For reasons I'll explain in a later post this summer has been a little bit nuts for me, although mostly in ways that have very little to do with birding. At the end of June that included a trip out to Portland (the Oregon one) for a good friend's wedding. I had been out to Portland way back in the before times to visit my sister when she was living there so I was familiar with the city and happy to be back, though this time it was only for a weekend and mostly involved weddings and social things.
I did have time for one morning of birding, which I decided to spend at Powell Butte, a nice little state park in eastern Portland that had eBird records of some birds I hadn't seen in quite a while. The butte is an extinct cinder cone in the Boring Volcanic Field and has a few acres of grassland, woods and trails that are popular with local dogwalkers and joggers and have a few birds too. I somehow managed to make it out there by 8:30 in the morning despite being up until 3 the previous night and possibly not entirely sobered up yet. It was a beautiful sunny day though and the view was amazing, with Mount Hood looming over us to the east and the broken-off stump of Mount Saint Helens to the north.
 |
| The Powell Butte grasslands with volcanos in the distance |
 |
| Mount Saint Helens |
 |
| Mount Hood, the tallest volcano in Oregon |
The birding there was decent if not amazing, and I was able to catch up with a few birds I still needed for my year list. Lesser Goldfinches and American Goldfinches were flying overhead twittering and there were Violet-green Swallows and Barn Swallows wheeling about high in the sky. I had a distant look at a gorgeous Lazuli Bunting, a bird I hadn't seen since 2020, and in some low bushes there was a very bold Orange-crowned Warbler and a less exciting Willow Flycatcher.
 |
| Lazuli Bunting |
 |
| Orange-crowned Warbler |
 |
| Willow Flycatcher |
 |
| Fuzzy-horned Bumble Bee (Bombus mixtus) |
 |
| Riverbank Lupine |
 |
| Chicory |
 |
| Brown Knapweed with some sort of little beetle |
 |
| Common Centaury |
 |
| Purple Foxglove |
In a little patch of woods I found an extremely confiding pair of Dark-eyed Juncos of the Oregon subspecies, wildly different from the Slate-colored birds we have out East but apparently the same species. I left them alone when it became clear they were attending to a nest somewhere, but there was also a nice Common Yellowthroat that showed itself briefly. Down a bit further I had a little group of surprisingly confiding Chestnut-backed Chickadees that let me get the first decent pictures of the species that I'd ever gotten.
 |
| Dark-eyed Junco |
 |
| Common Yellowthroat |
 |
| Chestnut-backed Chickadee |
 |
| "Nipplewort" is not what I would have named this plant (Lapsana communis) but nobody asked me |
 |
| Broad-leafed Sweet Pea |
Eventually it was time to head back for post-wedding brunch and socializing, so I hailed another Uber to head back. As I was waiting I was distracted by a much closer look at a gorgeous male Lazuli Bunting, and was finally able to get decent pictures of it even if it never came down low enough. A couple of California Scrub Jays flew in for another last-minute addition to my year list.
 |
| Lazuli Bunting |
The rest of the weekend was spent socializing and walking around Portland, including visiting the other Powell spot (the enormous bookstore). It was a fun weekend out there and a nice break from the absurd humidity of DC. Portland is still one of my favorite cities in the US and I'm always happy to have the chance to visit, especially to see good friends and share in happy moments. The birds, in this case, really were a bonus...
Comments
Post a Comment