Blue Goose ~ Day 161

November 6, 2014 ~ Susanville, CA to Klamath Falls, OR

How lucky...again, a Starbucks at the other end of the parking lot, open at 4:30 a.m. with two cheerful guys working away, getting ready for another day of social coffee lovers. I'm seldom the only customer even that early in the morning. Consistently good coffee, often with a Bacon-Gouda sandwich or a couple of small Petite Vanilla Scones, and a couple of hours on the computer: this is my morning agenda lately while waiting for the sun to rise.

The road north was sparsely traveled, and I could feel the subtle rise in elevation as I drove in sunshine through this high desert. I finally found Modoc NWR after a few wrong turns. The woman at the headquarters told me and another visiting couple about Great Horned Owls which had nested in a large cottonwood across the road and Red-tails in tree on VC side of the road. When a storm ravaged things one spring night and disrupted the hawk nest, the manager found that they just took over a Barred Owl nesting box. And then the next year, the birds switched trees, with the Owl nesting in the hawk tree and vice versa. I tried hard to find daytime roosting owls and never did, but they certainly were tucked in somewhere close, resting, snoozing, waiting out the light.

Many farms surround and infiltrate Modoc but there were also ponds with waterfowl and several hawks  flying / hunting over the fields.

Modoc NWR - CA

Northern Harriers have been the predominant raptor with Red-tails also numerous. The light was brilliant and clear, the land open between the mountains to the west and Nevada to the east. I fantasize about being able to experience a year in a 24-hour period on these refuges, watching the seasons and ebb and flow of the birds, and how the water moves and how the grasses grow.

My next stop in mid afternoon was Tule Lake NWR, still in California, but just below the Oregon border. What a beautiful amazing place in this mostly dry land. A volcanic ridge rises just behind the VC. Several feeders were very active, situated at a slight distance from the windows. Guys with guns were planning their waterfowl / pheasant hunts, getting information and permits. One gentleman  spent 15 minutes grousing about fewer and fewer lands available for pheasant hunting, whining some about the water-fowlers, pointing out a discrepancy in the maps and generally commanding the attention of a manager. He wasn't really obnoxious - just unhappy. Pick-ups with dogs, and visitors in vehicles like mine lined up in the parking lot which was bordered by trees busy with fall-feeding birds, including a pair of Golden-crowned Kinglets. And a life bird! a quick glimpse of a Golden-headed Sparrow. This is on my short list of birds I want to see better but definitely saw the smudgy yellow head which is the winter presentation. It is otherwise a streaky brownish sparrow. They had been visiting the feeders I was told, although not lately, and are common here.

The high rocky ridge sheltered the VC site, and the sunshine was warm, filtering through the leaves still on the trees. Another birding couple, each with a long lens, was digiscoping the VC birds. It was park-like, quiet this time of year, and I lingered before setting out on the auto tour, along a series of dikes enclosing vast impoundments of water. (There was a sign asking visitors to thank the local farmers for allowing the use of water for the refuge, or words to that effect.)

Western Grebes - Tule Lake NWR - CA

The refuge is incredible! Finally, finally, I saw thousands of birds: gulls, grebes, swans, geese, ducks, herons, and hawks over the fields beyond the dikes, spending two to three hours moving slowly south, east, south and then east in stair-step fashion before finally reaching the highway to Klamath Falls.

I saw young, half-grown Western Grebes importuning parents for food. That was the verb that immediately came to mind. These kids would slither across the water toward a parent, mouths half open, half begging, half crying for food. And the patient parent would dive whereupon the juvenile bird would immediately shut up until the parent showed up again. I didn't actually see the adults feed the young birds so maybe were teaching them they needed to start figuring this out. I watched half-grown Eared Grebes close to shore, swimming, diving, swimming, diving without attendant adults. There were Bonaparte Gulls flying about; occasional flocks of White Pelicans in the sky; Tundra Swans, adults and juveniles; and a huge mixed flock of Snow and White-fronted Geese. I didn't get close enough to check for "blue" Snow Geese, which I am sure were also present. It was very quiet on the water, and the sun was slowly moving to the west behind me, so viewing conditions were great. Definitely, a top ten refuge.

Geese - Tule Lake NWR - CA

I drove 30 minutes to Klamath Falls, eating in a sports bar and sleeping in the adjacent Walmart lot.

