Johnson Lake
Spark Bird Abundance
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A “spark bird” is any bird that is a gateway to a greater interest in birds. Mine’s the Great Egret. It’s not particularly rare, but in the area that I often walked in 2018, it was a somewhat elusive visitor. Seeing one standing statuesque in the submerged cottonwoods would take my breath away.
Our Soundwalk Setting
Johnson Lake is a small seasonal lake on Sauvie Island, near Portland Oregon. It lies on the east side of the Sauvie Island Wildlife Area, managed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. This little lake is not particularly well known or frequently visited as a birding destination. There are nondescript, gated gravel road access points from the north and south which close for the winter, Oct 1- Apr 15. It is probably better known to hunters than it is to birders. So, with few expectations, I decided to check it out one Sunday morning in early September, 2023.
Rounding the corner, my eyes fell upon a novel scene: centered in the lake was a throng of mostly large white birds; dozens of American White Pelicans and over 100 Great Egrets more densely packed than I’d ever seen. I’ll share with you a photo I’m not proud of, but that I do find quite stunning:
This is why access to the area closes in the winter. Birds are sensitive and they need space. As a wildlife observer, it’s hard to know where that invisible line is; where one step closer will disrupt them. While I have you here let me tell you a sidebar story. Below is a picture from 1908, Malheur Lake Oregon, a similar shallow lake habitat. See if you can spot the difference?
No Great Egrets. No spark birds! Why? By 1908 their populations were reduced by over 99% in order to supply the last century’s version of fast fashion.
In 1908 William Finley and Herman T. Bohlman traveled to southeastern Oregon to photograph the wildlife of the Malheur-Harney Lakes Basin, which contains key habitat for birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. Finley and Bohlman took dozens of photographs, paddling a canvas boat around the marshes in search of birds and other wildlife.
What they found appalled them. Plume hunters had nearly destroyed Malheur Lake’s population of great egrets, stripping them of their feathers to feed the nearly insatiable demand for plumes, which at the time were the height of women’s fashion. After stripping their feathers off, the plume hunters left the adults for dead while the young remained in the nests to starve to death. Environmental historian Nancy Langston writes that, “out of hundreds of thousands of egrets that had once nested in Malheur Lake, only 121 were left when Finley toured the region. His horror at the decimation motivated him to begin a campaign to save the great marshes of southeastern Oregon.” oregonhistoryproject.org
Today, back on Sauvie Island, Great Egrets appear to be doing pretty well. The pelicans and mallards decamped to another locale after I unintentionally flushed them, but the egrets circled back and settled in, providing the unusual soundscape for our soundwalk.
Let’s just say it is abundantly clear why egrets are not classified as songbirds. Their quiet croaks and grunts while foraging sound like contented monsters. Meanwhile the Greater Yellowlegs—much smaller in stature than the egrets but pretty big as far as shore birds go—call out “Yel-low-legs”. It’s an interesting contrast of frequency and texture. On the way to and from the lake we hear the woodland birds of the area, and some trains. It was a pretty quiet morning, as mornings on the island go.
Months later I worked up the score that leaned into Wurlitzer electric piano, synth drones, and harp. The chord progression evolves with greater harmonic complexity as the score unfolds, hopefully conveying a sense of mystery, for Sauvie Island is a bit of a mysterious place.
Sauvie Island History
Sauvie Island is the largest island along the Columbia River, and indeed the largest river island in the US. It was home to a large indigenous population who gathered the edible tubers, Wapato, that grew abundantly in the wetlands. The island was visited by explorers Lewis and Clark, who camped there in 1806 and documented what they observed.
The original inhabitants of the island were the Multnomah tribe of the Chinook Indians. There were 15 Multnomah villages on the island, and the 2,000 islanders lived in cedar log houses 30 yards long and a dozen yards wide. They hunted, fished and gathered plants year-round. sauvieisland.org
Native Americans lived for a millennia on and around the island until waves of epidemics were introduced into populations by white traders. First smallpox, introduced as early as 1781, then malaria beginning in 1830.
Fever and ague appeared suddenly in July 1830 in Native villages on and around Sauvie Island near Fort Vancouver. The Indians believed it had been introduced by an American ship involved in the salmon trade, the Owyhee, commanded by John Dominis. They may have been right, as the ship had visited malarial ports before sailing to the Columbia. As the epidemic broke out simultaneously in the villages and at the fort, Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) personnel were kept busy and did not witness what happened in the villages. Only later, when Peter Skene Ogden visited Sauvie Island, did the destruction become clear. Because of their proximity to dense mosquito breeding areas and the counterproductive effect of treating the fever attacks by plunging into cold water, high mortalities in villages were assured.
Comparing Lewis and Clark's estimates of population in the Portland Basin with numbers from the late 1830s, an estimated 90 percent of the people died. oregonencyclopedia.org
Mortality rates on Sauvie Island were even worse. By the late 1830’s Sauvie Island villages were abandoned, but many reminders of their culture and civilization remained. Perhaps I will dive deeper into this on our next soundwalk.
In 1837, the Hudson's Bay Company established a dairy farm on the island. The island was later named after Laurent Sauvé, a French-Canadian employee of the company who managed the farm for a couple of years.
By 1852 Sauvie Island, once a cradle of Upper Chinookan civilization, was claimed in by white Euro-Americans in up to 640 acre parcels under the donation land act of 1850.
By 1856 most of the Native Americans in the Lower Willamette Valley were removed to Grand Ronde Encampment in the western valley foothills of the Coast Range.
Today, in 2024, the casual visitor to Sauvie Island is hard pressed to find any mention, marker or memorial to the Native Americans that stewarded this land for perhaps an order of magnitude longer than Euro-Americans. Just last year the Portland City Council took a small step toward acknowledging Native American heritage by renaming the Sauvie Island Bridge. It is now Wapato Bridge. Let’s hope the agencies (Metro, ODFW, and Oregon State Parks) that administer public lands on the island take note, and seize opportunities to educate visitors in the future.