The Virtues of 5MR Birding

Surely, by now 5MR birding needs no introduction. Briefly, it’s the attempt to reserve a portion of your birding energies to try and locate species within a 5-mile radius of your home. 5MR fever has spread across the globe, thanks to the tireless efforts of the movement’s evangelist-in-chief Jen Sanford. I won’t retread the myriad reasons you should think about starting your own 5MR patch, but seriously, look into it. Instead, I offer some thoughts and observations on how 2019 has unfolded so far, and how the new approach has shaken up our routines.

There are several reliable spots in our 5MR for Eurasian Wigeon

We’ve been in our house for about a year and a half now, and until the 5MR challenge got underway we hadn’t been gung-ho county listers for our new home county, Linn, Oregon. That means some fairly low-hanging fruit was ripe for the picking. In contrast, nearly all of our birding this year has been ultra-local. We’re steadily teasing out Albany’s secrets, stalking its underbirded nooks, and venturing into its overlooked crannies.

Killdeer

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Spotted Towhee

Lesser Goldfinch

Bewick's Wren

We’ve been checking out a lot of hotspots we hadn’t explored before; hotspots we didn’t even know about. Timber-Linn Memorial wasn’t on our radar at all, but we got lucky on our very first visit with a Snow Goose who thought it was a wigeon. This could have been super tough and not the least bit surprising if we hadn’t found one in our 5MR this year. Likewise, we picked up Red-shouldered Hawk (county bird!) on our inaugural visit to Truax Island – a place we didn’t know existed until a fellow 5MR birder recommended it to us.

Snow Goose

American Wigeon

Besides exploring new corners of our patch, we’ve been hitting our usual places even more often, including the greenway encircling our development. A Merlin we found in our neighborhood on New Year’s Day might be the only one we see all year. Same with Tundra Swan, a species for which there’s really no habitat in our circle – but a couple weeks ago we stepped outside our front door to go for a walk, and immediately two flew right overhead.

Merlin

Cooper's Hawk

Northern Flicker

Suet showdown

In January we followed up on a Swamp Sparrow report from a little ways down the street. We gave up after two hours of flogging the same row of blackberry bushes (White-throated Sparrow was a nice consolation prize), but the next day we found our own Swamp Sparrow in a completely different part of the neighborhood. After chasing a few of these in Oregon and dipping repeatedly (sometimes even within an hour of others finding them) this had become quite the state nemesis for us. Nemesis: vanquished.

Bewick's Wren

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Zonotrichia combo - White-throated and Golden-crowned Sparrows

Swamp Sparrow

On the other hand, some birds I’d taken for granted actually aren’t so common inside our 5MR (e.g. Northern Pintail and Northern Shoveler), which took some planning to get. And we still need others, like Townsend’s Warbler and Chestnut-backed Chickdee that feel overdue. Part of the fun has been constantly expecting one of these “easy” species to turn up, and finding a something out of left field instead. How is it we found a Mew Gull before Hutton’s Vireo? Or Wild Turkey before Pileated Woodpecker? We’ve added 17 new birds to our Linn County list (so far!) just from exploring and wondering what will turn up next.

American Coot

Green-winged Teal

Ring-necked Duck

Black Phoebe

Some birds we’ve seen in Linn County in the past, but the most reliable, heavily reported locations fall well outside our 5MR, so we’ve had to put in the legwork to find our own spots. Horned Larks, Savannah Sparrows, and Dunlin all hang out in agricultural fields, which are one of the defining features of our circle. But not all fields are created equal, and these species are all most easily found too far south to count.

American Pipits

Horned Larks

Western Bluebirds

We’ve taken to driving quiet stretches of road that we’d never been down before, where we can pull over to the shoulder to scan, and we picked up most of our ag. birds in no time. Even better, we spotted a Northern Shrike less than a mile from where we ticked Horned Lark. The shrike kept hovering like a kestrel – we’d never seen that behavior from a shrike before!

Northern Shrike

One of Jen’s objectives for the 5MR challenge is getting people to drive less. It’s actually atypical that we haven’t taken any day trips to the coast so far this year. We usually plan a semi-ambitious itinerary for our weekends that might take us an hour or more from home in any direction. At least for now, most of the time we ask ourselves what we’re doing this weekend, it has to do with tracking down 5MR target species. It’s been really great getting to know our home territory much more intimately over the past two months.

