USA: Oregon – Klamath Basin and the Coast

Our Oregon birding tour begins on the coast at Tillamook Bay, one of the prime birding areas in the entire Pacific Northwest. Tillamook and nearby Bayocean Spit will yield an incredible variety of seabirds, shorebirds, waterfowl, and related species.

The delightful Grey-crowned Rosy Finch will be one of our many songbird targets on our Oregon birding tour.

A full-day pelagic trip with Tim Shelmerdine and Oregon Pelagic Tours will take us into the Pacific in search of tubenoses: Black-footed Albatross, Pink-footed Shearwater, Fork-tailed Storm Petrel, and many others. This trip has produced some incredible rarities including Short-tailed and Laysan Albatrosses that we found on a previous Oregon birdwatching tour.

After another day of coastal birding, we move inland to Crater Lake, the Klamath Basin, Tule Lake (in northern California), and a total change of pace. Now we’ll be looking at dozens of Bald Eagles, thousands of ducks and geese, and large flocks of Sandhill Cranes. There should be Ferruginous Hawks and hopefully a Short-eared Owl. Great Grey Owl is resident here, and we will make every effort to find one, as we have in the past.

The majestic Great Grey Owl is resident in the Klamath Basin.

A few of the more intriguing songbirds we will seek on this Oregon bird watching tour include Grey-crowned Rosy Finch, Golden-crowned Sparrow, Wrentit, Townsend’s Solitaire, Tricolored Blackbird, and American Dipper. Woodpeckers include American Three-toed, Black-backed, Lewis’s, and White-headed. Our final stops are Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge and Sauvie Island near Portland. These are excellent songbird areas and great spots for scoping more waterfowl, raptors, and Sandhill Cranes.