I went dark and early to hike Wildwood to follow up on Andy's possible
Mountain Quail.
TLDR: No Quail.
The longer version is that at just about sunrise, maybe 1/2 mile out on the
trail, I heard two "Quarks". I stopped to listen and try and locate the
sounds. Maybe 5 seconds later, a pair of Ravens flew over, with the lead
bird calling a series of alternating calls- not the standard "KWAK!" call,
but a high-pitched "WHAAP" - pure tone, not grating like the standard call
- that anyone who knows Aristophanes at Portland Audubon is well familiar
with. This call was interspersed with a low rasp.
In my mind, the first two calls I heard sounded different, and like a dead
ringer for Mountain Quail. But the more likely answer is that MOQU was what
I was primed to hear, and a distant raven call was pliable enough to do the
trick.
Which is not to say that Andy's birds were ravens. As per eBird this would
be the farthest east in the Coast Range (technically the Tualatin Mountains
are in the coast range ecoregion) for MOQU to be recorded, but I was
interested to read that BoNA describes them as "Notable among New World
quail for seasonal altitudinal migration... No other New World Quail so
consistently makes seasonal movements between breeding and wintering
areas." Would be a great 5mr bird!
Other than that, there was a nice dawn chorus to start the day.
Good birding,
Brodie
On Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 10:48 AM Andy Frank <andydfrank@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
While walking in Forest Park in Portland this morning about 9AM I heard
about 4 "quarks" that I thought sounded like Mountain Quail. It was
somewhat distant and did not repeat itself so I am not confident enough to
include it on my checklist, but if someone happens to go and can confirm
it, I'd love to hear it. This was near the intersection of Wildwood Trail
and Birch Trail.
Andy Frank
