[birding] Linn Golden Eagle, other good birds

[M & R Campbell]

Since I have hardly been out of valley bottom this year, I rode across the to the foothills just northeast of Brownsville and hiked up through the mixed woodlands of Cochcran Creek watershed.  The most significant bird of the trip was a GOLDEN EAGLE.  Even from quite a distance and silhouetted against the sky, it was small-headed enough that I first tried to make it into a Vulture.  As it continued down the valley and flew some two-hundred feet directly over me, it was clearly an eagle, and it demonstrated the "broad-handed" quality that Sibley mentions.  As far as field marks go, from underneath and against a bright sky, I couldn't see much more than that, but it definitely lacked the big schnoz of a Bald Eagle.

Of the 65 other species of birds that I counted (and the several whose voices I couldn't place and have already forgotten), the most significant might be YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT, which I had always thought were scarce in Linn County.  It turns out that they are easy to find near Cochran Creek, scattered around clearcuts that were replanted some five to ten years ago.  My favorite bird was the PYGMY OWL that finally responded to my thirtieth or fiftieth attempt to hoot one up. I could hear its own hoots coming nearer, tree by tree, until it reached the high deck where I was standing, saw me, and lost some of its enthusiasm.  It stopped hooting, but then swooped in about eight feet above my head and parked on a stump eight yards away.  Sitting in full sun, glaring at me, it was perfectly photogenic.  Too bad I didn't have a camera.  It was less impressed with me, so it flew back up into the same tree, this time missing my head by less than an outstretched arm, and re-commenced its hooting.  It ignored the gathering mob of songbirds and was still hooting when I hiked out of ear-shot, far down the valley.  

Other birds, significant to me mostly because I hadn't found any yet this year, were:

SOOTY GROUSE  (easy to scare up if you spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly through mixed woodlands)
RUFFED GROUSE (ditto)
MOUNTAIN QUAIL (heard, only)
BAND-TAILED PIGEON
PILEATED WOODPECKER (several)
CASSIN'S VIREO
PURPLE MARTIN  (just look for giant, old snags)

Inexplicably, I have yet to see or hear a Varied Thrush this year.


Randy Campbell

Peoria


All the birds mentioned in this post were found, or not, using only human power.









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