Ian RoseMy 2025 bird list starts appropriately slow and relaxed for this January 1st morning, with a five minute, four species feeder watch.
1) American Crow
2) Black-capped Chickadee
3) Dark-eyed Junco
4) Yellow-rumped Warbler
The lazy day continues. No going to look at birds. Only sitting and letting birds come to me.
5) Anna's Hummingbird
I took a 15-minute walk down my street in the rain (it's only getting heavier later) and mostly just got wet, but I did manage to add one to my year list, a beautiful bird that will hopefully get its new, decolonized name this year. Where are we on that, AOS?
6) Steller's Jay
Another short walk, another few year birds.
Side note: It is wild to me that kestrel is not the state bird of any US state. For me, it's easily a top 10 US bird. There are too many repeats in the state birds, and one of those Cardinal or Meadowlark states should snatch up Falco sparverius.
7) Mallard
8) Northern Flicker
9) American Kestrel
10) California Scrub-Jay
It was a great morning of slow birding around the Timberhill area of #Corvallis, with most of my existing year list showing up, along with these six newcomers. The bluebird gave us a close look, and that was a treat on a rainy winter's day.
11) Bushtit
12) House Finch
13) Pine Siskin
14) Red-breasted Nuthatch
15) Downy Woodpecker
16) Western Bluebird
On a short walk while my laundry was washing, a starling. A beautiful flower can also be a noxious weed. It's not your fault someone brought you here because of a misguided Shakespeare obsession. We hate you because you thrived where we put you, which doesn't seem at all fair.
(EDIT: See comments on this post for a partial correction of the Shakespeare starling story. Always happy to be corrected or learn the complexities of a story.)
17) European Starling
Well, this just about does it for the easy winter backyard birds. For more, I'll have to either go to them or wait for spring migration. Good to see this common but lovely bird gorging on berries on my morning walk.
18) American Robin
The closest body of water to my front door is a little seasonal pond, dry in the summer but starting to fill up now with winter rain. It's sometimes a nice wood duck and merganser spot, but no ducks yet this year. It did give me a good look at my first heron of the year though, along with a pair of song sparrows foraging in a pile of sticks.
19) Great Blue Heron
20) Song Sparrow
What a gorgeous evening walk at Chip Ross Park here in Corvallis. Until last year, I had no idea I had such a world class Acorn Woodpecker habitat right in my backyard. It's fabulous, and makes me consider actually spending the money on a bird-worthy camera lens.
21) Red-tailed Hawk
22) Acorn Woodpecker
23) Brown Creeper
24) Spotted Towhee
A quick walk to get the mail gave me my first encounter of the year with our neighborhood dinosaur pack. Turkeys aren't native here, but they are pretty common, and for all their nuisances, I like having them around. Also my favorite little western wren, who deserves its new decolonized name yesterday.
25) Wild Turkey
26) Bewick's Wren
We have gotten some perfect winter days here lately, between the rain storms. Today's birding spot was Bald Hill Natural Area in Corvallis, and featured a male harrier snacking on a kill and both kinglets in the same few meters of trail. Couldn't have been much better.
27) Northern Harrier
28) Common Raven
29) Ruby-crowned Kinglet
30) Golden-crowned Kinglet
Big morning for year birds. I hadn't had a real Weird Duck Day (TM) yet this year, but today was that and more. My favorite was the lone canvasback, but it's also always a great treat to see two closely related species right next to each other, in this case the cackling and Canada geese.
31) Cackling Goose
32) Canada Goose
33) Northern Shoveler
34) Green-winged Teal
35) Canvasback
36) Bufflehead
37) Common Merganser
38) American Coot
39) Pied-billed Grebe
40) Great Egret
Weird Duck Season continues, with a quick visit to Willamette Park and a beautiful breeding pair of one of the best American ducks, in my opinion.
41) Hooded Merganser
Another morning at Willamette Park, another bird for the list. Not the one I was looking for, but that's one of the many great things about birds. I was pretty sure at first glance, just based on behavior—none of our other sparrows flock and flitter quite this same way—but waited for a closeup look to see just the barest spot of gold.
42) Golden-crowned Sparrow
I went out on this very frosty morning looking specifically for my first bald eagle of the year. Sometimes, just sometimes, they cooperate. A beautiful full plumage adult perched low and posing. A good omen, I hope, for our divisional game in a few hours, or, more likely, just a great bird on a cold morning.
43) Bald Eagle
I had a really good day. Lots of winter farm work and a bunch of time in the woods with some very cooperative and curious birds. Days like this are gifts, and this one came right when it was needed.
