Anderson River Park

Temperatures are slowly warming up for us as we travel south. We stopped yesterday afternoon on our way to Red Bluff at Anderson River Park where the temps were pleasantly in the fifties.  This city park for the town of Anderson is located on a bend of the Sacramento River.  Although we have driven through Anderson more times than I would venture to count, I only recently read about this birding site in a new book, “Freeway Birding – San Francisco to Seattle” by Harry Fuller. The number of birds we found at this eBird Hot Spot overwhelmed us. Jeanette could hardly write fast enough in making our bird list, which in an hour totaled 28 species. 
   

Acorn Woodpeckers were so numerous and noisy that they could easily be considered pests.

The most striking birds we found were six Mute Swans, an introduced species from Europe, and not considered a valid species in Oregon, however in California the numbers are evidently large enough to be allowable.  The addition of this swan to my Life List brings it to 280 species.  

A New Travel Log

Several people have recently commented on how much they enjoy reading about our travels, --- so here goes a new one.  After postponing for the holidays, first Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and finally New Years we left this morning for California and hopefully some warmer temperatures.  Nightly temps in Salem in the twenties with daily highs in the thirties were starting to wear on us.  Our first day's destination was Valley of the Rogue State Park, located between Grants Pass and Medford.  Jeanette and Buster are shown in the above photo arriving back at the motor home after a great bird walk here in the park.  You can see our bird list here.  Because we use these travel logs posts not only to entertain others, but also for kind of a repository of information that we can resource later I will be including tidbits of information that you might consider trivial, but for us they will be import facts that we can retrieve in the future.  For example today we paid the lowest amount for diesel fuel when we filled up in Albany.  Two dollars and twenty-seven cents was the advertised price less a forty cent Safeway discount, meant we paid an amazing low amount of $1.87.  We paid twenty-four dollars for our campsite tonight with water and electricity. The temperature was 27 degrees when we left Salem at nine, and 48 when we arrive here at the park at 2:00.  Tomorrow our plan is to drive over the Siskiyou Mountains and stop for the night at Sycamore Campground, a favorite of ours in Red Bluff, California. 

Year-end Statistics

I’m using this photo I took yesterday of a Song Sparrow at our suet feeder as a segue to sum up the bird observation totals for this past year.  The Song Sparrow is one of 50 species of birds we have observed in our back yard this year.  During our walks in our neighborhood of Salemtowne we have seen 72 species.  Expanding into Polk County we have identified 131 species, and the grand total for the state of Oregon is 182 species on 447 checklists. These statistics are all easy to come up with thanks to the great Internet site of eBird.org.

I’m sure it’s apparent to all of our readers that birding is our current passion, but it hasn’t always been that way.  I remember in 1970 receiving a book for Christmas on how to tie flies, and for the next ten years or more fly tying and fishing was my major passion.  Hiking, backpacking, and cross-county skiing all took up major chapters in my life along the way.  And of course bicycling was a passion that both Jeanette had when we met, and have shared for twenty years.

As I reflect on this past year it’s become painfully obvious to me that we no longer have the burning desire necessary for intense physical activities.  Birding however seems to be a good fit for our aging lifestyle and something hopefully I can continue to review annually for some years to come.

Red-breasted Sapsucker

This Red-breasted Sapsucker caught our attention yesterday during a brief mid-day -bird walk at Wallace Marine City Park.  Its bright colors gave a cheery note to the dull shades of the winter day. As I started taking photos we realized that it was actually acquiring sap.  The four species that make up the genius of Sapsuckers all drill shallow evenly spaced holes in a horizontal line to tap the trees for sap.  Once drilled, they continue to revisit these “wells” to harvest the sap.  You can see from the photo that the entire bark surface is wet from the oozing sap.  A second source of nutrition for these birds is the insects that are attracted to the sap. This is a good time of year to find them at lower elevations. Once a working sapsucker is discovered you should predictably be able to make repeated observations.

A Close Call

Buster’s favorite place to go “birding” is Fairview Wetlands.  He loves to make a try for the borrowing varmints in the grassy area along the trail. He came very close to success today.  The time difference recorded on my camera between these to shots is only three one hundreds of a second!  Until today I assumed these varmints were probably ground squirrels. This is first time I’ve been able to get any kind of a photo.  After studying the photo and researching in a couple of books I now think they are Western Pocket Gophers.

A Different Kind of Bird

Most of the time when we are out birding, Buster is occupied with searching for squirrels.  But today while we were taking a quick walk at Maude Williamson State Recreation Site he found something different, a chicken.  Notice how he appears to be on point. He wasn't sure what to do, and after a few seconds make a half hearted attempt to chase the chicken.  The chicken wasn't bothered much with Buster, and with a few flaps of his wings kept out of range. It soon became apparent that the chicken was more interested in a hand-out. The only thing I had to offer the begging chicken was some dog food, which after trying was rejected. 

Drying Out

We basically had a dry day yesterday and the birds seemed to take advantage of it to dry out a bit.  We also took advantage of the dry “window” too to get in some walking, chalking up over three miles. While on a bird walk at Fairview Wetlands I photographed this Red-tailed Hawk. We are accustomed to seeing birds like Turkey Vultures and Cormorants spreading their wings and tails out to dry, but this is the first time I recall seeing a Red-tail Hawk with this behavior. It’s pretty obvious with this view why this is called a Red-tailed Hawk.