Mountainous Marion County

A sunny and rain-free weekend was all we needed to take a mini getaway. Itching for dryer times, we headed east towards Central Oregon. But first, we had some cleaning up to do in our home county (Marion).

Detroit Lake

Detroit Lake

Canada Goose enjoying some sun

We had been getting eBird needs alerts for Marion County for some really cool stuff, so we took the opportunity of a nice weekend to try to fill in some gaps. Marion County is interesting as it stretches from Salem to the Cascade Mountains, maybe 80 miles or so across at its widest point. So this makes for an interesting list of birds you can get. We’ve been wanting to tackle the eastern end of the county to pick up some mountain species that we can’t get in other areas of Marion county, and that’s just what we did.

Tumble Creek

Pine Siskin

We hit up the Detroit lake area and stopped at one of our favorite little trails, Tumble Creek Trail. As soon as we got out of the car, we found some Red Crossbills hanging out high in the conifers! These crossbills were the first of the year for us. Minutes later, we walked towards the head of the trail from our car and flushed TWO Mountain Quail! LIFER!!! We cautiously tried to relocate them as they scurried under the bridge. We quickly crossed the road and saw them just below us. The morning was a bit dark and cloudy, so lighting wasn’t perfect, but the view definitely was just about as perfect as we could imagine! These birds are notorious for being hard to find, so we just could not believe our luck.

Red Crossbills silhouette

MOUNTAIN QUAIL!!!

Notice the lovely "tiger" striping on its flanks

That face, though...

We watched one for a couple of minutes before the two of them flew across the creek. We were totally stocked to SEE these birds. We thought if we would ever find them, we’d only hear them. And to get these clear views of them was absolutely amazing. The rest of the trip was just going to be sprinkles on top.

Its little head feather is like a tiny sword

We next headed to Detroit Flats where there is a small trail along the lake. This tiny area is a great spot for Flycatchers, and that’s just what we got. Our Empid ID skills were put to the test, and we still weren’t 100% sure about all of our sightings. We felt really good about identifying Gray Flycatchers with its yellow lower mandible and tail pumping. And we usually felt pretty good about IDing Dusky Flycatchers, but we could not confirm if we had a Hammond’s Flycatcher.

Gray Flycatcher

Dusky Flycatcher

Dusky Flycatcher

We had never spent so much time looking at and discussing primary projection than we had with these empids. (Hahaha!) We kept going back and forth saying: “Are they long enough? Does the tail look short to you? They look kinda long, but not SUPER long. Its head looks round – no, now it looks like it has a crest. Does it look like it has a clear vest? Why won’t it call or sing?! Oh forget it, just put down empid sp.” And that’s how it goes sometimes. If you have any wisdom you’d like to share, please do!

Empid sp.

Empid Sp.

Empid sp. Cresty and vesty, but the primaries didn't seem long enough for Hammond's

Our last stop for our Marion County hit list was up on Byers Peak. On our drive on the windy road up the hill, we found a Townsend’s Solitaire – county bird! We didn’t get too much else up there, but we had exact coordinates to find a Sooty Grouse, and we were successful! Yet another lifer! We only heard this little trickster. We tiptoed around this steep little pullout trying to get a visual, but it was not going to happen. We could just hear its low "hoots" (and feel them in your chest), but we could not locate this darn bird. Sometimes it sounded like it was behind us, and other times right in front of us, and we’d be standing in the same exact spot looking in one direction! We recently saw that someone posted a photo of one up in a tree, and we did not even think to look up. It did not cross either of our minds that a Sooty Grouse could be up in a tree! It was probably sitting up above us, throwing its voice and giggling at us weirdos.

Townsend's Solitaire

You can see the ruby crown of this Ruby-Crowned Kinglet! Now summering in the Cascades.

Wilson's Warbler with his adorable toupé

We moved on to Sisters before spending the night in Bend. We stopped at Calliope Crossing and picked up a couple of Calliope Hummingbirds. We also found a few more Red Crossbills that confused us at first as the flock we saw had only juveniles. From a distance, the streaking on the body threw us off, and it took us a second to realize those weren’t just chunky Pine Siskins.

