Shawneen Finnegan, Jim Danzenbaker, Ann Nightingale (from Victoria B.C.) and I
spent the day birding North Portland and Sauvie Island. We started by checking
the grebe/scoter spot on east Hayden Island, behind the Columbia Point condos
at the end of N. Hayden Bay Drive. We only saw a couple Western-type grebes,
with one that seemed to be a likely Western X Clark's hybrid. We had a large
flock of mostly Lesser Scaup there as well. We made a brief stop at Broughton
Beach, where the stiff east winds made an already chilly morning quite cold.
After that we checked the Fazio Road area south of Marine Drive down 13th
hoping to relocate the Palm Warbler found there earlier this winter. No luck
with that, but there was a sizable flock of American Pipits in the field full
of rotting pumpkins on the south side Fazio Road. On our way to Sauvie Island
we checked Force Lake, finding a nice mix of ducks including a few Canvasbacks.
We spent the remainder of the day on Sauvie Island, mostly along Rentenaar Rd.
staking out the two seed patches for sparrows. The first patch (by the little
trail that goes to the wooden shed) was active all afternoon with eight species
of sparrows (including Dark-eyed Junco) and the continuing out-of-towner Song
Sparrow that is smaller and much paler than our locals. There were at least
five White-throated Sparrows at this seeded area. Two Swamp Sparrows fed almost
constantly in the low branches overhanging the slough between the seeded areas.
They stayed mostly on the south side of the road within 15-20' of the road, but
usually behind lots of branches. Finding an opening to get a decent photo
proved to be a challenge. The second seed patch at the crossroad was really
quiet today. Last Sunday the Harris's Sparrow was there almost constantly,
along with about 40-50 other sparrows. Today only a few birds were coming in
and we never saw the Harris's Sparrow. I don't know if anyone saw it today.
We spent the last couple hours of daylight working Reeder Road and then Oak
Island Road looking through several flocks of sparrows, blackbirds and
waterfowl. In the pond behind the last big new house on the right before the
big right hand curve near the end of Oak Island Road we found a nice flock of
wigeon that included two male and one female Eurasian Wigeon, plus a male
American Wigeon X Eurasian Wigeon hybrid. We also had really odd-looking Aythya
duck in that small pond. Superficially, it looked like a very dark first-year
male scaup, but the bill was darker than a typical scaup bill with a paler
whitish band behind the bill nail. It also had a small pale spot in the face at
the base of the bill. Shawneen got some decent video of it that includes a
raised wing sequence in which it shows a scaup-like wing stripe. We watched it
for quite a while and did not come away with a solid idea about what exactly it
was. I suspect that it might be a scaup X Ring-necked Duck hybrid, or perhaps a
scaup X Redhead cross.
Dave Irons
Beaverton, OR
