[birding] Finley NWR longspur search & miscellaneous

[Joel Geier]

Hi folks,

I was at Finley NWR this morning for an event related to the Willamette
Valely Birding trail, so checked out the field to the SW of the Bruce
Rd. overlook where Doug Robinson reported a Chestnut-collared Longspur
over the weekend, in with a flock of 16 Horned Larks.

I found at least two different flocks of HORNED LARKS in the range of
15-20 birds, plus several smaller groups of 4 to 6 birds that appeared
to be family groups of the endemic subspecies (hatch-year birds still
easy to recognize, looked like a good ratio of youngsters to adults this
year). So, I found perhaps 40 to 50 Horned Larks in that field overall.
I had good enough looks at most of these to be sure that no longspurs
were among them, except for one of the two larger flocks. No doubt the
longspur chose to associate with the one flock that I couldn't get a
decent look at! 

I did hear a couple of longspur-like "kiddle" or "kididdle" calls from
birds flying over the sparsely vegetated area immediately south of the
overlook.

About 30 AMERICAN PIPITS were also in the field, along with similar
numbers of SAVANNAH SPARROWS, one WESTERN MEADOWLARK, one RED-TAILED
HAWK, and a lone MOURNING DOVE. A RED-SHOULDERED HAWK was calling
persistently from the direction of McFadden Marsh, the whole time I was
out there.

The Horned Larks are favoring the parts of the field that have sparse
vegetation (as opposed to the nearly bare, tilled-up parts),
particularly in the SW part of the field where it looks like perennial
grass was planted last spring. There, the larks are favoring the more
weedy patches which makes viewing them a little difficult. When flocks
flew, I generally saw 50% more birds in a given flock than I could see
on the ground despite some very patient scoping. On most of these, I had
good enough looks at the flying birds to be sure all of them were the
same species, with the exception of the one big flock which took to the
air at the same time as the other big flock.

Later on, Molly Monroe & Sallie Gentry & I took a TV news team out the
new Homer Campbell Memorial boardwalk trail to Cabell Marsh, which had
lots of MALLARDS plus a handful of PINTAILS & GREEN-WINGED Teal, a RUDDY
DUCK, 6 DUSKY CANADA GEESE and 2 GREATER WHITE-FRONTED GEESE, plus a
WESTERN GREBE (just maybe Clark's, as we didn't have a scope along, but
at least through bins it looked more like a Western). 

Molly said that the Duskies had just shown up on the pond by the new
headquarters this morning. Molly spotted some distant shorebirds which
looked like peeps but that's about as far as we could go.

At the north prairie overlook, a WESTERN MEADOWLARK was singing and
several WESTERN BLUEBIRDS were flycatching, perching at times on the
refuge sign. Really a beautiful day out there. Hopefully Molly can add
anything I missed.

Happy birding,
Joel

--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis