Western Bluebird, Champoeg State Park, Oregon, 8 November 2011 by Greg Gillson. I stopped by Champoeg State Park recently, and was able to photograph this Western Bluebird using my car as a blind.
This bird is banded, probably in concert with the Prescott Bluebird Recovery Project, which builds bluebird nest boxes and monitors populations locally in the northern Willamette Valley.
Champoeg was a town between Portland and Salem, Oregon. In the early 1840's the rapidly increasing number of settlers met at Champoeg and voted to set up a local provisional government. Up until that time both the United States and Great Britain jointly occupied the Oregon Territory, with the British Hudson Bay Company having a presence at Fort Vancouver (near present day Vancouver, Washington). Relations were friendly-enough between American and British subjects (and French-Canadian, Spanish, and Russian fur trappers), but there was really no "government" to speak of for the American settlers. This provisional government ruled until 1848 when Oregon became an official territory of the United States. Oregon became a state in 1859. In December 1861 a huge flood swept away the town of Champoeg and it was never rebuilt.
A previous post on Western Bluebirds.
