wildfires affected the larger landscape of southwest Oregon, pointing out that the forest habitat still standing in the vicinity of Agness may now be all the more important for birds and wildlife, including the coastal marten, that have dispersed from the large areas burned in the Chetco Bar and Klondike Fires.

With the Final Record of Decision, we were disap-pointed that our main concerns were not adequately

addressed. We submitted objections raising concern about several aspects of the project: commercial log-ging in riparian reserves and serpentine pine areas; the likely increase of invasive species in oak savanna restoration areas; and the short timeline of the project over a large area, which precludes the ability to actu-ally apply the promised “adaptive management” approach. In short, it’s hard to shift gears and adapt management to new information after all the trees have been cut. Objections will be considered at a meeting in late October. In early September, the coastal marten was designated as a federally threat-ened species under the Endangered Species Act. We hope this will require the Forest Service to make

The Storm Petrel Fall 2020 Page 6

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Northern Parula Photo by Lois Miller

some adjustments to its plan. The last major timber management plan in our area, Coastal Healthy Forest Treatments, focused on plantation thinning and has guided the direction of local timber sales for over 10 years. This plan has scheduled timber sales over the next four years.

Protecting Forest Waters

Over the past several years, Teresa Bird has headed up KAS efforts to help local citizens and communi-ties better understand and find out about aerial spray-

ing on nearby private timberlands. As we’ve come to learn, Oregon’s Forest Practices law is weak, with only narrow buffers from logging and spraying to protect fish-bearing streams and no buffers to protect smaller non-fish-bearing streams, even those that flow into drinking water sources. Earlier this year, we hosted an online training to help volunteers learn how to monitor for spraying through the state’s aerial spraying notification program (FERNS).

I am pleased to report a positive outcome from

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Native Plant Notes by Teresa Bird

Giants of the Earth

This time of year is a dreary one for plant lovers, just in general. Imag-ine, then, going for a plant hike this time of year in forest that burned a few years back at pretty high severity. It seems like a bleak scene, with many dead trees, and most plants dried and dying back for the year, which is only one reason why the vibrantly green redwoods stood out to me on my recent visit to the Bombsite Trail.

The Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is well known for being the world’s tallest tree, long-lived and magnificently large. But most people think of California, not Oregon, when they think of these giant trees. I’d lived in Curry County several years without a visit to our redwood groves, until I heard that the Chetco Bar fire burned through many of these areas. Curious whether or not the trees survived the fire, I drove down later that year and was surprised to find that the red-woods, despite being completely charred, were already resprouting tiny shoots — all over the trunk. I knew that the redwood’s thick, fibrous bark made them superbly fire-resistant, but I was still astonished at the level of resilience I was seeing from these thoroughly burned trees.

Now, several years later, the burned redwoods up the Chetco are so covered in new growth they look like fluffy caricatures from a Dr. Seuss book. After the widespread fires across Oregon this fall, a visit to the redwoods was a great reminder for me of the forest’s long relationship with fire, and how important it is for us to look to nature to learn how we can develop a healthy relationship with fire as well.

Redwoods thrive in the coastal fog belt, capturing fog droplets with their flat, spreading needles to create a little microclimate of year-round precipitation despite the Mediterranean dry summers. I was once told by a meteorologist that over half (and likely up to 70 percent) of the precipitation in the redwood coastal “rain” forest comes from fog. Their thick bark is not only fire-resistant, but fungus- and insect-resistant as well. Despite the redwood’s massive size, the roots are generally shallow and short, and so the trees gain stabil-ity from roots interlocking rather than deeply penetrating. They are also unique for their amazing ability to grow huge burls, clonal clumps, and reiteration offshoots at all levels of the canopy. Their branches are often laden with duff, moss, ferns, shrubs, and even other trees! No wonder they are a favorite place for Marbled Murrelets to choose to lay their eggs.

Curry County holds the northernmost redwood groves of the species’ entire range. There are several great places to see our resident redwoods, the easiest being the Redwood Nature Trail or near Redwood Bar (both along North Bank Chetco Road), or the Oregon Redwoods Trail up the Winchuck. The Bombsite Trail I hiked this year is a much longer drive, being that Forest Road 1205 is washed out from the Chetco, and you need to access the trailhead from the Winchuck. These groves are relics of another time and cli-mate when redwoods grew further up the Oregon coast, and I often wonder if redwoods will regain some of their former range as the climate continues to warm and change. ■

these efforts. Through monitoring of the Hub-bard Creek watershed, which supplies drinking

water for the city of Port Orford, Teresa identified an upcoming timber sale and spray in the North Fork. She alerted the local Port Orford Watershed Council. The council was then able to reach out to the land-owner to request that the logging company leave a buffer around the stream and avoid aerial herbicide spraying. Because this stream is both non-perennial and non-fish-bearing, there are absolutely no require-ments to leave buffer trees or to avoid spraying, even though it flows into a public drinking water supply. In the end, the company agreed with a handshake to leave a 20-foot buffer and to use only manual appli-cation of herbicides. The chair of the Port Orford

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◄ Watershed Council went out with the company to flag the buffer zone. Kudos to the Port Orford Water-shed Council for negotiating this positive deal for Port Orford’s water drinkers!

