Priscilla's
Bird Photography

Photos from personal trips  AND trips with
Birds of Oregon and General Science, (BOGS) in association with Eugene's Celeste Campbell Center

provided by:
Priscilla Sokolowski
Eugene, OR
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BOGS Clearwater Landing,
April 23, 2015, Trip Report

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Just for fun, I made a google map of our Clearwater Landing bird walk. My thanks to Mary Morrison for capturing the gps coordinates of the birds we saw as we went along the trail. (She used an app on my iPhone called "Birdwatcher"). For most of our trips a map like this would not be all that useful or important. Clearwater Landing is about the only place large enough that a map would be of interest if there was an especially uncommon bird that others would want to go and see.

  • The map can be re-centered by clicking on any place other than an icon (pic or balloon marker) Hold the left mouse button down and drag to re-center map

  • Be aware that when the mouse cursor is inside the map, the mouse wheel may operate the zooming in and out. moving the mouse cursor outside the map will make the mouse wheel move the entire webpage up and down (scroll)

  • There are + and - zoom controls at the bottom right corner of the map. You WILL need to zoom in a LOT in places where there are many icons crowded closely together.
  • Click on the small menu box at top left corner of map to get a drop-down list of birds seen. This way you can pick the bird you want to find on the map and see a photo (or two or three photos) of it.

  • Click on markers showing bird image icons to open a photo of the bird.

  • Be aware that there are two or three photos of some of the birds

  • The Great Horned Owl fledgeling was seen briefly on our trip but the photo shown on this map was taken by Don Laufer on a field trip with Floyd Weitzel's class a week earlier (Friday April 17).
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All of the photos which are especially good can be seen by clicking on their icons on the map above, so I am only duplicating a few of them in this text portion of the trip report below.

The weather was great for walking. We had only the slightest of sprinkles a few times over the nearly three hours that we were there. We didn't return to Campbell Center until 12:30, which is later than usual. There was a point where Steve's "8 more minutes" evolved into about 20. A few of us sat out that stretch on a nice bench right near the bank of the middle fork of the Willamette river. The river was running shallow over rocks and we all enjoyed the so-called "white noise".

We had about a dozen people at Campbell when arranging car pooling. The other twenty six who went on this excursion filled up the parking lot at Clearwater Landing and were waiting for us when we arrived. Yes, we had 38 bird-watchers on this walk! I think we did fine though. Clearwater is a forgiving place in the sense that (especially) at this time of year, the birds are very active and did not seem terribly disturbed by our presence. The exception might have been the fledgeling Great Horned Owl we saw flying to a perch further away from us. If it wasn't already nervous about the herd of humans moving along the bike path, it probably was after hearing the very enthusiastic vocalizations made by our group when it was spotted flying. I found out that Floyd's Willamalane class had seen this Owl the Friday before and had some very good looks at it. I included one photo taken on that occasion by Don Laufer, in the map above. I'll include it here also.

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During the previous week, I had gone to the Wild Birds store and Donna had told me she had seen her first Lincoln's Sparrow. I told her I had never identified one. We had three opportunities to enjoy Lincolns' Sparrows on this bird walk, so for me this bird was the highlight of the day. The Lincoln's Sparrow is one of several birds which have been reported more on OBOL this Spring than I recall in the past.

Another bird in this group is the Calliope Hummingbird. We did not see one on this walk, but again, Donna had one at her bird feeder for the first time, just this week. Chipping Sparrows and Red Crossbills have also been seen throughout the valley in the last two weeks. We did see Red Crossbills on our recent Alton Baker walk. When I get that album and trip report online, you will see a pretty good photo of the Crossbill taken by Don.

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Near the end of our walk, just before arriving at the parking lot, a group of noisy birds was seen in a tree top up ahead of us a few hundred feet. These turned out to be Evening Grossbeaks and from my experience they are always in flocks and always very loud. This is one of those birds which is seen frequently by some people, especially in the South Hills, I think, while some of us never seem to see them around town at all. The last time I saw Evening Grossbeaks was two years ago on the Lakeview trip by Floyd's Willamalane class. We saw a lot of them in the small oasis town of Plush. I used to see them a lot when camping in Ontario Canada, nearly a half century ago.

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Bird list for walk at Clearater Landing in East Springfield, April 23, 2015.
The weather was cool and cloudy, with some short, light showers.
--- bird list and gps coordinates compiled by Mary Morrison using "Birdwatcher" app for iPhone.

  1. Mallard
  2. Ring-necked Duck
  3. Common Merganser
  4. California Quail
  5. Great Blue Heron
  6. Turkey Vulture
  7. Osprey
  8. Red-shouldered Hawk
  9. Red-tailed Hawk
  10. Mourning Dove
  11. Great Horned Owl
  12. Vaux's Swift
  13. Anna's Hummingbird
  14. Red-breasted Sapsucker
  15. Downy Woodpecker
  16. Northern Flicker
  17. Steller's Jay
  1. Violet-green Swallow
  2. Black-capped Chickadee
  3. Red-breasted Nuthatch
  4. Brown Creeper
  5. Pacific Wren
  6. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
  7. Hermit Thrush
  8. American Robin
  9. Common Yellowthroat
  10. Black-throated Gray Warbler
  11. Townsend's Warbler
  12. Spotted Towhee
  13. Song Sparrow
  14. Lincoln's Sparrow
  15. White-crowned Sparrow
  16. Golden-crowned Sparrow
  17. Evening Grosbeak
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The photo slide-show for this trip can be found here:
http://priscillanhk.com/bogs-clearwater-4-23-15.html

Generally if you want to know what is happening next at BOGS, or want to see the latest photos/reports,
you can find these on the "updates" page:
http://priscillanhk.com/updates.html
Enjoy!
Priscilla

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