A cluster of 10 bird observers stood near the large pond in Southeast Portland’s Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge on Saturday, watching with wonder and amusement as a pair of common merganser ducks began their mating ritual.
But one word – “pileated!” – pulled their attention from that scene to another: A birder in their group had spotted a gloriously plumed pileated woodpecker busily banging its beak into a tree trunk, feasting on whatever insect colony it had found there.
The 10 wildlife gawkers at Oaks Bottom were among more than 300 volunteers who spread across Portland and its near-in western and southern suburbs Saturday to conduct the 100th annual winter bird count to take place in the city. A cheer arose from the group, as its members realized they had just seen the fifth of the five species of woodpeckers they could possibly hope to see at the refuge on a January day: hairy and downy woodpeckers, a northern flicker, a red-breasted sapsucker and, now, a pileated.
In all, the hundreds of volunteers equipped with binoculars and spotting scopes saw 122 species of birds between dawn and nightfall, four more than in 2025…