The buffer deal is good news given the imminent logging in the city watershed, but honestly, 20 feet is not much to protect water quality. Yet in the absence of meaningful reform of the Oregon Forest Practices Act, continued vigilance by citizens will be needed to protect the streams that flow through Oregon’s private timberlands, many of which are now owned by real estate investment companies. If you’d like to help us monitor for local aerial sprays, please contact Teresa at teresa@kalmiopsis audubon.org. ■

Winging It by Mark Lanier / Photo by Lois Miller

Brown Pelican

Gracefully gangly? Majestically awkward? Beautifully ugly? Now, we’re all bird lovers here, but be honest; there is no bird more con-tradictory than the Brown Pelican.

I mean, if first impressions rule, put yourself in the shoes of some-one stepping onto our shores who doesn’t know pelicans. What would you think upon spotting this big, rotund lump-of-an-Ave on the beach? Huge bill that seems to defy gravity and aeronautics. Rubbery, bulging throat that has to make vultures and turkeys feel good about themselves. And an “ET”-like shuffle-of-a-walk that seems destined to end in a face-plant. You’d be wondering how natural selection hadn’t wiped these critters out eons ago!

But as you looked closer, you’d catch the profile of the bird gazing contentedly out over the ocean. Its neck in a gentle fold resting on its body. The bill suddenly looking manageable, with its slight dip toward the surf. And you’d realize, this gawky bird looks ... regal, somehow.

When the Brown Pelican takes flight, you’d stand in awe and witness that landlubber clumsiness vanish, that hint of nobility transform to pure elegance. Long wings lift the bird’s deceptively light weight, making takeoff of that large body much easier than you anticipated. And effortless wingbeats — models of effi-ciency — take the bird up and away faster than seems possible.

You’d note that elegance revert to awkwardness as the flying pelican spots a potential meal, though. Terns and kingfishers, when they spy a fish, seem to suddenly realize gravity is a thing and plummet into the water with a jetlike zip almost too fast to follow. But a pelican’s dive feels futilely unhurried: a turn of the head; a slow-motion dive ending in a wing-splayed, long-bill-led, surely-bones-must-have-been-broken crash into the water. But, unharmed, the bird pulls up its head, strains the meal out of its pouch while fighting off the gulls, swallows the catch, then jumps into another easy launch.

If you’re lucky, it’ll be one of those calmish days where the breaking waves are still high. Then, you’d see Brown Pelican watching at its best! In a precisely spaced line, the birds gracefully glide millimeters above the sea, seemingly in a limbo-like (“how low can you go?”) competition to see who can get closest to the water. Breakers intermittently try to disrupt the game. But with nary a twitch of muscles, the group glides over the interruption in a one-at-a-time, fantastic-feathered wave of their own, renewing their contest on the other side.

In the end, I think you’d conclude, as I do, that we South Coasters are so privileged to be able to regularly observe these wonderfully awkward, beautiful birds! ■

Bird Notes Late Summer / Early Fall 2020

SPECIAL NOTE! We have an extra-long Bird Notes this time. Longtime South Coast birding expert Tim Rodenkirk shared that September 2020 will probably go down in history as the month with the greatest number of amazing rarities ever found in one 30-day period in Curry County. Three or four rarities each year is the norm, but this September, there were over 20! This is likely due to a couple of factors. First, some amazing out-of-town birders showed up start-ing on September 7. Second, an explosion of wild-fires on September 8 created an enormous amount of smoke, including offshore, that likely disoriented some birds and compelled them to head to the coast instead of bypassing Oregon. Many of these rarities were photographed and can be seen on eBird.

JULY

10 – Gary Maschmeyer photographed a White-winged Dove at his feeder in Brookings. This species is very rare to the region.

13 – Kathy Mullen also identified a White-winged Dove in Gold Beach, perhaps the same bird.

AUGUST

4 – Eric Hopson spotted a Tufted Puffin near Brook-ings.

10 – Frank Mayer spotted a very early Yellow-headed Blackbird at the wet area along the road into Floras Lake.

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15 – Luke Ruediger of Klamath Forest Alliance re-ported seeing a Spotted Owl in forests north of Foster Bar on the Rogue River while ground-truthing the Forest Service’s proposed Shasta-Agness log-ging/restoration plan, a sighting later confirmed by the Forest Service.

