Last night after just after falling asleep, I awoke with a start. I looked at the clock: it was 9:22pm, and I hadn't gotten any birds yet that day.
This may not seem like a big thing, but, being the avid eBirder that I am, I had a streak of 1893 consecutive days with at least one bird reported (and on a few of those days, I observed and reported more than 100 species, but usually it was somewhere in between.) July 15, 2021 was the last day that I didn't observe a bird, or at least didn't bother to report one on eBird. Even though I was an avid birder and a near daily lister by that point, I somehow went from July 12-15 that year without going birding. I wasn't about to let the streak end, even if there were fewer than three hours left in the day and those hours were the absolute worst time to bird.
I grumbled, begrudgingly got out of bed, and after a few desultory moments of listening in vain at the window for the aberrantly late caw of a random American Crow or the unexpected hoot of any kind of owl, decided I would have to head out to find my bird for the day. To my surprise, my wife Kristin, a much more casual birder, told me she wasn't tired and wanted to go with me.
I tried to strategize as best I could, hoping to find at least one bird in the Gladstone/Milwaukie/Oregon City/unincorporated Clackamas County melange that forms my neighborhood and its immediate environs. the Rock Pigeons, who by day sit on the wires in their dozens on Concord Street between Oatfield and McLoughlin, were nowhere to be seen after dark. Likewise the Canada Geese on the field below the McDonald's by Clackamette Park, and the water at the park, which we hit ten minutes before it closed, was low and rushing between huge gravel bars, so no dice, nor Mallards either. Kristin suggested Boardman Wetlands or Clackamette Cove, but I thought it would be too dark to see anything; same with the boat ramp in Milwaukie down on the waterfront park. She suggested the New Seasons parking lot on the Milwaukie Expressway, but I decided our best bet was heading to downtown Portland, where upwards of 20,000 crows are known to roost in the trees, as anyone knows who has ever walked there.
Much to my dismay, although I knew they were down there somewhere, I could spot nary a crow as we drove around block after block with the windows down in the surprisingly warm evening; I thought I may have heard a distant caw, and caught a few faint squeaks of an unidentifiable passerine on the green below the Hawthorne bridge, but both proved too elusive to put on a list. I birded intensely for three minutes as Kristin ran into her office to grab something, but I got nothing; no silent flocks of night-flying geese winged their way overhead, no lone House Finch flitted by and peeped in the gloaming; there was nothing. I began to wonder if a null list (zero birds) would keep the streak alive as we headed home, when, as a last-ditch effort, we stopped at the afore-mentioned shopping center.
The abandoned Shari's there has become a haunt for grumpy geese and indolent Mallards in the months since the bankruptcy; overgrown now with grass and weeds on the margins of the building, the last time I drove by, slowly checking out the scene, a pair of Canada geese walked hostilely up to me with their best 'Come at me, bro!' strut, and I heeded their warning and left. But alas, there were none to be seen this night.
The pond by the new Pietro's Pizza was on the way out of the lot, and Kristin suggested we stop. I looked to our right and there, in a pool of dim light right by the overgrown pond, was an animal. I couldn't quite make it out at first; the way it was moving around I wondered if it were a raccoon washing an evening snack, but the color was all wrong. A moment later, though, all became clear as a young female Mallard, who had been preening intently, lifted her head from underwing and stared at us, her dark eye quizzical over a mottled black and orange bill.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and thanked Kristin for the tenth time that night. The streak would remain unbroken.
No comments:
Post a Comment