Our Heritage from George Benson

George M.  Benson served as the Refuge game warden, and later agent, beginning in 1918. In addition to enforcing the hunting and trapping laws, he also banded many waterfowl, often with the help of local children. He loved birds and took a mail order taxidermy course and then started mounting birds.

After he died, the mounts were kept in storage for several years.



The museum

Then the refuge decided to honor him  and commerorate his many years of service by  building a little museum called the George Benson Memorial Museum, on the headquarters property, to house his mounts and other educational exhibits. dawn to dusk.  It was opened in 1953.   A husband and wife team, Robeand Patricia Hansen donated other mounts of birds  and mammals found on the refuge.



There are a few other educational exhibits in the museum, including a little bit about the Paiute Indians who lived on this land before being driven off it by ranchers.

 

This was the largest sandhill egg on record at that time



A bit of the work of the Paiute artesians



On the personal front, I've been totally glued to a computer for most of the days.  It's taken about 80 hours, but I have my slide show almost finished. Jess, a staffer, with a wonderful voice narrated it for me. I only have to fix a couple of mistakes and figure out how to make my music stop playing after 6 slides and then how to mix Jess and the music in the last couple of slides.  I'll probably have to do some editing but that is a job for tomorrow. I've been working most of the last twelve hours on it and I'm ready for supper and bed. I'm actually writing this at the office because I had the pictures with me on my computer. I've been working on two projects on three computers today.  It's a good thing my boss isn't around because I had to use her  computer for part of my work.  And hopefully I can get her office back to a point that she can actually come back in on Monday.

We are all getting things ready for the Bird Festival. I'm also getting a kid's activity ready.  It's Migration Madness but played at stations with dice. I also am going to let each child pick from one of six birds and then he gets to keep a picture of that bird mounted on a popsicle stick. That is part of the mess I have sitting around.  I talked two new volunteers that are making stuff for us to build me little feet to hold up the poster boards that wll have to sit on tables with the stations mounted on them.  The stations are just numbered pieces of paper with directions on them. I may have to make some volunteers play the game with me to make sure every kid will die or get to his/her breeding ground while they are still having fun.

And I'm SO excited that I'll be going on TWO field trips as the driver. One is Extreme Birding and lasts all day.  The other takes us through Double O Ranch, my future home here.  It's the place where the shore birds breed so I'm anxious to know the locations of future nests.





Crossing a River in the Sky

This morning was supposed to be windy and rainy. But I woke to a clear sky and calm air.  I decided to spend most of the day birding and also go to the library and buy groceries in Burns.

My first stop was Ruh-Red Road. It runs against the north side of Malheur Lake for about three miles.  Those three miles have water on both sides of the road and are the best birding place I've found as the birds are a little more dense and much closer  to the observer than most places.

A strange blue

A few of about eighty pelicans

Our birds are mostly just stopping here for a refuel so our populations change dramatically.  I saw no tundra swans today but we are really getting in the pelicans. The most common duck was the shoveler - I saw around 400. We had more lesser scaup today but no ring-necked ducks. There were only a few redheads which breed here. But I did get around 28 species at this location.

Then I took the information about birding around Burns and started towards town.  I was reading about the birds to be found on Wright's Point when I learned it is actually not a strange ridge, but an old stream bed. It had a lava flow down it which protected if from weathering so now you have to climb to cross the old river bed.  You climb up one side of the ridge, then finally cross over, where there must have been wide part.  Then you go down along the east side of the ridge.   From the road, you just see this strange, winding ridge, with flat land on either side of it.

Wright's Point - the only hill between Malheur and Burns

The road goes up the south side and then turns and comes down along north  side

A closeup view of some of the rim rock which is old volcanic rock and doesn't weather as fast as the rest

View from Burns side on way back home

View from the top of Wright's Point looking east

I spent another few hours just driving around and taking pictures.  I had wanted to go hiking but the wind was so strong that it was hard to get the car door open. In fact, while I was shopping, I was called to the front of the store.  A woman had parked her van next to me and when she opened her door, the wind tore it out of her hand and it knocked off one of my racks. Didn't hurt anything, though.