24 – Victoria Netgen found a Leach’s Storm Petrel blown ashore at a house north of Ophir. She and her husband Karl managed to transfer the injured bird to the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center for rehab.

25 – Tim Rodenkirk spotted a Buff-breasted Sand-piper at the Euchre Creek mouth.

27 – Rowly Willis photographed a beautiful North-ern Waterthrush at Arizona Beach SP. The last one seen in Curry County was in 2013.

SEPTEMBER

1 – Terry Wahl observed a Yellow-headed Blackbird on the family ranch near Cape Blanco.

3 – Tim reported a fly-over calling of an American Golden-plover at Floras Lake. Steven Hunter found a Lark Sparrow at Chetco Point in Brookings.

4 – Tina and Mark Lanier reported a Spotted Owl in their backyard in the Ophir vicinity. It’s extremely rare to see this bird in a residential setting, so they

took photos that later confirmed the sighting. Most Spotted Owl sightings in town are actually Barred Owls that have become pretty regular in towns as well as in forest settings.

7 – Chris Hinkle and Em Scattaregia found a Black-poll Warbler at Lone Ranch. The same day they found a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher at the Winchuck River mouth.

9 – Chris and Em, now joined by Adrian Hinkle, saw a rare Black-and-white Warbler at Lone Ranch Wayside, also seen by several others through the 12th. Terry Wahl reported three (!) Short-eared Owls at his family ranch near Cape Blanco. ►

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Northern Waterthrush

Rowly Willis

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Spotted Owl

Kameron Perensovich

10 – Charley Kahler reported a Say’s Phoebe, flycatching at Lone Ranch Beach on Cape

Ferrelo. The day before, Chris and Em saw one at McVay Wayside in Brookings. These are the first of several reports of this bird throughout September, including overwintering birds arriving back in Brookings and the Euchre Creek area by month’s end. The Hinkles and Em also found a Northern Mockingbird in Pistol River.

Mick Bressler and W. Michaelis spotted a Northern Goshawk at a place they have named Z Birdy Bar, about five miles up the Rogue. Amongst the 87 spe-cies seen during the smoke-filled bird “fallout” were 850 (!) Violet-green Swallows, a Long-billed Cur-lew, a Dusky Flycatcher, 29 Warbling Vireos, 31 Yellow Warblers, 47 Black-throated Gray War-blers, eight Townsend’s Warblers, 25 Wilson’s Warblers, and 26 Western Tanagers. Wow!

11 – Russ Namitz reported a Black-and-white War-bler at Arizona Beach SP, the second one in Curry in just a few days. It stayed through the 12th. At dusk at the south jetty of the Rogue River, the Hinkles and Em saw a Burrowing Owl and a Short-eared Owl fly by headed south!

12 – The Hinkles and Em found two more rarities, a Northern Parula and a Black-throated Sparrow, at the Indian Creek Trail just a half mile upriver from the Rogue River bridge. Tim found a Black-and-white Warbler at the Indian Creek Trail, the third one in a week in Curry. This bird was around through the 13th.

Courtney Kelly Jett, Caleb Centanni, and Colby Neu-man found some more great rarities at Floras Lake: a Black-necked Stilt on the road in and a Brewer’s Sparrow north of the lake. The next day Adrian Hin-kle located likely the same Black-necked Stilt about a mile south along the Elk River. The following day Rick McKenzie found likely the same Black-necked Stilt on his ranch just across the Curry/Coos line near New Lake. Mick Bressler found Curry’s second-ever male Summer Tanager at Z Birdy Bar.

Although there had already been six incredible rari-ties sighted this day, the rarest bird was discovered by the Hinkles and Em — a Yellow-billed Cuckoo at Arizona Beach SP. This is a first county record and perhaps the only one ever found on the Oregon coast.

13 – The Hinkles and Em saw a late Common Nighthawk in the heavy fog north of Floras Lake. Tim reported a fly-over calling Pacific Golden-plover at Floras Lake.

14 – Two Yellow-headed Blackbirds were observed

at the Rogue’s south jetty by Adrian, Colby, Court-ney, and Caleb. What a great fall for this species! Adrian found a Tennessee Warbler at the Winchuck River mouth.

15 – Tim saw a light morph adult Broad-winged Hawk at Lone Ranch Wayside near Brookings.

18 – Don Munson observed a Parasitic Jaeger at the Port of Brookings.

24 – Jay Withgott found an immature male Rose-breasted Grosbeak at the Indian Creek Trail. This eastern species is almost regular in the spring but is much rarer in the fall. He also reported the first Clay-colored Sparrow of the fall at Euchre Creek.

