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BLACK SAGE ROAD AND TUGULNUIT LAKE

35 km, all paved

Black Sage Road is another classic side road of the south Okanagan. It takes you from the north end of Osoyoos Lake along the east side of the valley north past Oliver, rejoining Highway 97 just south of Vaseux Lake.

Start: Junction of Highway 97 and No. 22 Road between Oliver and Osoyoos.

JUST NORTH OF OSOYOOS LAKE, take No. 22 Road (for some reason known more widely as Road 22 locally) east off Highway 97. The road drops to the floodplain of the Okanagan River, passing through a marshy area marked by growth of cattails and bulrush. In spring this marsh is alive with the braying calls of yellow-headed blackbirds, the raucous quacks of Virginia rails, and the whistled whinnies of soras. Marsh wrens chatter from the bulrushes, their football-shaped nests woven to the stems of the reeds. Like many wrens, male marsh wrens build more than one nest to show off to their female partners. The females choose one and do the interior remodelling themselves, adding soft cattail down to the rough interior before laying their eggs.

Beyond the patches of marsh are moist meadows—hay fields watered by the water table, which is never far below the ground here. In April, long-billed curlews nest on the fields, the birds giving mournful cries to advertise their presence. These large sandpipers become harder to see in May as the grass grows tall; their young grow quickly, and by July both young and old curlews gather in small flocks and leave the valley for coastal wintering grounds in California and Mexico. The taller grass of May attracts bobolinks to the Road 22 meadows, and the black-and-white males are often seen chasing each other and the buff-coloured females over the hay, chattering out the bubbling song that gives them their name. The fields south of the road and immediately east of the highway are being invaded by Russian olives, trees native to southeastern Europe and considered a weed in much of the American West. This is the only spot in Canada where I’ve noticed them taking over wetland habitat; they grow in more open groves elsewhere in southern British Columbia.

The wet grasslands are filled with unseen meadow mice, and that food supply attracts a steady flow of mouse-hunting birds. A few kestrels—small falcons—are often seen perched on the power lines along the road, intently watching the nearby grass for movement. Red-tailed hawks perch on power poles year-round, joined in winter by rough-legged hawks that have flown south from Arctic nesting grounds. Northern harriers fly back and forth over the meadows on long, narrow wings, listening for mice in the thick growth below; you can easily recognize the harrier by a prominent white patch at the base of its tail. Harriers have a circular ruff of facial feathers, similar to that found in the owl family, which they use to funnel faint sounds into their ears. Barn owls and long-eared owls roost in the dense birch woodlands along the old river channel by day, then replace the harriers on the mouse-hunting night shift. The owls are often joined by coyotes quietly pacing through the grass, their ears cocked, ready to pounce on any squeak.

A small parking lot sits at the south side of the road just before the river bridge. If you have time for a walk, stop here, read the informative kiosk signs, and then stretch your legs along the river dyke. Although most of the land along Road 22 is private, once you’ve walked a few hundred metres in either direction along the river, you usually have public land beside you.

The road crosses the Okanagan River channel on a narrow bridge; you can usually drive south down the dyke on the east side of the river to Osoyoos Lake, but the other dykes are normally gated and restricted to foot traffic. Okanagan River was channelized in the 1950s to control spring floodwaters; the canal was designed to literally flush the spring runoff through the valley as quickly as possible. Periodic weirs drop the water level in a controlled fashion; these produce extremely dangerous rolling currents, so swimming anywhere near them can be a fatal experience. The old river channel winds back and forth across the valley, its path marked by a thick growth of deciduous trees, mostly water birch mixed with alder. In summer you can see colourful wood ducks and painted turtles in these oxbows. The warm waters are also home to interesting insects; the oxbow on the north side of the road just before the big old barn is one of the few places that the powder-blue western pondhawk has been found in the British Columbia Interior.

The barn and historic ranch houses at the east end of Road 22 are part of the old Haynes Ranch. John Carmichael Haynes was a government agent and later a judge in the early days of Osoyoos; he used his influence to amass about 22,000 acres of ranchland in the area. If you look into the barn from the east side, you might be lucky enough to see a roosting barn owl. These birds have nested in the barn several times since 1990, the first time the species was found breeding in the British Columbia Interior. Barn owls are generally nonmigratory and can’t tolerate deep snow, so they are very rare in Canada outside of the southern coast of British Columbia. If the owls aren’t in the barn, you should at least see Say’s phoebes flitting around the corrals any time from late February through October. These black-tailed, orange-bellied flycatchers build nests in the barn’s eaves and rafters. Please do not enter the barn—it is dangerously in need of repairs, and I can personally attest to what it feels like to fall through its rotten rafters!

To the east you can see a large, rocky hill called “the Throne.” This is part of the Haynes’ Lease Ecological Reserve, 101 hectares of land set aside in 1980 to protect some of the desert-like habitats of the south Okanagan. The high cliffs are home to one of the few peregrine falcon pairs that nest in the southern Interior. The reserve extends south from the Throne in a narrow strip to the northern shore of Osoyoos Lake.

