So far the tally is 86 species. The prize a YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER in
Clackamas County. I've seen these before, winter YBSA in Oregon, and they are
invariably juveniles. This is a adult female and it's a spiffy bird indeed. A
photo on eBird shows it beside an adult Red-breasted. Awesome image. I don't
know how the home owner feels about visits. The first ,and so far only one of
two, Bald Eagles was flying over a yard on se 70something in Portland. That's a
continuous residential plain of a quarter million humans. Even more noteworthy,
the Trumpeter and Tundra Swans flying over Phillip Klein's house in Portland.
Two endangered species of my childhood observed passively over a major
metropolitan landscape. It's an OK time for some of the charismatic megafauna.
As for the nerdy/nebbishy microfauna l have my doubts. Mike Patterson's
yard in Astoria had a Western Gull. Liz Holencik's "gull,sp" on Alsea Bay came
with three lovely photos, including an open wing shot. It's an adult male
Thayer's Gull almost into full alternate plumage! But this miraculous
technology (my perspective is birding Alsea Bay 100s of hours in the Nixon
years where the best resources were the Golden Guide, a dial phone on the wall
at home and USMail) is eclipsed by Karen Saxton's BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE at her
mom's house in Coos County. This is the most abundant gull on Earth(5
million)but rarely seen from land outside the breeding season. Thayer's Gull
may number only 7 thousand pairs and are born in the HIGH arctic, some further
north than Snowy Owls care to fly. But once there was a lone gull on the roof
of a tract house along Big Creek in Newport. A lush neighborhood surrounded by
forest , host to a Nashville Warbler the previous count. I found it hard to
imagine this wild wanderer from the end of the Earth lounging in such banality.
But Phil Pickering was on the team and confirmed, the lone gull was a Thayer's.
It might have been playing with the Kittiwakes out of sight of land the day
before. Both Phoebes have been reported, one of only two BLPH at Linda
Fink's in Yamhill County near the northern limit of its occurence. I'll post a
complete list later today.Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphoneLqqncq
