YAMHILL RAIN

Quiz: When is a Red-tailed Hawk like a Caracara?  Answer: When he’s sporting the new fashionable wet look.  I first noticed this hawk along Westside Road north of McMinnville and turned around for a better look.  Wasn’t that a splash of white across the crown?  Yes, very damp downy feathers, it turns out.  I dubbed this fellow my “Wet-tailed Hawk.”

YAMHILL SEWER PONDS

Where better to spend a rain-soaked morning than some location where ducks gather?  Yamhill Sewer Po0nds, where the nearby fields hold almost as much water as the ponds themselves, and nearly as many waterfowl.  When the dogs and I arrived about 300 geese were loafing along the strand next to the shallow lake covering a pasture.  A single shotgun blast sent the geese, mostly Cacklers with a leavening of Canadas, up into the air.  They circled and called and then returned about fifty feet further south than they had been before.

Cackler crowd

Cacklers returning

There was a variety of ducks including Lesser Scaup (note the slight angle at the back of the head), Shovelers (always the most numerous species here) Mallards and Buffleheads.

MUD, MUD

“Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow
In glorious mud.”        –Flanders & Swan

Weren’t no hippopotamus, but two very rutful, happy pigs in glorious mud.

 

Yamhill Sewage Ponds (restricted access), Yamhill, Oregon, US
Jan 17, 2016 10:45 AM – 11:20 AM.  8 species

Cackling Goose (Branta hutchinsii)  300
Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)  50
American Wigeon (Anas americana)  12
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)  X
Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata)  200
Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)  25
Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola)  30
Western Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma californica)  2

Westside Road, Yamhill County, Oregon, US
Jan 17, 2016 10:20 AM.  8 species

Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus)  1
Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)  X
Eurasian Collared-Dove (Streptopelia decaocto)  X
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)  X
American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)  3
American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)  X
American Robin (Turdus migratorius)  X
European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)  X