From the Contact Station February 2021

Water Everywhere and Counting Birds for Christmas

January rains have topped up most of the lakes and ponds around the auto tour.  Long Lake is now ‘Long-and-Wide Lake.’  Many of the dabbling ducks have moved off to shallower water on other parts of the refuge and the swans, which are quite abundant, have moved to the far edges to find the sweet spot where they can reach the food they like best.  So far, I have seen only one morning cold enough to put a bit of ice glaze on the water.  Although there is a hint of possible snowflakes for the last week in January as I write this, it does not look like we will have temperatures to freeze the pond water.  There is nothing like seeing a Bald Eagle on the ice plucking the feathers off an American Coot.  Likely there will be enough rainwater into February to keep the ponds full.  A trip around the River ‘S’ on Martin Luther King Day found four Columbia White-tailed Deer right next to the road munching grass and paying no attention to the dozen cars passing.  The water has affected the areas where they can graze and that sometimes means they are very close to the road.  Keep that in mind as you carefully drive around the River ‘S.’

On December 27^th, sixty-eight birders participated in the 121^st Audubon Christmas Bird Count of the Sauvie-Ridgefield Circle.  Our 15-mile diameter circle is centered around the Columbia River from Vancouver Lake Bottoms to the Lewis River and Sauvie Island to I-5 so it contains all of the Refuge.  We had to run the count a little differently because of COVID-19 restrictions, but we managed, and it was a strikingly beautiful day starting with a pink sunrise and low ground fog.  Twelve birders focused on the refuge putting in about 45 hours of birding time, walking over 30 miles, and driving over 14 miles.   They were able to identify 99 separate species of the 132 that the entire circle found.

The most exciting find of the day was a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.  Rarely found north of the Columbia River, this was a first winter sighting on the refuge. It was on Bachelor Island in a

a row of trees so not an area open to the public. Knowing one made it to this side of the Columbia River, it is worth watching for it among small flocks of foraging birds like chickadees, wrens, and nuthatches anywhere on the refuge.  The White-faced Ibis that had been hanging around the River S in the week before the count was kind enough to stay around a be counted.  The last time we had this bird on the CBC was in 1981. The other rare bird for the Christmas count was a Least Sandpiper found in ponds off the Kiwa Trail.

Our swans numbered 2166 Tundra Swans and 114 Trumpeters with another 100 not identified to species.  All our ducks were well represented.  Keep an eye out for not-so-common Common Merganser, Common Goldeneye, Cinnamon Teal, and Eurasian Wigeon among the American Wigeon.  Wood Ducks were mostly up in the Carty unit if that is your favorite duck. I know Red-shouldered Hawks are always sought-after raptors.  There was one spotted off the Kiwa trail so it can probably be seen from the River S auto tour some of the time.  We now know it is here.  (Surprisingly, there were two found in a wetlands buffer area in the industrial zone of Ridgefield on 11^th St SW if you need your Red-shouldered Hawk fix.)   We only found six Great Horned Owls on the count.  Three were in the closed section, two on the auto tour and one on the Kiwa Trail.  This is a little disappointing, but we will keep looking for them.   Barn Owls did a little better with nine counted, but mostly in the closed area.  There is a roost near the refuge shop.  Even though we can’t see them, it is nice to know that there is a roost of Short-eared Owls on Bachelor Island.  Maybe when the fields dry a bit more later in the season, they will come over to hunt the River S again.   We were able to count on the closed sections of the refuge with the FWS issuing a permit to the Friends for our volunteers to participate.  We are incredibly grateful to the FWS staff for enabling us to cover this important bird area in our circle count.  Several staff also participated in the count.

And as a final note, there are a lot of Bald Eagles in the area up and down the Columbia.  The sub-adult Bald Eagles can be very entertaining as they harass each other for food and scare up all the Cackling Geese flocks.  The adults have been doing nest preparation and should be on eggs soon.  Winter is always a great time for birding on the refuge.