Tualatin Hills NWR and Indoor Insect

With a break in the rain yesterday it was a nice time to go out birding, so my dad and I went to see what was happening at Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. Turns out we weren't the only ones with the same idea....the parking lot was packed! I wonder if people were inspired by the article in The Oregonian over the weekend that featured winter birding in the Portland area.

Perhaps as a result of all the people, there were hardly any birds along the trails, but the overlook of the lakes from the visitor's center proved to be well worth the trip in itself. We saw a total of 19 species and I added 5 waterfowl and 2 raptors to the year list. Here's part of the view from the visitor's center overlook:

Later on in the day I was surprised my wildlife viewing wasn't over when this stinkbug nymph fell out of a plant that had just been brought indoors. The fact that it landed on the newspaper makes for a nice built-in scale to the photo:

Also, I've decided that when I don't get out birding anywhere else I'll at least try to walk Moonshadow Park, the little path in the neighborhood that I mentioned in the last post, where I saw the red-breasted sapsucker. I added a list in the side bar to the right where I'll keep track of how many different species I've seen there on my visits, so keep an eye on that over the next few months.