The Pygmy-King of North Mountain

Last weekend we set out for an ambitious outing down near the Oregon/California border for our second annual trip to the Winter Wings Festival (a superb, excellently run small festival). Ordinarily we'd recount all our adventures chronologically, but on our fifth and final day we found a certain owl that's generated no small amount of interest, and I felt the need to write a timely account (at least compared with our usual leisurely blogging schedule).

Golden-crowned Sparrows

We spent Sunday night in Ashland with a few target birds in mind. Last year we found our lifer California Towhee at the Songer Wayside, along Emigrant Lake. We'd seen it for exactly as long as we needed to ID it, and not a split-second longer. We hoped we might have better luck this time, but an hour wading through the heavy fog turned up little more than Oak Titmice (Titmouses?) and Acorn Woodpeckers -- not that I'm complaining!

Foggy day at Songer Wayside

Oak Titmouse

But thank goodness we dipped on the towhee. We were ready with a back-up plan and headed for North Mountain Park, where they'd been reported in the past couple of days. We didn't expect much when we pulled in to a parking lot with a baseball diamond on one side, and a soccer field on the other. "This will be a quick stop," I thought. But the farther along the path we got, the more active it became. Through a scrubby thicket of buckbrush, I spotted a chunky bird that looked good for California Towhee. We tried entice it into the open, when a second towhee flew out in front of us, and then we got superb, unobstructed views of them both as they scratched around for worms. This would definitely be the bird of the day… for another five minutes.

California Towhee

Towhee butt

The path continued through an ethnobotanical garden, and I walked a few yards past Maureen as she paused to take photos of scouring rush. I noticed a good-sized fuzzball only 15 ft off to my side, in a tree inexplicably covered in white and pink ribbon. "What the hell?" I didn't even realize it was a bird at first. My brain slowly resolved the image, and I whistled back at Maureen to get her attention. I whispered, and mostly mouthed, "Pygmy-owl" just loudly to get the message back to her. She was skeptical, but gamely inched forward to where she could follow my eyes.

Northern Pygmy-owl

For a long, long time we watched the potato-sized owl take us in, along with the rest of its surroundings. Eventually it flew to another, farther part of the tree, but came back after a little while. It was definitely alert, and on the look-out. A pair of Lesser Goldfinches flew into a tree behind us, and the owl locked in immediately. Its body postured straight at them, with its head stretched up toward them. For a full minute, the owl readied itself for just the right moment, but when it finally moved in to strike, it missed its target by the slightest margin.

Pygmy-owl eyespots

Staying alert, looking for prey

Target acquired

Instead of flying off to safety, the goldfinches stood their ground and initiated their alarm call. In no time at all, they were joined by a Black-capped Chickadee, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and a Bushtit, and they jointly harassed the owl and made clear that they wouldn't look favorably upon further attempts to predate them. Whether the owl decided to take its frustration out on us, I don't know, but it flew close by us on the way back to its original perch, and we decided that would be a good time move along.

"Move along, buddy"

We left Ashland for Agate Lake, a bit farther north, hoping for Lewis's Woodpecker, which we'd dipped on earlier in the day. There wasn't a whole lot going on, other than an immature Bald Eagle perched just over the entrance. A good-sized flock of meadowlarks passed back and forth for a while, but not close enough for pictures. But our last stop before heading home was at Rogue Creamery to pick up some souvenir cheese. We were glad for the chance to appreciate Oregon's state bird and Oregon dairy all at once!

Juvenile Bald Eagle

Cleaning Up Our Target List: Winter Wings Festival, Epilogue

As much fun as we had exploring southern Oregon during the festival (see our previous posts here, here, and here), there were certain species we weren't able to turn up around Klamath; we were going to have to do some serious strategizing if we wanted to pick them up on our return trip home, and pick them up we must! The festival ended on Sunday, but now we had all of Presidents' Day to inspect every burrow, cavity, and undergrowth until we struck birding gold. Our targets: Lewis's Woodpecker, Oak Titmouse, and California Towhee.