44) Canada Jay
45) Chestnut-backed Chickadee
46) Pacific Wren
47) Fox Sparrow
I took a quick break on a busy day, and saw what, at first glance, looked like maybe a warbler. But then it finally settled down and showed its spots. This was a nice surprise today.
48) Hermit Thrush
One of the most common and easily seen birds in the world, and it barely squeezes into my first 50 of 2025, because I spent most of January out in the countryside. You know them, you love (or hate, or possibly ignore) them. Give it up for the great survivor of human urbanization. Personally, I like them. It's not their fault everything we build looks like a cliff.
49) Rock Pigeon
One of my favorite Oregon birds. I saw this orange stripey boy digging for grubs in the snow and dirt today, after missing them all winter so far. Always a pick me up.
50) Varied Thrush
Every year, there is at least one common bird that I just don't see weirdly late into the new year. This year, the "where is it?" award goes to a bird with a brilliantly simple name. Also new today is a bird who is overdue for a simpler, less white-dude-infused name, like so many others. Spring is coming.
51) Red-winged Blackbird
52) Townsend's Warbler
I'm pretty sure I already saw one of these a few weeks back, but I wasn't sure enough to list it. We had some sun today, tucked between rain storms. I'm glad I was able to get out, even just for a short walk, and this was a nice bonus.
53) Red-breasted Sapsucker
I'm very careful with listing birds by call, because I don't trust my ears or knowledge that way. I'm fairly good at visual ID, pretty poor by ear. But this is a bird I've only seen, clearly, once in my life, out of the dozens of times I've heard them. Today was the first clear one this year, at Jackson-Frazier Wetland in Corvallis.
54) Virginia Rail
Yesterday was a very special day, almost a sacred day on my calendar. I saw my first vulture of the year. My favorite of all birds, soaring high and saving us from deadly diseases. I am blessed to live in a vultured place.
55) Turkey Vulture
I'm pretty sure these aren't the first I've heard this year, but again, I'm overly careful IDing purely by sound. These two, calling to each other across my little local patch of woods, were unmistakable, the closer one almost straight above my head.
56) Great Horned Owl
This is definitely not the first time I've seen or heard a Mourning Dove this year. But I hadn't listed it until today, because I was always doing something else or away from my phone. One of the most recognizable bird calls in North America, and I have to think, the first call many beginner birders ever learned.
57) Mourning Dove
I haven't had a chance yet to go Proper Birding on the east coast - maybe tomorrow - but one nice thing about leaving home is that even the backyard birds are new ones. I've missed cardinals. Not being bitten by them when I used to take them out of mist nets, but otherwise.
58) Northern Mockingbird
59) House Sparrow
60) Northern Cardinal
Now This is Birding, Central Park edition. If you're ever in New York City on a weekday and it's raining, go to the park. Lots of birds, almost no people. Glorious.
Palm warbler is an eBird lifer! Gorgeous bird.
61) Blue Jay
62) White-breasted Nuthatch
63) White-throated Sparrow
64) Common Grackle
65) Palm Warbler
A couple of ducks I should have seen in Oregon this winter but somehow didn't, picked up at the Reservoir in Central Park.
66) Gadwall
67) Ruddy Duck
Today I went and walked at the first park I ever knew as a park, the first place I looked at birds and had any idea what I was seeing. Peace Valley Park, Bucks County, PA. So strange that I hadn't seen a cormie all year in Oregon, but such things happen when you don't visit water as much as you should. The phoebe was a treat, a bird I probably haven't seen in a decade.
68) Double-crested Cormorant
69) Osprey
70) Hairy Woodpecker
71) Eastern Phoebe
72) Eastern Towhee
One more east coast bird before I return to Oregon. As with most of the others, it's a common enough bird, just not where I live. Homeward bound soon.
73) Laughing Gull
A beautiful little gem of a bird that is sadly in decline all around the Northwest. It should never take this long to see my first of the year, even with my lackluster birding effort.
74) Rufous Hummingbird
Eugene Parnell@ianrosewrites I've never seen one in real life that I know of, even though they're in all the bird ID sources I consult. Any idea why they're in decline? Is there anything we can do?
@eugeneparnell Here's a CNN article about the decline from a few years ago: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/03/world/iyw-rufous-hummingbird-tipping-point-extinction/index.html
I don't have much info beyond that.
These tiny creatures are losing their battle to survive. Here’s what we can do to save them
The Rufous Hummingbird is magical. The male’s iridescent throat glows brighter than a shiny copper penny and like most hummingbirds, whizzes through the air curiously hovering right in front of humans who ponder them. The first time Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy, saw one, it was feeding on blossoms of a lemon tree in California.