This subject line sounds like the title of a really good horror movie, huh
:-))
....the odyssey continues......

Klamath Marsh NWR, Klamath Basin, Oregon, June 03-04, 2000 ---
<A HREF="http://www.klamathnwr.org/images/maps/kmarshmap.jpg">http://www.klam
athnwr.org/images/maps/kmarshmap.jpg</A>

Fate or divine intervention swayed my Crater Lake considered option for a
possible route home when I just happened to read enough of the upper front
page of the morning Klamath Falls newspaper through a vending machine at a
gas / food mart which told me everything I needed to know that the rim drive
and north slope exit was still closed by winter snow but would be open in
another two days. Boy, would I have been bummed if I'd gone there, then had
to backtrack. So, off to Klamath Marsh NWR instead and check out the habitat
along Silver Lake Road where Frank Mayer had told me that a Yellow Rail (not
rails?) was heard a week before then continue northward for home.

My very first stop at odometer reading 4.5 miles east of U.S. rt. 97 and
first likely looking habitat and pullout instantly yielded at the very least,
six 'ticking' Yellow Rails clicking away endlessly at straight up 'high
noon', all on the south side of the road. Wow! From there, I continued
exploring along Silver Lake Road, actually a straight as an arrow causeway
traversing the vast marsh, stopping frequently but heard no other Yellow
Rails. On eastward, the marsh gradually becomes wetter and the requisite
Yellow Rail habitat of knee high spike grass and sedge grades into mostly
tule rush, and finally further along, extensive cattail (ideal for Least
Bittern I'd think). Midday calling Soras, Virginia Rails, Coots, Marsh
Wrens, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, and other assorted marsh birds, ducks
(mostly Cinnamon Teal, Wood Ducks, Ring-necks), and shorebirds (Killdeer,
Common Snipe, Willet, Long-billed Curlew), along with numerous White-faced
Ibis and scattered pairs of Sandhill Cranes tending their young. It became
clear that whatever plan I had before was instantly scraped. This vast sea
of marsh was much too fascinating a place to so quickly dismiss and
immediately demanded much more attention and time to explore. In addition,
there was also the magnificent eastside bordering mature Ponderosa /
Lodgepole Pine forest which I found harbored White-headed Woodpeckers,
Williamson's Sapsucker, Pygmy Nuthatches, Green-tailed Towhee, Red Crossbills
(feeding on the ground), a remarkable high density of Olive-sided
Flycatchers, as well as holding potential for some interesting owling
possibilities like maybe Flammulated and Great Gray. After doing all that,
my plan was set into motion -- an 'all nighter' at the marsh.

After wandering around down to Wocus Bay (lake) and onward around a labyrinth
of Winema National Forest roads, many of which were rather vague paths
forking off again and again in all directions, for a few hot and dry
afternoon hours, and without a suitable map for such an exploration, getting
lost was becoming a slightly worrisome possibility that only attention to
detail and a good sense of direction saved me from not to mention an
impending fuel crisis as I was getting dangerously low and I had no idea
where I might find the nearest gas station. With the prospect of an 'all
nighter' at hand and surviving it, I needed a power nap, not only for the
pre-night event but preferably a motel to sleep off the night for a few hours
the following morning before making the final 8-hour sprint to Seattle.
Fortunately, I found gas on rt. 97 a mile north of the Silver Lake Road
turnoff, and a motel 14 miles further north at Diamond Lake Junction.

My luck was holding out, checked in, and crashed into a power coma for 1-1/2
hours. At 7pm, tanked up, gas & coffee, and armed with a couple now
deliciously stone cold home grown cheeseburgers bought a few hours earlier at
a local roadside grease pit but saved for later to get me through the night,
I felt totally recharged, told the motel clerk not to expect me back before
morning, and was off for a night at the marsh.

It was an absolutely perfectly gorgeous evening. At 7:30pm at mile 4.5 again
on Silver Lake Road, the Yellow Rails were still 'ticking' away as they had
been all afternoon although sometimes a little sporadic and still no more
than six or so. It was still quite warm as the sun lowered in the northwest,
t-shirt weather for sure, and the marsh was really coming alive, much more so
than midday. All of the same players as mentioned earlier, just
exponentially more of them, plus a chorus of American Bitterns pumping all
over the marsh lands, a Short-eared Owl and several Harriers were careening
around the marsh, and Soras were seen popping out on the marshy / watery
edges here and there along with an increased abundance of Ring-necked and
Wood Ducks in the roadside water ways. I looked and listened long and hard
over the cattail portions on the east side for Least Bitterns but no such
luck. There must be a few in there though.

I worked slowly back and forth along the road as the slow high latitude
Pacific Northwest sunset progressed. Such exquisite beauty at this site as
to be utterly magical and feeling full of peace and happiness at just being
somewhere such as this where sunsets a month or so either side of the summer
solstice take their long sweet time. As the windless evening began to cool
and the sun set over the snowcapped Cascades, some of the higher peaks turned
from white to a pastel glow of alpine pink in the final moments of
illumination steeped with long shadows of blue and gray. With cacophony of
marsh sounds amidst the vast expanse of marsh before me now in the shadow of
the stunning Cascade background, those moments were priceless. Little wonder
that the Klamath Basin NWR complex (specifically Lower Klamath in 1908) was
the very first national wildlife refuge to be established in the USA with
other parcels of the complex added over the years including this one, Klamath
Marsh (sometimes called Klamath Forest) in 1958.