Old building and hay

The wind blowing water against the bank

The first avocets I've seen in full breeding plumage - some breed here

Red-headed ducks breed here also

A field of snows - I could only get a small part of them they will go much further north to breed

View looking east across Malheur Lake at sunset - that is light, not snow

A wild sunset

Carpe Carp III: Know Your Enemy

Carp, an invasive species of fish, has had a huge negative impact on Malheur NWR.  They compete directly with fish and plant-eating ducks and totally destroy sago pondweed, an important food for ducks.  They cause the water to turn from clear to so turbid, it looks like chocolate milk. The turbidity kills some of the invertebrates that the ducks feed on.  So the refuge is committed to reducing the numbers of carp.

But they don't know how carp move, where they like to congregate, and ways the staff can get the best of the carp. So the first step is to track where carp go in a couple of ponds so the staff can predict where they will be.  If they know this, a professional fisherman may be able to come in and remove them when they are in a big group.

To study carp movement, Linda, the fish biologist, is planing to put  radio tags in 25 carp in Bocca Lake, a fairly large lake on the refuge. She has already tagged five carp.  Today she recruited several staff members, including John, the Law Enforcement officer, who is a great airboat operator, her new technician, Kris, and me.  The plan was to put out gill nets to catch the carp and also to fish for them.  Last year they found that carp LOVE corn marinated in garlic so we were all charged with adding garlic to a can of corn last night. I was out of corn so I marinated black-eyed peas.instead.

This morning dawned cloudy, cold, very windy, and with rain in the forecast. That didn't even put a blip in the packing up and leaving.  However when we got to to lake, we found that Jess, who was supposed to operate the motorboat that Carla, the archeologist, and I were to fish from, found that he couldn't control the boat easily in the wind and didn't want to risk us taking a dip in the frigid waters. So we fished from the bank  instead - and found a nice place out of the wind. Meanwhile John, the airboat operator, Linda and Kris went out to put the gill nets out.  They got them out before 11:00  A.M. and then had to wait until 2:00 P. M. to go back and pull them in. Meanwhile we all tried to fish with corn on our hooks. I found that black-eyed peas won't stay on the hook, so just chummed with them. But no one caught a fish.  I think they were all huddled up in deeper water and not eating.

Finally after we ate our lunches, and sat around looking at our poles and chatting,  it was time to go bring in the nets. John, Kris, and Linda fought their way through big waves to the nets and pulled them in but only got 4 carp of big enough to implant the radio tags in.

I was the official carp holder.  First we had to anesthetize them by putting  a small amount of clove oil in a bin of water and then putting a carp in it.  As soon as it went to sleep, we took it out and added another while we operated on the first one.

The pictures tell the rest of the story. The characters were: Surgeon: Linda, Fish deliver/holder: Marilyn, Fish Recovery: Kris, and data enterer and photographer of the surgery: Karla

Linda showing Kris how to operate the radio antenea

Leaving to pull up the nets

Untangling the fish from the net

Fish in anesthetized in clove solution

Bringing the anesthetized fish to be measured

Holding fish ready for surgery

Figuring where to make the first cut

The slit is finished and she adds a needle to thread the antenna out

Pushing in the radio tag

 

Pulling the antenea out through the  needle

Suturing the fish - took 3 - 4 sutures

All done

Recovery room - Kris had to swish the fish until the effect of the cloves wore off and it could swim - the coldest job

This was a really interesting job.  If we had had sun, little or no wind, and had caught fish on out hooks, it would have been a superior day.  But we managed to have fun anyway.  And now there are 9 fish in Bocca Lake with radio tags.  And I'm invited to go help next time.

Love All About

I spent Saturday and  Sunday working which means I was using a company truck mostly for my fun.   Of course, I have to drive to refresh the brochure boxes anyway, and I get to count trail walking as "checking the trail" and I needed some pictures for the Power Point show I'm working on.

Actually driving the company truck didn't last long.  I got it stuck early Saturday morning while trying to find a place on land from which I could see the new island the Corp of Engineers built for Caspian terns. I had to walk about 1/3 of a mile carrying my backpack, with water, binoculars and camera plus a big box of brochures. I switched to a company  car and kept going. (The refuge rescued the truck on Monday and I'll probably have to get my canoe out and go out to the island to get its picture. )

On Saturday, I only managed to drive the upper portion of the refuge. Of course, I had to come back and edit - mostly throw out - about 500 pictures. Sunday I ended up spending several hours at Benson Pond and fell in love with the place.  And there were lovey birds all around.  Coots copulating, song sparrows singing their territorial songs, harriers sky dancing, blackbirds singing and displaying their epaulets, and lots of sandhill crane gentlemen walking with their ladies. (I drove behind one pair for at least 20 minutes until they found a field they wanted to visit and left the road.) The owls were  through with courting and were on the nest. A hawk pair was defending their nest so may already be laying. Canada geese were paired up and some males were being aggressive to other males if they came to close to their ladies.

