The warm and welcoming group, led by the torta shop’s kitchen manager, transforms novices into nerds. It worked on me.

It took what felt like forever to spot him. I was pretty sure I had identified the correct tree, but the correct branch? The tree had so many branches! And they were all covered in leaves! But finally—

“Oh!” I gasped. “Oh.” For there was the purple finch, and the tiny thing was beautiful: a little ball of a bird that to my eye looked more rose red than purple. Through my binoculars I watched him swivel his head, then throw it back—what an adorably chunky beak he had—as he began to trill. His feathered throat pulsed. Mine froze in awe.

My first outing with Güero Bird Club was off to a cracking start. Yes, that Güero: I’d gathered early that morning with about 10 others, Gen Z to boomer, for a birdsong walk organized by Audrey Tawdry, kitchen manager of the popular Kerns torta shop. (No tortas were served, but Tawdry brought coffee and mini muffins.) Over the next two hours, as we weaved slowly through Kelley Point Park, I marveled at the weird and delightful descriptions unleashed by my fellow birders. House finches, Tawdry said, have a song that reminds her of Benson Bubblers. Swallows, said someone else, sound like ray guns. The brown-headed cowbird? That one’s a TV turning on. We used our eyes, too, of course. Someone pointed out two American goldfinches perched high in a tree like lemon drops. For many minutes, we simply watched a bald eagle that had landed near us, its back turned but its face in profile, the sharp hook of its enormous beak slicing the air.

The bird-watching boom could have been a pandemic blip, a hobby for the stressful but stagnant days of lockdown. But the old-fashioned pursuit has held on. In part this is thanks to newfangled tools such as Merlin, an app with an amazing (though imperfect) ability to identify birds by sound; it’s seen more than 10 million new users since the Sound ID function, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was added in 2021. And, in Portland, it’s also thanks to groups like Güero Bird Club, just one of many grassroots bird-watching gangs turning novices into nerds.

On that morning with the purple finch, I felt the pull.

The bird-watching bug bit Tawdry when she was a senior in college in Binghamton, New York. She and her best friend had signed up for a biology class taught by a hippie wetlands ecologist and a vest-wearing British entomologist. Students received a CD with about a dozen local birdsongs on it, and Tawdry played hers as she drove friends around in her 2001 silver Volkswagen Beetle.

“I would probably fit, like, seven college kids in at once, and I’d always have my birdsongs on,” she says. “I still remember those songs.”

Her aunt and uncle gave her binoculars for graduation, and she had her own moment of awe that summer, at a park near her childhood home in the Hudson Valley. As sunset approached, a yellow-shafted flicker flew by. “I remember seeing this gold flash underneath their wings and gasping,” she says.

She took to carrying her binoculars everywhere, which meant that looking at birds “just kind of followed [her] around,” including on her 2015 move to Portland. But the idea of assembling a flock didn’t spark until 2020, when the city was in lockdown and Güero was doing a brisk takeout business. She and then-coworker Greg Smith, who also happens to be a seabird biologist, were constantly swapping reports. Owner Megan Sanchez noticed. “She would hear us and be like, ‘Did you bring enough to share?’” Tawdry says. “I guess we made it sound fun.”

Güero Bird Club officially launched in 2021. Three years in, the format is largely unchanged. Weekly walks, which are free and open to all, take place year-round, in both morning and evening, at one of any avian hot spots in Portland: Mount Tabor, Oaks Bottom, Powell Butte. Tawdry provides binoculars to those who need them. After coffee, socializing, and quick intros, the group strolls for about two hours, pausing often.

The simplicity and consistency are part of the appeal. But each outing takes on a different flavor. A few weeks after my birdsong walk, I joined a Wednesday gathering at Whitaker Ponds, a nature park in the Cully neighborhood. This time I gawked at the fancy feathers worn by a great white egret; the breeding plumage looked to me like a ballerina’s long tulle skirt. I learned from Tawdry that flycatchers hatch with innate knowledge of their song, unlike most other birds that learn it from their parents, and from another member of the group about the carpenter bees that shimmered iridescent green on a decaying log.

Inspired, I began carrying my binoculars on neighborhood walks. Suddenly I was the one pointing out goldfinches. My ears, too, began to parse one sound from another. I finally understood the song sparrow’s mic check—the bird, which abounds in Portland, has a way of announcing itself with a few clanging notes before dashing into something more melodic.

