No eagles, but plenty of birdies at Stone Creek

Stone Creek offers more than just golf lessons to Oregon City students

By Ellen Spitaleri

The Clackamas Review, May 20, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

David Phipps, left, the superintendent of Stone Creek Golf Club, shows a nest to sixth graders from Gaffney Lane Elementary School.

Ellen Spitaleri / Clackamas Review

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It was a perfect day to be at the Stone Creek Golf Club – the sun was shining, the swallows were performing their acrobatic dance overhead and the air was alive with the calls of killdeers and red-winged blackbirds.

And 40 sixth graders from Gaffney Lane Elementary School in Oregon City were there not to play golf, but to observe nature and to check out the birds.

Teacher Kristi McQueen and her teaching partner Lori MacKenzie have just finished a six-week unit on birds in their life science curriculum and wanted their students to “see and witness real-life situations instead of just sitting in a classroom,” McQueen said.

Two years ago, McQueen taught the son of David Phipps, who is the superintendent of Stone Creek Golf Club, and he suggested that the students come on a field trip to the golf club, and they have been visiting every year since then.

“This is community outreach,” Phipps said, adding, “Kids don’t have much opportunity to stand on a golf course, and we want them to see it’s a place where you can do more than just play golf.

“There’s a trail that goes all around the golf course, and we have hundreds of people every day walking around.”

He said he wanted students to understand the connection between nature, the environment and the golf course.

Stone Creek provides a “natural environment” and “wildlife abounds,” Phipps said, adding that the golf course is Audubon certified.

“We’ve let a lot of areas go natural and we’ve done some native prairie plantings. The lakes have buffer strips for fish and wildlife habitat and we don’t use pesticides or fertilizer in the buffer areas.

“The bass in the ponds help keep the mosquitoes down,” he said.

Sixth graders

join birders

Last week, after the school bus dropped off the students and their teachers, Phipps gathered the group together and gave them some instructions.

He explained that they needed to stay out of the way of the golfers on the course, and also asked them to stay out of the tall grass and wooded areas, as birds might be nesting there.

“The key is to be real quiet and use our ears to find them, and then you can look through the scopes” and see and identify the birds, Phipps told the students.

Adult volunteers who brought birding scopes and binoculars included Bob Burbank, of the Prescott Bluebird Recovery Project, Steve Berliner and Dick and Sally Shook, who represented the Friends of Mt. Scott and Kellogg Creek Watershed and Ron Spencer, from the Audubon Society.

McQueen said her students were “so excited to be out here. They like the idea that they might see a bird they’ve never seen before.

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