The warm spring afternoon insisted that we go birding, and we saw five Great Egrets at the little wetland just west of Garden Valley Boulevard in the 8100/8200 block and a single egret in the Sutherlin ball park field close to the Murphy Plywood log pond. There were 7 Great Blue Herons at the rookery on Lower Cleveland Rapids road. We talked to a man at Ford's who told us that he had lived close to the pond for 66 years and, when he was a boy, it was a wetland fed by a large spring which is now buried. We've been told that Ford's was a log pond and is not entitled to protection from drainage because it wasn't historically a wetland, but apparently that's inaccurate (to put it diplomatically). Earlier in the day we saw the leucistic Red- tailed Hawk on its favorite tree along Garden Valley close to the fire station at the Del Rio intersection.
Bob and Jeannie Pollock Roseburg March 4, 2014
