January 6 to March 15, 1997
by Colin Dillingham

Birders working on their 1997 Curry year lists turned up an amazing number of excellent birds in January including unseasonal swallows and warblers'.

Black-crowned night-herons were reported in early January by BS. Mark Fisher reported that Del Norte's population of Aleutian Canada geese is swelling with an estimated 25,500 counted on 28 February. Don't miss this spectacle around Castle Rock and Alexandre Dairy before they head north! They are almost sure to be delisted from the Endangered Species Act in the near future. CD and MS found a rare snow goose on 17 January that spent the late winter at Euchre Creek wetlands providing many Curry birders with their first in the county. Perhaps the best find of the season was the Emperor Goose that Betty Irle found December 14 at the mouth of the Rogue River. The goose went unseen by anybody else until January 19 when JB and DM refound it at the Hunter Creek RV Park, where it is still present. This gave many people the opportunity to see their first emperor goose It was interesting to note that TJW and DM found both an osprey (at TJW's ranch) and a turkey vulture (at Gold Beach) on 5 February.

CD found Curry’s second yellow-bellied sapsucker at Big Bend up the Rogue River on 13 January, but it remained unverified by other observers. TJW and DM found a yellow-shafted flicker in Langlois on 13 January. CD found a black phoebe building a nest on 13 March in Brookings near the city pool. A tree swallow on 18 January at Euchre Creek (ADB), 2 barn swallows on 17 January at Garrison Lake (CD, MS, TJW), and 4 more barn swallows at TJW's Ranch on 31 January (TJW) were all remarkable, whether they were early migrants or wintering individuals! TJW's find of a lowland Townsend's solitaire on his ranch 31 Jan was highly unusual. Townsend's solitaire's are year round residents in high elevations, but are almost never found at low elevations.

BS located a wintering Northern Mockingbird on 28 February on 2nd and Easy Streets in Brookings, relocated by FH on 12 March. Two possible bohemian waxwings were sighted this year, but neither observer felt sure of their observations. BS saw a waxwing in his Brookings yard in mid-March and Glenn Sevey saw an unusual waxwing with a group of cedar waxwings on 13 February near his Hunter Creek home. Two wintering warblers were a yellow warbler at the Winchuck mouth on 17 Jan (ADB) and a Nashville warbler in the Dawson Tract at Brookings on 19 Jan (CD, MS). Al Affonso's Harris' sparrow remained until at least 17 Jan in Port Orford (CD, MS, TJW). A second Harris' sparrow was at Dorothy Sevey’s yard in Hunter Creek on 20 Jan (CD, AD, MS). CD reported an immature male orchard oriole on 14 March in his yard in Brookings, later seen by AD. FH reported an immature male oriole in Brookings 26 January through 14 March was thought to be a bullock's oriole.

Observers: Colin Dillingham(CD), John Bischoff(JB), Don Munson(DM), Angie Dillingham(AD), Jim Rogers (JR), Terry WahI CrJW), Fred Hummel (FH), Buzz Stewart (BS), Alan Barron (ADB).