Crane hunt

February 13, 2024

We’ve got another fine day today, maybe the last we’ll see before we leave town next week. It’s the best day we’ll get for that ride out to Gresham Rachael’s been encouraging, so that’s the plan we start the day with. We agree that we’ll leave soon after I get back with my midmorning appointment with my doctor. It’s one I’ve been looking forward to for weeks now, my date to get a new cortisone shot in my arthritic left knee.

The shot goes in well, and while I’m there I have the chance to ask the man a couple of questions I’ve been saving up for him. I tell him of my fall in the Tucson Mountains over three weeks ago, and wonder about my still sore but steadily improving ribs and whether they’re cracked or just bruised. He offers an X-ray to confirm the situation, but adds what I already knew - it wouldn’t change the treatment plan, which is to just wait for improvements. He’s not concerned about it unless I’m having breathing problems, which I’m not.

While I’m on the subject I ask him about my sprained or broken little finger too, which is also steadily improving its way back to full mobility again. Same response - we could X-ray, but why?

And I have one more question. I’ll be gone nine months, which is a long time between steroid shots. I’m thinking I’ll try to find a willing doctor in England this summer, and I wonder if a note from my doctor would help with that. He didn’t think that would be necessary, and thought I should be able to talk my way into it when the time comes. So we’ll see.

While I’m here though, he does suggest that I get my shingles booster and a thyroid test, so after those are done I’m ready to drive home, feeling well perforated by a jab in the knee and two in the arm.

Before leaving, he reminds me of something I’d forgotten about from the last time - I need to take it easy for the next few days and stay off the bike. So that ride to Gresham is out the door and replaced by another 12 mile walk along the Wildwood Trail for Rachael, this time up north past the archery range.

For me, it’s the natural excuse to drive back out to Sauvie Island on another crane hunt.

On Sauvie Island. This would be an amazing day to be out on the bike here, if that was an option.

I’m in luck this time and find about thirty of them hanging out up the west side near Multnomah Channel. So that makes me happy - it really wouldn’t feel right to leave Portland without seeing them at least once.

It’s nice of them to put on a display for me.

Biking is a much better way to visit Sauvie Island than with a car of course, but one nice thing about being here with it is that it’s easy to make it to different parts of the island. After checking the cranes off my Portland to do list I drive back over to the viewing platform on the east side to see if there are any tundra swans in close enough for a confident identification.

On the way there though I stop first to pull off for a better look at the raptor atop a utility pole beside the road. The lighting isn’t the best and I don’t look closely at the image I’ve captured, assuming it’s another red-tail. When I get home though I’m startled to see it’s pretty unmistakeably a red-shouldered hawk, a bird I didn’t think made it this far north. I pull up the range map and confirm that it’s not normally found north of the Siskiyous, but then I also check out recent birding reports and see several other recent sightings in the vicinity. So maybe this is another species that’s getting pushed northwards from climate change?

A red-shouldered hawk, the first I’ve ever seen around Portland.

No luck with the swans today unfortunately, but as a consolation there’s a dense white stripe of a few thousand snow geese that erupts into the sky a few minutes after I arrive. Its almost shockingly sudden - one instant they’re all calmly milling together in the field, and maybe ten seconds later the entire hoard is aloft.

1:33 PM. Now they’re up. Zoom in on them - they’re so densely packed you can’t see through to the other side.

It’s a remarkable and ephemeral phenomenon to witness, as it always is. And it’s really short-lasting - from the timestamps on the photos I took, I can see that in just about one minute they erupted from the ground, swirled around in a huge white eddy, and then alit again; and then almost immediately took off again and repeated the show. I captured their first time around on video, but after that I flipped to capturing a few stills.

1:35 PM: falling from the sky for the second time in under three minutes.

1:36 PM: Settled again, for the moment. It won’t be long though.

I consider driving further north and seeing what’s out on the Columbia today, but then the gas gauge alerts me that I should be looking for a station soon so I turn back toward town. I don’t get far though before there’s one more reason to come to a quick stop when I see a river otter lumbering across the road. I’ve never seen one out here, so I pull off and scan the waterway just behind the trees and brush he just disappeared into. I can’t tell if the mammal carving a V into the water is him or a nutria, but he’s moving fast enough that it’s likely the otter. So that’s a first.

The river otter I just saw crossing the river? Probably, but he could be a nutria. In any case, it’s something new to keep an eye out for here.

It looks like I’ve still got about twenty miles left in the tank when I pull into the gas station, so I’d likely have been fine checking out the river if I were more of a risk taker. Twenty years ago I probably would have taken a chance on it, but I’ve gradually gotten more risk-averse over time.

Dinner tonight is memorable when we drive over to the east side to Nuestra Cocina, a long time favorite of ours. We’ve been coming here off and on for at least fifteen years, or probably twenty. We’re here tonight partly to check in with our server Mike, who may have been working here ever since we first started showing up. The last time we were here I’d just had my ablation procedure, and when we mentioned it to him we learned that he also has afib and is being sapped by the same sort of calcium blocker and blood thinner diet that held me up.

He said then that he was under evaluation for an ablation procedure himself, and I want to know if there’s any news on that. And there is - he’s scheduled for his procedure the day after we leave for Barcelona. I’ll have to remember to follow up with him later to see how it went, as well as to hear about his trip this spring with his extended family to explore their roots - in Sicily! There will be a lot to catch up on next winter.

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Rich FrasierI hadn’t thought about Nuestra Cocina in a long time, but the name brought back a pang of regret. We loved that place, too!
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8 months ago

Bill ShaneyfeltShingles shot... Ouch! That one hurt for near 3 weeks. But then, the actual shingles hurt for 8 weeks, so the trade-off is easy.
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8 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Bill ShaneyfeltThey warned me of that, but in fact it didn’t bother me at all. It’s probably related to muscle mass - I have no upper body strength at all, because I’m too lazy and undisciplined to exercise.
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8 months ago

Bill ShaneyfeltMy arm was red, inflamed and painful while my body felt feverish and tired and achey, but not quite enough to stop me from doing stuff, but that's me and I just push through pain. I do lots of pushups, but I am a really skinny guy at 5-10, 135 (most in legs) so I doubt it is as much related to muscle mass as it is to body chemistry sensitivity to the virus, living or dead in vaccine. After all they say shingles lasts 3-5 weeks while mine hung on for 8 weeks before I could tolerate a T shirt or a blanket of any kind.
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8 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Bill ShaneyfeltYou’ve had shingles? Ouch! Was this before the vaccine? If so, I wonder if that affected your reaction.
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8 months ago

Bill ShaneyfeltYeah. Got shingles end of May and finally got out on my bike without a shirt (not my norm) early Jul. Basically lost summer. At the suggestion of my doc. I waited 6 months before getting the vax in hopes of preventing another episode. Got a brother in law who has recurrent shingles despite having had both types of vaccine. He's learned the earliest symptoms and takes antivirals that limit both severity and length of episodes. He gets it about 4x per year.
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8 months ago

Bill ShaneyfeltIf you can view facebook, here is a link to a photo of skinny me my first ride not fully recovered.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10226058137616098&set=a.10225306530586392
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8 months ago

Suzanne GibsonThe snow geese video and pictures are fantastic! What a sight!
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8 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Suzanne GibsonAs thrilling every time as the first one - which I’ll never forget. It was about 30 years go, hiking with my dog on Diablo Mountain in the wilderness in SE Oregon. I heard this roar in the distance, looked around, and saw a white cloud of geese rising at the far end of Summer Lake, maybe ten miles away.
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8 months ago