The outdoor theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is a marvelous place to view performances. Photo: T. Charles Erickson courtesy of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
This imaginative combination of birding and culture follows in the tradition of Bryan Bland’s popular “Birds and Music” tours of Europe. After a delightful morning of birding that includes famously delicious picnic breakfasts and lunches in stunningly gorgeous surroundings, we return in time for a daily performance in the theaters just a block from our hotel. The Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland performs eleven plays over its eight-and-a-half-month season, and we’ll have the opportunity to see most of the year’s offerings during our seven nights in Ashland, including three performances of works by other playwrights in addition to four of the Bard’s own.
Ashland is a charming and surprisingly civilized small college town located in a natural wonderland hours from any metropolitan area and surrounded by rugged mountains, wild rivers, national forests, and wilderness areas, and it’s within driving distance of Oregon’s only national park, a national monument and several national wildlife refuges. Before we arrive in Ashland for the theatrical attractions, we’ll take two days to bird our way from Portland down the splendid Oregon coast during the peak of shorebird migration.
Day 1: Our trip begins at 6 p.m. in Portland. Night in Portland.
Day 2: It’s about an hour and a half to the coast at Tillamook, famous for its cheese-producing dairy herds, not to mention the scenic Three Capes drive and rich coastal waters. We’ll stop at several state parks, scenic waysides and river jetties where Heermann’s Gulls attend Brown Pelicans, young Common Murres beg from the adults, and Western and Glaucous-winged Gulls mix in more ways than one. Also among our avian targets today will be the locally breeding Marbled Murrelet and Black Oystercatcher as well as migrating Black Turnstone and Wandering Tattler. Night in Florence.
Oregon: Birds and Shakespeare was as fine a tour as we have ever done. Rich Hoyer and Bryan Bland were great leaders. I just can’t say enough about Rich. His birding skills were as good as any leader we’ve been with, and his interest in the rest of the natural world was engaging.
Out in the van at 6 am, field breakfasts and lunches, then dinner al fresco in a first class Ashland restaurant and finally a great production by the Ashland Repertory Company. For us these were perfect days.
A final note – Bryan Bland not only contributed so much to our enjoyment of the Shakespeare and other plays but he’s also the world’s wittiest story teller.
Bill and Ann Toneff, OH
Day 3: We’ll spend a second morning on the spectacular coast near Florence, visiting the Heceta Head cliffs, the jetties of the Siuslaw River, and the dunes before heading inland and then south to Ashland. We may see shorebirds such as Western and Least Sandpipers, joined by lesser numbers of Pectoral and Baird’s Sandpipers, both Short-billed and Long-billed Dowitchers, both species of yellowlegs, and others. We’ll see our first play this evening after settling into our comfortable accommodations and our first of many fine meals. Night in Ashland.
Days 4-5: Our first birding will be near Ashland in a valley surrounded by forested hills. The oak and madrone woodlands are home to the common Western Scrub-Jay along with more local California and Spotted Towhees, Oak Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch and Acorn Woodpecker. Bushtit, Lesser Goldfinch and Black-capped Chickadee are common garden birds in town, and even American Dipper can be found in the city park. The back roads through mixed conifer forests have been good for Mountain Quail, Sooty Grouse and Northern Pygmy-Owl, some of the harder western specialties to find. Evenings will be devoted to the theater, where the 2008 Shakespeare productions will be: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coriolanus, Othello and The Comedy of Errors. We’ll also see plays by other authors, which will include three of the following: The Clay Cart (Sûdakra), Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner (Luis Alfaro), Our Town (Thornton Wilder), The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler (Jeff Whitty) and A View from the Bridge (Arthur Miller). Nights in Ashland.
Day 6: We’ll take advantage of the one night free of performances to travel a bit farther abroad into the Klamath Basin, famous for its teeming national wildlife refuges. En route are diverse coniferous forests where we should see Dusky Flycatcher, White-headed Woodpecker, Cassin’s Vireo, Pygmy Nuthatch, Mountain Chickadee and Mountain Bluebird. We’ll drive around the enormous Upper Klamath Lake in search of Ruddy Duck, Western and Clark’s Grebes and American White Pelican. Staying overnight far from civilization among pine forests and sedge meadows, we may be lucky enough to hear Yellow Rail in its only known breeding location in western North America. Night in Fort Klamath.
Day 7: We’ll visit magnificent Crater Lake National Park, checking the coniferous forests on the way up the mountain for Williamson’s Sapsucker and Cassin’s Finch. Birding above treeline at the lodge and the rim overlooking the crystal blue lake (the deepest in North America) could produce Clark’s Nutcracker, Gray Jay and Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. In the afternoon we’ll return to Ashland and the festival. Night in Ashland.
Days 8-10: During the last three days we’ll continue our pattern of birding in the mornings and theater in the afternoons, when it’s too hot to bird anyway. Options include Mt. Ashland, where wildflowers attract several kinds of butterflies; searching for Great Gray Owl, which breeds in all the surrounding mountains; or working our way up the Rogue Valley to look for Wrentit, Yellow-breasted Chat, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Red-breasted Sapsucker and Red-shouldered Hawk. If we have the energy, we can spend a few post-theater minutes looking for Western Screech-Owl in the park behind the theaters. Nights in Ashland.
Day 11: The tour ends this morning in Ashland with flights departing from the Medford airport.
Updated: 07 January 2008
Prices
- 2008 price about $3,830
- Single Occupancy Supplement $770
- 2009 price not yet available
Notes
This tour is limited to 14 participants with two leaders. Both leaders will accompany the group irrespective of group size.