This afternoon at the River S Unit of Ridgefield NWR in Clark County, an
adult NORTHERN SHRIKE flew in from the west around 2 pm, just minutes before
some rain rolled into the area. Within two minutes, the shrike was gone. I
did not see it again, despite making another loop around the auto-tour
route.

Between 3:20 and 3:30, I observed 3-4 SHORT-EARED OWLS hunting the fields
west of the road, just south of the Kiwa Trail parking lot. One of the owls
was quite active in its hunting, diving to the ground several times in a few
minutes; the other 2-3 owls disappeared out of view relativley quickly. I
first spotted the owls a few minutes after the rain stopped (and did not see
them on a previous drive around the loop). Perhaps the rains caused some
prey species to move around a bit -- I can't think of why else the owls
would start hunting in broad daylight (the sun was out in the open at the
time). I put some very crude photos on the web at:

http://www.westerngrebe.com/temp/

The diversity and number of birds changed quite a bit since my previous
visit six days ago, although today being a hunting day could have caused
birds to distribute themselves differently. The number of TUNDRA SWANS and
CACKLING GEESE have noticably increased, while the number of DUSKY CANADA
GEESE decreased. RUDDY DUCKS have also increased in number. Also, I saw my
first CANVASBACKS (3 males) of the season for this location. There were
40-60 DOWITCHERS (presumably Long-billed), and only a handful of WILSON'S
SNIPE were readily visible.

A relatively dark GREAT-HORNED OWL was in the woods along the auto-tour
route, and a beautiful dark-morph Red-tailed Hawk was busy in the SW portion
of the auto-tour route.

Scott Carpenter
SW Portland