Say's Phoebes have been wintering at Ward Butte for at least 20 years. My
records before then are entombed in binders for now but I'm sure I have
older records there as well. There are a number of Jan-Feb mid-winter
records from there. I've always thought that some if not all of the birds
there had wintered before. I think they were happy with their survival
prospects there and made it their true winter destination. There have been
at least a couple of Say's Phoebes I can think of that wintered multiple
years at sites in the greater Eugene area as well. I think at least some
of these birds are coming back to specific WV wintering sites and are not
necessarily wandering opportunists.
Mark Nikas
On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 5:37 PM <clearwater@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Defining the onset of "true winter" in the Willamette Valley is a tricky
subject, especially in recent years. Not quite as tricky as defining the
start of the "rainy" season in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, but
trending in that direction.
Rather than attempting to classify these mid-December Say's Phoebes as
either "winter residents" or "late migrants," perhaps it's better to
consider them as opportunistic birds that have migrated as far south as
conditions warrant, and will stay at this latitude as long as they continue
to find food. The bird on the SE side of Ward Butte has been there for at
least a month, with no sign of any movement.
Another way to see these birds might be as birds that migrated southwest
out of the intermontane region, but took a more westward track and wound up
a little farther north than the bulk of the population. Perhaps a few
decades ago fewer of them would have survived this far into "winter," so we
wouldn't have picked them up on CBCs.
It's not that long of a hop to the Rogue Valley where, as Alan notes,
these kinds of numbers have been typical for a long time. Numbers there
might be going up: CBCs in the Rogue-Umpqua region yielded 13 Say's Phoebes
in the winter of 2017-2018, and 25 last winter (mainly in Medford both
years).
The Rogue Valley, in turn, isn't much of a hop from Redding at the north
end of the Sacramento Valley, which shows up as the north end of their
regular winter range in older field guides.
This kind of discussion keeps coming up year after year. One way to answer
it -- which has been raised many times on OBOL -- would be to organize a
few Late Winter Bird Counts (LWBCs) in the same established circles as the
CBCs, try to staff them at a comparable level of effort to the regular
counts, and see what differences emerge. It might even give us some new
things to argue about in February!
Joel
Lars Norgren wrote:
CBCs are essentially late autumn events and l often wonder if theseSay's Phoebes near the 45th parallel are true wintering residents or late
migrants. This fall has been mild and drier than average. So was last year.
...
--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
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