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Late Winter Escape

© Terrie Murray

Al and I came down with a case of spring fever on Saturday, so we ran away from home. It was beautiful and sunny, and it seemed that all the local birds had broken into spring songs all at once. What a glorious day! Our target was the Willamette Valley, where a gyrfalcon has been reported along Perrydale Road, near Basket Slough National Wildlife Refuge. We didn't find the gyrfalcon, but we did find several other good birds:

Turkey vulture (first for 2002)
Red-tailed Hawk
Rock Dove
Northern Harrier
Canada Goose
Great Egret
Northern Shoveler
Mallard
Green-Winged Teal
Northern Pintail
Great Blue Heron
American Wigeon
Common Merganser
Red-Winged Blackbird
Killdeer
Ring-Necked Duck
Gadwall
Bufflehead
American Kestrel
American Robin
Golden-Crowned Sparrow
Tundra Swan
California Quail
Lewis's Woodpecker
Rough-Legged Hawk
Acorn Woodpecker
Tree Swallow
Mourning Dove
Dunlin
Long-Billed Dowitcher
Common Snipe
Black-Capped Chickadee
White-Tailed Kite
Brewer's Blackbird
Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Dark-Eyed Junco
Spotted Towhee
Steller's Jay
Northern Flicker
Golden-Crowned Kinglet
Song Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
Red-Breasted Nuthatch
Downy Woodpecker
Ruddy Duck
Coot
Bald Eagle

We stopped for dinner in Albany with Al's parents. After dinner, back in the car, we decided it was too nice a weekend to head home so we continued on west to the Oregon coast, stopping in Depoe Bay for the night. At that hour the only hotel room we could find was in a funky old motel called The Whale's Inn, where our room had a hunting theme. It was a hoot! There was a bear skin on the wall, along with mounted antelope and deer heads. Above our bed was an artfully-arranged display of different sized bullets, and on the bookshelf were several treatises on hunting, along with a copy of "The Amateur Taxidermist." There probably couldn't have been a more unlikely couple staying in that particular room, but we laughed it off and slept well.

The next day we woke to another brilliantly sunny day. We started at Boiler Bay, just north of Depoe Bay, where we hoped to see sea birds and possibly a couple of pelagics flying by. The weather was just too good for that, and what birds we could see were quite far off. We did, however, meet two very friendly British birders, one of whom is manager of the Holkam Preserve near Cley, in Norfolk. Friendly birders are just as nice a find as good birds, so we were well pleased. We spent the rest of the day working our way around Yaquina Bay, and then back north to Lincoln City where we headed inland and home around 6:00 p.m. The birds were few and far between, but we did get some good work on grebes and loons in winter plumage, including quite a long time on one winter-plumaged Pacific loon that we tried real hard to make into an Arctic loon. It may have been, but we were just too uncertain to call it.

The copyright of the article Late Winter Escape in Birdwatching is owned by Terrie Murray. Permission to republish Late Winter Escape in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.