Pajareo sin fronteras

  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...

After my fun  excursion  east of the Cascades, I returned to Portland, which is where I would spend most of the rest of my trip to Oregon. The drive back over the mountains was... not terribly fun, through dark mountain roads in the snow in a 2-wheel-drive car. I'd been hoping for at least a little glimpse of the scenery, but the weather (and weather-related delays) meant that was not to be.  I still had my rental car for one more day after returning to Portland, so I decided to spend my first day back in spots that would be harder to access via public transportation. My main goal of the day was to seek out the flocks of Snow Geese that had been reported in the area. The first stop, along the Oregon side of the Columbia River, produced approximately 0 birds but a lot of snow. I did, however, hear the cacophony of many, many waterfowl on the other side of the river. This could only mean one thing: a trip to Washington state.  After a trafficky drive over the ...