Yesterday's sunshine found me wandering in an open prairie like cemetery. As I walked, I began to hear and see a distressed pair of adult Kildeer so I immediately, walking VERY gingerly, headed back toward my car. I had to assume there could be a nest nearby. Almost to my car, there right at my feet, tucked in next to a memorial stone was that very nest! Two tiny, newly hatched Kildeer and one exquisitely beautiful egg! I quickly snapped this photo and made to leave the cemetery!
Problem! There was a grounds keeper diligently mowing the cemetery on this sunny dry day. I found a discarded pop bottle, marked the headstone and told the keeper about the nest. He was enthusiastically willing to skirt around the nest! I
This morning I returned very briefly to find all three VERY fast new baby kildeer running like crazy behind two squawking parents. The grounds keeper had left a lard swath of the cemetery around the nest unmown, saving the nest! GREAT day!
The babies were WAY over there and my zoom was inadequate to the task.
It all felt almost predestined. Finding the nest, alerting the grounds keeper who was a mere 4 rows away as he mowed the cemetery !

The Slender-billed Nuthatch is a sensitive and declining subspecies of White-breasted Nuthatch found in oak groves and woodlands in the coastal Pacific Northwest.

This photo taken at Dawson Creek Corporate Park, Hillsboro, OR.

5,000 ft, West Cascades, upper montane, raptor landed in rocks near fire lookout, overlooking talus slope, mixed conifer forest - Mtn hemlock, Noble fir, Pacific silver fir, HJ Andrews Forest, Willamette National Forest, Oregon.

Found this owl sadly roadkilled near our mailbox (at the exact plotted location) at 5:30 this morning, clearly hit by a car (probably our neighbors, since nobody else lives past that point) sometime last night. It seems to be an adult, with no brood patch.

My 3 year journey has come to a rest. In northeastern Oregon, the White-headed Woodpecker is only occasionally seen but expected. Thus it became my big nemsis bird to photograph. This sighting represents a lifer and my 300th species ever photographed. Next up, Nashville Warbler!