Is that a bald eagle taking a bath? Yes!

Sometimes you can hardly believe your eyes. I was talking on the phone and I saw what looked like a large bird in the distance across the channel, sipping water, splashing and bathing -- except this bird looked like it had a big white head. Could that be an eagle? I shoved the phone in my pocket, got my binoculars and looked. Indeed, it was a bald eagle, on a half-submerged log, splashing like crazy in the water as though it were a robin in a birdbath. I got out my camera and didn't get a good splashing picture, but here's the bald eagle. The leisurely bath went on for about ten minutes and then the eagle flew away. There are eagles nesting in those cottonwoods across the channel and we see one or two eagles almost daily.

The 6 a.m. Otter Show

I don't usually wake up at 5:30 but this morning I was wide awake and figured I might as well go up and get the Sunday paper and work the crossword. As I was strolling along the walkway I could see Bruce in the distance, stopped. I looked to the right of him and could see movement. I realized it was a family of otters. They were in and out of the water, scampering over the water pipe and the walkway float logs. I could see them looking up stretching their necks checking Bruce out. We both stood and watched -- me, maybe five minutes and then they were gone. Bruce said they started out right on the walkway and at one point he saw the mom take the baby down and show it how to get a crawfish and the baby came up with a crawfish and ate it. There was a mom and three young. I didn't get a photo this morning but they are probably this same otter family I have been seeing as I paddle.

First thing out my door I had seen a heron hunched over walking on a log in the backwater and as I write this there are carp splashing in the water below my window.

Violet-green swallows: here yesterday, gone today

I had four boxes for violet-green swallows at my other house. Dave Fouts said he thought I could get them to nest here on the houseboat and showed me where to put a box. I bought one at Audubon and hung it last year -- but, no swallows. This year, though, they nested. Here is a baby the day before they fledged. I saw three of them in the box the previous day, their little faces and beaks awaiting the parent bringing food.

The river as blues metaphor: Eric Burdon and The Animals

Now that I live on the river, I find myself drawn to river metaphors. Last Friday I went -- upriver -- to Portland's annual Waterfront Blues Festival. It's a four-day festival, but I specifically went Friday to hear Eric Burdon -- whom I'd seen 50 years ago on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was 15. I knew he'd continued to be a fine and evolving bluesman and I wanted to experience that.

I was especially taken by a song he sang, "River is Rising," which I assumed was an old Negro spiritual. The lyrics go, "The river is rising/Carry me away to another world" and I took that to be metaphorical in a lot of ways, one of which might have led to freedom on the other side, or drowning in a rising river and being carried to heaven, or some other thought.

I liked the songs he sang and I went and bought his new CD, also riverine, called "'Til Your River Runs Dry." Imagine my surprise to discover that "Rising" is a new song written by him, Tony Braunagel/Jon Cleary. There's another song on the disc that he wrote called "Water."

In an interview Eric gave to Oregonian writer Curt Schulz he said, "I am still a Geordie kid whose grandfather worked the coal mines. The experience of the youth revolution is always within me, as well. All of these experiences add layers to who we are, but they don't strip away what we've been through or where we came from.... Blues people I've known seem to be born with an old soul. It makes sense that those of us who feel the blues, live the blues and breathe the blues tend to grow old gracefully."

On Sunday Mavis Staples sang a powerful rendition of one of my favorite spirituals (especially as danced by the Alvin Ailey troupe), "Wade in the Water." Amen.

Techno-flotsam. How geeky is this?

A few weeks ago when I was paddling I saw something floating in the middle of the channel. I went over to see what it was and found this gray hoodie, size Small, with an Old Navy label. I tossed in in the front of the kayak, dried it out on the deck, then finally yesterday got around to putting it in the laundry. When I was folding it I discovered that there was a digital-device plug not only sticking out of the pocket but actually sewn into it. Upon a closer look, I discovered there were earplugs at the end of the pink tie strings. When I looked inside again, I saw a label at the neck that said HB3 Technology.

