Fall on the Oregon Coast
In September I took my fall trip, which was a week out mostly on the Oregon Coast. This was intended to be mostly an unplug and relax trip, with birding as as secondary attraction — I carried the camera but didn’t really use it much. Right now, to be honest, any photography other than birds feels like work instead of fun, and I’m just letting it happen if I feel motivated and not feel guilty when I don’t.
I’ve been spending time on the coast going back to the 1990’s and I love the area; it’s a great region to explore and relax. I’ll typically focus my time around three places: Bandon in the South, Newport more or less in the middle, and Astoria on the North. Each town is interesting and has nice food and lodging options, and each gives me a base to explore a nice chunk of the coast. On this trip I poked around from Florence to the south all the way up to Tokeland to the north.
I left around noon on a Friday, with my first stop being Ridgefield, since I wanted to visit the refuge in early fall and see what was going on, and because I am still trying to avoid drives longer than about 4 hours. The first night’s stay was the Best Western in Woodland, which was a nice, quiet room.
I ended up doing the tour route twice, once after I checked into the room in the afternoon, and again early morning after checking out. Down in California, the Central Valley refuges tend to be winter-only places, and get very dry and slow during the summer, but Ridgefield is interesting to visit year round. On this trip, you could tell a lot of the summer birds had left but there was still enough going on to make it a fun stop: I had 21 species on the evening visit and 34 the next morning with 36 unique species across the two. Highlights included some nice Wood Ducks and a hooting Great Horned Owl, but the best bird by far was a single Bank Swallow I found in a flock of Barn Swallows with an assist from Merlin — a lifer.
After that stop, it was on the road through Portland and into Newport, where I stayed two nights. Our favorite stay in Newport is the Agate Beach Motel, a small but really comfortable classic motor lodge very near Yaquina Point, but it was full, so I went instead with the Agate Beach Best Western — despite my preference for Best Western Hotels, the first time I’ve actually stayed there. I rather liked it, and a rarity for a Best Western, it has an in-house restaurant, which I tried and quite enjoyed. It’s right on the water, so the room and restaurant both had quite pleasant views.
Whenever I visit Newport, I make it a point to visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which is a very nice, smallish facility — which at one point housed Keiko, a killer whale that was ultimately freed into the wild. The story of Keiko (star of the movie “Free Willy” is an interesting one worth digging into. These days the sea otters are the star attraction and they did not disappoint, but my favorite place is always the aviary (of course), home to Puffinsm Murres and other seabirds. Laurie and I have been going to this aquarium long enough to have actually seen Keiko during the time it was housed there.
A big part of their exhibit space was dedicated to discussing the problems of plastic pollution in the oceans, and included a number of quite interesting and well done sculptures created from plastic waste.
One restaurant to recommend in Newport is Super Oscars Mexican, a family run mostly taqueria place that has really tasty food — there are a number of good Mexican places in town, but this is my favorite to grab and go with, and I took a nice chicken quesadilla out to the Jetty and ate it while watching the Pelicans and Cormorants do their thing. And if you’re interested in some ice cream, head over to The Local Scoop, featuring both Tilamook and Umqua brands — I especially recommend the Umpqua River Wild Blackberry if they have it. And FWIW, the Tilamook flavors available local the main facility are a higher quality than is distributed nationally.
After a couple of nights in Newport, it was time to head north to my next stop, Astoria. Astoria has an interesting history, and is named after John Astor, and there is a really interesting story behind its founding. It sits right on the river near the mouth of the Columbia, and it is a great place stay to explore the Northern Oregon Coast and Southern Washington Coast — you can day trip up to Westport if you want.
Food recommendations in Astoria include the Astoria Brewing, also a great place for some nice beers, or in my case, a nice local cider. I must admit my burger was a bit dry, but in general, it’s good, solid pub food. Also I stopped at Mo’s, a coastal chain, for their chowder and a really nice fish&chips. And while I normally grab and go breakfast to get out and around while traveling, I always stop in once to Pig ’n/Pancake, another really nice coastal chain. Unfortunately, two places I used to love while staying here: Doogers seafood and Baked in Alaska, were both Covid casualties.
The trip from Newport to Astoria passes through Tilamook, home, of course, of Tilamook Cheese World Headquarters and its large and usually quite busy company store. It is well worth a stop — there’s a fun tour you can go through if you want, and the store is a good place to pick up things to make up lunches or a picnic or a nice quiet dinner back in the room. There are also some cheeses you can buy there that they don’t ship widely, including a rather nice extra sharp cheddar, but much of what is here you can buy in most groceries. The Tilamook store also has a large ice cream counter, and so this is a really good place to add calories to your life happily.
But very near to Tilamook is a smaller place called the Blue Heron.
It specializes in local and regional smaller offerings, and you can get a lot of really nice, small producer, artisanal cheeses, sausages and other yummies. This is a place I always stop at, and this time, I was able to grab a few nice goat cheeses and a nice piece of Vampire Cheddar from Facerock Creamery in Bandon, and so I had a nice supply of yummies for lunches the rest of the trip (and about a week after I got home). I don’t mind passing on visiting Tilamook, and on this trip the parking was completely full so I did, but Blue Heron is a must visit, and it never disappoints.
While exploring around Astoria, I spent time in Fort Stevens State Park, and a short visit to Cape Disappointment, where I found out much of the park is closed for construction, and I spent some time exploring and birding the Long Beach area, but the birding was slow and nothing much to talk about. My second day, since my legs were still grumping at me, I decided to take the drive up to Tokeland (about 90 minutes), where there has been a huge flock of Marbled Godwits hanging out in the Marina, and with them some local birding celebrities: two Bar-Tailed Godwits have been with the flock for weeks, as well as two Hudsonian Godwits.
So in search of these rare (for Washington) birds, I drove 90 minutes, parked at the marina, chatted with a couple of other birders there chasing these Godwits, and then walked over to the dock. Along the rocks on the shore of the marina was a huge flock (300+) of godwits, and much to my amusement, less than ten feet from where I was standing, were the two Bar-tailed godwits, waving and offering autographs.
That’s how chasing rarities goes some times: sometimes you drive for an hour or more only to find the bird disappeared ten minutes ago, and sometimes you do the drive and the birds show up five minutes later to be added to your life list.
That said, I spent another hour or so trying to find the Hudsonian Godwits, to no avail, but they have been seen much less reliably than these two extroverts. And after that, it was mostly just poking around and exploring, but nothing much worth discussing. On the last day, I got up, had an omelette and pancakes at Pig ‘N Pancake, and drove the 3 hours home, and honestly, I was ready for my own bed and comfy chair for a few days.
There was very little photography to speak of, mostly me taking quick shots with the iPhone rather than trying to be more serious about it. The birding was nice, better than I expected this time of year, and it was really nice to add two species to my life list (Bank Swallow and Bar-tailed Godwit, #313 and #314 respectively), which gives me a solid 5 lifers for the year. I added 7 species to my year list, leaving that at a nice 157 species compared to 132 for all of 2024.
(note: this is an edited version of the essay I wrote in this month’s 6FPS. If you want to see the full version, or if you want to see the writing I do in the newsletter that doesn’t get onto this site, please consider subscribing)