While birding alone had its pleasures, I missed the collective knowledge of the group, the experience of shared wonder. Tawdry’s main goal with Güero Bird Club is to encourage curiosity, and she describes what she does as hosting: she makes a plan, disarms by explicitly inviting oohs and aahs, and then steps back. Sometimes she greets a mere handful on a frigid February morning. Other times it’s a blowout, as on a Sunday in May when I found myself among more than 40 others, moving amoeba-like up the slopes of Mount Tabor.

The party, admittedly, was too big. But at the summit, we spread out. Many were drawn to a regal pair of bald eagles. Others delighted at a red-breasted nuthatch dancing up and down the trunk of a tree. I hung back for a moment and watched not the birds but the people watching the birds—watched as they flapped their arms, summoning others to come see the cool thing they could see. “Objectively the cutest, most wholesome thing in Portland,” said Morgan Quirk, an architectural historian I’d met that morning. “I can’t get enough.”

Neither can I.

Gateway Birds: Five feathered friends that call Portland home

Anna’s Hummingbird

Tough, tiny, year-round Portland resident. Buzzy, high-pitched song recalls an exceptionally squeaky door hinge. Males sport brilliant magenta feathers from throat to head and court potential mates with dramatic dive-bombs.

Northern Flicker

Brownish, distinctively spotted woodpecker likely drumming in a backyard near you. Typically nests in holes in trees (in early summer, listen for nestlings chirping nonstop). Frequently found rooting in leaf litter for ants. Look for red mustache on males and black bib on all.

Dark-Eyed Junco

Abundant, energetic, seed-eating sparrow. Often seen hopping on ground and darting in underbrush. Vast geographic variation: all juncos have pinkish bills and white tail feathers that flash in flight; Oregon’s dark-eyed form has handsome black hood, brown back, and whitish belly. Ticking, metallic trill.

Wood Duck

Striking, ornately patterned duck living in watery habitat across Portland. Significantly smaller than mallards (ducklings, accordingly, are stupid cute). Nests in tree cavities. Males wear iridescent purple and green; females have eyes ringed in white.

Cooper’s Hawk

Crow-sized raptor with a barrel-shaped body, steely face, and sharply hooked beak. In flight, look for long tail feathers edged in white. Fast, stealthy, and possibly preying on other birds at your backyard feeder.

 

For this and similar articles, please visit PortlandMonthly

Portland’s long-brewing plan to turn the area surrounding the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry into a bustling neighborhood is coming into focus.

At a Portland City Council meeting Wednesday, commissioners unanimously advanced an agreement that solidifies the path forward in the nearly decade-old plan to bring more housing, people and activity to the south end of Portland’s Central Eastside. They agreed to spend more than $15 million in public dollars to kick off the plan.

“This is a significant day for Portland,” said Commissioner Mingus Mapps. “The legislation before us today is about more than infrastructure. It’s about transforming the OMSI district into a vibrant hub for education, innovation and community life.”

The plan, funded by a combination of private and public funds, is expected to cost around $90 million. Construction is expected to begin by early 2026.

The plan includes 24-acres public and privately-owned property surrounding OMSI in the Central Eastside. It promises a new waterfront park with science programming and partnerships with Indigenous communities, habitat restoration, outdoor plazas and up to 1,200 new housing units. At least a third of these units will be affordable to lower-income tenants.

The plan was first put into motion by OMSI in 2017, who proposed redeveloping the area around the museum as part of the city’s 20-year land use plan for the city’s urban core. The idea was to turn the industrial district into an “innovation district” with commercial and residential buildings and new outdoor public spaces, all centered around OMSI.

The city incorporated this proposal into its new land use plan in 2020, sending both OMSI and Prosper Portland – the city’s development bureau – into planning mode. In the years since, both parties have floated ideas for the new district. But the exact details of the plan have remained relatively hazy – until now.

The plan, or “term sheet,” agreed on by council, breaks the project into three phases.

The first includes building a new street, which planners are calling “new” Southeast Water Avenue, that will focus on expediting traffic – ranging from heavier freight from nearby industrial businesses to bicycle traffic. This will be built alongside the current Southeast Water Avenue, which will still be an active street. The city will pitch in $11 million from area tax-increment finance revenue and is seeking $6 million in state grants to fund the street project. This construction is anticipated to wrap by June 2027. During this phase, which the city says may last up to a decade, OMSI will also begin developing new housing in the district with private money.

