Woolly aphids and Lesser Snapdragon at Willamette Park

[Don Boucher]

Hello,

On Saturday (11/2) Lisa and I visited Willamette Park and areas nearby. We started at the Rivergreen Ave. neighborhood, and walked north by the Taylor Water Treatment Plant, through Willamette Park and finished at the boat ramp near Fischer Ln.

We got good looks at White-breasted Nuthatches, especially at the oak and maple-covered path near the Rivergreen neighborhood. We saw a female Townsend's Warbler, three Black Phoebes, got a good look at a Hutton's Vireo but the birding was otherwise a little slow.

In the forest, we saw many Woolly Aphids flying around and witnessed Bushtits and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet flycatching them. They're very tiny and it was a challenge to get a focused photo of one. I couldn't identify the species but they're in the subfamily Eriosomatinae. When Lisa was child in Medford, OR, her grandfather called them, "Blue Fuzzy-ass Gnats." That's about all we can think of them as.

We encountered a late-blooming pink blossom that reminded me of a vetch at first. It's introduced and perhaps not particularly remarkable but I hadn't ever seen it before. It's called Lesser Snapdragon (Misopates orontium). There was also some Blue-headed Gilia blooming (Gilia capitata).

Don Boucher

Corvallis

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