[obol] Red-bellied Woodpecker trip

From: David Irons <llsdirons@xxxxxxx>
To: OBOL Oregon Birders Online <obol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 06:23:25 +0000
Greetings All,
Shawneen and I made a successful trip to La Grande to see the Red-bellied 
Woodpecker today. After seeing the bird just befor 9AM, we spent much of the 
rest of the day birding around Union County. Overall, pretty quiet. We drove up 
to Morgan Lake, where we listened to the expanding and contracting ice make all 
sorts of cool noises, some quite load. We also saw one bird, an Eared Grebe 
that was diving in one little open section of water out in the middle of the 
lake. After that, we spent quite a bit of time birding around Cove, where we 
did not relocate the Blue Jay and saw little of interest. We then went over to 
Union and found to that to be even less inspiring, aside from one American 
Crow, which I think is pretty tough to come by in Union Co. during the winter 
months. We saw lots of raptors as we drove between towns.
At about 2:30 we started back west and basically drove non-stop to McNary Dam. 
Unfortunately, we arrived there with a mere 40 minutes of birdable light 
remaining. In retrospect, I wish we had bailed from Union Co. as soon as we saw 
the woodpecker and spent our time along the Columbia. There was a swarm of at 
least 600 gulls below the dam, mostly Californias, with good numbers of Mews 
and Ring-billeds and lesser numbers of larger pink-footed types. We did have 
four Bonaparte's Gulls and a single American White Pelican feeding below the 
dam. There was group of about 40 Common Mergansers that included a single 
female Red-breasted Merganser and a female Hooded Merganser and a flyover flock 
of about 240 Snow Geese was fun, although not surprising. Snow Geese were 
formerly rare in the Mid-Columbia Basin, but in recent years thousands have 
been using McNary NWR (just upriver in WA). Right at dusk, several small groups 
of Black-crowned Night-Herons flew in from the west and continued up towards 
the dam. Given  the number of birds present, we could have easily spent a 
couple hours birding the outflow area below the dam and we never even got over 
into the wildlife area, which is usually good for sparrows and other 
passerines. 
Dave IronsPortland, OR
[obol] Red-bellied Woodpecker trip

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