Great Grey Owl @ Jacksonville Woodland Trails

Monday, May 11, 2020

Each year we hike at the Jacksonville Woodland Trails 20-30 times.  But over the past couple of weeks we have become owl whisperers.  In the last 3 hikes @ JWT, we have had 5 sightings of owls.  These sightings are along the White Oak trail for those of you who live in Southern Oregon and/or hike at the Jacksonville Woodland Trails.  One of the owls we saw in the past was about 20 or so feet from us, but we didn't have our camera and the our phone picture was mostly a dark silhouette.  When we did have our camera, the owls always were too far away and we had to settle for using our binoculars for a view.  But today, yes finally today, we saw not one, but two owls on our hike and we had our camera.  The first was not too far off the trail and was on a branch of a pine tree and is in the photos below.

First owl sighting which we think was a young owl

Same young owl just a slightly closer picture from a differnt angle on the trail.

We  are not sure what type of owl it was - let us know if you have any idea.  However, just a little further down the trail, Carol almost walked under a Great Grey owl that was literally 10 feet from us.  We spent 5-10 minutes just taking in the beauty of this creature and even got to point out the owl to two other people on the trail.  We even had Katie with us, yet the owl stayed right there on the branch for us. Incredible!

Our Great Grey friend @ JWT

Hope you enjoy the pictures and if you are in the Southern Oregon area, get out to those trails and find an owl if you can.  They are there, you just have to look real carefully.

Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol

Fish Lake Trail #1013

Saturday, May 8, 2020

We took Katie and drove to the Fish Lake boat ramp area and hiked the Fish Lake trail #1013 from Fish Lake to the North Fork Campground for a nice 6.9 mile trek through the forest. This hike also put us over the 200 mile mark for the year.

The trails starts by following the outline of the lake affording us some great views of a still full Fish Lake as well as a snow covered Brown Mt in the background.  Eventually the trail heads away from the lake as it skirts around some private cabin properties and then comes back toward the lake near the dam.  From here the trail follows the North Fork of the Little Butte river.  It has been a while since we last hiked here and since then they have put in logs across portions of the stream to create better wildlife habitat.  We only disturbed a couple of Canada Geese along the slow section of river, but the area looks like an ideal place for deer, elk and even beaver.  We took a break at a campsite in the closed North Fork campground befroe retracing our steps back to Fish Lake,   Lots of wildflowers, a few patches of snow, and the wonderful smell of the woods.  All in all a great hike on a very hot spring day.  Katie also enjoyed the "leash free" hike, eating and rolling in the snow, and of course, taking a few dips in the water.

Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol

View of Fish Lake with Brown Mt in background

Calypso Orchid

Yellow Violet

Oregon Anemone

North Fork of Little Butte along the trail.  Notice the "log jam" to far left of water

Some areas of water had lots of green algea

Still a few snow patches on the trail, much to Katie's delight

New boardwalk area over snow runoff water

One last look at Fish Lake and Brown Mt