Columbia Slough

February 16, 2023

The day begins with what’s becoming the standard for this month - looking east to observe the dawn. Yesterday a dense fog, today a brilliant sunrise that briefly turns the Willamette crimson. No Mount Hood though, which apparently is hidden behind the tower to our east.

Coffee date! In a long overdue reunion, I drive over to the Clinton Street Coffeehouse to meet with Bruce for the first time in nearly a year - not since right before we left for Barcelona last March. There’s a fair amount of catching up to be done, and we make a good start.

CycleBlaze meetup #6: Bruce Lellman. We took a shot at this same spot in the Clinton Street Coffeehouse last winter. We’ll have to make it an annual tradition.

The look a year ago (2/22/22). Do we look any older? I think Bruce looks more relaxed this year. He was still stiff from his healing back last year.

Think, the thinking man’s car of choice.

It’s dry again today, and a useful couple of degrees warmer. Rocky and I both decide to get out on our bikes, but to go our own way. Neither of us is sure how far or fast we’re going to bike, and have different priorities. I plan to head north toward the Columbia, testing out my ankle again and keeping an eye out for the birds. Rachael mostly wants to get enough of a ride in to test out her new cycling shoes and to check out the Straggler before I pack away her Bike Friday for Italy.

I dress more appropriately for the ride and the cold today rather than yesterday when I just rode my street clothes, my Pendleton and rain jacket. Today I wear a biking outfit - bike shoes, shorts and leggings, bike jersey, long sleeved jersey, and my Pendleton and rain jacket again. With four layers up top I should be fine. Also I take my warm gloves just in case, although I never end up putting them on and don’t really need them. It has to be really cold for me to wear them because I can’t manipulate the camera with them on and it’s a nuisance to take them off whenever I see something I want to take a shot of.

And I decide to try biking without the ankle brace, but pack it along just in case. A half a mile from home I find an empty bench along the waterfront where I sit down long enough to put the brace on after all, because it’s apparent it’s still needed. The main issue is pulling my foot out of the cleat, which makes me wince a bit until I find the right twisting motion. It would probably be fine to ride without it, but it feels like a safety issue if I have to make a sudden stop.

The Willamette is totally slack this morning as I look south toward the Hawthorne Bridge.

The bird I expect to see, one of the gulls that always seems to be perched on a post of the fence along the river, fails me again today. I’m really surprised that I don’t see a single gull all day, as was the case yesterday also. I’ve not noticed this before. Do they not make it inland in the winter? Maybe the next rains or coastal storms will drive them inland.

What does surprise and delight me though is a downy woodpecker that swoops in and lands on a bankside alder as I’m climbing away from the river. This is really lucky. I know they’re around - their lookalike cousins the hairy woodpeckers also - but I don’t really expect to see one. I’m frustrated at first trying to find him with the camera, his body poorly visible against the dark trunk of his tree. He flies off before I get even one shot off and I assume I’ve lost my chance, but then he alights again just twenty feet away a much more visible perch.

I haven’t decided for sure where or how far I’m going today. I started out with Kelly Point on my mind, but it’s getting late in the day for that long of a ride so I decide to just bike north on Williams and then Vancouver until reaching the Columbia Slough. I’ll ride along it for a ways and then double back east along the Columbia to the path near the airport. There are always birds of interest on the slough, and I want to include the airport path because for the last few winters there’s been a rough-legged hawk hanging out there.

I always enjoy biking south on Williams, a heavily used bike corridor. Today it’s worth stopping for a couple of new murals that must have gone up since last winter. And then, another surprise when I see a pair of flickers swooping in and settling high in a tree in the residential blocks north of Rosa Parks. I pull off of course and spend several minutes hoping I’ll get a decent shot of one. I don’t really though - they’re too high up, the lighting’s poor, and neither one will strike much of a pose for me - but after several minutes I start feeling self-conscious standing out in the street with my camera in a residential street and decide it’s time to move on.