Now really curious, I googled it and found that this is an "Old Navy Techno Hoodie with HB3 Technology." It has" built-in headphones inside the hood, with a jack inside the front pocket. Soft, warm jersey fleece. Wash with like colors in gentle cycle; lay flat to dry. Machine washable headphones." It costs $17 at The Gap. There's even a YouTube video about it.

On another website with a heading "How Geeky is This?" it says "The plug works with most mp3 players and phones." It shows it on sale for $15 from an original price of $29.50.
Since it is actually a cool thing but one that I'm not going to use, I'm going to send up a writeup to the island's weekly Newslinks to see if the original owner or someone else who might like it shows interest.

The visit of the Vicki Lynn

Here's why it's so much more entertaining to live life on the water and hang out on a river-facing deck instead of a private backyard. On Sunday I was sitting on the chaise lounge, working the New York Times crossword, and a boat, the Vicki Lynn, pulled up and people waved at me. I waved back. I thought one of the people aboard was a guy I know from mandolin class who keeps a boat downriver. Then I squinted and walked over and saw it wasn't him. Who were these people?

It turns out they belong to a boat club that is going to meet downriver at Hadley's Landing next weekend and they wanted to know if they could put up somewhere on my houseboat a fish flag that is their club's "sign" as part of a game people will be playing. I said yes but can I take their picture and put this in my blog. A resounding yes. Then a lady on board asked if she could take my picture, then admitted she'd already taken it and asked if that was okay.

We agreed my bird-feeder arm would be a good place and a lady got out of the boat with plastic straps and scissors and installed it. They waved as the boat motored away.

All set to save someone

Rope that floats? Who knew? When I went to West Marine to get supplies to repair the life ring that Dave Fouts gave (see previous post) they said you need rope that floats. Of course. What good would it be to toss the life ring to someone but have the rope sink so you can't use it to pull the person in?

It's been quite a while that this life ring has been sitting in my living room. Dave told me that I should repair where the tape covering it had been torn or worn off before I tossed it into the water. Eventually I got up to West Marine but they didn't have such tape, so I just bought orange duck tape (actually the brand is Duck Tape) from Home Depot. I also bought a hook for hanging the ring and another for the rope.

Finally today I did the repair and got it all up. Now I'm all set to save somebody who ends up unintentially in the river.

When I was coming back to my door, the way was blocked by a preening mallard. I stood awhile and watched.

The parts: life ring, nylon top and a hook for each

Preening mallard blocking the way back to the door

Otter encounter extraordinaire

Today my usual six-mile paddle included an extraordinary encounter with river otters. I was about 1-1/2 miles downriver from the Sauvie Island Bridge, near the mainland shore, and saw four little heads popped up in the water looking at me. I recognized immediately that they were otters. I stopped paddling, got out my camera and waited. They went underwater and came up and looked at me, repeating this three or four times. One scrambled up on shore and ran into the woods.

As I floated downriver, the other three otters stayed around my kayak, surfacing and then going under. I kept trying to take photos but it seemed like every time I'd get them in the frame they'd  go underwater.

Then at one point they disappeared, and then showed up just behind me scampering on a fallen log. I turned my kayak around and they stayed long enough to pose and watch me for me to take these photos.

Then two of them went on another log and I got a few photos of them. After that they turned and went upriver. I watched to see if they would surface, but didn't see them again. As far as I can recall, the only time I've ever seen more than one otter at once in the wild was kayaking years ago in Elkhorn Slough outside Monterrey, California -- and that place is a marine preserve known for its abundance of otters.

The skunk and Gertrude the mallard

                                         The first of 13 mallard eggs. Photo courtesy Monica Fetzer

When I moved to the houseboat I heard that the neighboring floating home two houses away regularly had mallards nesting in their river float's garden boxes. I wished for the mallards to nest on mine and I created what I understood to be a good nesting place -- a flower pot with hay inside and surrounding vegetation for privacy. But no luck.

