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American Black Bear (Ursus americanus)

Scoggins Valley Park
50250 SW Scoggins Valley Road
Gaston, Washington County, Oregon

While driving around the road that circles the large lake at this state park, we encountered and briefly observed a smallish black bear that appeared to be alone and busy foraging. It was eating berries from the many berry bushes adjacent to the road.

Cutting the base of the flower from the petiole. Presumably feeding on nectar or embryo at the base of the flower. Thousands of cut flower beneath the tree. Seem to focus on many flowers in single clusters.

Grey squirrel eating tree buds! I like how you can see her cutting twigs to hold like little popsicles so she doesn’t have to reach precariously the whole time. Even a city squirrel doesn’t ONLY eat from bird feeders and garbage cans; I like seeing them perform natural behaviors. (Though as clever, adaptable, opportunistic omnivores, almost anything they eat could be considered “natural”… kind of like dogs and humans in that way. Still: congrats on the healthy eating habits, random squirrel!)

I believe these are oak trees but I’m rusty on my tree ID when no leaves are present so I could be wrong; one of my plans for later in the year is to go up and down the riverbank path and ID all the good-sized trees.

Update: also this is more photography practice for me, trying out camera settings and then editing backlit shots once I get home - I think they’re getting better than the last chunk of super backlit photos?

It didn’t really hit me until I saw this bird that the heron from last year probably wasn’t just in non-breeding plumage, but was an immature bird. This site has actual professional photography of different heron plumages: http://gustaviatex.com/blog/2020/2/21/great-blue-herons-are-ready-for-spring

(Side note, frustrating that iNat only offers “adult” or “juvenile” for mammals and birds and not infant/adolescent/juvenile/1st year immature/etc… but I peeked at the topic on the forums and there are way too many people who care way more than I do arguing about it and as I have no intention of volunteering my time to wrangle the database, I will stay out of it! For my own personal rule I will use “juvenile” for babies/fledglings and consider full-size independent birds as “adult” even if they don’t have full adult plumage yet.)

I have now read that it takes 4 years for herons to grow up enough to sport this look, and that at first things like the cap are a little messy. So I don’t believe this is “Slim” suddenly all grown up and returning to a haunt from a few months ago, because that black and white cap is SHARP. I think this is a different, much more mature bird. Look at those PLUMES! And the black and rust inside the wings! As well as the bright orange beak (difficult to see the blue lore). Very different. And compare the “flying past the dock” shot to the other bird I noticed a few days prior which is still mostly grey everywhere including beak and legs, no snazzy plumes. THAT one could theoretically be Slim… remains to be seen if they hang around and get noticed in the same few spots on a regular basis like s/he did.

It was raining pretty hard when I noticed this bird from the west side of the path just south of the Belmont bridge (near where that huge gull landed!) and I decided it was worth it to risk getting my camera out of my backpack and try to get photos, but in the struggle to get it out of its waterproof case (a little reusable silicon snack pouch) while huddling under the umbrella, I evidently messed up a bunch of settings, and ended up with a lot of garbage! Also the bird kept moving north as I crossed the river and headed towards the boathouse in the park. All told I took more than 500 shots over the course of about an hour trying to get something usable, because I could tell the camera was unhappy with how dim it was in the rain, especially if I tried to make the shutter speed faster to catch the plumes blowing in the wind even though they were soaking wet. Trying to get something artsy framed by the dripping twigs was fun though. These are my favorites, plus a couple shots to see how far away s/he was, one emphasizing what a weird skinny creature they are from the front, and one flying past the dock for better direct comparison with the previous bird. Even from the opposite bank through the trees, that bird was DEFINITELY looking right at me a lot of the time - not difficult when my umbrella is both neon and reflective - and the black and white pattern over the eyes really gives it a smug condescending impression at times, LOL. I’m simultaneously happy with some of these shots and disappointed they didn’t measure up to my hopes; maybe I’ll have to paint the scene instead,

The toes appear much more slender than those of Great-horned Owl. Size appears to match this observation of Barred Owl feet:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/162574018

They appear similar in size to these confirmed (though very obscure) Barred Owl tracks:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/69318561

And track morphology appears to match these reported Barred Owl tracks:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/81068916

Found amongst mesquite woodland. Possibly/probably transported here by humans but bears and bear habitat are not terribly far from here and a starving/sick animal may have wandered onto the desert to die