Migration

It’s a quiet time of year at the Welcome Center of Beaver Creek State Natural Area where we are volunteering.  Not only are the visitor numbers down with school starting and all, but the bird scene is definitely quieter too.  The swallows, warblers, and osprey are gone, all headed south for the winter.  But a mile to the west of us at Ona Beach State Park, it’s a different scene with new migrating birds passing through daily.  This is the case with the bird in the first photo, a Semipalmated Sandpiper.  They are not to be seen here year around, but only as they come through on their migration¸ in this case migrating south for the winter.  Few in numbers they are to be found normally mixed in with the very similar and more common Western Sandpipers. 

The photo below is of two migrating Brown Pelicans.  Brown Pelicans travel in the reverse direction.  They are done with their nesting along the California shoreline and are now spreading north along the Oregon beaches.  A few weeks ago, we would not have seen a single pelican at Ona Beach, now you can easily count forty or more collected at the mouth of Beaver Creek. This time of year when the nesting areas of the marsh along Beaver Creek are quiet, the ocean beaches have become the migration highway.

Beach Surprise

We love going down to Ona Beach, either in the morning or in the evening. It’s a great outing for Buster and Jeanette and I are always eager to see what new bird we will find.  But last night we had a whole different surprise when we found this fellow using a parasail, I think that’s what it is called, to propel his tricycle type thing back and forth across the beach. By tacking against the wind he could race one direction, turn and race back the other direction. Kind of interesting to watch.   

Early Arrival

Last night we witnessed this lone female Northern Pintail fly in and land on Beaver Creek. She was most elegant in the evening light, and instantly ignited my imagination. Where had she spent her summer, British Columbia or as far away as Alaska?  Will she stay put here, or venture on to California or Central America to spend the winter? And where are her traveling companions? These are all unanswerable real possibilities.  What I do know, is that this is the first reported sighting on eBird for Lincoln County of this fall’s southern migration of Northern Pintails. The last of the northern migration was reported in May.       

Bird of the Day - Western Sandpiper

Western Sandpipers turned out to be the most numerous bird of the day.  Jeanette counted 72 of them in two or three flocks that worked the water’s edge along the beach. It was dense fog this morning at Ona Beach State Park, which might have accounted for our luck in sneaking up on a large variety of sandpipers.  In addition to these Western Sandpipers we also saw one Least Sandpiper, one Spotted Sandpiper, two Greater Yellowlegs, two Killdeer, and a Semipalmated Plover, all of which belong to the Sandpiper Family. We also saw five other species of birds, non-sandpipers, that I won’t burden you with.

Pacific Tree Frog

It’s a very rainy windy day here at the Welcome Center at BeaverCreek State Natural Area, making birds and human visitors pretty scarce. While Jeanette was doing some vacuuming in an upstairs ranger’s office, she spied this little Pacific Tree Frog on the outside deck. He was a very curious fellow, repeatedly crawling in and out of the crack between the deck and the wall.  I don’t imagine the rain bothers him, and evidently heights either as he is on the second story deck.    

Juvenile Cedar Waxwing

We have been seeing huge numbers of Cedar Waxwings lately; in fact they are the dominant species right now. We can easily count sixty birds in an evening. We have been a little puzzled as to why the increase in numbers as compared to a month ago.  Last night we took a closer look, and noticed that some of them looked different, they did not appear to have the distinct crest.  I got a photo, and when we checked we realized that some were juveniles.  Cedar Waxwings have an average of four young ones in a brood, so our number of waxwings has tripled, which probably explains our increase.  You may notice that the breast feathers do not look like a Cedar Waxwing, but resemble more the “vest-look” of an Olive-sided Flycatcher.  Last night we also solved a mystery bird cry, and think it belongs to a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk.  The cry matches that of a recorded juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk. No photo or even a sighting, but we did witness a tremendous confrontation between some Steller’s Jays, Sharp-shinned Hawks, and American Crows.  

Just Another Heron

Oh, it’s just another Great Blue Heron; it’s such an easy trap to fall into. Reminds me of the common saying, “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen em all”.  And that’s kind of what I was thinking this morning when we were birding along Beaver Creek at Ona Beach State Park. But, because it was one of the easier birds to photograph, I decided to see if I couldn’t get maybe a better one than the great number I already have.  To my surprise, when I got home and down loaded them into my laptop and started looking closely, I realized this bird was different, and after checking found I had a juvenile.  Looking closely revealed that it lacked the white strip on the head of an adult, had stripes all along the neck, and lacked the bearded plumes on the back and chest. Although I’ve taken photos of many adult birds, to my knowledge this is the first juvenile Great Blue Heron. I hope it was an important lesson learned.