From Oakland, CA, I took the overnight train to Eugene, OR, waking up at 6am to wonderful views of Mount Shasta. It rained for most of my 3.5 days in Oregon but that didn't stop us from birding from the Pacific coast up to the snow patches on Marys Peak, tallying around 150 species, including eight lifers.
The first was an immature White-winged Scoter amongst the hundreds of Surf Scoters on the sea, while this well-camouflaged Western Screech-Owl was only our second owl of day 2, having already seen a Northern Pygmy-Owl that morning.
Best of all, though, was my final morning spent in Skinner Butte, a park which rises above the city and acts as a migrant trap. Here, we encountered a fall of over 100 warblers, at least half of which were Orange-crowned, with smaller numbers of Wilson's, Nashville, Black-throated Grey, Townsend's and 1 MacGillivray's, as well as several Warbling Vireos. The main target of this trip was Hermit Warbler, the only western warbler I'd never seen, and there just had to be one somewhere amongst the madness but it took us a good couple of hours of checking every single warbler until we finally found it.
