Mount Tabor, etc.

March 9, 2025

Mount Tabor

If you’re a birder, eBird makes an interesting new resource. You can pull up a map of nearby birding hotspots and drill down into them to see recently submitted checklists that list the birds seen and the time of day of the visit. Based on this, it looks like an early morning visit to Mount Tabor is in order, with the possibility of seeing perhaps a half-dozen birds I haven’t spotted yet this year: hairy and downy woodpeckers, chestnut backed chickadees, red breasted nuthatches, varied thrushes, Stellar’s jays all look like potential additions to the tally.

Arriving at dawn looks like the ticket though, so I forego breakfast for the moment and drive east as soon as it’s light enough for me to drive safely (nighttime driving is a thing of the past for me now). Regardless of whether I find any success with the birds, I’m rewarded almost as soon as I arrive by a look east to a half-shrouded Mount Hood.

There’s a wonderful view to the east when I arrive. Sorry it’s so grainy though. I should read up on the phone camera to see what the low-light options are.

I spend a few minutes walking across the crown of the park, admiring the trees and early signs of spring, and then head over to the western slope for the walking route down to the reservoir and back that I have planned. My knees are really terrible this morning so it’s not clear if this is going to work, but at least there’s the fact that slow travel is appropriate for birding.

The view to the west is OK this morning too.

Fox squirrel, another unwelcome invader from the east. I was surprised to learn that this is regarded as the most common backyard squirrel in Portland. I’d assumed it was the eastern gray.

I don’t get far down the path when a few small birds - chickadees possibly - swoop in and get swallowed by some dense shrubbery. I open up and aim the camera their way hoping to catch some movement, but instead what I see is a message that there’s no memory in the camera. Crap. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but I forgot to replace the SD card after extracting the last batch.

A spotted towhee, sitting on the railing just twenty feet from me - close enough that even the phone is sufficient for a decent shot.

So that’s frustrating, but there’s nothing to be done about it now. At least I got to enjoy the sunrise. And the mountain’s not going anywhere soon, so I’ll get other chances. On the way home I keep my eye out for a promising spot for breakfast and soon pull into the Red Square Cafe and order up a Classic Red bagel (bacon, cheddar, catsup) and admire the ambience as I overhear the server talking about his childhood when he lived in Japan - Tokyo and Kyoto - with his mother, a singer who performed in various locations throughout Asia.

Laurelhurst Park

Rachael’s plan for the day is another walk, once again one I came up with for her. I’m enthusiastic about this one, a loop east to Laurelhurst Park and back that I’m certain she’ll enjoy. She gives it so-so marks though when she talks it over with me later. One frustration is that the restrooms in the parks were all locked up so she was forced to stop off at a Laughing Planet (and pick up a cookie as long as she was stopped). The bigger issue though is with walking west across the river. Portland is definitely cleaning up its act, but the neighborhoods bordering the river on both sides are still pretty marginal with camps and street people under overpasses and alongside the arterials making her feel insecure. I suspect most of her walking will stay on this side in the future, either south along the waterfront or up into the west hills.

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Oaks Bottom

There’s still plenty of day left so in the afternoon I head out again, on the Rodriguez this time. My plan is to bike south to the Sellwood Bridge and then climb up through Riverview Cemetery before returning to town along Terwilliger Boulevard, but that doesn’t quite happen either. When I come to Oaks Bottom I decide to lock the bike up and walk along the backside of the lake again, and at the pace I walk now that ties up all the available time before I need to rush back for dinner again.

The Morrison bridge is closed for maintenance today. Or open, depending on your perspective.

There are surprisingly few birds out again this afternoon, but it’s much more enjoyable now that the chain saw gang is off duty. And it’s surprisingly successful, netting me three new birds, and another sight of the screech owl. Especially satisfying is my sighting of a brown creeper, a bird I’ve only seen a few times before. They’re definitely around, but they’re hard to spot. Theyre small birds that spend most of their time creeping straight up the trunk of a tree, their mottled brown pattern blending in with the tree trunk so they’re difficult to make out. This sighting is the same as my last one - I see him fly in and affix himself to a trunk about fifty feet up, and by the time I’ve opened up the camera he slips around the backside of the tree and disappears.

#116: Brown creeper (downloaded from eBird).

Today’s list: Pied-billed grebe, American robin, American coot, Yellow-rumped warbler, Screech owl, Fox sparrow, Downy woodpecker, Brown creeper, Northern flicker, Great blue heron, Northern shoveler, Mallard, Gadwall, Greater scaup, Rock dove, Double-crested cormorant, Red-tailed Hawk, Glaucous-winged gull, Cedar waxwing, Golden-crowned kinglet, Canada goose, Cackling goose (22)

Today's ride: 12 miles (19 km)
Total: 1,198 miles (1,928 km)

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