Celebrating Our Oregoniversary

As hard as it is to believe, today marks the 1-year anniversary of our arrival in Oregon — our Oregoniversary, if you will. After a wearying, but unforgettable 5-day adventure that took us literally from coast to coast, we first set foot together in our new home state on April 24, 2014. It was a decisive moment, but an uncertain one. We had just moved 3,000 miles to a region that we had never even visited, and knew relatively little about. The natural history, the geography, and the culture were all unknowns for us. It was a lot to take in all at once; it was both fraught and exciting. 

But when it comes down to it, there's only one thing to do when faced with uncharted territory: start exploring at once. So that's what we did. Though, to be honest, it wasn't completely novel. I like to tell people that we moved here with a very accurate stereotype of Oregon, and to a large extent that's true. Exactly as expected, there's a young, active vibe up around Portland; people appreciate good food, and care about how it's produced; there's a killer music scene; and the outdoors are celebrated, engaged with, and utilized like no other place we've lived.

Where the stereotype falls apart is in how vast and how varied Oregon is. No matter what direction we travel, whatever the distance, we're always bound to find something worthwhile, something unexpected. As you can see from the map below, we've been off to a quick start in trying to take in as much as we can. Not once during these 365 days have we looked back regrettingly on our decision to move here — we haven't had time to! We've been too busy birding, hiking, driving, and otherwise exploring not to be thankful for our fateful, impulsive move. In homage to our adopted home, here's a look back at some of our adventures from the past year in Oregon.

Every place in Oregon that we've submitted an eBird checklist from

The first time I remember having our minds truly blown was on our first visit to the coast in Newport. Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area is home to a massive breeding colony of Common Murre, which, along with the nesting Pigeon Guillemots, were the first alcids we'd ever seen. Add to that Brandt's and Pelagic Cormorants, Black Oystercatchers, Harlequin Ducks, and a Wandering Tattler, and we were hooked. Hardly a month passes that we don't take a trip down this way. Whether for the birds, the shellfishing, or the tidepooling the coast is always extraordinary.

John Day National Monument is one of those places that you can hardly expect to accommodate in your stereotype of Oregon. For one thing, it's out in the desert — not the first thing people think of when they think Oregon. Secondly, the Painted Hills are a baffling and beautiful mix of red, green, and gold unlike anything else. Not surprisingly, there's great birding out that way of which we've only scratched the surface.

Last fall we attended our first hawk watch at Bonney Butte. Besides Golden Eagles galore and a host of other raptors, including Merlins, Peregrin Falcons, and Cooper's Hawks, Maureen and I each had the opportunity to release Sharp-shinned Hawks from the banding station set up there. Bonney Butte may not get the numbers that some other hawk watch sites do, but it makes up for it in variety: 7 raptor species throughout the day. And with the views of nearby Mt. Hood in the background, it made for some the most spectacular birding we've ever had sitting down.

The Willamette Valley is the heart of Oregon. It's where most people live and encompasses Salem, Portland, and Eugene. To think that just down the street from us are Acorn Woodpeckers, Band-tailed Pigeons, Varied Thrushes, and Wrentits! We're fortunate to have such great birds around at every time of year, and especially to have a great refuge system to support them in. Just a few minutes away, Ankey NWR hosts some of everything, from birds, to butterflies, to frogs, to dragonflies. A little bit farther, and Finley NWR is always good for day trip to hear Pacific Wrens babbling, or possibly run across a rowdy band of Gray Jays.

Klamath Falls was our first impression of Oregon, which we experienced from the car on our drive up one year ago today. When we returned there this February to attend the Winter Wings Festival we got explore the area in much more fully. Prairie Falcons, Oak Titmouse, and Lewis's Woodpeckers were among the highlights from that memorable trip, not to mention great looks at birds like this Evening Grosbeak. As if we needed further incentive to keep coming back to visit the Klamath Basin, it's also apparently one of the best places to catch Western and Clark's Grebes performing their courtship displays in April and May. 

Although I just recounted it in our most recent post, I'd be remiss if I didn't include our pelagic trip in this round-up. As I did earlier, I want to stress again because it bears repeating: we live in a state with albatrosses offshore. I will never tire of this fact, because it's an extraordinary thing. Seabirds are extraordinary things. Hell, the Pacific Ocean itself is an extraordinary thing.

While we've gotten around a good deal in the past year, there's still plenty more to see, and we'll keep on filling up that map. We've got plans over the next months to visit Malheur, Crater Lake, and the Columbia River Gorge. Meanwhile, we'll keep exploring, learning, and making up for lost time (from talking to people, it seems like we've already seen more of Oregon than many native Oregonians have in their entire lives). For two people who have moved around quite a bit, it's a relief to finally feel settled in a place, especially after taking such a risk in coming out here. We're glad to have been able to share so many of our experiences from the past year with you, and we're equally excited about all of the adventures to come!

