Coastal Uplands

A Shadow Darner (Aeshna umbrosa) dragonfly was observed on 2026-10-03 on Highway 101 North in Tillamook, OR. This species indicates the presence of oxygenated water and persists into autumn as adults emerge and disperse, typical for the season.

A Coastal Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii) was observed on 2026-10-10 in Tillamook County, OR. This native trout lives in freshwater and estuarine reaches and persists in local streams despite widespread impairment of downstream waters in Tillamook Bay, which is on Oregon's 303(d) list under the Clean Water Act.

Tillamook County is 37.79% in abnormally dry conditions or worse as of the week ending October 19, 2026, stable for the past three months. Sustained low precipitation concentrates pollutants in streams and warms water, compounding stress on aquatic taxa.

Rough-skinned Newt was observed on October 10 at Arch Cape. This timing aligns with autumn dispersal as newts leave breeding ponds and seek overwintering sites on land, a period when terrestrial encounters peak.

Mule Deer was recorded on October 17 at Manzanita and October 16 at Nehalem in Tillamook County. October marks the beginning of the rut, when bucks exhibit peak activity and aggression as they pursue breeding opportunities.

Twenty-three separate reports of Sharp-tailed Sandpiper have been logged on eBird near Milepost 62 US-OR since October 5, with a high count of 2 birds. These Siberian-breeding shorebirds are rare autumn migrants to the Pacific Coast, typically passing through between late August and mid-November en route to Australasia wintering grounds. This concentration of reports suggests a notable stopover event during their southbound migration.

A flock of eleven Elegant Terns (*Thalasseus elegans*) was resting at the Garibaldi Marina on Tillamook Bay on September 11. This is a bird of the Gulf of California and the Southern California coast. More than nine in ten of them nest on a single island, Isla Rasa, in the Gulf of California, and only five nesting colonies remain in the world. Another was photographed in Tillamook County in late April, so the species turns up on this coast in more than one season. Picking one out from the Caspian Terns that also work this bay is mostly a matter of the bill. An Elegant Tern is a slim, crow-sized tern with a long, thin orange bill that droops slightly toward the tip. A Caspian Tern is a much heavier bird with a thick, deep red bill, and in flight its outer wing feathers are mostly black from below where the Elegant Tern's are pale with dark tips. Royal Tern, scarce this far north, also has an orange bill, but a stouter one, and a short bushy crest that stops behind the eye with white between the two. The Elegant Tern's crest is longer and shaggier; it starts above the eye, wraps around it and runs down the nape. In September the adults show a white forehead rather than the full black cap of the breeding season, and young birds are grayer above with a gray crown and more mottling. Common and Forster's Terns are smaller still, with slighter bills, and neither carries the shaggy nape. The tern makes its living on small schooling fish, northern anchovy above all, along with sardine, topsmelt and jack mackerel. It hunts by fluttering over the water on long pale wings and plunging headfirst to seize a fish in the bill, usually within ten miles of shore and often within sight of it. How many chicks a colony raises in a given year tracks the anchovy closely. The bird goes where the fish are. That is what brings it to Oregon. After the breeding season ends, Elegant Terns spread up and down the coast following anchovy schools, and most turn back south by October. In an ordinary year the northward push stops in northern California. In warm-water years it reaches Oregon, Washington and sometimes British Columbia, and Oregon's fish and wildlife department lists the species as a regular post-breeding visitor to this coast, roosting with gulls on spits, sandbars and mudflats near bay mouths, which is exactly the setting at Garibaldi. The water off this coast is warm this year. Buoys off Tillamook and at Astoria Canyon read 59 to 61 degrees in early September, against a mid-September norm near 55 degrees for this stretch of coast, inside a marine heatwave that has covered the California Current through the summer. NOAA reporting this year has anchovies and sardines shifting north with the warm water.