Güero Bird Club Is Portland’s Best Way to Get into Birding

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.

 

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