Turn north onto Black Sage Road at the T-junction at the end of Road 22. Here you can seen the stark contrast between the lush meadows on the floodplain and the desert grasslands on the sandy benches. The dark, gangly shrubs are antelope brush, and this site marks one of a few remnant patches of this habitat left in the valley. Antelope brush was once widespread from the United States border north to Penticton. Many of the larger shrubs have a warren of small burrows underneath them, the homes of pocket mice. These smaller cousins of kangaroo rats are highly nocturnal, hopping over the sand by night and stuffing seeds into their cheek pouches or pockets. Pocket mice are true hibernators, sleeping away the winter in their underground homes before emerging in mid-March when spring blossoms on the grasslands.

You quickly reach the first large vineyards of Black Sage Road. Burrowing Owl Estate Winery lies across the road from the sandy grasslands of the South Okanagan Wildlife Management Area. Lark sparrows—big, handsome sparrows with striking chestnut faces—sing from the antelope brush, and you can often see an osprey on its nest on a pole towards the river from here.

Through the main vineyard section of Black Sage Road you are naturally surrounded by a vast landscape of grapes. In winter you may sometimes see western bluebirds flashing through the cinnamon-coloured vines, looking for bunches missed during harvest. As the road angles westward onto the sidehill, you’ll see that the natural antelope brush vegetation was recently burned—a wildfire swept through here in 2007. Fires are a natural part of these dry grassland and shrub ecosystems, creating a mosaic of different habitat types, some dominated by grasses and others by shrubs. Unfortunately, this system doesn’t function properly when habitats are reduced to small patches and separated from similar habitats by large areas of agricultural and suburban landscape. The opportunities for natural reseeding by native plants are greatly reduced if an entire habitat patch burns to the sand. The British Columbia Ministry of Environment set this area aside some years ago to retain a narrow corridor of natural grassland, fully aware that the risk of wildfire might make the task of preservation more difficult.

The road gradually descends to the valley bottom, keeping grasslands and cliffs on the east side and orchards and vineyards on the west. It then turns to climb back onto a flat, sandy bench now planted with vines and corn. This bench is one of many in the valley formed at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch as young meltwater streams brought sand and gravel down from the hills to rest against the glacial ice in the valley bottom. The road descends slightly once again, to meet McKinney Road in a T-junction; turn east for a few metres on McKinney, then resume your northward journey on Boundary Road. This takes you through the suburban outskirts of Oliver, where you’ll eventually meet the east side of Tugulnuit Lake. This lake formed when a channel of the Okanagan River was blocked by a large alluvial fan built by Wolfcub Creek flowing in from the east at the end of the last ice age. The river now occupies another channel, west of the lake. Being surrounded by houses, Tugulnuit Lake has almost no natural shoreline, but it can be a good place to look for migrant waterfowl in spring and fall.

The road continues north, past small rural holdings, to meet Highway 97 at the large Jackson-Triggs Winery. Just before the winery on the west side of the road is Inkaneep Provincial Park, a nice spot for a picnic in the shady trees. The park protects a tiny area of native riparian vegetation—birches, cottonwoods, roses, and willows—that harbours a number of endangered species. One of these is the yellow-breasted chat, a relatively large songbird that is bright yellow below and grey above. The chats usually stay well hidden in the cover, but you can easily hear the males on spring mornings (and often all night long) performing their loud, unmusical songs, which consist of loud whistles and rattling trills. The meowing calls coming from the rosebushes belong to the grey catbird, another denizen of these riverside thickets.

From the junction with Highway 97, you can turn left to return to Oliver and Osoyoos or turn right to continue north towards Penticton (section 6).

focus Burrowing Owl

The bird from which Burrowing Owl Estate Winery takes its name is an unusual owl in several ways—it is more diurnal than nocturnal and has long, bare legs and a habit of doing regular knee-bends. But what really sets the burrowing owl apart from its cousins is that it nests and roosts underground, in burrows dug by badgers or other fossorial mammals. Like many other small owls, burrowing owls eat a variety of prey; the local birds generally catch pocket mice in the spring and early summer, then switch to large insects such as beetles and Jerusalem crickets in summer and early autumn. By October the insect numbers dwindle and pocket mice begin to hibernate, so the owls migrate south, probably wintering in California and northern Mexico. They return in late March or early April, and the evening air echoes with the males’ cu-kooo calls.

Burrowing owls were once fairly common in the Okanagan and south Similkameen valleys, but they declined rapidly in the late 1800s when cattle overgrazed the area, degrading the habitat and likely trampling a lot of the nests in sandy soils. In the 1980s and 1990s, the British Columbia Ministry of Environment attempted to reintroduce these owls to the Okanagan, bringing owl families up from a healthy population in central Washington. Most were released in the grasslands adjacent to Burrowing Owl vineyards. Owl numbers were maintained as long as new recruits were brought in each year, but when imports from south of the border stopped in the early 1990s, the numbers declined quickly. The last burrowing owl was seen here in 1995, three years before the winery produced its first vintage.