Tule Lake NWR - CA

I had been emailing Andree about my arrival time in Eugene, and she asked me if I had seen the Tule Lake Japanese Internment site. I had only seen a sign and had not visited but then spent an hour reading about these camps:

ENCYCLOPEDIA.DENSHO.ORG

Tule Lake was one of the ten concentration camps built to imprison Japanese Americans forcibly removed from the West Coast states during World War II. Following the ill-conceived loyalty questionnaire that was administered in early 1943 to the imprisoned population, inmates who refused to give unqualified "yes" responses were segregated to Tule Lake and unjustly labeled as "disloyal."
War Relocation Authority (WRA) site....The concentration camp site was 1,110 acres; including the farmed areas, Tule Lake was 4,685 acres. It was situated on a dry lake bed created by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which drained the lake in 1920 to create farming homesteads that were allocated by lottery. Today, the former camp site is under federal and private ownership.

The area was the ancestral home of the Modoc tribe; however, a treaty with the U.S. in 1864 led to a decade of Modoc resistance against removal from their homeland. The legendary battle of Lost River took place at the geological and historic landmark, Capt. Jack's Stronghold in Lava Beds National Monument, where a band of fifty to seventy Modoc fighters held off an army battalion whose numbers rose to nearly 1,000. After five months of resistance against army efforts to roust them from the Stronghold, the Modoc were eventually overwhelmed by army reinforcements. On October 3, 1873, the leader of the Modoc, Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack, was hanged. Surviving tribal members were exiled to Oklahoma.

Construction on the Tule Lake concentration camp began April 15, 1942. By May 25, 1942, approximately 500 Nikkei volunteers had arrived to help set the camp up for inmates from the Sacramento, Pinedale, Marysville, Pomona and Salinas WCCA centers. Another 3,166 came directly to Tule Lake, which officially opened on May 27, 1942...The response of region's chambers of commerce was not welcoming, indicating, "they preferred to maintain the present character of the population [with] no orientals or negroes among its residents." Early public relations efforts by the WRA to dispel hostility toward the "Jap" camp had the opposite effect, creating distorted news reports and a persistent belief inmates were being coddled, enjoying a leisurely life eating steaks, ham and roasts while the local town folk suffered wartime shortages and rationing. When conflicts at Tule Lake flared up, sensationalized articles amplified local fears of dangerous Japanese POWs in their midst. The multiple instances of labor unrest at Tule Lake—including strikes over the lack of promised goods and salaries as early as August 15, 1942, a strike by packing shed workers the next month, and a mess hall workers protest in October 1942—were viewed by locals, not as an assertion of human dignity and civil rights, but as threatening acts of disloyalty.

The infamous loyalty questionnaire was mishandled at Tule Lake, causing widespread dissent. Pressure to answer ambiguous questions within a fixed deadline without adequate opportunity to discuss and evaluate them led to anger and civil disobedience. Several dozen young men in Block 42 refused to answer the questionnaire despite threats of $10,000 fines or twenty years in prison or both. For refusing to cooperate they were imprisoned in Alturas and Klamath Falls County jails, but since there were no criminal charges, the protesters were removed to Camp Tulelake where the Constitution did not apply. There, the army imprisoned several hundred of Tule Lake's protesters for nearly two months. Mismanagement of this life-defining questionnaire contributed to Tule Lake having the largest number of Nikkei defined as "disloyal." (Those who refused to answer the questions or gave outright "no" responses were labeled "disloyal.") Answering "yes" but adding qualifying comments such as "when my rights are restored" or "when my family is released" also was defined as "disloyal." Of the 10,843 responses to the question 27 concerning military service, 3,218 or 30% refused to give unqualified "yes" responses. In their responses to question 28 of the loyalty questionnaire, disavowing loyalty to Japan, 15.6% were defined as disloyal because they refused to give unqualified "yes" responses....Under Best's tenure as director of the segregation center, Tule Lake became the largest WRA concentration camp, with a peak population of 18,789 inmates. By 1945, Tule Lake included a furniture factory, a bakery that produced goods for internal consumption, a shoe repair shop, a hog farm and slaughterhouse, a beauty shop, fish store, funeral parlor, several coop stores, and a tofu factory. Additionally, the farming areas grew enough to supply Tule Lake and other camps. Tule Lake had eight Buddhist churches and three Christian churches and four judo halls.