At 9:30 with darkness settling in earnest and back at mile 4.5, much of the
earlier evening marsh activity and sounds were beginning to taper off, but
with more Yellow Rails 'ticking' away in the marsh to the south. Ten, maybe
20. From t-shirt to fleece top to thermal underwear top, the evening cold
was setting in. There were no mosquitos. By 10pm, it was essentially
totally dark, except for the final faint and dwindling glow over the Cascades
to the Northwest, moonless, dead calm, and by then, the Yellow Rail marsh was
cranked full tilt. So many Yellow Rails, few could be isolated and
distinguished from one another. Quite literally, the marsh 'crackled' in a
subtle low volume uniform cacophony which a casual observer might dismiss as
insects. Insects NOT; Yellow Rails galore!! There is no other way to
describe it other than to say the marsh "crackled". If there was ever an
epicenter for Oregon's Yellow Rail population, then surely this was it! Now
*THIS* is what I'd call an infestation!!

The 4.5 mile odometer reading east on Silver Lake Road from U.S. rt. 97 can
also be recognized by the two small open water areas on both sides of the
road, a stack of hay bales on the left (north), a turnout to a gate on the
right (south), and a small outhouse sized structure a little further out in
the marsh on your right (south).

I commenced to walk the now totally dark and traffic deserted Silver Lake
Road to absorb this unique audio experience and measure the length of Yellow
Rail activity audible from the road. The 'crackling' continued throughout
the marshes on the south side of the road back to milepost 4 at which point
it abruptly ended. Going the other way, the southside crackling was
continuous to milepost 5 after which it diminished on the south but picked up
again on the north side and continued on to about mile 5.8 (two reflectors
west of milepost 6). East beyond milepost 6, the marsh composition changes
to tule, becoming wetter and deeper, and is no longer suitable Yellow Rail
habitat. The dominate sounds along the 4.0 to 5.8 mile stretch were mostly
Yellow Rails, occasionally augmented with Soras, Virginia Rails, American
Bitterns, Coots, winnowing snipe, Marsh Wrens, and to the north, the only
annoying distraction to such a pristine and seemingly pre-western
civilization times, a time when the Klamath Indians roamed these wilds, were
the herds of mooing cattle.

If I were put to task to make an estimate of the number of Yellow Rails I
might have heard just from Silver Lake Road along that 4.0 to 5.8 mile
stretch, I'd probably feel comfortable to say 50 - 80 just on the south side
from mile 4.0 - 5.0 with another 20 or so on the north side beyond mile 5.0.
To gauge such numbers, and since there were so many all endlessly ticking
away at once as to make it quite difficult to impossible in some or most
areas to distinguish individuals, I needed to (1) determine or at least
estimate sound carrying capacity (distance), and (2) get a feeling for
individual territory. This was to prove most interesting and enlightening.

Initially, I was fairly certain that I'd isolated one particularly loud
individual, or so it seemed, in the ditch along side the road. So, into the
ditch I went only to discover that it was just over the fence. So, squeeze
through the fence I went only to discover that it was still beyond a second
fence, seemingly closer but still some distance beyond. Quite some distance,
it turns out.

Hopefully I wasn't trespassing or entering a restricted area, but in perusing
the fence line several times in earlier daylight noting several gaps here and
there, I hadn't detected any signs to the contrary, private or federal
property whatsoever, so I wasn't really quite sure what to make of this. The
NWR boundary seemed to be down near milepost 5, yet the primary Yellow Rail
zone was west of there. Maybe it is refuge land, but if not posted, maybe
it should be, or at least better. If I did inadvertently violate protocol,
ethics, federal restrictions even, I sincerely apologize and I'm sure I'll
get flooded with a batch of flaming chastisement from those who know, or
worse, find myself publicly railed out of the community (no pun intended).