Juvenile Red Crossbill

You get a better look at the bill crossing in this pic

Our go-to spot at the Best Western in Sisters reliably turned up White-Headed Woodpecker and other mountain species including Pinyon Jays, Pygmy Nuthatches, and Mountain Chickadees. There’s a water trough were the little birds like to go drink, and I love that someone had the brilliant idea to nail a little wood board that goes down into it that now allows the woodpeckers to scoot down in there to get a drink.

Female White-Headed Woodpecker

Male White-Headed Woodpecker going down for a drink

We drove to our delightful AirBNB home for the night. It was a perfect little spot with great mountain views and, get this, alpacas!!! That may or may not have been my main motivation for booking this place. Plus it had adorable sheep, little lambs, and chickens. It was a perfect way to end a fantastic day. More from our next day in my next post!

Alpacas, sheep, and little lambs!

I'm in love with this alpaca face! Best AirBNB!

Can't forget the fluffy chickens!

View of the mountains from our AirBNB

Spinus Soiree and a Sharp-Shinned Buffet

Oh man, it's great to have a feeder again. In Florida we had Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Northern Cardinals, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and trained the neighborhood Blue Jays to eat peanuts straight from our hands. It was Xanadu. Our Savannah apartment had a patio with a spectacular sunset view overlooking a marsh, but, alas, it was screened and we had no place to put a feeder. Now we're making up for lost time.

Most prominent among our new set of visitors are members the Spinus trio: American Goldfinch, Lesser Goldfinch, and Pine Siskin.

Pine Siskins are handsome birds, but they're nothing if not modest. At rest, you can hardly say they're flashy, covered as they are in relatively uniform brown streaking. But catch them just right, and you might find these unassuming finches flaunting more color than you suspected they had. 

Even the siskin on the far side of the feeder wants to catch a glimpse

Far more brilliant than the siskins are two of its congeners, the goldfinches. We have both Lesser and American in the Willamette Valley. The Lessers had been the more prevalent this winter, but now they're starting to get outnumbered by their larger cousins. 

Pine Siskin (left) and Lesser Goldfinch

American Goldfinch

No offense to the above, but my favorite feeder birds are absolutely our Western Bluebirds. As many as seven have visited at one time, and they make me smile without fail. I don't know if its their color, their size, their shape, or the fact that we catch them out there only only once or twice a day.

Part of the charm is that they're nearly too big for the perches on our tube feeder, and have constantly to perform an impressive acrobatics routine just to stay on long enough to eat.

Just don't let a bluebird catch you laughing at it, or it might give you "the look." Western Bluebirds don't take kindly to your sass.

These are two different photos that I edited to show side-by-side. This House Finch and the Western Bluebird were, at different times, on the exact same part of the feeder tray, striking the exact same pose. This amuses me.

While the occasional siskin or goldfinch will fly at the sliding glass door, the collisions are always slight we have yet to suffer any casualties. One morning, I heard something SLAM into the glass, much harder and louder than anything I'd heard from our usual feeder birds. I jumped up the instant it happened; fast enough to watch a Sharp-shinned Hawk carry away its quarry. "Please, please, please don't be a bluebird" was my silent prayer to the raptor gods. 

Sharp-shinned Hawk and a former European Starling

The Sharpie only flew as far as the other side of the driveway and I was able to scope it from the porch. Thank goodness: that lump of feathers clasped in its talons was no more than a starling. Our starlings are such bullies they even give the flickers a hard time of it. Nevertheless, I wish the Sharpie could have dispatched with it more efficiently. As you can see from the video, some fairly fancy footwork was apparently required to entirely subdue it.

On each the following two days, the Sharpie stalked our feeder. The first day, I even caught it hovering inside the patio long enough to see that the suet was unattended. The second day, it was flying wide circles over our apartment. After that, I don't know that it's returned, and we haven't caught sight of it for over a month.

The Chase is On! – Winter Wings Festival, Day 3

For our last official day of the Winter Wings Festival, we selected to partake in the “Chase Tour” to search for some target species and rarities. Two of the birds on the list were species we had already found on our first day out – Trumpeter Swan and Eurasian Wigeon.

