Kelly Point

February 19, 2023

Rocky’s voice is still rocky this morning. She’s doing better, but still thinks it’s best to sit out another day.

When she starts biking again, she’ll be wearing these.

I’m working a pretty short list of birds I hope to see here before we leave, unless we start getting some spring arrivals in the last few days. Wood ducks, hooded mergansers, Stellar’s jays, fox sparrows, hairy woodpeckers all seem possible if I’m lucky and put myself in the right place at the right time; plus a few gull species if any of those finally show up.

I don’t have much time to work with though. We’ve still got over three weeks until we leave for Palermo, but we only have two days until a prolonged spell of cold, miserable weather is due to move in. Today I’m off to Kelly point at the mouth of the Willamette, with stops along the way along the Columbia Slough and Smith/Bybee Lakes. I’ve sketched out a bit longer ride for the day, continuing my regimen of gradually stretching the distance and difficulty I’m subjecting my still-healing ankle to.

The Columbia Slough is about the same as it was two days ago, with no real surprises. The wetlands around Vanport and Force Lake are more productive though; and even though they don’t offer up the wood duck I’d been hoping for, they do have a pretty nice assortment of waterfowl: widgeons, canvasbacks, scaups, gadwalls, a few others.

Every time I see a gadwall now, which is often, I’m surprised that it’s taken me so long to recognize this bird. It’s obviously been in front of my nose for many years without me knowing it. How many other of nature’s treasures are like this, waiting for me to finally recognize them?

A nice shot of a lesser scaup, which we’ve seen before. Very similar to a greater scaup, best distinguished by its rather pointed head profile.

Biking along the Columbia, I see my first new bird of the day - the first gull I’ve seen since arriving in town. The problem though that I was too late in noticing it, and by the time the camera’s out and ready for action the bird is too far off to identify.

Finally a gull! The first one I’ve seen anywhere since returning to Portland. It’s too pale to be a western gull so it’s a new species. But do you see enough information here to identify it? I don’t.

Success comes when I reach the turnoff to the short paved trail into the Smith and Bybee Lakes wetland. It’s marked as closed to biking, but it’s farther than I want to walk on my ankle just yet and the trail is virtually empty today so I just bike slowly and respectfully.

It’s well worth the effort, as I soon hear a hammering above my head and zoom in to find a spiky-billed hairy woodpecker; and then a bird I don’t expect, a yellow warbler. They fly south for the winter but are about the first warblers to return in the spring, so she must be a vanguard. And then the sighting I’m especially pleased with today, a pair of hooded mergansers drift by. Such a cute couple they make!

In another few miles I make it out to Kelly Point, but it really worth the detour today. Gray, chilly, practically birdless. I make short work of the loop through the park and then head south for Saint John’s, along Willamette Bluff, and finally home.

The view down the Columbia from Kelly Point. On the right, Washington; on the left, Sauvie Island.

____________________

2023 Bird List

110. Hairy woodpecker

111. Yellow warbler

112. Hooded merganser

Today's ride: 31 miles (50 km)
Total: 1,599 miles (2,573 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	9
Comment on this entry	Comment	0