Birding in Lewiston

ByMatt

Given my current disabled condition, there’s not much I can do to get ouside and enjoy the sunshine, but there are a few places that I can go. There are paved walking and bike trails in every nearby town, and some of them offer spectacular scenery. The Trail of the Coeur D’Alenes, for example, starts in Plummer and meanders for over 70 miles to the town of Mullan near Lookout Pass. There are some sections of this trail that seem like they’d be good to explore, but this time of year, there might still be some snow blocking my way or even some downed trees across the path.

Fortunately, Lewiston’s Levee Parkway doesn’t suffer from either of these problems, and it has the added benefit of an extra 5-10 degree increase in temperature. The levee lines the Clearwater and Snake Rivers and was built for both recreation and flood control. The 11-mile trail begins near the Rt. 12 bridge and ends at Hell’s Gate State Park. There are views of the river, the canyon walls, and some of the more industrial sights of town, but overall, it’s not a bad spot to be, especially in my condition. In fact, I kinda wished I had my camera on me even though I’m not sure I’d be able to support it with two hands yet.

It does have one other attraction. The spill-over ponds on the other side attract migrating waterfowl, and people from all over the state will come to Lewiston to witness this display. Yesterday, I must have counted about 15 different species of water birds, and there were probably more that I missed because I lack a spotting scope. It’s not just the number of species that is awe inspiring, but also the sheer number of birds. Between the ponds and the river, there were probably thousands of bodies floating on the water.

My complete list of sightings for the afternoon can be seen here. In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be checking out other trails for the disabled, many of which travel through great bird habitat. While I may not be exploring the backcountry as I once was, at least I can still get out and have some fun. And pretty soon, I should be able to hold a camera again.

Similar Posts

  • Mount Rogers, VA

    Well, my time in Alabama has come to an end. To catch up on this thing, I spent the fall season at the McDowell Environmental Center as an educator down in northern Alabama. I enjoyed it so much that I returned for the spring season. The area is a sandstone highlands carved into canyons by the rivers. Its beautiful and biologically diverse and very interesting. I had a great birding season with 117 species this spring, lots of wildflowers, and good herping. The season ended May 19, and on Sunday the 21st, I headed north with Damascus, VA as my…

  • Why you’re working from home, Part 2: A Shiny Model

    Immediately after I published my last post, I wasn’t content with the manner in which I conveyed the SIR model. Simply posting graphs from scenarios that I ran isn’t exciting. It’s passive, and it doesn’t actively demonstrate for the reader how social distancing does work to reduce infection rates. I wanted something interactive. Something that you, my readers, can play with. So I built the model in Shiny. Shiny is a tool for R that makes data visualization interactive. I had never used Shiny. But with a few hours of reading the introductory tutorial, I had my own custom application…

  • |

    August Update

    I just realized that August has come and gone and I have yet to write about anything that happened during this month. It’s not as though I haven’t done anything. In fact, I was quite busy every weekend. So, let’s see, what happened in August? It got really hot. In fact, it got so hot, that doing things became unpleasant. Nevertheless, we took Clara out to Elk River to beat the heat. At first, she didn’t like sitting in the cool water, but by the end, I got her to tolerate it. We also took Clara up to Kamiak Butte….

  • Snowstorm

    Snowstorm, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer. After last week’s post about the snowstorm that welcomed us in to March, I took a few photos of the snow banks to illustrate how much we had. So here’s one of those photos, from Tuesdsay, March 1. Now, to be fair, the total snowfall over the few days was anywhere between a foot and a foot and a half. What you see out the window is the snow that piled up as the accumulation from the roof slid off. But even previous storms that dropped a foot of snow or more did not…

  • First Snow

    First Snow, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer. On Friday, I woke up to find a light layer of white on everything. At first, I thought it was a heavy frost, but when I put my glasses on, the truth was revealed. We had our first snowfall. It wasn’t much, less than an inch, and by late afternoon, all was gone. It wasn’t the first snow of the season either, but it was the first to stick on the ground, especially at our elevation. But Sunday night, it began to snow some more, and the accumulation was greater. It still wasn’t…

  • |

    The Birds at our Feeder

    We get lots of birds in our trees in the front yard. This could be contributed to the source of food we are supplying to them. The list of winter birds is less than the summer residents. For example, I haven’t seen a bluebird in months, and most of the woodpeckers have left the yard too. And of course, the hummingbirds have gone since they don’t have the proper gear to tolerate the cold. But even with the few remaining species, watching the feeders has been a delight. In Idaho, we have the possibility to see four different kinds of…