Travels with Buster - Chapter 3

Buster loves to hike.  His day is most perfect and whole went he gets to be out hiking. This morning I decided to take him hiking on the Fish Lake Trail below the dam along the North Fork of Little Butte Creek starting at the North Fork Campground. As it turned out, it is one of the trails on the Oregon Cascades Birding Trail. It was a perfect trail for him, a dirt path covered with soft pine and fir needles.  He was off with his nose to the ground taking in the scents of chipmunks and squirrels and who knows what.  For me, the unbelievable beauty of this creek side trail had a choke hold on my attention to the point that I wasn’t able to pause and ID the untold number of singing birds. A few did penetrate my consciousness: the liquid song of a Swainson’s Thrush, the cry of two circling Ospreys, the strong melody of a Song Sparrow, the nasal call of a Nuthatch, the squawking protest of a disturbed Common Merganser, a mother Canada Goose with two juveniles trying to hide in the grass, and then while I was searching the stream for signs of trout, the splash of a feeding American Dipper.  Yes, Buster sure loves to hike.