And I was also in love - especially with Benson Pond  - but with everything I saw.  The day had a mix of sun and clouds which made for some beautiful landscape pictures.

Benson Pond looking west

Golden willows planted by the CCC almost 100 years ago.

Canada Geese

Reflections

View along a canal behind the pond

A very wet mink

The invasive common teasel

Beaver Damage

And my punishment for getting the truck stuck?  I had to go on a tour for some Boy Scouts and ride with our resident archeologist/geologist/historian who explained lots more about the refuge to me.  THEN I had to continue my punishment by going to scout the area on Double O Ranch where the Llama Ladies will be leading a birding tour where each participant gets a llama to carry his or her gear.  So I only was allowed to work on the slide show for a few minutes before the tour and then I stayed behind and worked another couple of hours.

Carpe Carp - Part II: I'm Rescued

Sunday Night

As I was walking out of my house to go eat and shop in Burns,  the Fire Manager showed up with another 7 carp, giving me a refrigerator  filled with bloody - figuratively and literally - carp. I decided that: 1) my hands hurt too much to start another long session with these carp - I would do them a little at a time and use them myself. 2) They probably still weren't enough to feed the crowd. 3) And I didn't have enough time to get them ready.


Monday Night

I was invited to come to the get-together with the workshop participants. One of the people I talked with was a man who ran a processing plant in Australia and who is putting in another plant in Minnesota.  I started telling him about my problem with not knowing how to fix carp,  and he said, "Just bring them in and I'll cook them. I'll need some toothpicks, some oil and butter, some flour, an onion, a red and a green pepper, and some salt and pepper.  And of course those fish you have in your fridge."  Wow!  I was energized and ran off to the grocery store, and then gathered up other supplies at home, including frying pans.

Tuesday Morning

Incoming Carp

Part of my help with setting up the workshop room was hauling in the carp and supplies to cook it.  Keith, the Australian, decided he wanted to clean and cook the fish at noon.  The word got out and several of the participants stayed around to watch Keith cut a fillet, then skin it, then cut off boneless parts of it.

Cutting the fillet - skin is on

Cutting the fillet along the ribs - working from front to back and going lower with each pass

Cutting the fillet above the belly

Cutting the fillet off the skin - start at the tail and stretch the skin as you cut flat towards the head

Cutting the boneless portion of the fillet off - this is the part over the ribs

Cutting the boneless shoulder off the fillet.

Trimming out the mud vein - red part

The last cut is a flat cut the leaves the tiny Y-bones behind and ends up with a thin little fillet.

Most of the fish were females and they were mostly eggs - the greenish mass

The heavy white membrane around the air bladder is used to flocculate wine

He dredged these in seasoned flour and fried them in a dab of oil and butter.

He threaded all this on toothpicks and then sauteed the entire kabob

Finished kabobs

Preparing the fish  took him about 3 - 4 minutes a carp. Then another few minutes to prepare everything. AND he cleaned up the kitchen.  I didn't have to do a thing except pass the plates of carp around.  Well, I did go buy him and his friend lunch with their money.  And I meant to help, but by the time I got back, the food was ready to cook and the kitchen clean.

And this past week, I fed every one I could coerce into coming to lunch on carp tacos.  I have a whole host of recipes now since Germans and Asians all eat carp.  It is even kosher.  I'm telling the refuge staff that I plan to work them up to the Chinese special recipe.  You cut the head off a carp and stuff it, then sew the head back on to serve it.

Next personal project - learn to catch my own fish.

And my current big project for the refuge is to make a slide show that will be shown each hour for about 20 - 25 minutes to those people going on the self-guided tour of the refuge.  I'll present it part of the time but someone else will present it when I'm doing other things.  So I'm trying to get the dialog and some music  added to the slide show so it just has to be turned on.

After the show,  we'll hand the participants a CD with directions and details about each site on it ,and they will head off to enjoy the refuge while at the Migratory Bird Festival.  Today I really worked hard - used up one camera battery and most of another getting pictures to use in the blank spots of my presentation. Of course, I couldn't pass up a good picture, so only got half of the drive done. And those two sandhill cranes that claimed the road ahead of me for almost half an hour didn't help my schedule either.