I was at a get together with old friends from the neighborhood in which I grew
up at one of the guy's (Sterling Anderson's) Rockaway compound since Monday
afternoon. All of the people there were birders at some level. The host's
family have fed birds there for years. There is a creek and mixed woods on the
property.
Since Monday there have been a lot of Orange-crowned Warblers singing, and
Violet-green Swallow pairs staring to nest. A pair of Lesser Goldfinches were
visiting the thistle feeder. Those were only my second sighting of that
species in Tillamook County. There was also a White-throated Sparrow visiting
the feeder each day. Several E. Collared-Doves, 2 Mourning Doves, and up to 20
Band-tailed Pigeons were visiting the feeders. Several Greater Yellowlegs
flying over were the only shorebirds detected. (28 had been at a bight on
Willapa Bay, WA on Sunday.)
To all of our amusement, Randy Wright brought a very old home film of the
Brambling that had visited the host's family's bird feeder in Portland in
November 1967. The sighting and recording pre-dated the later sighting and
photographs of very likely the same Brambling at Christy Brindle's house which
is recorded as the first state record and dated March 1, 1968. Christy lived
in our neighborhood, about four blocks from the feeder where the video was
taken.
The account of our sighting is that several friends had assembled at Sterling's
parent's house to play a board game called Risk. Sterling mentioned that there
had been a bird at his feeder that he couldn't identify. We kept an eye on
the feeder as we played the game, and eventually the Brambling showed up. A
day or two later Randy Wright returned with his family's home film camera and
filmed the bird. We were not able to find a bird that matched what we had seen
in the American field guides at the time. In order to solve the mystery five
of us took the bus to the central library in downtown Portland. After a while
someone found a match for the bird in Peterson's Field Guide to Britain and
Europe. I think we found a reference to Brambling having been found on one of
the Alaskan islands, but no other records for North America. It was suggested
by some that it was an escaped bird, but we argued that if it could make it to
an Alaska island that it could make it to Portland.
We are making plans to get the film digitized and submitted to the OBRC. (We
weren't able to read a sign that someone was holding up in a segment of the
film that followed the part with bird, but it is being held up by one of our
friends.. Maybe it will be legible when the film is digitized.)
Jeff Gilligan
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