Towheeblog

We are touring the area with two visitors from Britain this week.  So we watc hed Violet-green Swallows in and out of a nest hole above the door to the White Rose wine-tasting room atop Dundee Hills.  Later in the same are we saw both Lazuli Bunting and Western Tanager.  At Ed Grenfell Park on Baker Creek Road near McMinnville–where I have birded dozens of times–I heard for the first time Yellow-breasted Chat calling. One was in the dense brush just across the creek from the main parking lot along Baker Creek Road.  Then north of Neskowin yesterday I saw my first Brown Pelican and Heermann’s Gull of the year in Oregon.  They are two of the species triumvirate that nest south and summer here in the North Pacific, the third being Elegant Tern.The rest of the gull gathering were Ring-billed, , Glaucous-winged and those W X GW mixes that are often referred to as “Olympic Gulls.”

While out and about I have seen exactly one monarch butterfly.

Dundee Hills, Yamhill, Oregon, US
Jun 5, 2017.  10 species

Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) 7
Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto) X
Violet-green Swallow (Tachycineta thalassina) 2 White Rose tasting room
American Robin (Turdus migratorius) X
Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana) X
Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) X
Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena) 2
Brewer’s Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) X
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus) X
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) X