C o n tin u e à V fom p3ge
cap and chcstnut-colored sides, travel in
small, chirping flocks, and are endemic to
the rainforests of the Northwest; in coastal
tribes’ tales, they are depicted as groups of
boys, hopping from place to place in
search of food and mischief. Song and Fox
Sparrows perch in trees, emitting lilting,
musical songs, adorned with reddish
brown plumage on their backs and brown-
on-white stripes and splatter patterns on
their feathered fronts.
Sparrow, in native
tales, can fly freely between the land of
the living and the spirit world of the dead;
Sparrow serves as an usher to the recently
deceased, pointing out the route to
afterlife villages.
The Red-Shafted Flicker is a large
woodpecker with mottled, grey and buff
plumage, and fluorescent orange-red
feather shafts under their tail and wings.
Ruffed Grouse, looking somewhat like a
small, buff and brown chicken is seldom
seen in town, but can sometimes be heard.
During their breeding season, the male
drums the air with his wings, accelerating
into a booming crescendo, a noise which -
we must assume — the female Grouse find
hard to resist.
Both Flickers and Grouse,
in native folklore, are feminine characters,
generous and maternal, with little
tolerance for the lewd and lascivious
behavior of such hyper-masculine
individuals as South Wind.
We all know crows. Locally, we have
an abundance of crows on the beach and
in town - both the Common Crow, and
occasionally the slightly smaller
Northwestern Crow, which is endemic to
the Northwest coast. Crow is an ambitious
but chronic underachiever in native myth,
seeing these birds - profoundly aesthetic,
folkloric, or as evocative, deeply
informative manifestations of human and
natural history, to name a few. Take a
good look: there is much more to them
than meets the eye.
For any non-specialist who wants to
understand what makes birds tick, it’s
hard to beat Roger Pasquier’s "Watching
Birds: An Introduction to Ornithology."
(1977, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Co.) It
appears to be out of print, but there are
many used copies to be found. There are
several bird guides available for western
North America - anything written
or endorsed by the Audubon Society or
Roger Tory Peterson is a pretty good bet,
but this doesn’t exhaust the possibilities.
The wired among us might want to check
out
h ttp ://w e b e r.u .w a sh in g to n .e d u /~ d v ic to r/b
ooks/ which has a fairly comprehensive
list of recent bird guides for specific sub-
regions of the Pacific Northwest.
THE
Casual D in in g
O ve rlo o kin g the Hestucca River
Spirits • Mot Sandwiches
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pacific c ity ,
O regon
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alwbys ^concerned with, but never wholly
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hence fashion.
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successful at obtaining food. Ravens
surpass crows on many fronts; ravens are
highly intelligent birds, omnivorous, jet-
black, drawn to lowland pavement by the
abundant, forest-edge roadkill.
Ravens
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and crows are two different species of the
same genus, and ravens can be discerned
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from crows by their larger size, their stout
Chris Beckman
Tim Davis
beak, their wedge-shaped tail, and their
P.O. Box 174 Tolovana Park, OR 97145 CCB # 41095
gliding, hawk-like flight. While Raven is
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the most powerful trickster-transformer of
the coastal tribes of northern British
Columbia and Alaska, on the northern
Oregon coast he is depicted as a less
central character, a kindly and wise being
who watches over the exiled and the
falsely accused.
Later this year, angular
swallows and swifts will zip overhead,
catching insects in flight, building mud
nests on house and cliff faces chattering
from above and depositing impressive
guano piles on local decks. In native lore,
these were "lucky birds," jumpy and
O reg o n A u t h o r s « B o o k s a b o u t O r eg o n
w it h S e l e c t io n s fr o m t h e P N W
quick, bringing luck to anyone who might
catch them. (Some coastal tribes also
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captured Varied Thrushes as well as
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showy. Rufous-sided Towhees, with their
black heads, white bellies and red eyes
and sides. Captured in traps, these birds
¡6*
were kept as pets. Dark-Eyed (or
"Oregon") Juncos, with their black heads,
rust-colored back, white bellies, and pink
sides, probably were captured as pets,
to o .)
Perched here, between the forest and
the ocean, we have an impressive
assortment of mid-latitude birds.
Shorebirds abound, particularly during
winter migrations and the spring nesting
season. In a lucky moment, you can
stand on Ecola cliffs and see Bald Eagles
circling beneath you, raising the ire of
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gulls, standing out in swooping black-and-
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white contrast to the churning blue-green
jHfla vincv Jfôlarlut
ocean below.