Finding Some of Everything at Ankeny NWR

Everyone should live this close to a National Wildlife Refuge. From our apartment in south Salem, we’re a mere 8 minutes’ drive from Ankeny NWR, one of the crown jewels of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Complex, and a top spot for wintering waterfowl. We arrived in Oregon too late for wintering birds, but there are have been good numbers of Canada and Cackling Geese, Cinnamon Teal, and Ruddy and Ring-necked Ducks to enjoy into the summer. The Ruddy Ducks, in particular, are looking mighty handsome and we’ve been able to watch males perform their bizarre mating display, bouncing their bills off of their chests with increasing rapidity.

Cackling Geese

Ruddy Duck

Black-headed Grosbeak

I don't have any idea what this is, but it's incredible

There's an emu on the farm across from one of the main trails at Ankeny.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if somebody tried to eBird it.

Right in the parking lot, Maureen spotted a gorgeous pink and gray moth. It was super tame, crawling over the ground right in front of us without flushing. Maureen was so taken with it that she almost would have preferred it’s colors to the navy and coral she chose as our wedding colors! It was a Cinnabar Moth, which isn’t native, but was introduced intentionally to help combat invasive ragwort, its host plant. Once we got started on the trail, we started noticing golden beetles clustered together on the tops of certain plants. Given that we’d just seen a Cinnabar Moth, I thought they could have been Ragwort Flea Beetles — another introduced species that’s also partial to ragwort, which happens to be a metallic gold — but now I'm leaning toward some kind of leaf beetle in the Chrysolina genus.

Cinnabar Moth

Chrysolina sp.

Recently, I was taking a stroll around our neighborhood and stumbled across a huge number of ragwort plants, each one totally covered in Cinnabar Moth caterpillars. Instead of the pink and gray of the adults, the caterpillars wear a striking orange and black striped pattern. With all of these Cinnabars consuming the ragwort, I’m surprised there’s still any ragwort left. If/when it is finally eradicated, I wonder what happens to the moths? The idea of introducing a species to help fight another introduced species is amusing and absurd, and I can’t help but think of an episode of The Simpsons: Bart cares for a pair of Bolivian Tree Lizards that eventually escape and decimate the Springfield’s pigeon population. To address the lizard problem, Skinner proposes “unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes”.

Lisa: But aren’t the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we’re prepared for that. We’ve lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we’re stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that’s the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.

An army of Cinnabar Moth caterpillars

Our other exciting Lep. find of the day was a beautiful Lorquin’s Admiral. We haven’t been chasing down West coast butterflies with quite the same gusto as we have the birds, but this was one that caught our attention. It makes me wonder what else we might have been missing while butterflies flit about in our periphery. We might just have to work on building up our Oregon butterfly list a bit.

Lorquin's Admiral

We also had some interesting Odes that morning. The damselflies were in fine form, mating every which way we looked. Actually, I shouldn’t speculate on whether they were in fine form or not because damselfly sex doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. As I understand it, below, the male’s terminal appendages (cerci and paraprocts) are clasped onto the female’s prothorax, which helps them determine whether they’re the same species or not. This step precedes copulation. Either that or he’s a zombie damselfly, vacuuming out her brains in an futile attempt to sate his unquenchable, ceaseless hunger for damselfly brains. We also had a nice look at some Eight-spotted Skimmers.

Zombie damselfly courtship

Spreadwing damselfly (Lestes sp.)

Female Eight-spotted Skimmer

Male Eight-spotted Skimmer

During our last trip to Ankeny we also found a motherlode of Pacific Tree Frogs. These little guys were all huddled together along blades of tall grasses, as well as dodging and diving around our feet while we walked the trails. Some groups preferred to take refuge in the wider leaves of blackberry plants (which are everywhere, and should be ripe in another a couple of weeks!). The frogs show astonishing diversity in color and pattern, but they all share dark striping that runs from their noses, through their eyes, and down their flanks.

Along the same trail as where we found the frogs, we came across a Northern Flicker doing some excavating. I rather prefer the bright red mustaches of these fellows to the black mustaches of the Yellow-shafted Flickers back East, but this is only quibbling: any bird unabashedly sporting statement-making facial hair has my respect (here's looking at you, Black-throated Sparrow).

The past several times we’ve gone there’s been a 2nd-year Bald Eagle perched up in a snag, just off the path. He stayed put for good, long stretches, giving us ample time to admire and photograph him, before he would take off over the water to terrify the ducks and geese.

2nd-year Bald Eagle

The highlight of our Ankeny birding, though, was an epic back-and-forth battle supreme between a female Tree Swallow and the Cliff Swallow whose nest she was trying to usurp. A dozen or so Cliff Swallow nests were built underneath the roof of the observation gazebo, and swallows were flying in and out almost continuously, alternately hunting and homemaking. One nest in particular was intensely coveted by an interloping Tree Swallow, who tried repeatedly to annex these other birds’ territory. We watched as, time and time again, the Cliff ejected the female Tree Swallow by force. The Tree clung on for dear life, despite being relentlessly bitten in the face and legs. Somehow, inevitably, she would shove herself back inside again. We watched this brutal war of attrition for nearly ten minutes, but it still wasn’t long enough to see the outcome. We were able to record some of the action, though:

Cliff Swallow in a Cliff Swallow nest

Tree Swallow in a Cliff Swallow nest

This Tree Swallow asserts his dominance by issuing a furious bellow. No Cliff Swallow will ever feel safe as long as this rage-machine and his brutish kin patrol the otherwise placid shores of Ankeny. Aye, this may be a designated NWR, but the designation serves merely as a bitter and ironic reminder there can be no refuge for weary Cliff Swallows.

