As I emailed Rainer and some others lately--these birds are not new.
They've been present on a daily basis since first reported on obol and
ebird in June of 2014. They were probably around prior to that, just
unreported.
Others have also reported them on obol, though it seems to keep coming as
something new each time. They're not new, they've been a regular presence
that I see and/or hear daily over there. This morning while walking my
dogs, the pair was on the cliff side easily viewable from the old Boise
veneer lot (which you can now walk through, if you didn't know--it's not
very exotic bird-wise, but up close looks at as many cormorants and GB
Herons as you could like, and who knows what you might find in the river.
There were also six Wilson's Snipes and a few Killdeer in the lot this
morning, and a pair of Bald Eagle on the tip of Sauvie Island.)
Greg Haworth and myself have both noted or photographed a few recently
fledged Black Phoebe last year and/or this year, so these birds are
definitely breeding (I think in 2014 they did indeed raise two broods, but
I did not monitor them as closely this year, sad to say). I think there was
some mention of Black Phoebes breeding in Ridgefield, too.
Hannah Fritz
St. Helens, OR
