I haven’t been keeping meticulously close attention to migrant arrivals this year so I thought I would put together a checklist of the 40 spring migrants moving through or coming into the Northern Willamette Valley of Oregon.
Using the data I compiled last year from eBird I ordered the migrants using the frequency data from earliest to latest arrival. The eBird data can be found in the header banner under “eBird Frequency Data”. I didn’t use the earliest arrival, nor would I say I used the mean. It’s probably somewhere in between but a bit closer to the earliest arrival.
For the four species that also winter in the area (Hermit Thrush, Yellow-rumped, Towsend’s and Orange-Crowned Warblers ) I picked the date when the frequency data jumps indicating migrants are moving through.
For the three species that are detected at very low levels (Gray Flycatcher, Bank Swallow, and Red-eyed Vireo) I just picked a date, but not the earliest.
Since eBird frequency charts are blocked out in four segments per month they assign the data to the 1st, 8th, 15th, and the 22nd of each month. So that is how it is presented here. This is equivalent to thinking of arrivals occurring sometime during the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th week of the month.
Each species is designated by a six letter code to save space. These will be intuitively obvious to any regular field observer. Not everybody will be able to decipher these codes so here is a link to a listing of the codes. Enter the alpha code into your browser search function and it will show you the name of the species.
Below is the table with my recollections of this year’s arrivals for the Northern Willamette Valley:
Specie Sig Freq
TRESWA 15-Feb reported
TURVUL 1-Mar reported
RUFHUM 8-Mar reported
VIGRSW 8-Mar reported
BARSWA 22-Mar reported
ORCRWA 22-Mar reported
CLISWA 1-Apr reported
COMYEL 1-Apr reported
NRWISW 1-Apr reported
BTGYWA 8-Apr reported
CHISPA 8-Apr reported
HERTHR 8-Apr reported
YERUWA 8-Apr reported
CASVIR 15-Apr reported
HAMFLY 15-Apr ????
HOUWRE 15-Apr reported
NASWAR 15-Apr reported
PASLFL 15-Apr reported
WILWAR 15-Apr reported
BLHEGR 22-Apr ????
DUSFLY 22-Apr reported
GRAFLY 22-Apr ????
HERWAR 22-Apr reported
MACWAR 22-Apr reported
PURMAR 22-Apr reported
TOWWAR 22-Apr reported
WARVIR 22-Apr reported
WESTAN 22-Apr ????
YELWAR 22-Apr ????
BULORI 1-May reported
LAZBUN 1-May reported
OLSIFL 1-May ????
SWATHR 1-May ????
WESKIN 1-May reported
WEWOPE 1-May ????
BANSWA 8-May reported
YEBRCH 8-May ????
WILFLY 15-May ????
REEYVI 1-Jun ????
COMNIG 8-Jun ????
So, we have twelve species that I can’t recall being reported in the Northern Willamette Valley – but I’ve not kept up with all of the reports. Nor have I kept a record of when each reported species was first reported.