This year new people live in that house -- Monica and George Fetzer -- and here's the story of what happened:
A mallard pair nested there -- see photo above -- and the female they named Gertrude laid 13 eggs. One of them got cracked and covered with ants, so they tosses that in the river. Twelve remained.
The eggs are suupposed to hatch  28 days from when  the last egg is laid. She doesn`t start sitting till they're all laid.

Then, as George described and Monica wrote, "Gertrude faithfully sat on them even as I planted my summer flowers all around her. She even endured a dinner party with 33 people, many of whom were quite interested in her. Three days before the eggs were due to hatch we were awakened to a very-close smell of skunk. Alas...next day, no eggs. Darn. Maybe next year."

We were all disappointed and also shocked that a land animal like a skunk -- which we and our pets pungently experienced at various times when we lived in our land houses -- would defile our riverhouse existence!

Heron poopy splat tracks

In an earlier post, I wrote that I wished I had herons landing on my deck, like some of my neighbors experience. Maybe not. It turns out that herons land all the time on our walkway during the night, and they leave big, messy, poopy splats. This week, a heron moseyed through its splat and made tracks down the walkway. The tracks are overall charming to see but the splats are quite the mess!

The absurdity of river caterpillar rescue

Caterpillar floating in river

Rescued caterpillars on my legs

I wrote this to "Ask an Entomologist:"

"Last week when I was kayaking on the Multnomah Channel of the Willamette River in Portland, I paddled alongside a small orange/black fuzzy caterpillar with a bit of white fuzz on top and I rescued it -- eventually setting it on the dirt in a planter on my houseboat. Paddling a week later, I saw another caterpillar and rescued it. After five of these, and seeing that none of the caterpillars was dead I figured, silly me, they must belong in the river. I then noticed that about every five feet there was one or more of these caterpillars floating, and seeming to be "eating." I eventually pulled over and put my five "rescued" ones back on land, still hesitant to leave them in the water. I also realized later that I only saw these caterpillars along about one mile of the six I paddled. I was near shore the whole time. I can't find any info about them myself online. Can you help? I would like to add an entry to my blog, My Riverhouse Life, that I will call "The Absurdity of River Caterpillar Rescue."

I wrote to a website called www.allexperts.com. I was given a choice of half a dozen or more entomologists and I chose one. I immediately got an email saying that "most of our questions are answered in 3 days." However, less than an hour later, I got another email with a link to the answer. Eric R. Eaton is the entomologist. He's the author of the "Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America" and has a blog at http://bugeric.blogspot.com.

He correctly identified this caterpillar as a Ranchman's Tiger Moth, Platyprepia virginalis.  He sent this link http://bugguide.net/node/view/381614 with photos (that exactly matched mine) and more information

... along with this note:

"I grew up in Oregon and found the adult moths frequently associated with wetlands, so it makes sense the caterpillars would be found in the same situation, though why they were actually in the river is kind of a mystery. Maybe they blew off the host plant or something."

I will now do more research on my own to see if I can find out why the moths were in the river swimming.

Copyright © 2010 Andrew McKorney



"Stream," ballet like a river

                                                                  Photo by Blaine Truitt Covert, courtesy Oregon Ballet Theater

Last Friday I was a volunteer usher for the Oregon Ballet Theater premiere of a dance called Stream, which I found to beautifully evoke the flow and colors of a river. In the evening's program it said this regarding the dance's Swedish choreographer, Pontus Lidberg: "At the heart of Stream is a quote that has given Lidberg inspiration, 'What we call a person, the Buddha referred to simply as "stream."' Lidberg clarifies, 'There is no beginning or end, there is just now.'"

The sheer fluid costumes in shades of blues and aquamarine were designed by Reid Bartelme. The program says, "The properties of water ultimately influenced Bartelme's final costume design with the use of translucent fabrics in ethereal blues and greys and a mobius-like top. There are also subtle differences in each costume as well. Bartelme shares, 'Water is all one thing and never the same thing.'"

