Greetings All,
For about a month or so now I have been regularly hearing calling Evening
Grosbeaks around the northern end of the Willamette Valley. This past weekend
while in Eugene, Shawneen had a flock of 50 Evening Grosbeaks pass over Dan and
Anne Heyerly's house just north of downtown Eugene. We looked at recent eBird
reports of Evening Grosbeaks and found that the number of valley floor reports
this fall is about equal to the total number of valley floor reports for all
previous fall seasons. By all indications this fall's lowland incursion of
Evening Grosbeaks is highly unusual and perhaps unprecedented in recent years.
I can't recall ever seeing or hearing as many Evening Grosbeaks in the
Willamette Valley lowlands during fall. The big numbers here typically come
during April and May and they are mostly absent from the valley floor most of
the rest of the year.
If you are an eBirder, I encourage you to record all sightings of Evening
Grosbeaks this fall. This incursion, along with the lowland incursion of
Mountain Chickadees may be an early indicator of other finch irruptions into
our region this winter. On a lesser scale, there have been several lowland
reports of Townsend's Solitaires, including one that visited Wilson Cady's
feeder just yesterday. Further, Pine Siskins seem to be arriving in big numbers
as well. Jim Danzenbaker sent us a photo tonight showing about fifty Pine
Siskins on the deck of his home in Battle Ground, Washington.
One last thing to pay attention to. Over the past year or so, I've noticed that
nearly every Western Red Cedar I see has dead foliage. I'm not sure if this
drought-related or perhaps a disease of some sort, but in recent months I have
been hard-pressed to find a Western Red Cedar that looks healthy. Even in
Olympic National Park and in the Olympic National Forest, the cedars have lots
of patches of brown foliage. The most intense evidence of this is a broad
elevational band (between about 2000 and 3000') along Hwy 58 east of Oakridge
where nearly every Western Red Cedar is dead-topped, sometimes for upwards of
40 feet.
Dave Irons
Portland, OR
