NATURAL PERSPECTIVESTaking the less traveled roads

This past weekend, Vic led a field trip for his summer birding class to Angelus Oaks along Highway 38. While some of the class opted to drive up Saturday morning to meet at the Oaks Restaurant at 6 am, those of us who like to sleep relatively later in the morning stayed at the rustic Whispering Pines Cabins across the street. Vic’s game plan was to lead an owling foray into the hinterlands after dinner Friday night for those who were staying up there.

Apparently most of the students had already exper- ienced Vic’s legendary late night owling trips, because only one brave woman ? Walli Skrocki ? agreed to accompany Vic and me. We picked up auxiliary bird guide Tom Benson at Heart Bar campground. Our destination was the end of a dirt road past Heart Bar where a flammulated owl had been reported.

As dusk claimed the mountains, I spotted a fat rattlesnake slithering to safety at the side of the road. We all climbed out to see it better. It was a beautiful western rattlesnake, nearly black and thick as a woman’s wrist. It coiled up to observe us as we admired and photographed it. Apparently we weren’t enough of a threat to even make it rattle; we parted company amicably.

Tom had just acquired an iPod that plays bird songs through small speakers. As we continued bouncing up the canyon over rocks and ruts, he played calls of the target owls. At the end of the road, Vic, Tom and Walli set off on foot up the mountain to find the owl. Tom said that it was about a half mile up the trail, and then about a quarter of a mile off the trail. Even with a waxing gibbous moon to light the way, I declined to go hiking.

I stayed near the car, looking at stars pop out, first one by one and then by the millions. I was delighted to see the Space Shuttle soar by in the southern sky. I heard repeated calls of a flammulated owl and assumed that it was Tom playing his iPod. Imagine their disgust (and my delight) when they returned an hour later to tell me that they hadn’t heard the owl and that they hadn’t been playing calls at the time that I heard them.

But their trip up the trail hadn’t been totally in vain. They had drawn in a juvenile Northern saw-whet owl with calls. The youngster approached to within five feet of them, probably wondering why mom looked like a small music-playing gizmo.

Then Vic thought that he heard the flammulated owl in the distance. We all went a short way up the trail. Tom played the call and from far away, the flammulated owl answered. A pack of coyotes howled loudly nearby. There is nothing eerier than standing in a moonlit forest, listening to the sound of coyotes. On our drive back down the canyon ? a seven-mile bumpy trip that took 50 minutes ? we spotted several western toads and a common poorwill.

The next morning, Vic led a caravan of five cars down Middle Control Road, past a gorgeous waterfall, down to the Santa Ana River at the junction of Middle Control Road and Seven Oaks Road. These dirt roads are reasonably well graded and suitable for passenger cars. We returned to Highway 38 via paved Glass Road, which also crosses the Santa Ana River, a mere creek at that point. The group took a short hike at the Jenks Lake trailhead farther up the road, where they heard a Northern pygmy owl. It is one of the few owls that calls in the daytime.

After some birding at Heart Bar campground, we had a lovely picnic lunch. I had packed Irish cheddar cheese, Italian dry salami, crackers, baby carrots, cherries, hummus and tortilla bread for lunch. We ate under towering Jeffrey pines, with their vanilla-pineapple scent wafting around us.

We stopped briefly at Onyx Summit on Highway 38, then continued about a mile and a half toward Big Bear before turning right on the obscure side road that leads to Missed Spring. A short uphill hike brought the group to the spring, which had enough water in it this year that it wasn’t as easily missed. Vic ended the field trip at this point. The bird count for the day was only 35 species, but it included some nice mountain birds such as brown creeper, Clark’s nutcracker and red-breasted sapsucker.

Vic and I continued to explore the dirt back roads of the area, searching for new places to take the class next summer. Vic has developed a “Student Acceptability Scale” for roads that include roughness, steepness, surface quality, sheerness of drop off and other factors. The roads not only have to be accessible by 2-wheel drive passenger vehicles, they can’t be too scary or too hard on his senior students’ backs. We found some, like Seven Pines Road, that flunked on all counts and had me whimpering in fear. And I was driving!

There is nothing like getting off the beaten path and driving these one-lane mountain roads, especially if you know a good chiropractor.

Get a San Bernardino National Forest map, check local conditions, and try back-roading for yourself. Enjoy the headwaters of the Santa Ana River in its natural splendor, with towering pines and mountain wildflowers galore.