Various Oregon Birding Piks

Monday, September 9, 2019

2019 More Yet

Here are the continuation of my pictures. It is now just into August, and fall migration is heating up, and there are young birds all around. Each year the swallows stage at my place, and just the other day there were over 200 hanging out on the wires here. But the majority of them have gone south.

Least Sandpiper

Western Sandpiper

Immature Barn Swallow

Immature Tree Swallow

8/21/19

The weather man was predicting some rain, so with the weather front coming in I thought I might see if anything unusual would take a break from migrating. I did not find anything of the sort, but did run into a flock of Lesser Goldfinches at the local sewage ponds, as well as lots of waxwings.

Lesser Goldfinch

Immature Cedar Waxwing

8/26/19
Went birding today with Chuck Philo from Toledo in SE Lincoln County - specifically a place called Grass Mountain. Chuck has been here many times over the years, mostly for hunting when he was younger. We were looking for migrants, which were in short supply. At one point we saw a Wilson's Warbler, so I began tooting a Pygmy Owl call, which sometimes can perk the curiosity of small birds which come out to investigate the noise, but he was not interested. However, when we rounded the corner found I had called in the real thing, a Northern Pygmy Owl, and he was quite cooperative. We were able to walk quite close to him and he did not seem to care. So for both of us, we were "finally" treated to the photo op that we had spent years awaiting. They can be quite confiding, but until now, we'd been skunked.

Northern Pygmy Owl

Northern Pygmy Owl (How about those nostrils!)

Northern Pygmy Owl

Migration for raptors had just begun and we were treated to 2 Immature Coopers Hawks and 1 Immature Sharp-shinned Hawk, the latter being a smaller version of the former. All raptors seem to like to harass each other, from the smallest to the largest. Here are some shots of these two having a tussle in the air.

Cooper's Hawk

Yes, he is flying upside down. I did not rotate it after on my screen

Coopers on the Left, Sharp-shinned on the Right

We attended a family reunion over Labor Day weekend just over into Washington state, and after Rosie went home, I headed south along the east flank of the Cascades. I added a few birds to each of 4 counties. On Wednesday, 9/4/19, I had the opportunity to join the weekly Bend birding outing. We headed up into the Cascade Highland Lakes, and I was able to add Common Tern to my Deschutes county list. Below are a few pics from the 4 day excursion

Lincoln Sparrow at Detroit Flats

Clark's Nutcracker coming to a watering trough

Western Chipmunk coming to that same watering trough

Yellow-rumped Warbler coming to that watering trough

A cow drinking at this watering trough

I wonder how long they have been farming......

Finally, a Canyon Wren to photograph

Wilson's Snipe near Prineville

Female Western Tanager, but this was where we stayed in Washington

American Robin in Washington

Sphinx Moth. These are often mistaken for hummingbirds as they fly fast with fast wingbeats

Sphinx Moth

Willow Flycatcher

In this pic I was seeing if I could take a pic of a hovering dragon fly. Not too bad!

Mt Batchelor from Crane Prairie Reservoir in the high Cascades

As Rosie and I are going on a 10 day jaunt to Southern Oregon, I figured there would be plenty of pics from our vacation to start anew, so am mailing this one out.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Tillamook Campout

8/14/19

Hi Folks,

Recently our sister in law volunteered to stay with Rosie’s mother so as to provide us a break. This was with less than a week’s notice, but we made plans to take the camper over to the coast. We started looking into the main campground at Newport, straight west from where we live, but ended up going more north, to the Tillamook area, and stayed at the Barview County Park Campground, where the jetties are, between which much water flows into and out of Tillamook Bay. There are about 6-7 such places in Oregon, and these are all great places for birders as they provide a way to get a little beyond the surf to observe birds just off shore.

The weather was simply splendid the entire 3 days: not much wind, the ocean was calm, and the temps were in the mid 70s all the time. We walked a few miles each day up and down the beach. I even walked out to the end of the north jetty three times, something discouraged in less than optimal weather. On Tuesday I went for a birding foray with Jimmy Billstine, a good birding friend from the area and added one species to my Tillamook County list, a Willow Flycatcher.

It was nice to just chill out and not have a set schedule to adhere to. Makes us look forward to retirement even more. We brought along some firewood and had the traditional campfire each night. We had not been camping over at the northern coast in many years, and one thing we could not help but notice was that the majority of the other campers were Hispanic. I had some mixed feelings for a while, but ended up being more complementary to see those of a different culture displaying good family values and earning a decent living. Just wish my Spanish was better.

I ended up taking over 1200 pictures! Sometimes it is easy to sort through them, knowing you eventually got a great pic of a certain bird, and you could simply delete the dozens of lesser quality ones taken beforehand. Other times it was not so easy. Eventually I whittled it down to about 50 or so (I have not counted). As the pelicans were much in evidence, and as I wanted to get them soaring over and diving, I had to go through about 200 to find the few you see here. It was fun to try to get them diving for fish. I did not get any to my satisfaction, so these will have to do.

The sunsets were fairly good and we enjoyed 3 of them. We hoped to see the green flash, but it is quite difficult this far north, and probably not possible when there are clouds on the horizon. It was fun to see about 50 others each night taking in the sunset. This is an older campground, and so the sites are spread out and roomy, with lots of conifers for privacy (and birds). We had a few rodent visitors all the time: California Ground Squirrels, Western Chipmunks and Chickarees, those darks squirrels here in the west. There was one such squirrel who would climb up to the top of the spruce trees around the campsite, bite off the cones, sending them down to the ground. He was amazing! They were literally coming down every 2-3 seconds at times, even making a racket when landing on the roof of our camper. The grounds in the vicinity were strewn with small cones and he would later go through them, carting off to his stash the ones he liked best.

We were hoping to empty our holding tanks at the campground waste disposal area, but we learned they charged $10. Ah, modern technology comes in handy again. I knew there was a web site which listed the free dumping places in Oregon, found it, and saw there was one at the Spirit Mountain Casino, which was en route home. It was also a convenient place to stop for lunch.