Sunrise

A group of fourteen birders headed out early on a large white school bus to start the chase. First stop was Putnam’s Point in search of California Towhees and Red-Breasted Merganser. No luck finding either bird, but we found plenty of RBME’s cousin, Common Merganser. And we got some great looks at Common and Barrow’s Goldeneyes. We first noticed a pair of Barrows Goldeneyes swimming by. We were so excited to see this handsome male with his bright white comma on his face, but the female was in a weird position, and she didn’t move from that position for what seemed like a couple of minutes. We briefly had the horrible thought that maybe she was dead and floating with her head just sitting above water. And then we were even more horrified when the male proceeded to nip her behind the neck and mate with her. Ahhh! But then she snapped up after “the deed” and sat up like normal. Phew! We laughed at ourselves, but were gladly relieved that she was not dead, not a victim of necrophilia, and she had been just "presenting" herself.

Onward we went to Moore Park to seek Red-Naped Sapsucker and Oak Titmouse. There was the very, very slight chance of getting the extremely similar-looking Juniper Titmouse as their ranges can overlap a bit in this area. We dipped on those species, but did pick up a Red-Breasted Sapsucker. We wished we could have spent a little more time in this area to do more searching, but the trip leader was trying to get us to some other spots before the end of the day. 

We then went up to Upper Klamath Lake to relocate the Trumpeter Swan and Eurasion Wigeon we had found on Day 1. As finding that first Trumpeter was already a needle in a haystack situation, we did not have the same fortune this time. But we did luck out in finding three Eurasion Wigeon – 2 more than we had found the first day! That was certainly a nice treat to spot these cinammony heads popping out amongst the brownish-grey and green heads of the American Wigeons.

Our next stop is one in which we spent a good chunk of our time – Running Y Ranch. This is a resort area with a golf course and big fancy residential homes set in a woodsy, natural area with great hilltop views of the Klamath basin. A nice adult Bald Eagle was kind enough to pose for photos as we all scooted to one side of the parked bus to bask in its majesty. CORRECTION: What I thought was foot of a prey bird is actually the eagle's own foot dangling. Maybe he got a foot cramp. Haha. =P

As we wondered the neighborhood trying not to be too invasive in people’s yards (although most homes seemed like temporarily empty vacation homes), we spotted a few nice passerines, including Cassin’s Finch, Western Bluebirds, White-Breasted Nuthatch, and adorable Pygmy Nuthatches. 

White-Breasted Nuthatch

Cassin's Finch

We were given permission to hang out on the deck of one of the homeowners at Running Y Ranch, and what a deck it was. I wish I could just camp out for a week on that upstairs deck that bumped up against a huge cedar tree right at the center that was stringing about a dozen very active bird feeders. It was a dream! 

We didn’t have luck finding the Barred Owl that was supposed to live in the yard, but we got quite a spectacular, up-close and personal show of Pine Siskins, Mountain Chickadees, White-Breasted Nuthatches, and the prized bird of the yard – Evening Grosbeaks. 

A little feeder squabble between a Pine Siskin and an Evening Grosbeak.

Our final hours of our chase tour took us to Lower Klamath Lake and the border of Oregon and California. Here, we were on the lookout for raptors. And that’s exactly what we got! Our first stop along the road that winded through large farm fields led us to a cliff where we spotted three Golden Eagles soaring high above. Here we learned that a pair of Golden Eagles can build about half a dozen satellite or decoy nests. All along the road, Red-Tailed Hawks appeared regularly almost every half a mile. We got some amazing close looks at curious juvenile Red-Tail who put on a short, low to the ground flight display.

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk in flight.

Other highlights were lots of Snow and Ross's Geese, a DOZEN Rough-Legged Hawks, which were recent lifers for us and still super awesome to see, and a Great-Horned Owl sitting on a nest. All I could see were its little “ear” tufts peaking out amongst the bare branches. And we also picked up a life mammal – Muskrat. We watched one swim in one of the channels alongside the road, moving its laterally compressed, eel-like tail in a serpentine manner to propel itself in the water. Cool and a little icky at the same time. 

Ross's Geese seen along the OR-CA border.

Look closely for the Great Horned Owls "ear" tufts. 

Muskrat smimming

Once we got back from our field trip, Nick and I wanted to still use up some of the precious remaining daylight to see if we could find some of those birds we dipped on – Oak Titmouse and California Towhee. We did not succeed in finding them that day, but we still ended the festival happy at all of the awesome things we had seen in the Klamath Basin this trip. We’ll definitely come back to Klamath Falls, especially since they are known to have dancing grebes there – a spectacle I long to see.

As you can see from this little mural on a random utility box, the dancing Western Grebes are a source of local pride.

Sunset