Wallace Marine Park

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Wallace Marine Park is one of the big positives on the list of reasons we love living in West Salem.  It's a mere two miles down Wallace Road from our home in Salemtowne.  Although it is well know for it's baseball field complex, the 115 acre park contains a good network of trails that are perfect for birding.  Its location along the Willamette River also provides the opportunity to see waterfowl. Today's bird walk was a good example of the diversity to be found.  In an hour and twenty minute walk we identified twenty four different species.  The best photo of the day was the Red-breasted Sapsucker as shown above.  The most interesting bird to watch was a Brown Creeper working its way up a Maple tree.  But the real highlight of the walk were three Osprey.  Exciting for us as it was our FOY (first of the year) sighting of an Osprey for us in Oregon. The three Osprey were making a good amount of noise circling over the the softball complex where the remains of their previous years nest is located. They were probably working out the details of this years mating and nesting arrangements.