Thursday's Bird Watch

The male American Goldfinch is on the of the prettiest birds to be seen right now around Dallas Retirement Village.  Although Goldfinches are year-round residents, it is the striking summer breeding plumage of the males that gets our attention.  Many of our birds are appreciated for their song, but for the American Goldfinch it is the sight of the male's bright yellow with contrasting black coloration that catches our eye.  Easily attracted to seed feeders, they will return to their dull coloring this fall.  This male was photographed here at DRV on June 14th.
 

Honeyman State Park

"We always have a good time with Glenn" was easily the theme of our second day with him, and actually true for any time we spend with him. The three of us are perfectly aligned in our love of birding. On this day, July 25th, we started out with an old favorite, Carter Lake. It was quiet, but we enjoyed the walk and the recounting past bird trips and sightings.  Next, we moved up to Honeyman State Park at the East Woahink Lake Day Use Area and walked the connecting trails counting birds. Then we drove over to the  Cleawax Lake Day Use Area, walked more trails and had a picnic lunch. We fnished the day back at Waxmyrtle Campground with a walk up to the bench with a view of the Siltcoos River Estuary. In all we walked close to four miles, making four eBird Lists. We ended the day worn-out.

 

Siltcoos River Recreation Area

Our friend Genn is show with Jeanette in the above photo Monday evening checking for birds on the Lagoon Loop Trail. On Monday morning, Jeanette and I were in the middle of a couple of early morning birding stops in Independence, when we got a text from Glenn that he was camped at Waxmyrtle Campground on the Siltcoos River.  He had been on a summer trip to Eastern Oregon, Idaho and Montana, when excessive heat forced him back to the cooler climes of the Oregon Coast.  After a two second conversation, Jeanette and I decided we were headed his way. We ended our birding trip, went home, packed up the van, and by that afternoon were at Glenn's campsite.  Waxmyrtle Campground is where we originally met Glenn in June of 2015 while we were volunteering in the Snowy Plover Protection Program.  When our summer commitment ended, Glenn took over. We have remained good friends and visited him frequently as he continued working in a variety of volunteer positions with the Siuslaw National Forest.   eBird Checklist - 24 Jul 2023 - Siltcoos River--Lagoon Campground and Loop Trail - 28 species 

 

Thursday's Bird Watch

This is the third Thursday in a row that I am featuring the Cooper's Hawks of the Dallas City Park.  It has been an amazing experience to follow their growth from the helpless downy chicks I reported on July 6th to the fierce hunters I am reporting today, July 20th.  Last week I reported that the three chicks would be hanging around for the next month to be fed by their parents.  It was what I had read, but these juveniles proved that wrong.  When we arrived at the park on Sunday July 16th, we found them actively hunting on their own.  They were busy chasing after squirrels and birds.  This photo shows the fierce determination of this juvenile as it defends and devours its catch of a Black-capped Chickadee.  Parents are not needed; these guys are on their own. 

Lost Lake Birding Stop

view from the Day Use Area

This trip over the Cascades was to attend a Mini Scott Family Reunion at my brother's house in Bend on Saturday.  Jeanette and I left in the van on Friday with a general plan to make stops along the way to bird and camp for the night before going on to Bend the next morning.  We first made a stop at Lyons City Park to have lunch and count some birds, and also walk around and count birds in John Neal Memorial Park. Our second stop to bird was at Lost Lake.  We thought this would also be our overnight camping location.  We picked a spot to camp near a picnic table, set-up our camping chairs, and sat down to enjoy the shade and a slight breeze and recover from driving. It was a great birding spot, we turned on our Merlin Bird ID app, and spotted birds with our binoculars, and got photos of passing by birds all from the comfort of our chairs. eBird Observation List

 

Osprey

Sandhill Cranes

Eventually we realized that we needed to walk back to the registration station and pay for the night.  I started looking around for the site number when I noticed a sign "Day Use Only".  Oh well, the cell service is lousy here, so we will just hang around for the afternoon, have dinner and then drive on to Ray Benson Sno-Park on the Santiam Sumit, which we know will have excellent cell service, and it's free. It's a short drive on up Highway 20 out to the Sno-Park, but we were totally shocked at the sight of hundreds of four-wheel drive vehicles in some kind of big event that totally filled up the Hoodoo Ski Parking lot, spilling over to the Ray Benson Sno-Park, with an obvious party flavor, dashing all our hopes for a quite evening. We drove on to Corbet Sno-Park only to discover it was included on some kind of overland route with the forementioned mega-party. In all we had checked out six locations before we eventually found a quiet hide-away in the Indian Ford general area and set up to wait out the heat of the day in anticipation of a cooler night. It had been a frustrating afternoon of dealing with hot temperatures and disappointing camping areas, but we were in agreement that Lost Lake was the highlight of our day.

