Replaced: Fernhill Wetlands Waterfowl
MIA: Jackson Bottoms Wetlands
Alive&Well: Fernhill Wetlands Raptor

Today, I packed up my binoculars, my new spotting scope and my carving
tools and headed to the west
side of Portland to revel in the return of the spring birds, take a
look at he Bald eagle nest at Jackson
Bottoms and check up on the resident letterboxes.
I had a pretty good idea that the Waterfowl box might not have fared
too well through the winter. My
first clue was when Ryan and Amanda A asked me, "did you mean for the
box to be underwater?" Sure
enough it had floated off to parts unknown. Over a great lunch at
Maggie's Cafe (very high on the
cool-o-meter) across from the University in downtown Hillsboro I carved
a replacement stamp. It's in
it's original spot and awaiting the next flood-of letterboxers
preferably. Get that stamp before winter!
I'm pleased to say that Windairen's Raptor box made it fine through the
winter. The only glitch there is
that a zealot with a chainsaw made the "duck" instruction in the clue
irrelevant. Quacking is still
optional.
The next stop was Jackson Bottoms and lo and behold there was an eagle
on the nest and a eagle
survey guy there watching it with me. He thinks that the eggs began
hatching today. If he's got it right,
then we should be able to see wobbly, fuzzy little raptorettes in about
ten days. Then, I headed off to
check on the letterbox there for Lillis. Sadly, it's definitely missing
in action. A pity, too, since it's one
of my favorite stamps in my book. There were hundreds of swallows there
arguing over the numerous
nestboxes, a flock of egrets in the grass and dozens of screeeeeing
kildeer. No letterbox but scads of
birds. Spring is definitely here! Funhog