Riding the Scappoose Dike Land:

We have moved over to St. Helens for a few days this week. We are getting our annual dental checkups and visiting old friends. Today we jumped onto Path, our recumbent tandem bicycle and rode from St. Helens to Scappoose. Then we rode around the Scappoose dike lands. This is some farmlands that have been developed from the flood plain of the Willamette River many decades ago. The main highway of the region is US-30. It is four lanes and roaring along at 55 plus. Turning off onto the dike road puts us on narrow twisting roads with practically no traffic.

What is so neat about the dike lands is the wild life. Today we saw deer and a wide assortment of birds. These included gold finches, robins, crows, sparrows, kestrels, turkey vultures and several ducks. The stars of the show today were a pair of bald eagles and a red tail hawk.

We spotted the eagles first soaring over a cut over cottonwood plantation. They were several hundred feet over the few trees standing at the edge of the field. We then spotted a smaller red tail hawk soaring close to the eagles. We pulled of the road to watch, We were just in time to see the hawk and one of the eagles swoop out of the sky to the level of the top of the cottonwood trees at the edge of the field. As the hawk dropped toward the eagle the eagle did a complicated twist in mid flight extending his talons upward toward the diving hawk. Both of the birds then circled in the rising thermal off the cutover plantation and gradually gained altitude. Every minute or so the hawk would make another stoop toward the eagle and each time the eagle would parry the attack by twisting onto his back and reaching out talon to talon toward the hawk. Both birds eventually soared so high that we lost them in the sun.

When we stopped at the county park a few minutes later, the camp host at the park told us that the pair of eagles had stayed at the park for four days just the week before. This pair of eagles are big beautiful birds. The red tail hawk is a rather large impressive bird itself, but it was only about two thirds the size of the eagle he was attacking.

I am sorry to report that I don’t have photos to illustrate this blog. I had the camera out but shooting directly into the sun does not provide usable photos. You all will just have to see it through my eyes.

Even before we retired this Scappoose dike land loop was our favorite ride. During the bird migrations there was always a delightful surprise around every bend. Indeed Path’s first ride was this same dike loop. In fact he was not even painted at the time. We call it our naked ride. The bicycle was naked, silly, not us.

We close with love to all our friends.

Gary and Judy