Subject: [Tweeters] Reecer Creek Road
Date: Jul 10 04:51:50 2007
From: Constance Sidles - csidles at isomedia.com


Hey tweets, You don't need a million dollars or a Russian rocket to
leave this planet for an other-worldly experience. All you need to do
is drive over to Reecer Creek Road out of Ellensburg, arrive as the
sunset is painting the sky in shades of magenta and gold, park on the
side of the road opposite the second turn-around, and wait. If you get
there early enough, you can listen to the evening chorus, with veeries
singing a soprano aria while lazuli buntings carry the tune and
mountain chickadees keep time. Verdi would weep from envy. As the light
fades, the last of the veeries sends a final song into the night, and
then falls silent. Now you can turn on your headlights and slowly glide
down the hill, looking for the jack-o-lantern eyeshine of common
poorwills.

There are people who say that the most exciting birding experience you
can have is to go out on a pelagic and embrace the spray along with
albatrosses, storm-petrels, and the like. Other people will tell you
that owling is the best. I've looked for seabirds and owls many times,
and I can't deny it is exciting. But to my mind, nothing is as
thrilling as searching for poorwills on a velvety summer evening, when
all sound ceases except for the quiet crunch of your tires. Your eyes
are caught by every gleam. No, that's a moth attracted by the
headlights. You remind yourself that you're looking for orange glow,
not white. A beer can in the ditch gleams brightly, but that too is the
wrong color. You wonder if the poorwills made it back from their long
journey south. Is the habitat still attractive to them? They seem to
cling so precariously to this region, and you think about the birds we
have lost - scaled quail, mountain plover, upland sandpiper. Ranchettes
are filling the valley. More people are moving in. Will the poorwills
join the dismal company of here-no-longer?

And then you see it - an unearthly orange disk aglow with living fire.
You stop - not just the car, but your own breathing. The poorwill
slowly turns its face to you. Two orange disks now. Suddenly, the
poorwill leaps into the air. You see a flash of white collar, the
rounded wings so like the moths that are its prey. It catches
something, and sinks down onto the pavement again. Then it levitates,
and the eyes move off into the trees, watching you the while way. You
can breathe again. When your heart stops pounding, you realize that all
you want is to repeat that experience. At least, that's how I felt.
Last weekend, I found five poorwills on that road. I will carry the
memory forever. - Connie, Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com