25 – Jay had the high count of the year for Elegant Terns — 113 in the Brookings harbor area.

28 – Mick Bressler and W. Michaelis observed

The Storm Petrel Page 10 Fall 2020

◄

▲ Black-and-white Warbler

Robert Cook/Audubon Photography Awards

Yellow-billed Cuckoo ▼

Kevin Jordan/Great Backyard Bird Count

The Storm Petrel Fall 2020 Page 11

Marbled Murrelet Surveys Continue by Teresa Bird

This summer I continued to look for murrelets in our nearby coastal forests with the help of Max Beeken. The most exciting surveys this year were along the South Fork Sixes River, where Max and I both saw an amazing amount of murrelet activity on both sides of the river! I also heard many of the murrelet’s dis-tinctive “keer!” calls from all around me during a survey a third of the way up the Humbug Mountain trail. While we usually focus our survey efforts on the forest surrounding Elk River, this year we also helped Coast Range Forest Watch survey a proposed timber sale on Board of Forestry lands in the Elliott State Forest. The many combined murrelet sightings from our surveys in the area effectively confirmed that the area was being used by murrelets, and the timber sale was halted by the Oregon Department of Forestry. Thanks to the National Audubon Society for a grant that helped to fund this survey effort! ■

Curry’s second Williamson’s Sapsucker in the Siskiyou National Forest east of Gold Beach. This species is super rare west of the Cascades.

Tim found two Horned Larks with a Pipit flock at Floras Lake.

29 – Rob Santry spied a juvenile American Golden-plover at Floras Lake.

30 – Rich Hoyer and Alan Contreras found another Tennessee Warbler at Chetco Point in Brookings. On the same day, near Mill Creek Beach in Brook-ings, they found a Chestnut-sided Warbler.

OCTOBER

3 – Tim reported the same, or possibly a different, Chestnut-sided Warbler at Chetco Point.

5 – Terry Wahl has five (!) CA Scrub Jays on the family ranch near Cape Blanco. This species is regu-lar on the coast to about Ophir but rare north of there. Terry had never seen more than one there before or during migration.

9 – Mick Bressler, W. Michaelis, Rich Hoyer, and Chris Hinkle spotted a Tropical Kingbird, a West-ern Kingbird, and a Black Phoebe, all on the same fence line in the pastures north of Gold Beach along Old Coast Highway. The Western is rarer than the Tropical this late in the year.

10 – Linda Tarr spotted a Sora while kayaking in Garrison Lake. It was in the reeds near the 12th Street boat dock. Rich Hoyer and Chris Hinkle found a Bobolink at Lone Ranch Wayside. Don Munson reported a Snowy Egret from his yard along the South Bank of the Chetco River in Brookings.

Tens of thousands (!) of Cackling Geese were seen all along the South Coast migrating south. Rich and Chris counted 9,000 off Chetco Point in Brookings in an hour and a half. The migration continued the next two days but in much lower numbers.

11 – Rich and Chris found an early Swamp Sparrow at McVay Rock Wayside and a Northern Mocking-bird on Tanbark Road in Brookings, where one has overwintered in recent years.

11-12 – Gary and Emily Nuechterlein and Deb Buitron, and Linda Tarr and Foncy Prescott watched 1,000-plus Cackling Geese migrating through Port Orford, the “V” formation symbolizing the fall season!

Compiled by Tim Rodenkirk and transcribed by Joy Wolf. Thanks to KAS members and friends

for sharing your unusual bird sightings. Keep them coming to KASbirdnotes@gmail.com.

■

POETRY CORNER

While Watering the Rose Geranium by Vicki Graham

Whir blur hover sheen, beak a needle, tongue a fine thread sliding deep.

Pause. My wrist a stalk. Pin claws, tail like silk:

wings stilled, tongue flicking in out in out in fire throat pulsing —

and gone: a green shine, a green shade.

Kalmiopsis Audubon Society P.O. Box 1265 Port Orford, OR 97465

What’s Inside

Photo Gallery: Birds of the South Coast .... 1 From the President’s Desk by Ann Vileisis ........................................... 2

Ways You Can Help KAS ......................... 3 Conservation News by Ann Vileisis ........................................... 4 Port Orford Dark Sky Update, Salmon on the South Coast, Rocky Shores Habitat Plan Update, Shasta-Agness Project, Protecting Forest Waters

Native Plant Notes by Teresa Bird ............................................ 7 Winging It by Mark Lanier .......................................... 8 Bird Notes by Tim Rodenkirk and Joy Wolf ................. 9 Poetry Corner by Vicki Graham ...................................... 11 Marbled Murrelet Surveys Continue by Teresa Bird ........................................... 11

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