Phase two brings in the Portland House Bureau to build more affordable housing. In total, the plan aims to ensure that at least 300 of its 1,200 planned residential units are affordable to people making below 80% of the region’s median income, which is $94,000 annually for a family of four. The parties will also begin construction on a new waterfront park, and start planning for educational programming and signage for that area. OMSI will partner with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission to design this new park.

“It’ll be centered in Indigenous culture and offer free learning opportunities related to ecological and cultural knowledge,” said Aja DeCoteau, the executive director of Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “This includes native plants, invasive species, river health and culture, placemaking opportunities that foster a sense of place for people such as demonstration of traditional native fishing practices.

The third phase will focus on construction and tying up loose ends – like adding more affordable housing, infrastructure, parking or other private investments in the region.

In all, OMSI estimates the project will create 11,000 jobs – both temporary construction positions and long-term jobs at anticipated new businesses. OMSI Director Erin Graham said analysts have also projected the project generating more than $1 billion in private investment over the next two decades.

“It is important because it helps to guarantee the growth and sustainability of our city and really important because it also helps to sustain OMSI and the critical mission-based work that we do,” she said.

With the council vote, the city pledged nearly $16 million in public dollars to fund the first phase of the project, including an additional $500,000 from the Portland Bureau of Transportation and $4 million from Portland Parks and Recreation.

The project has tapped into other public dollars. Metro regional government has already given $7 million to help establish the new waterfront park, and $750,000 to support Indigenous leaders tasked with advising OMSI on waterfront development. The state has also forked over $11 million to help with the street redesign.

The parties need to identify more financing before any work begins. With the agreement, both OMSI and the city committed to pursue new funding streams, like federal or state grants.

If they can land more funds, construction could start in early 2026. As Mayor Ted Wheeler pointed out, the total project will take more than a decade to fully fund and complete.

“But I think you’ll find that this city council and the next and the one after that…and it sounds like two or three after that…will continue to be supportive of this vision,” he said.

For this and other local news, please visit opb.org

Errol Heights has an epic slide, a mini skate area, and trails through beaver habitat.

ON AN IDYLLIC FRIDAY MORNING, southeast Portland’s Errol Heights Park hums with activity. Toddlers pull themselves on all fours up a gentle turf slope. An older kid dangles upside down from a rope bridge as another hop-hop-hops up a series of log steps. At the mini skate area by the community garden, two neighborhood teenagers taking a break from carving turns gush when landscape architect Carol Mayer-Reed, whose firm helped design the park, asks how they like it.

“This is awesome,” says Solomon Dolinar, 17. “We were really hoping a skate park would come up around here. It’s perfect.”

Michael Milch, meanwhile, is visiting with his wife and two grandsons, 7 and 5, from Gladstone. Milch is mayor of the nearby city and learned about this park from a constituent: a second grader unimpressed with the slides in his own community. But the newly installed slide at Errol Heights—a German-made steel twister that towers 24 feet in the air—was, he told Milch, “the best.”

Word, it seems, is getting out about the recent $12 million glow-up at Errol Heights, which sits on the southern fringes of Portland, just across Johnson Creek from Milwaukie. And this part of the park is lovely indeed, with grassy expanses, play areas tucked between trees, 11 picnic tables (five of them ADA-accessible), and a small splash pad. A striking bronze-and-steel sculpture by Portland artists Terresa White and Mike Suri features, among other birds, a peacock: the neighborhood is home to a semi-feral muster whose screams regularly split the air.

But there’s more. Wend your way west, and you’ll reach an elevated steel walkway that switchbacks, in an appealingly irregular fashion, down a steep grassy hillside. As you follow its 337 feet—it, too, is ADA-accessible—a large pond comes into view. Ringed by cottonwoods, bigleaf maples, and Doug firs, on this spring day it’s as busy as the playground above. Ducklings skitter across the surface as geese flap overhead. Swallows swoop low, and warblers trill from the canopies. Pacific tree frogs ribbit in a steady chorus.

Things down here feel a world away from the scene above, the calm interrupted only by the occasional car gunning up SE 45th Avenue. That’s because this part of Errol Heights owes its existence not to humans but to another builder, the OG landscape architect: the assiduous, semiaquatic rodent that is our state animal.

THERE WAS NOT ALWAYS A VAST POND AT ERROL HEIGHTS. For decades, this spring-fed creek was dotted with man-made dams, which created a trio of small pools amid thickets of trees. But in 2007, the Bureau of Environmental Services (BES) began removing these dams—and another dam builder began to move in. This was by design: in a 2016 blog post about a restoration project in the area, BES proudly noted that it was “letting local beavers engineer and build it.”

