Stateside birding (part 3)

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.

Stateside birding (part 2)

I then flew over the Rockies towards the San Francisco Bay Area, where I birded my old patches of Lake Merritt and Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland.  Here, I was glad to find this elusive Ridgway's Rail out in the open, since it was still known as a subspecies of Clapper Rail the last time I saw it.

We also went to Russian River, where there were lots of singing Wilson's Warblers and Black-headed Grosbeaks, an Osprey nest visible from our garden, and I even did some kayaking!  My final day in the Bay Area was spent in San Francisco itself, admiring the views and getting to see a small group of the city's famous Red-masked Parakeets in flight; the first new species (albeit an introduced one) of my trip.

Stateside birding (part 1)

I spent the second half of April in the US catching up with some birds I'd not seen since my last visit there fifteen years ago!  My arrival in New York coincided with the first day of spring and it seemed as if the whole city had decided to go to Central Park.

My first native species, having seen plenty of House Sparrows and Starlings in downtown New York, was, appropriately enough this American Robin.  It looked like there had been a fall of Hermit Thrushes, which were everywhere, but I was a little too early for the main push of migration since there were very few warblers around.  I had just two and a half days in New York, this being more of a stopover on my way to the west coast, but it was especially nice to see and hear displaying Red-winged Blackbirds at Jamaica Bay since I've never really visited in spring before.