The Birds of Spring Return to the Mountain

Years ago, Mt. Hood Community College’s Natural Resources Technology program hosted groups of students from Central America and the Caribbean seeking degrees and knowledge to take home with them. It was a joy and a privilege to have these students in my classes. I think I learned as much from these warm, smart young people as they did in their time at MHCC. 

One March, during a field exercise in the woods near the college, one of the students — from Guatemala or Honduras, I think — looked up into the trees and said, “Where are all the birds?” 

“They’ll be here soon — they’re on the way back from your country,” I said. 

Take the olive-sided flycatcher, which has one of the longest migration routes of songbirds seen in Oregon. This species winters mostly in South America, while a few winter in Central America, and they fly north to breeding grounds that stretch from Northern California to Alaska. 

Although these flycatchers are common in western Oregon during breeding season, a much showier bird signals the beginning of spring in our area: the varied thrush, also known as the Alaska robin. The varied thrush is a year-round resident of parts of western Oregon, depending on the elevation, but here in Zigzag their bright colors and whistling calls are welcome signs of warmer weather to come. The species ranges from northern Mexico to Alaska.

A cousin of the varied thrush, the American robin, also is a migrant to our area, ranging from southern Mexico and throughout the US and Canada. They are year-round residents in most of western Oregon, except in the Cascades. I usually see them around my house a few weeks after the varied thrushes arrive. Some Mountain Times readers at lower elevations may see American robins year-round.

My favorite of all migratory birds is the rufous hummingbird. Each year I record the date Lara and I see the first of these brave migrants, and so far the dates range from March 16 to early April. The males arrive first and soon begin defending their territory; the females appear a couple of weeks later and begin building nests. Writing this reminds me that it is time to clean our hummingbird feeders and stock up on sugar to make nectar.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the rufous hummer is a long-distance migrant. “Rufous hummingbirds travel nearly 4,000 miles from breeding grounds in Alaska and northwest Canada to wintering sites in Mexico. They travel north up the Pacific Coast in spring and return by the Rocky Mountains in late summer and fall.”

The Cornell Lab notes that rufous females begin building nests within three days of arrival on their breeding grounds — the males don’t help. “They put their nests up to about 30 feet high in coniferous or deciduous trees such as Sitka spruce, western red cedar, Douglas fir, pines, hemlock, birch, maples, thimbleberry, and occasionally ferns or vines. Nests are hidden in drooping branches, sometimes with several nests (up to 20) in the space of just a few yards.”

Rufous hummer nests are barely two inches wide and are built of soft plant fibers, often harvested from catkins (cylindrical flower clusters) on western hazelnut and red alder trees and shrubs, and reinforced with spider webs. Some rufous females camouflage their nests with bits of moss, lichen, or bark. They lay two or three eggs, each about a half-inch long.

The dark-eyed junco, a type of sparrow, is another bird I see in the spring. They are probably full-time Oregon residents who move up and down the mountain with the seasons. Some juncos breed in Canada and Alaska and migrate to the southern United States in winter. 

Band-tailed pigeons nest in large Douglas fir trees in my neighborhood. I know they’re in residence when I hear their owl-like hoo-hooing and the sound of many wings flapping as a flock flies up and away from their aerial community of nests. These pigeons gather in flocks as a defense against hawks, owls, and other predators. I often see or hear a red-tailed hawk circling over the pigeons’ nest trees, hoping for a meal. Pigeons that nest in our area usually migrate to central California or farther south in the fall. Some live in Portland and other Northwest cities year-round. 

These are just a few of the more than 400 species of migratory birds that one may see in Oregon. To learn more about migratory birds in North America, visit the National Audubon Society’s Bird Migration Explorer, a “guide to the heroic annual journeys made by over 450 bird species, and the challenges they face along the way” (see explorer.audubon.org). The site has an interactive map of migration routes and provides information on individual species. I was happy to find that there are an estimated 22 million rufous hummingbirds in North America, but distressed to learn that they are on Yellow Watch List D (steep declines and major threats).

On the American Robin, there is good news: The population of 370 million isn’t facing major threats.

Of note, the Central American and the Caribbean students I mentioned were visiting thanks to a program called the Cooperative Association of States for Scholarships (CASS). The CASS program, founded in 1985, provides two-year scholarships to community colleges in the US (including Mt. Hood Community College) for disadvantaged students and rural professionals from Central America, Haiti, and Mexico. The program’s funding ran out in 2006. 

Have a question about birds in our area? Want to know why the term “bird brain” is actually a compliment? Let me know. Email: SWilent@gmail.com.