TOWHEE.NET can be your personalized birding service for Western Oregon and Northern California. We'll organize trips for individuals with a half day for birding, or small groups with a long list of target birds and days to spend afield. You can see testimonials from past visiting birders, including several from Europe. If you need advice on where to look for Pacific Coast birds, TOWHEE.NET will give you the answers. If you would like a written itinerary for any particular time of year, we can supply this. If you want a personal tour guide, whether for a few hours or for several days, we do that too! See the Our Services section. From Wrentit to White-headed Woodpecker, there are wonderful birds unique to the western United States, and we can help you see them.

What's Towhee up to now?

Now providing bird guiding services for vacationers booking through the Ashland Springs Hotel. Fits, the hotel lobby decor is art of birds and the restaurant is named "Larks." Check it out: www.ashlandspringshotel.com/birding_package.php.

I'm now doing a monthly field trip for Rogue Valley Audubon. It's the third Sunday of every month. 8 am at the Ashland municipal dog park. If you need directions, just e-mail me.

There will be two multi-day birding trips to Ashland in 2009. These are sponsored by Golden Gate Audubon Socieyt, but open to all participants. The winter trip is January 23-25. The spring trip is Memorial Day weekend: May 22-25, 2009. Go to www.goldengateaudubon.org/html/thegull/thegull_main.htm and then open the pdf file for the Summer, 2008, issue of "The Gull".

See report of my Ecuador Trip with guide Lelis Navarette. He is co-discoverer of the last new bird found in Ecuador. Next year I'll be hosting a tour with NestlingTours: Peru in 2009. Much of it will be spent in the Amazon lowlands in southeastern Peru. Lelis will once again be our excellent guide with radar hearing.

It's Oregon Now!

We have moved from sea level to 2000 feet, from coastal scrub to Siskiyou Mountain forest uphill on the one hand; on the other, rich riparian habitat in the Rogue River Valley. Friends tell me there's great fishing. I notice mostly the birds, but the Osprey and Kingfisher seem to confirm the fishing rumors. There are American Dippers living in the stream across the street from our house. That same stream, Ashland Creek, flows past the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Wrentit here is a riparian species. The Chestnut-backed Chickadee prefers damp forest of Douglas fir. His bigger Mountain Chickadee cousin deigns to come down into my garden in winter, but prefers thinner air during the breeding season. Cedar Waxwing is more common here than it was in the Bay Area, a welcome surprise. Anna's Hummingbird will be at my feeder even after a snowstorm, another surprise. Juncos are about ten times as dense here as they were in San Francisco. In the summer the Black-headed Grosbeak are in and out of the garden all day long. Western Wood-pewee wheeze their calls all day long.

Pileated Woodpeckers nest atop the ridge behind our house.The city park across the street from has nesting Dipper and Wood Ducks congregate on the lawns with the Mallards. In early morning we often hear the Western Screech-owl hooting. Perhaps the most abundant bird in Ashland is the Acorn Woodpecker. In summer the sky is criss-crossed by Vaux's Swifts. I first noticed them one evening years ago as we waited to see a Shakespeare play in the Elizabethan (outdoor) Theatre.

Up on Mount Ashland I can regularly find Gray Jays, Red-breasted Sapsuckers, Mountain Bluebird, Mountain Chickadee, Dusky Flycatcher, Western Tanager, Hermit Warbler, Macgillivray's Warbler, Green-tailed Towhee, Lazuli Bunting and, with some luck, the White-headed Woodpecker. Nearby Prairie Lake has White Pelicans paddling about each summer and Bald Eagles hunting all year long, Osprey, Common Merganser, even Sandhill Cranes some years. In that area also are breeding Great Gray Owls and Northern Goshawk.

I am leading some field trips for Rogue Valley Audubon Society and for Klamath Bird Observatory. But I should have plenty of time to help you find the lifers you want to find. And we're not that far from the Oregon Coast with the Black Oystercatcher, three wintering species of Scoter, nesting Tufted Puffin and Pigeon Guillemot. Come see for yourself.

If you want to explore Oregon birds and mountainsides, pay a visit. Maybe you've seen Clark's Nutcracker somewhere else, but not in front of Crater Lake's cerulean reflection? There's always something great to see.

OUR SERVICES

• Free advice on where and when to look for your target birds in southwestern Oregon and northern California.
• Detailed, written birding itineraries designed to get you the best birds of the season in the time you have available.
• Personal tour guiding - for a few hours or full days.
• Visitors to the Ashland, Oregon, area or northern California can get help tracking down any recently spotted rarities.
• Your style determines the tour.  Want 100 species per day?  Prefer to spend 45 minutes watching adult Bushtits come and go from their soft, sack nest?
• More information than just the name of the bird.  How does it live?  What does it sound like?  What does it eat?  Is it common or endangered, expanding its range or disappearing?  What role does in play in the habitat?
• Personalized training in birding-by-ear and how to read habitat.
• If you are a birder visiting Europe, we can help you find the great birds there.  Even if you only have two hours in central Paris!
• Birders with family?  We are working with Nestlingtours to bring families to the bird-rich areas of Northern California

California Birds

Local knowledge is what you need to get the birds you seek.  Some great California birds are only seasonal.  Spring is best for Lawrence's Goldfinch, Cassin's Vireo or Lazuli Bunting.  The Allen's Hummingbird is gone by mid-August.  So are Pigeon Guillemots.  In Northern California you expect the Heermann's Gulls to show up in July, along with the Elegant Terns.

Would you like to see American White Pelicans and the sky-diving Brown Pelicans in a single day?  Want to spot a Yellow-billed Magpie, never been seen beyond California?  How about a few of those great Pacific Coast specialties— Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Black Phoebe, Townsend's Warbler, Varied Thrush, Golden-crowned Sparrow, California Thrasher, Nuttall's Woodpecker?  And North America's only colonially nesting woodpecker, the Acorn Woodpecker?  We can make that happen.

Want some pelagic birding?  Hanker after a Black-footed Albatross, Sabine's Gull or Cassin's Auklet?  TOWHEE.NET is named for a land bird, but we've got a taste for saltwater, too.

Yes, San Francisco has its autumn hawk watch.  From the Marin Headlands you scan the skies as the raptors migrate south and some even cross the Golden Gate into the city spread out before you.

Hardy enough for a winter trip?  It doesn't get cold, but that's when the rains come.  And that's when we recommend you fill out your list of North American ducks.  Cinnamon Teal, Barrow's Goldeneye, three scoter species, two scaups and a pond full of Ring-necked Ducks.  On a good day, you should see at least twenty-two duck species.  Sound like it's worth a little rain?  If you want bigger birds, we can go after Snow and Ross's Geese and the wintering Sandhill Cranes. 

Want an identification challenge?  Come to Northern California in the fall and we'll see if you can get all nine regular gull species, and then maybe add a rarity.  Or try us in May for six species of Hirundine, all local nesters.  Name one other major city where you'll find Brown Creeper, Black Oystercatcher, Brandt's Cormorant, Pygmy Nuthatch, Common Raven and Hooded Oriole nesting within a few yards of one another.  That's just a nice way to start a rich day of birding in San Francisco. 

We can help you plan that unforgettable trip, and we can provide personal guide service as well.  Send an email to help@towhee.net. 

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