Winter Birding in Oregon

My excuse for not blogging on time in my usual Tuesday slot has been heard before – it’s that busy holiday time of year.

But if you were leaving for a 10-day trip and had committed yourself to making 18 different confections for Christmas gifts, you’d be a little behind too. Committed is what I should have done to myself to an insane asylum for having decided to make so many nougats, filled chocolates, truffles, caramels, toffee, peppermint patties, etc. But boy was it fun. Put your order in for next year, but they won’t be free.

But back to my other excuse – I flew to Oregon yesterday for 10 days of visiting friends and family and of course birding. I grew up here and am still very attached to the place, the climate, the community, and the birding. This season of Christmas Bird Counts is an especially evocative birding time of year for me. It was on the local Corvallis CBC that I cut my teeth on birding socially when I was 15. I had been a solitary birder for the previous year and a half and found that while alone I didn’t learn as much.

Oregon is such a gorgeous place visually. I lead a tour here every year in May, and despite my doing some pretty darn exciting birding in the Neotropics, Oregon in Spring is one of my favorite tours. This year it’s being combined with Gavin Bieber’s SE Arizona tour for a perfect mix. The Oregon Coast is rightfully famous. But just as spectacular are the Cascade Mountains. This is Bachelor Butte in the spring when my tour takes place. This time of year, there’s quite a bit more white in the landscape.

I’ll be doing the Florence CBC this coming Saturday, where one of the most common species will be Western Gull.

We probably see coastal Bushtits, in their usual flocks of prime numbers. With a distinctive gray head, this subspecies is quite different from the gray ones we see in Arizona. Their closest relatives are all in the Old World – the long-tailed tits and the Pygmy Tit.

Golden-crowned Sparrow will also be a common bird in our area.

We have some beach in our area, so we might get lucky and see Snow Bunting, not a common bird this far south.

In the deeper woods we’ll at least hear the common Pacific Wren, a new name for this western form that was split from Winter Wren.

Of course, as on any CBC, we’ll be hoping for some Mega, such as this Lucy’s Warbler, which spent the winter of 2003-04 at Sheila Chambers’ feeder in Brookings, Oregon. But the first winter record for Oregon was on the Florence CBC in 1986, found by Al Prigge, Norm Barrett, and Chris Bond. Might we be so lucky?

I’ll also be doing my home count, the Corvallis CBC, which I compiled for a couple years in the early ’90s. I have a good chance of finding a few lovely Townsend’s Warblers (photo at top) in town.

Townsend’s Solitaire has been seen here a few times in winter though it normally winters east of the Cascade Mountains, a serious biological and climatological barrier.

Another rarity here in winter is Cinnamon Teal, but as is the case of those species who are among the first arrivals in the spring, once in a while they are found in winter.

Then again, we can still hope for a mega. Who knows what will be found? One of the years when I was compiler Chris Lundberg found a Mountain Plover in a field just south of town.

A few years ago about a month after the CBC’s were over, I “discovered” the concept of putting my digital camera to my binoculars and documented the first winter record of Solitary Sandpiper in Oregon, found near Silverton by Paul Pisano, with whom I was birding at the time. Lucky for me the experiment was successful, even if grainy and not a brilliant photo – it ended up being a one-minute wonder and was never seen again. Maybe we’ll find something like that?

Top photo: Townsend’s Warbler in residential Corvallis by Rich Hoyer