Marathon Birding Day

Tundra Swan

We have sort of prided ourselves in our rather relaxed birding style.  After all, our trips are focused on taking Buster for a walk, a leisure stroll, and counting and photographing any birds we happen up on.  We are not the type to "chase" after birds, driving miles and miles to seek out an unusual species, or spending dawn to dusk in search of our prey, or attempting to identify owls in the dark of night.  But yesterday we might have crossed over to the dark side, --- we birding in three different counties,  through two rainstorms and turned in six different observation lists. The weather forecast for a dry day sent us out the door early around eight o'clock, by 8:28 we had spotted a Northern Harrier on Bethel road en route to a couple of ponds in Yamhill County. Despite a dry weather forecast we were forced to venture out of the car in rain at Sheridan South Side Park to check out the pond for water fowl, 15 species there. After thirty minutes we fled to the car and ventured on to Willamina to note the birds at Huddleston Pond, again walking in the rain, we tallied 17 species. We were wet and cold, but warming up in the car we decided on going south to Arlie Road in Polk County to see if we could find some recently reported swans.  Although a flock of 40 had been reported we only found one lonely Tundra Swan.  We were so close to Camp Adair at that point we decided to make a stop at the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife office and check out Adair Pond.  The volunteer site which we occupied for a couple of summer overlooks this pond. We made a circle of the pond and some of the surrounding trails for a bird count of 18 species, our first of the year for Benton County. It seemed like a productive, but long day for us.  Oh, I almost for got, my day actually started at 3:22 AM when I identified from my bed two Great Horned Owls doing a duet out in the dark. Perhaps we are more addicted than we would like to admit.