Through the opening in second fence, the targeted Yellow Rail along with most
of the rest were still off in the distance to the south. This was already a
good 100 meters from the road and I sensed that I was hardly any closer than
when I started in the ditch. Another 50 paces or so, the spike grass and
sedge became taller, ranker, knee deep with water now about ankle deep (7-10
cm). Finally, at about 200 meters out, I was closing in and maybe within 3-5
meters. The familiar and endlessly repetitive "tick-tick, tick-tick-tick"
heard from a distance and the road, at least for this one individual, was no
longer sounding like little pebbles being tapped together, rather more like
larger boulders, a sound like the sound of a rock you throw into a moving
stream and it hits another submerged rock, only rapidly repetitive and a
forceful "thud-thud, thud-thud-thud". Each "thud" note was uttered with a
forceful hollow throaty and resonating 'umph' quality similar to the more
familiar grunts in the antiphonal grunting winding down call of a Virginia
Rail. The "thud-thud, thud-thud-thud" was now so loud and penetrating, I
could feel it strangely resonating quite literally down to my skeletal core
and internal organs and yet still emanating from very deep in the mat of
dense vegetation, perhaps from a runway, which must have still filtered the
full force of the call a bit. My comparatively feeble attempt to actually
lure the bird out in the open by tapping my little rocks together and trying
to match the rails call in pitch and cadence, although sounding pretty good
to me, seemed utterly useless and went completely ignored. Even with the
bird perhaps nearly at my feet, I never so much as once saw the slightest
suspicious twitch of a single blade of grass nor heard the slightest hint of
footsteps which pretty much convinced me that the bird was operating within a
network of runways. There were precious few openings in this rank uniform
marsh, and while often standing motionless for long periods monitoring those
few I found in a fleeting hope that the Yellow Rail might emerge, such hopes
went unfulfilled. The bird plus a couple of others just plain flat out stood
their ground and ignored me as if I wasn't even there. A few times when my
lantern light played over a suspected location, the rail stopped calling for
a few moments but then soon resumed undeterred. I had no intention of ever
rushing the bird nor did so as not to cause any excessive disturbance nor
even trampling through the marsh in such a way as to inadvertently and
unknowingly stumble over a nest. The risk is that the nests are usually so
well concealed that I would probably never know it if I had and hopefully
didn't.

Finally, and just a couple more steps just to maybe get around on the
opposite side of the calling Yellow Rail and give it one last chance, a pair
of Sandhill Cranes erupted from near my feet scaring the absolute bee-geeezus
out of me as well as shutting up the Yellow Rail for good. The cranes went
off wailing into the dark of night utterly devastating the otherwise mystical
mood in the marshy calm. As slowly and cautiously as I moved along, I don't
know for the life of me how I didn't see those birds other than they must
have been hunkered down and hidden in the grass, but that was enough
disturbance for me, especially when I realized they also had just left two
2-1/2 foot tall pale cinnamon downy young standing motionless and dazzled in
my lantern beam and now potential coyote bait. Good Lord; if I can't see a
Sandhill Crane, 4 of them no less and right at my feet, then what chance is
there for something in this stuff so mousy as the diminutive Yellow Rail?!?
I turned around and slowly exited the marsh following the same path as I'd
entered. By then, 2am, the predawn cold and wet dew was settling in fast, or
perhaps it was just the scare from the cranes that triggered me to take
notice that I was in fact getting wet and chilled. Fortunately, come the
dawn, both the parents and young were reunited seemingly no worse for wear.

With a couple hours of darkness remaining, I tried my ear at a little owling
along the 5-mile stretch of dry sandy road leading south from Silver Lake
Road to Wocus Bay and back, stopping exactly every 0.25 mi to listen.
Generally, it was very quiet in the owl department with only the distant
sounds from the eastern marsh edge (mostly soras, coots, bitterns)
penetrating the forest edge. Three Great Horned and one Northern Pygmy
(standing in the road) were seen, none heard. There was one 'mystery' owl
giving a loud 'co-eeeeep' call several times which I couldn't quite place but
which sounded very much like the contact call of a Spotted Owl. However,
this dry mature Ponderosa / Lodgepole forest didn't seem quite like the right
habitat, so like many things that make strange noises in the night, I shall
never know. I was a little surprised that there were no Flammulated as the
habitat seemed perfect. However, such 'perfect' habitat in these parts of
south-central Oregon are indeed vast and Flammulated Owls are perhaps
concentrated nowhere, rather, widely scattered throughout.

Back out on to Silver Lake Road at first light, the marsh was cranking up
with blackbirds and marsh wrens and all of it's other denizens which had kept
me company through the night. With daylight but well before sunrise and back
at Yellow Rail epicenter at mile 4.5, the Yellow Rail concert had already
dwindled down to only a few scattered calling birds. Back down the road to
the cattail portion for another shot at Least Bittern, there were still none
to be seen or heard. In fact, the dawn chorus through sunrise and on to
about 7am was but an echo to the performance during the previous warm early
evening and sunset which may have been in response to the morning chill (low
40's). One final farewell stop at mile 4.5 at 7:30am, there were maybe a
half-dozen Yellow Rails still ticking away.

Quite satisfied with the experience, it was back to the Whispering Pines
Motel at Diamond Lake Junction, begged the proprietor for an extra hour 'til
noon, and sank into a good 4-hour sleep before getting up and out and on the
road for the final 7-hour sprint to Seattle and home thus ending another
3-month Spring sojourn in the field. My-oh-my, was it HOT around here when I
rolled in at 7:30pm; 93 on the back porch thermometer and much too oppressive
to even think about unloading until things returned to a more expected norm
the following morning.

****************************************************
Richard Rowlett (Pterodroma at aol.com)
47.56N, 122.13W
Bellevue (Eastgate), WA, USA

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought" --Albert Szent-Gyorgi (1893-1986).
****************************************************