Camassia is a Nature Conservancy site near Oregon City, with an amazing diversity of habitats in a relatively small area. We make a point to visit every spring for the wildflower show (here’s a wildflower blog from 2024), but when my trip to a newly reclaimed wetland turned out to be a bust (the wetland is preserved, but there’s no public access), I found myself in the vicinity and dropped in for a winter visit.

There was no one else in the preserve while I was there, and I enjoyed a couple hours of roaming around. When I first arrived, I looked for the osprey nest we’ve previously seen on an adjacent cell tower, but I saw no evidence of a nest, or any osprey in the area. But I did see an eagle pair fly-by (there’s a mediocre photo in the collection below for ID purposes), so my guess is the eagles chased off the osprey. I also spotted a small raptor on a tree top. From the size, I was guessing it was a kestrel, but I didn’t see the facial markings of a kestrel. Looking at the photo, it looks more like a Merlin. It also looks like it was enjoying a breakfast of some other small bird.