Interesting place for Lesser Goldfinches

[Joel Geier]

This afternoon I went down to count Great Blue Heron nests in an Oregon-ash swale, ahead of the nesting season. While I was down there, standing in water up to my ankles, I noticed a flock of Lesser Goldfinches working through the trees at about mid-height (not up in the canopy, and there's not really a sub-canopy, but just working in the lower branches of the larger trees).

I usually think of Lesser Goldfinches as occurring in much more dry, open-canopy oak woodland settings in the breeding season, and usually out in brushy fields in winter. It would have never occurred to me to go wading through a flooded, mostly closed-canopy ash swale to look for this species.

As for the herons, I counted 17 nests and one partial nest up in the trees, plus one on the ground which looked like it just blew down recently. That's up by about 5 nests from this same time last year.

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Joel Geier

Tampico Ridge north of Corvallis