And build it they have. The beavers at Errol Heights—city employees estimate it’s a family of four to six—have constructed a sprawling complex of dams, taking out hundreds of trees and flooding the area in the process. As some of the dams have aged, they’ve become fixtures of the landscape, sprouting vegetation where waterfowl build nests. It’s among the best places in the city to witness the work of the industrious rodent: their log-and-mud dams, the chew marks they leave on trees, the profusion of wood chips they produce.

“Anybody in Portland can walk through Errol Heights and see active beaver habitat,” says Ali Young, a capital project manager with BES. “That’s a cool, unique thing. Not a lot of other cities have that.” What you’re unlikely to see is the animal itself. Beavers, especially in cities, are most active at night. But you might hear the thwack of a tail against water, their trademark warning call.

Accordingly, the work in this part of the park has been about facilitating immersion in the natural environment. Trails are wide, in places cantilevering over the water—with sufficient clearance should beaver activity cause levels to rise. Scenic overlooks invite lingering. Much was designed with school classes in mind: a rock-lined cove just off the trail can serve as a de facto classroom, while a dock allows students to scoop water samples for testing.

There’s never any doubt you’re in the city. The pond laps against a retaining wall along SE Harney Street, and an industrial fabrication facility sits opposite. It’s easy to rue this sort of human impact, to wonder how this area might have looked even 100 years ago. But there’s also something enchanting about this unlikely urban oasis.

“We’ve destroyed so much habitat, and [wildlife] pathways have been disrupted,” says Christian Haaning, a natural resources ecologist with Portland Parks and Recreation. “So once they get here, they hang out here. You could walk in the forest for hours—days!—and see half the species in that pristine wilderness that you would see in an hour in this park.”

Once, as in so many wetlands, people dumped trash here; Haaning tells me crews had to remove an entire school bus from the site. Invasive weeds remain a challenge. But as he and I tour the park, we’re startled by a western tanager, its plumage a lick of flame, alighting on a branch a few feet from us (“hello, handsome,” croons Haaning). On a later visit, I listen to a red-breasted sapsucker hammer against a tree as a pair of deer amble leisurely by. Haaning says he’s seen minks, muskrats, and river otters.

For Mayer-Reed, this part of the park is where “the person becomes secondary to nature.” Here, she says, we learn to see a world outside ourselves: “Sometimes being in a park, especially a park like this, can round off some of the rough edges we have as human beings.”

Some of those edges gnawed off, no doubt, by a bucktoothed rodent.

For this and similar articles, please visit Portland Monthly

BE A SOUP-ER HERO!
We want to invite you to embrace your inner “Soup-er Hero” and bring warmth to your community today! Portland’s Alternative Realtors is thrilled to partner with Lift UP, a local nonprofit we’ve worked with for years that’s dedicated to enhancing food security for our neighbors in Downtown and Northwest Portland.

From February 12th to March 5th, we’re stirring up community support to collect 250 cans of soup for our neighbors.
You can drop off your cans of soup in our
collection bin at our beautiful office at 3144 SE Belmont St. We’re open and ready to receive from 9-5, Monday through Friday!

For those who prefer to contribute from the comfort of their homes, we’ve got you covered! You can donate cans through our online giving page. Every $10 you contribute provides 5 cans of soup, each a comforting meal for a neighbor in need.
Click here to donate virtually!

Here’s what we’re looking for:
Canned Soups: Any variety, packed with nutrients.
Boxed Soups: Easy to store, easy to share.
Low-Sodium Soups: Healthy options for everyone.
Ramen Cups: Quick, convenient, and comforting.

Why focus on soup, you might ask? Soup is more than just a meal; it’s a bowl of hope and nourishment. It tops Lift UP’s most-wanted list for its variety, ease of storage, and nutritional value. Plus, it’s a versatile option for everyone, regardless of dietary preferences or needs.

JOIN US FOR A SOUP SOIREE!
3-6 PM on Tuesday, March 5th @ our office:
3144 SE Belmont St

-You can donate virtually or in person at our office Feb 12-Mar 5
-Or you can bring your donation to our office during the party

Join us for snacks and a glass of wine!

By helping us meet our goal, you’re not just donating food; you’re ensuring that everyone has access to the comforting embrace of a warm meal. Together, we can nurture a community where no one questions their right to essential nourishment. We’re so excited to support our community! Let’s get ‘souping’!