I Used to Hate Birds

This weekend I wanted to visit somewhere new so I picked a random spot from Birding Oregon and headed out...   I ended up near Hermiston at Cold Springs National Wildlife Refuge.

Between I-84 and the refuge are cows, farms, more cows, some horses, and these hawks:


They look to me like Swainson's Hawks with the lighter patches on the face... I could be wrong (as always).

I eventually arrived at the refuge after stopping to check Google Maps on my phone a couple times..  There are no signs from the "main" roads and the directions from Birding Oregon were vague at best.


The refuge consists of several parking areas with trails to different areas of the Cold Springs Reservoir.  The trails pass through cottonwoods and willows while the rest of the refuge consists of sagebrush fields.

My first find:

The willows were filled with warblers...  A Townsend's Warbler:

A new one for me!

Jake and I walked along the reservoir shoreline for quite awhile...


It got pretty hot quickly and…

I decided to take a trip to the coast yesterday morning for some hiking and some birding..  When I arrived it was pouring rain... Brilliant me had not checked the weather.  So I drove south instead of north as I had planned and stopped at Ecola State Park where it was dry but patchy fog...

Here are some blurry faraway oystercatchers... Wish I could have gotten closer.

Next up was this guy in the tall grass:
I realize it's a bit blurry but I am so curious as to what it is... Could it be a Hermit Warbler? 

On the trail we took were tons of Chestnut-backed Chickadees...
They were very interested in what we were doing...


After some hiking I drove down to the Bayocean Spit near Tillamook to look for shorebirds...  I was somewhat successful.


A relatively small group of sandpipers was hanging out by the bay...


Yikes I'm having trouble with the ID on these guys... I might have to come back to these ones.  Not far from these guys was a lonely Semipalmated Plover...


And that was all I got …

I can't believe I went almost 3 weeks without visiting Ridgefield!  Wow.  Anyway... I decided there was no better way to start off my birthday than to get up early and see what I could find there.. I felt like the animals knew it was my birthday and were especially patient just for me....

I started off on the Kiwa Trail and was greeted by this guy:


I made it almost halfway around the trail when I heard something that made me stop short.  Dog scuffle?  Huh?  It took me a second to remember I was not at work and that this sound made no sense.  Oh wait, nope, not dogs... FIVE coyotes!!!

One of them caught sight of me right away and took off, pausing to look at me from a distance.


I assume this is the family of coyotes that I have seen photos of on Flickr... Finally I got to see them myself!   I was sort of stuck on that bridge that goes over the marshy area because I wasn't sure how 5 coyotes would react to my sudden appearance during their breakfast (yep, they were scuffling ove…

Over the weekend I went camping at a great campground near Crater Lake.  The campground itself was on Miller Lake, a nice and dusty 12-mile drive down a gravel road from Chemult, OR.  It was a lot of fun since I had never been to Crater Lake (I know!  I've lived in Oregon for 9 years in September and had never made the trek). 

I got up early both days to go exploring...
That might be Diamond Peak but it might be something else.  Just a pretty view along the gravel road...

I started off heading towards the Upper Klamath Basin... This eagle was perched along one of the roads bordered by fields of cows:

Not where I would expect to find an eagle...  I was hoping for a Golden Eagle but I believe it's just an immature Bald Eagle. 

Further down the road were these blackbirds perched on a fence.. The whole scene made me think of a Country Time Lemonade commercial for some reason.


A Great Egret flew in to perch on a fencepost:


I followed the road down to a bunch of supposed birding spot…