Close Encounters of the Barred Kind

We’re in Oregon now, and more or less settled after our big move. There’s A LOT to take in, with the Pacific Northwest being so different from Savannah and south Florida, both being primarily flat and marshy. We were hungry for a change of scenery, and now we’ve got plenty of that — within about an hour of our apartment we can see ocean, rainforest, mountains, wetlands, or desert, depending on which way we head. And with a variety of habitat comes a variety of birds — different birds than we’re used to. I’d be lying if I said that birds weren’t a primary motivation for coming out here, and we’ve enjoyed tallying new species after new species for the past month and a half.

Both of us have travelled fairly extensively, both in the U.S. and abroad, but much of that was done “BB” (before birding). We’ve even made multiple trips to the West Coast, and since kicked ourselves for the missed opportunities, when we could have spent at least part of the time looking out for birds. But the important thing is that we’re finally here and ready to bird, and we’re not likely to waste any more opportunities when we find them. Which is why we didn’t waste any time when we arrived in Salem, and headed to Minto-Brown Island Park as soon as we were able.

Brush Rabbits have got to be my favorite non-birds that we find at Minto-Brown

Minto-Brown is a nearly 900-acre local park, largely populated by dogs and their owners, joggers, and bicyclists. So, there was a good deal of activity all around us, as we struggled to find our bearings (and some birds) in the heavy fog that had settled overnight. First off were a mixed group of Zonotrichia just around the parking lot: White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows. White-crowned Sparrows are the much more widespread species, yet we’d only ever seen one individual before — a first-year bird that had lost its bearings and ended up wintering in south Florida. Now we were seeing adults, and plenty of them. We haven’t only heard them, either. In fact, aside from Song Sparrows, White-crowned Sparrows are probably the species we’ve heard singing most often this Spring, and it’s been a pleasure to get better acquainted with them.

White-crowned Sparrow

The Golden-crowned Sparrows were a real treat, although our time with them was rather brief, coming, as we did, at the tail end of their northward migration. That first morning, though, they were showing in good numbers, and giving us great looks as they foraged dandelions out in the open. Since we arrived in late spring, we’d already missed a good number of wintering species entirely, and Golden-crowned Sparrows are one of the few birds that we’ve seen in Oregon that have departed altogether for the summer. By all accounts, the winters here are miserable, but at least we have the return of the Golden-crowns to look forward to.

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Golden-crowned Sparrows LOVE dandelions!

All gone.

In the East, Blue Jays are one of the most ubiquitous and quintessential neighborhood birds, being well adapted to living around people, and as boisterous as they are. Before coming out here, I’d naturally assumed that their role would be filled by the closely related Stellar’s Jay, but instead have been amazed to find Western Scrub-jays filling that niche instead. As someone who started birding in Florida, Scrub-jays conjure a much different set of associations for me: local, communal, threatened, and having very specific habitat requirements. Western Scrub-jays may look similar, but they’re clearly more adaptable, and we see them nearly everywhere we go.

Western Scrub-jays were, in fact, one of the first birds we saw at Minto-Brown, but we’ve since seen Stellar’s Jays there in small numbers, including what looked like a nesting pair during our most recent visit. I’m in complete awe of these birds whenever we see them, with their improbably tall crest, and the blue racing stripe running up their foreheads. They’re like more mature Blue Jays, shunning Blue Jays’ childish rambunctiousness, and assuming a more solemn and dignified aspect.

Speaking of dignified birds, who’s more dignified than an owl? Who? Who? (get it?). There are so many great owl species out here, not least of which is the famous Spotted Owl. We were temporarily hopeful of having a Spotted some weeks back when we found a Strix owl on the ground, down in a sort of gully, but once we got a good look it turned out to be only a Barred Owl. At first it seemed to me that it was holding one of its wings funny, but we think it was just trying to figure out how to escape from its twiggy enclosure, as there didn’t seem to be a clear flight path out. Eventually, it started climbing up a tree trunk, and was able to free itself that way.

Barred Owl

Spotted Owls face threats from a number of sources, not least of which is an invasion of Barred Owls, moving far west of their traditional range. I can well understand the threat posed by a Barred Owl, and empathize with their persecuted cousins. On a later trip to Minto-Brown, I heard some activity down in the same gully, and stepped up to the edge of the trees to see if I could pish something up. Nothing came, and I wandered a few yards away, when Maureen quietly called me back over, making O’s with her hands held up to her eyes (the universal sign for owl, of course!). It turned out that, not a dozen feet from Maureen, and directly above where I’d been pishing, that same (I assume) Barred Owl was perched not very high up and looking our way. After a few seconds, it flew out, over Maureen’s head and then in my direction, leaving me ducking for cover behind our spotting scope. I regret any disturbance we caused it, and will assume at all times from henceforth that their’s an owl just above me, waiting for an excuse to rip me to ribbons.