Fernhill Wetlands

Here I go again, posting a week late.  

Oh well.

Last week, on one of those super lovely days here in Oregon, we visited Fernhill Wetlands in Forest Grove.

And guess what?? We saw a Black Tern, which ended up being listed on the Portland Audubon's Rare Bird Alert posting.  How about that?  

Not the best picture in the world, I admit.  But this guy was such an acrobatic flier, I'm amazed that any pictures came out!

Another unusual bird for this wetlands that we saw were Yellow-headed Blackbirds.

Doug took this picture of a nice female.

The pond also had this lovely group of Greater White-fronted Geese.

Lovely, aren't they?

We spent a nice amount of time in Dabbler's Marsh...home to many Tree Swallow boxes and thus, lots of Tree Swallows!

Nice one right above the sign.

Hello cutie!

Also saw a good dozen of these little lovely American Goldfinches.

We'll finish up with an overview picture of Dabbler Marsh.  Beautiful place and well worth a visit to Fernhill Wetlands.

St. Paul, Oregon

Still trying to catch up on posting pics of our times out and about.  This was last weekend.  We stopped in the little (and I mean LITTLE) town of St. Paul, Oregon.  

Biggest building there is the Catholic Church.  

Nice looking church.

Apparently, the first Catholic Church built in Oregon was built right here in little St. Paul.

And it looked like the little replica they have on the church grounds.

They also have a well groomed cemetery at edge of town.  I took several cool pics of old head stones and such, but then somehow I deleted all those pictures except the one of the main gate.  Oops.

Main gate, nice crosses, nice lawn.  

Lastly, I took a pic of what appears to be a bird house on the side of the St. Paul Telephone Co-op.  Really, they had a telephone co-op.  I said it was a small town.

I added a little birdie from Be Funky to go with the Bird Call bird house.  

Nice stop at this little town.

Baby Time!

No, not me...the Virginia Rail! At the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.

Doug had seen some chicks not too long ago, cute fuzzy babes that would run through the grasses like a water bug.

We went to the observation deck and waited.  And waited.  And...well, yes, we waited.  About 30 minutes.  Then the parent Virginia Rail came out of the grasses.  That is cool enough but then a baby appeared - a tiny little black fluff just at the grass edge.  Then ZOOM!  Baby was running and across the opening and into the grasses again before you could even think about saying "Jack Robinson" or even ... "hey, there's the baby!"

Somehow though, in that second of hesitation before baby took off a running, I snapped this picture.

Cute little thing, isn't it? Soon after this, the other parent came out, and at least 4 more chicks made the mad dash across to the grasses.  Doug got a couple shots off of them, but I only got this one.  Fast little stinkers.

Well, that is how it is some days, you get one decent shot of a bird and then, you take pictures of flowers.  I found a new photo "tweaking" tool called Be Funky. It is a freebie one at the Chrome app store.  I like how you can frame pictures like a postage stamp, so here are a couple I played with.

White Flowers.

Purple-blue flowers.  OK, yeah, one day I'll figure out the name of flowers.














It's May now so all the trails at the refuges are open so get out there and see some birds and blooms, y'all!!