Double-decker Wild Turkeys

They're so freaking weird

Lastly, one very rewarding aspect of 5MR birding has been getting to know local birders (as more than just a name on an eBird checklist). Some veteran listers have proactively reached out to us to offer advice or help getting access to tricky locations. Others have connected on Facebook. The collective excitment around 5MR birding and the mutual support it’s engendered have been altogether amazing. If you haven’t already, you can follow the “5MR Birding” group on Facebook, or find tips and resources to define your own circle here.

Gadwall

Mallard

Nemeses Conquered at Finley NWR

Although we haven’t been in the Pacific Northwest very long, we somehow had already acquired some nemesis birds. One in particular isn’t necessarily a difficult bird to get, but it eluded us a number of times. We would see reports of a Black Phoebe in an area we had just birded, or we’d go to that area after a report with no results. What was particularly irksome for Nick was that he *swore* he saw one once at Ankeny NWR, but it quickly disappeared before I got a glimpse of it, never to be seen again.

Red-Breasted Sapsucker

Golden-Crowned Kinglet (by Nicholas)

Male Dark-Eyed Junco (by Nicholas)

Female Dark-Eyed Junco

Ankeny NWR has also hosted a regular Rough-Legged Hawk that we couldn’t quite seem to get. We tried a couple of times to look for it with no luck. And another time we super scrutinized a distant raptor sitting in the grass for about 15 minutes hoping that it was a RLHA, but it turned out to be a Northern Harrier. Wah wah. So when a recent report for Finley NWR listed these two nemeses, we knew we had to give it a chance to get the most bang for our buck, so to speak. 

Brown-Creeper - Not a nemesis bird, but a nemesis photography subject. Nailed it!

Male Spotted Towhee

False Turkey Tail fungus (by Nicholas)

We had our doubts about how the day would turn out when we drove through a thick blanket of fog that stretched from just south of our apartment for about 35+ miles down all the way down to Finley. We eased into our day with a few ducks here and there in some of the ponds created by the winter rains. 

Fox Sparrow

Golden-Crowned Sparrow

Purple Finch… But not purple!

What perked us up was a group of 11 California Quail. Usually when we see any quail, they run for cover and vanish into the brush as soon as we see them. But this group seemed to feel they were at a comfortable distance, and they pecked for food as we watched them for a while munching and then running back and forth from one side of the road to the other. 

A bevy of California Quail

These round little footballs are super adorable and a joy to watch. They look like balloons that could pop at any moment. And I love how they know how to quickly run across the street in contrast to their somewhat leisurely pace along the edge of the brush/grass. I giggled each time one of them would inch up to the edge of the road, assess the safety of their surroundings, and then quickly scoot across, lengthening their bodies.

We pushed on and drove to the nature center as we were on a mission to find those nemeses. The first attempt was in a pond just behind the main building. There we sought and succeeded in finding a new lifer: the Black Phoebe! Huzzah! I took one pass when we first got there, not sure if this was the right pond as there was another across the street. After we took some time to snap some photos of the well-behaved birds at the feeder, we went back over to the pond, and immediately found success as the Black Phoebe flew passed us and continued to flycatch amongst the reeds.

Black Phoebe

Lovely pair of Spotted Towhees by the feeder (by Nicholas)

Next we headed to the long stretch of road with large open fields sprinkled with ponds of ducks. We were first greeted with only our second sighting of a Golden Eagle. He was one amongst half a dozen Bald Eagles we had already seen that day. We watched him perched for a few minutes until he unsuccessfully hunted for a goose. And then, as if a heavenly door opened up in the sky, a Rough-Legged Hawk swooped across the sky. There was no mistaking this one with its black belly and black “wrists.” It landed in the treetops and we were still jumping for joy when a second one soared right above us. AAAA-mazing! 

Digiscoped photo of a Rough-Legged Hawk

Immature Bald Eagle

This dreary day turned out to be quite rewarding, indeed. And just when we thought it couldn’t be any better, we were delighted by some bonus sightings. A group of Tundra Swans were feeding super close to the road that allowed for nice close shots. But the cherry on top of this awesome day was something I didn’t even know existed – a Storm Wigeon. What’s that you say?!? Check out Seagull Steve’s blog post about them. This is a rare form of an American Wigeon that has that butter color on most of its face, not just on the top of its head. 

Tundra Swan

I shouted, “What’s wrong with that Wigeon?” And Nick knew just what it was after reading Seagull Steve’s post. It was really cool to see it side by side with a regular American Wigeon. I would have never expected to see one, especially since I didn’t know of its existence. Haha. But what a treat it was after conquering two nemeses and having great views of other great birds.

Storm Wigeon = An extra buttery American Wigeon

Compare a normal American Wigeon to a Storm Wigeon

Ebony and Ivory, live together in perfect harmony...