Thursday's Bird Watch

 This photo is a follow-up of last week's photo of the Cooper's Hawk chicks in Dallas City Park.  There has been an amazing transformation in their appearance in a short period of time.  The fuzzy chicks of last week were photographed on the 26th of June.  This photo was taken on Sunday, the 9th of July.  In 13 days, they have grown enough feathers to be able to make their first short flights.  We got to see them fly first from limb to limb in the tree that contains their nest, and then venture out to fly to a second tree.  From what I have read, they will continue to hang around the area for the next 30 days, in order to be fed by the parents. - Jim Scott

Rambling on the Rickreall

 The Rickreall Creek Trail System has become our focal point as we attempt to expose our friend Rod Graves to the walking and birding opportunities adjacent to the Dallas Retirement Village. The RCTS not only travels through the Dallas City Park, but all through the entire city of Dallas. Each day we have walked a different section of the trail.

Yesterday, we invited our friend, and fellow resident, LaVerda Gallager along as we explored the east-end of the Rickreall Creek Trail System, starting at the Aquatics Center. e-Bird Checklist July 11, 2023.

Today's birdwalk was at the west-end of the RCTS and included the addition of friend and fellow resident Linda Dawson. We parked at Kingsborough Park and headed west to follow along the creek next to a residential area and then dropped down to the asphalt section of the RCTS, and to the very creekside.

The dry days of summer are upon us, and the creek is at summer lows. Still we enjoyed the bird songs and found Merlin Sound ID invaluable in identifying the song of unseen birds. e-Bird Checklist July 12, 2023.

The "girls" tried to run away with a fourwheeled bike.  In truth it belonged to trail friends Bill and June.

To the City Park and Beyond - - -

Adjacent to the Dallas City Park is the Hunter Arboretum & Botanic Garden.  This was our goal for our birdwalk with Rod Graves this morning. After walking through the Dallas City Park and checking on out the Cooper's Hawk nest, we ventured on to walk through the Hunter Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Rod commented right away about the beauty of the more natural setting and enjoyed inspecting a little closer the native trees and plants. When we reached the open meadow area, our turn around point, we sat down on the park bench with a good view of a couple of bird houses. I explained to him that the Violet-green Swallows and the Western Bluebirds the had used the nest boxes this year had fledged and just left the nests last week. A few minutes later he asked in his quite voice, "what's that bird there?" And there on top of the bluebird box was the Western Bluebird male feeding a juvenile. Sometimes I love being wrong.  eBird Checklist - 10 Jul 2023 - Dallas City Park - 21 species

 

Rod's First Bird Walk

Rod Graves, a Chemeketan hiking friend of mine from many years ago, just moved to the Dallas Retirement Village this past week. This morning Jeanette and I took him on his first birdwalk with us, something he had mention the very first time he visited here a few weeks ago. We walked to the Dallas City Park where we hoped to be able to show him the Cooper's Hawk nest, as well as a general overview of the park.

  

Arriving at the nest, much to our surprise, a juvenile took flight to a nearby limb.  This was the first evidence we had of fledging! Something we have been anticipating any day.
 

 

Next, mom showed up to take a supervising / protecting role, as much action continued on the nest and short flights to and from the nest.

This is a very poor photo, but a close-up scrutiny provided evidence of three juveniles. 

A red-letter day for us for sure, as we introduced Rod to birding and hiking opportunities close by and getting to see the much-anticipated fledgling's first flights. 

Here is our e-bird Observation List.

 

Thursday's Bird Watch

 Here are three baby Cooper's Hawk chicks in their nest at Dallas City Park on June 26th.  Originally, we found this nest site back on March 27th, after a report from a couple of other birders.  We saw both a male and a female, and continued to watch them for a number of weeks as they built their nest.  We brought the Village Birders here as a part of the Bus Birding Trips on April 6th and 8th.  We continued to keep watch on the nest site through the rest of April, all of May and up to this point at the end of June. Many times, we could not see any sign of life at the nest, and several times I became 100% convinced that the nest had failed, probably from harassment of the Crows.  You can imagine our excitement on the 26th of June when we discovered these three fuzzy juveniles.  It's going to be fun to watch over the next month as they grow, add their feathers, and be able to leave the nest.