[birding] Peoria birds

[M & R Campbell]

I was working in the yard this afternoon, in the rain, when my day was suddenly lightened by the year's first appearance of TREE SWALLOWs.  The occasion has me waxing poetic--or poetastic, as the case may be.  Ahem...

Loveliest of birds, the swallow flies
Bringing spring to northern skies.
For his mate he darts above,
Composing arabesques of love.

Now, of my four score years and ten,
Forty will not come again,
And take from ninety springs two score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

Fifty springs leave little time
To see the swallow in this clime,
So come fall south I'll fly
To find the tropic swallow's sky.


Or something like that.  Apologies to A.E. Housman (and anyone of actual poetic sensibility).

It's been a quiet week here in Peoria.  Last Sunday I added a GLAUCOUS-WINGED GULL to my yard list, which would be unremarkable except that I got the opportunity to study the bird as it harassed an adult BALD EAGLE.  Instead of simply flying past and leaving me wondering, as gulls usually do, it stayed in sight over the river while it made several attacks on the eagle, giving me time to pick out all the field marks of a third year G-w Gull, and impressing me with its speed and maneuverability.  The eagle looked slow and sluggish in comparison.
  
Earlier that morning, we had other eagle action when two sub-adult Bald Eagles tried to snatch a COMMON MERGANSER out of the middle of the river.  They took turns swooping at it, forcing it to dive at least four times, and one eagle even plunged into the river in an attempt to fish it out.  The merganser was a straggler from a group of males, who turned and swam heroically back upstream to their distressed companion.  Once it was impossible for the eagles to pick out a single victim, they flew off to the arcade, or wherever eagle punks go.

Bulliest of birds, the eagle tries 
to steal the lunch of other guys...

As far as I know the PYRRHULOXIA was last seen Friday the 20th.  I haven't been looking very hard, lately, but other birders are still straggling though town.  If you are one of them and you see the bird, could you please post your find?  Remember, at the moment you see it you will be the very latest person--and maybe the last--to have ever seen a Pyrrhuloxia in Oregon.


Randy

Peoria



  

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