In late April, one week after returning from Malheur via Deschutes County, a White Wagtail was reported in Bend. We were still recovering from a jam-packed weekend in Eastern Oregon, and didn't especially feel like retracing that part of our route so soon, but… a White Wagtail? We were powerless against the allure of a dapper Eurasian vagrant. It turned out that the bird didn't stick around long enough for us to have to worry about it, but then we'd begun daydreaming about all those Deschutes County breeding birds, so we started planning a weekend trip anyway.
Target numero uno was Green-tailed Towhee: a would-be lifer, and a bird I'd wanted to make a concerted effort to track down this year. We left after work on a Friday, and arrived in Sisters that evening to look for the Towhees in Deschutes National Forest. This patch of forest looked like the place where trees to go die, and we made slow progress trekking over the terrain as we climbed over old, fallen tree trunks. But there was plenty of places to perch, and offered terrific visibility. One of the first birds we found was a distant Lewis's Woodpecker on a very distant snag. There was plenty of Towhee's around -- Spotted Towhees out in the open the way we wished the Green-tailed would appear. We did catch the decent looks at a handful of Thick-billed Fox Sparrows, though (lifer sub-species!).
View of Mt. Washington from Deschutes National Forest
(Thick-billed) Fox Sparrow
Maureen was having better luck with the Towhee's than I was, and they always dropped out of sight before she could put me on them. It must have happened four or five times that she called them out, and then they'd vanish. At least I could hear them "mew"-ing around me, but with the light fading, I was starting to get desperate. Then just as we were heading back to the car, we tracked one down that popped up right in the open, 10 feet away, and starting singing it's heart out! We thought this would have been our best (only?) bet for Green-tailed Towhee's this trip, but the very next morning, we found ourselves serenaded by a pair shortly after stepping out of the car amid a vast, open expanse of sagebrush. But the most salient, and numerous, birds were the dozen or so Gray Flycatchers, singing, and tail-dipping all over the place.
Green-tailed Towhee
Gray Flycatcher
We did swing by Hatfield Lake, where the wagtail had been seen. We didn't have any hopes that it had stuck around and eluded everyone else for the past two weeks, but the place is otherwise renowned for vagrants, and would be an easy place to pick up all sorts of waterfowl. We ended up taking a trail that turned out not to be a trail, and flushed something huge that flew off a short distance. We tracked it down, and soon found ourselves face-to-face with a Great Horned Owl. Also along the trail / not-a-trail was a beautiful Nelson's Hairstreak that was intensely committed to a particular Pale Wallflower. We suspected it was laying eggs, but couldn't find any after it flew off.
Great Horned Owl
Just a neat-looking tree
Nelson's Hairstreak
Next on the agenda: woodpeckers. We got a tip about some spots to look for Black-backed Woodpecker, and some spots for Williamson's Sapsucker. We gave the sapsuckers a go, and were rewarded with brief but spectacular looks at a female flycatching. One foray brought it right out over our heads! Not bad for our first encounter.
Williamson's Sapsucker
Iris
Western Fence Lizard? Sagebrush Lizard? I can never tell them apart
We thought we would head to Smith Rock SP the next day and pick up White-throated Swifts, but the place was absolute chaos. We arrived about 10 minutes before they set up for a half-marathon. We were faced with either leaving immediately, or getting stuck there. We opted to leave for Sisters, and were glad for it. But not before a quick stop at Cline Falls SP where we had a nice Prairie Falcon circle overhead for a few minutes.
Prairie Falcon
Some cool fungus
More cool fungus
Common Garter Snake
Our first stop in Sisters was Calliope Crossing, for, what else? Calliope Hummingbirds. We met a couple who hadn't seen them where they're usually found, but we managed to find something special on our own. After establishing that the buzzing that blew past us was definitely a hummingbird, and not a bee, we tracked it to its small, silken nest. What luck!
Calliope Hummingbird
Townsend's Warbler
Friendly and interesting bugs kept landing on us in Sisters to our great delight. Clockwise from left: ribbed pine borer, mayfly, giant stonefly
Then on to Cold Springs Campground, where a pair of White-headed Woodpeckers was still busy preparing for nesting season. The male was doing all the excavating, while the female was farther off calling to check on his progress. His brief reply seemed to say, "yeah, yeah - I'm working on it." His industriousness outlasted our visit, and he was still hard at work by the time we left.
We were happy to see a familiar face early in September: our friend Diana Churchill traveled all the way from Savannah to come do some birding in the Pacific Northwest. We rendezvoused at the wildlife sanctuary operated by the Audubon Society of Portland, our first visit, and were smitten with the lush trails holding lots of old-growth firs. Secluded up in the quiet hills it was easy to forget that we were only a few minutes’ drive from downtown Portland (I should note, though, that the birds that we saw downtown later in the day surely constitute one of the great natural phenomena of the entire region).
The morning was mostly quiet, except for a wild burst that turned up Hutton’s and Warbling Vireos, Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, and Wilson’s and Townsend’s Warblers. Townsend’s Warblers don’t nest in Salem, and the only other individual we’ve ever seen was during our first outing in Oregon, right at the tail-end of spring migration.
Townsend's Warbler
Cross Orbweaver
The visitor center also turned up a treat, in the form up a Hairy Woodpecker lounging on one of the suet feeders. Hairy has always been a rarity where we’ve lived, and our handful of encounters up to now had been fleeting and not entirely satisfactory. While maybe not an ideal backdrop for nature photography, the feeder gave us the chance to study it in close detail. Like the western Downy Woodpeckers, the western Hairys have ashy-colored underparts, whereas eastern members of this Picoides pair are clean white underneath.
Hairy Woodpecker
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Steller's Jay just wants to know what's going on
Afterward, we stayed in the Portland metro area. The occasion was our wanting to witness a truly spectacular avian spectacle: an incredible number of Vaux’s Swifts settling in to roost for the night. We arrived at Chapman Elementary School a little after 6pm, when there were only a few dozen swifts hawking insects overhead. For nearly two hours swifts gathered in increasing numbers until there were thousands and thousands. Eventually they would all end up inside the same giant chimney, but in the meantime they swirled around one another, in an apparently aimless, patternless routine.
Vaux's Swifts
We were waiting for the real show to start — the time when these tiny flying cigars that were dispersed over the entire sky would all begin shooting down the same hole. Occasionally a handful of swifts would venture near the chimney, only to decide at the last second that they didn’t want to be the ones to go first. Collectively, they probably spent 30-40 minutes faking out the hundreds of people who came to watch. During every night in September, volunteers from Portland Audubon set up an information booth to answer questions, and generate interest. It’s an awesome public relations opportunity, and Portland Audubon orchestrates it beautifully.
We learned that in past years, raptors have come and ordered up the swift buffet. Unfortunately, the Peregrine that used to terrorize them was disastrously outmaneuvered last year or the year before, and flew right into the chimney. Cooper’s Hawks have been known to come, too, but abstained during the night we attended. Another thing I learned is that I’d been mispronouncing “Vaux”: apparently it’s not nearly as French-sounding as I’d thought.
The flight of the swifts gradually become more and more orderly. By the time some intrepid bird finally trailblazed its way into the roosting den, the thousands of birds had self-organized into a single, churning machine. Funneling down into the same finite space, it seemed that they couldn’t possibly all fit. But after 20 glorious minutes, the last group crammed inside and the audience erupted in applause.