There are many ways of
OREG ON BOOKS
0FÈSSÔ1
IND5ET
,L5
Your Professor, if he’s anything worth noting, is a word
man. Occasionally, he's even able to cypher the "word o f the
day" at Bill’s Tavern and Brewpub. Last week, scuffling
through old papers and letters, he happened onto a marvelous
piece of English wordsmanship crafted by a Vietnamese
reprsentative o f the Cuu Long Travel Agency in Vinh Long
Province, Vietnam. His friend, Professor Anthony Knight of
Melbourne, Australia slipped this along to the states with a
note suggesting that the piece "smacks o f you, Lindsey." I
slieepishly present to you this melange of English words and
phrases, a veritable minestrone o f working English words
steaming in a Southeast Asian pot. Hold on tight, gentle
readers, the syntax and lexicon swim the brain and giddy the
senses. Seaside Chamber o f Commerce, note w ell The
writer heads this segment the "Subtle Tryst o f Language-the
Life and the Travel"
"Hardly the tourists coming to Vietnam are able to ignore
the guide-book guidances on travel to Vietnam. The stumpy
containing the palpable information and data that’s possible
to urge them to get on the travel confidently. Mekong river
plain doesrft deign to "truckle down" due to all is written
from outside. Those guide-book writers obviously come to a
halt o r to a lag confronting the marvelous never-streaming
plain silted dregs, on the spur o f moment their reminiscences
are jotted down in a book It’s a fact that My Thuan ferryboat
ceases all the vehicles from any m otion Our moral sense
gets flinched and wrinkles into belittled sympathies against
flurries o f whirling water. Far...and faraway on-comers did
appear from other continents. In an instant the ferry
transmutes all into companions. The first place they touch
their feet on the border o f Vinh Long is Cuu Long Tourist
guide office, and maybe here does take place the cunning
congruence of the man, the life, and the discoveries. Among
them there isn’t a few having got to Vinh Long for a time.
Returning perhaps entices them to retrieve gentle memories,
or incites to forget the past by reviving it in a very reverent
manner. To the tourist guides in Vinh Long all is a start on
the tip of the iceberg. In wherries flimsily furnished or
concise to assert the daily means o f life eking in the people
kept intrinsic, tourists begin to strain through the real life.
Meandering deeply to the far-reaching arroyos, that motor
skiff is scribbling new pages o f message in a cozier
guidebook With the modem lens visitors naked eyes are
sufficient to keep track o f what's happening. There's one
thing ensurable. Without Vinh Long tourist guide's
elaborations, it's difficult to obtain smug and cursive
snapshots! The gift o f gab even the foreign language is just a
foible instead of acutely profound knowledge o f the plain life
or writhing anguish o r drudgery moreover o f wretchedness in
this land itself. Mekong basin is amble with the wilderness
o f the nature calling to every mind o f barbarian times in
himself."
(Your Professor got quite embarrassed at this point. That
really does smell like my writing!)
"Foreigners might find out the genuine land Reeking
stuff o f fruit, sapid delicacies o f indigenous victuals, likewise
means o f communication on the river, the cubic raft, the
scow, the flotsam market's vendible tatter tally, the land
communion shrine, the middle span o f rickety bridges...In a
haphazard way visible coming bonsai diminuitives,
embellishing floweries, reposing hassocks by night,
corpulently-grafted durians, Sau Wright’s bluish tinctured
wine...tourists reckon out the vigorous bustling life in
Mekong river plain." (Whew! So what do you guys think?
This tour guide knows his pitch, eh? He continues now, the
purple journalism taking on shades o f iridescent ultra-violet).
"In a m otor shallop slithering through the crosses o f
trunk-line rambling with the drooping riparian jetsams I've
perceived really a wilderness and the prosperity o f a newly-
born land over 300 years since the time of human settlement
after the existence o f the cay. The savagery tinged with
sumac, gentian, buddleia, enshrouding on the twain shores of
runnels, the thriving flourished with the tile roofs, the
bleaching walls, and a myriad of TV antenna-hoisting houses
immetging among the gardens of longans, rambustans, and
durians rife in succulence and effluence. (Effluence? The
Professor questions word choice here. The tour brochure
closes with a note concemling the tour's evening festivities).
"Dishes and manners of culinary in the rural land have
fascinated western guests such as in that night delightedly
slumbering under the mosquito net o w r the wooden divan,
the truebred peasants here, after flusters o f glee, with no
winks, to enjoy dainties o f entertainment "go the whole hog
on the spot."
Well, Your Professor had to sit down and catch his breath
after reading this tract. I suspect a steady diet o f opium and
too m uch Lewis Carroll and Wordsworth at the village
schooL This guy must have written political speeches for
Nguyen Cao Ky under the old regime. Even Spiro Agnew
would have been impressed Airft English a grand language?
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P.O. Box «S2. Connon Beach O R «7110