For guidance, we turned to the all-knowing and all-powerful eBird machine (Hail, eBird!). As luck would have it, there were a couple of places along OR 66 where our targets had been reported in the last week. These weren't hotspots, but random pullouts that we certainly would have driven past if we didn't know better. Both were on the road to Medford where we were headed anyway, so there was no risk in stopping to give them a good looking-over, even if we felt like we were standing where we didn't exactly belong.

Some landscape on the way to Medford. This was the view from Songer Wayside

The first stop was entered in eBird as a personal location named "Lewis's Woodpecker spot". That sounded promising enough. Maureen saved the coordinates in her phone to help navigate our way through the mountain roads, and it's a good thing she had, because it would have been super easy to miss otherwise. We pulled over on the widened shoulder of a road, dividing a privately owned orchard in half, along the steep grade of whatever large hill / small mountain we were on. The welcoming committee consisted of a sign reading, "Smile, you're on camera".

We'd be smiling soon enough, as the birds began filing in. First were the Acorn Woodpeckers, and Western Bluebirds. A Black-billed Magpie flew over, and a Kestrel perched to watch the action. But what excited us most was the drabbest one of all: our first Oak Titmouse! These small and unassuming parids penetrate into only a tiny portion of southern Oregon, so this wasn't a species we were likely to encounter elsewhere any time soon. It was good that we found it early, too, as our next bird would have been a tough act to follow.

Oak Titmouse

Lewis's Woodpecker is one of the most unusually colored birds in all of North America, in addition to being one of the most beautiful. Maureen spotted one farther back in the grove, but being in private property, we had to hope and wait for it to come to us, which it soon did. In fact it flew across the road and gave us some really great looks, where it was soon joined by two others. The "Lewis's Woodpecker spot" was living up to its name. We spent nearly an hour along that little shoulder as countless 18-wheelers and logging trucks raced by, but still, it was difficult to eventually pull ourselves away from such a striking and impressive bird.

Lewis's Woodpecker

From there we headed to the Songer wayside area at Emigrant Lake, where I'd found recent reports of California Towhee. We stepped out of the car, and, sure enough, a California Towhee was right there in front of us, just like he'd been waiting for us all along. Maybe he'd expected us sooner and got frustrated, because he wasn't prepared to stick around long; he took off even before we could get any pictures. But we'd gotten cocky and didn't chase after it. We figured if we could find a towhee without any effort whatsoever, they must be superabundant and another would turn up any second now… yessir, any second… TOWHEE, WHERE ARE YOU?!?

We walked every inch of trail we could find, squeezed through brambles, and tramped through mud, but never did turn up another California Towhee. We did have a nice look at some Western Bluebirds, while turkeys gobbled away from a nearby grove. It wasn't easy, but at last mustered the fortitude to call off the search and move along to the next stop, having at least glimpsed all three of our targets for the morning.

Western Bluebird

We had one more place to visit before the long drive home, which was at Tou Velle State Park. We had already seen our last lifers of the trip, but Tou Velle ended up being notable for another reason: the hordes of Acorn Woodpeckers pillaging oak trees wherever we turned. Before today, the most we'd ever seen in one place was three. We counted six at Songer Wayside, and now there were no fewer than 18 or 19! The granaries where they stored their thousands of acorns were enormous, and spread all the way up and around the surface of the largest oaks.

Acorn Woodpecker

Bracing for impact

Tou Velle had one other significance for us: we identified our very first butterfly of the year, a Mourning Cloak. These butterflies are commonly some of the first seen in the spring, but mid-February seems early, and could be a sign of the extremely mild winter we've experienced in the Pacific NW this year. It was an ominous note to end our trip on, although I'm glad for the return of butterfly season, along with the rest of the pollinators. Southern Oregon couldn't have been kinder to us over the long weekend, and we racked up just about every species we hoped for. It was also a great chance to see a new part of the state, and a hint of what's to come during our planned trip to Crater Lake later this year.

Our first butterfly of the year - Mourning Cloak

Black-tailed Deer