New artwork on Williams since the last time I biked this way.

Columbia Slough doesn’t disappoint, although it doesn’t present any new species for me today. I’m not surprised really - the ones I’m likely to see here at this time of year are all ones I’ve already seen further south. Today there’s a pied-billed grebe, a common merganser, a double-crested cormorant, a pair of green-winged teals, some mallards, some coots, and geese everywhere -on the water, on the path, and flying in large V’s overhead. And a great blue heron hunched in the reeds, giving me hope at first because of its posture that it might be a night heron so I take a snap just in case to check out later.

So, no new birds; but there is a very nice nutria drifting in the slough, his round tail oddly elevated out of the water. I’ve not noticed this behavior before, but one of the things I read about nutria in writing this post is that they don’t live long (oh darn, I’m sure many of you are thinking), and one thing that happens with them in cold winters is that they get frost bitten tails. So maybe he’s injured.

After a goose-free month, suddenly they’re everywhere I look.

Mammal #6: nutria. The wild mammals and wilder CycleBlazers are nose to nose at the first turn. Who will win out?

Leaving the slough, I bike north to the river with my eyes on the treetops watching for hawks and eagles. I see a pair of red-tails, and then a kestrel on the wire that gives me a closer look than they often do before flying off.

After that I bike east along the river, fully expecting but still failing to see a gull. And the rough-legged hawk fails to show when I come to the airport, but I do get some nice looks at the river and the mountain.

Mount Hood has a ghostly look this afternoon.

The Oregon Slough Railroad Bridge. This and its companion on the other side of Hayden Island are the only surviving swing bridges in Oregon. This is the line jointly used by Amtrak and N-S freight traffic across the Columbia.

Looking across the narrower channel of the Columbia to Hayden Island.

Finally I turn for home - south on 33rd, and past its half-mile long unbroken string of transient housing - campers, junker cars, tents. It’s a dismal scene, but it does look a little better organized and maintained than the last time I biked this way, and less like I’m traversing a war zone. A bit of progress, maybe.

And then west on Dekum, south to the Willamette, and home. Along the river there’s one last score for the day - a flock of cackling geese milling together in a tight formation pulling up grass. They make a good show characteristic of this species, and one I should video next time. And when I get home I look them up to confirm they’re really a distinct species separate from Canada geese. And they are, since about 20 years ago when the classification gods decided that the umpteen subspecies of Canada geese were really two different species. The smaller ones are the Cacklers and have some significant differences in spite of their visual similarities. Once you see the differences it’s pretty apparent.

More new art, on Dekum Street in the Woodlawn neighborhood.

#105: Cackling goose. I’ll bet you thought these were just Canada geese.

I’ve been tracking Rachael on the Garmin and see that she’s arrived home about five or ten minutes before me. I’ve seen too that she got a surprisingly late start, having left for her ride just about two hours ago after unexpectedly finding herself taking an early afternoon nap. She’s happy with her ride though -her shoes are fine, the bike’s fine. Tomorrow, if the weather holds, we’ll drive out to Sauvie Island.

The day ends with us driving west to Beaverton for a jazz concert, the opening performance of the 2023 Portland Jazz Festival. It’s a sellout crowd and a festive event - the first mask-optional, in person event since before the pandemic. The MC announces this and notes that maybe life is starting to work back to normal, which prompts an angry, elderly voice to shout out “No, it’s not!!” From a few rows behind us.

The concert is terrific - an hour and a half performance of free-jazz from guitarist/composer Bill Frisell’s new ‘Four’ album, with his piano/reed/drum quartet. We have two more festival performances coming up next week to look forward to.

____________________

2023 Bird List

103. Downy woodpecker

104. Northern flicker

105. Cackling goose

Today's ride: 24 miles (39 km)
Total: 1,502 miles (2,417 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	8
Comment on this entry	Comment	0