In Catherine Thomas' review Monday in The Oregonian, she describes the piece as "shimmering instrumentalism, a mesmeric pure-dance ballet set to a luminous strings-and-electronics score by Portland-born composer Ryan Francis ... Stream swirls and surges in calm, clear lines, aided immensely by Reid Bartelme's ice-blue diaphanous costumes against the darkened stage. There's an airy serenity to the piece, although tht 10 dancers are in near-constant motion, streaming en masse, arcing into on-pointe spins, forming and dissolving patterns... Stream is not a showcase ballet; it's all dreamy mood."

Preceding the dance was a lecture by OBT's ballet historian Linda Besant. In that morning's paper there had been a DOGAMI poster of the Willamette River floodplain over time -- she noted that image and compared it to the beauty and flow of the dance piece.

DOGAMI image from LIDAR of a segment of the Willamette River's historic floodplain

Way into the inlet

Directly across the channel from my houseboat is a small inlet. Mostly, it's too shallow to get very far back there, but once inside, it's a magical-feeling spot, a small place to float surrounded by high trees. Back there I've been up close with herons, a beaver, and a few weeks ago, hooded mergansers.

Every time I got out for a paddle, that's my last bit of gunkholing, to see how far I can get back in the inlet. Of late, fallen trees have blocked the path and I've even thought about taking a saw and slicing my way through. However, this last Saturday the water was high enough for an intrepid kayaker to scoot around the tree-falls and get quite a ways back. Here are some photos of navigating the encumbered passageway.

                                              

                                                  Beaver-chewed trunk and fallen tree

                               Headed home



Three martins in the morning

Sunday, April 14, 2013

The purple martins are back! One of my neighbors was hoping they would have arrived a week ago, fittingly during the memorial for Dave Fouts, but here they are today, a week later, and just as he would say, "the scouts arrive mid-April..."

I already re-love hearing their sweet chirp. There are two males and a female (I think) and they look bedraggled -- coming from South America. I felt bedraggled just paddling six miles in the wind and rain on Saturday.

They are checking out the gourds and claiming their spots on the poles. Mid-day when they were gone I took the opportunity to lower the pole and add cedar chips and diatomaceous earth that a neighbor had offered to people at Dave's memorial. He had given her that advice, although not said anything about it to me. The cedar chips are a soft beginning to a nest and the diatomaceous earth keeps insects away.

I am never going to lower (or raise) the pole sleeve again by myself. It is heavy and when I got to the end of the figure 8 around the clamp it got away from me. The pole careened down and banged me in the head. My hand -- fortunately gloved -- got trapped where the sleeve slides over the rest of the pole. Afterwards I looked up "concussion" "symptoms" and didn't have any, although I've got scraped-off skin and some swollen and black-and-blue marks on my hand. It was a bit scary.

But I won't do that again, and I'm delighted to have the purple martins back home.

Whitecaps, wind, and roily waters

A very windy day today and the river is wild with whitecaps. Usually the channel is flat and placid so it's a whole different aspect of the water's behavior. I won't be paddling today. The wind is blowing east/upriver, counter to the downtream current. The tallest trees are swaying along the shoreline. Boats are bobbing in the roily waters and there are big splashes on the bows of boats heading downriver. 



Debris derby

The river is a spectacle today. It's flowing high and fast, and is loaded with debris. Down the center of the channel is a steady stream of floaters -- logs, branches, plastic bottles, blobs of styrofoam, plastic bags, and junk of all sorts. At 10:40 a.m. I checked the tides -- which affect the river here even 80 miles inland -- low tide would have been around 9:15 a.m., so it's past slack and the tide should be coming in until around 3:00 p.m. -- but this is all moving fast downriver. These photos were all taken within maybe a half hour and are just part of what was speeding by outside my window. Every time I looked up it was something new and lots of very big logs ...

The river's ups and downs, Part II

Here is the dramatic difference between the river at low and high water. Last summer, the ramp -- some call it our bridge because it connects our walkway over the backwater to land -- was extremely steep. Now here in April, it's nearly flat. Time to go and move down some heavy firewood.