Field Trip: Botany for Birders – Fruit at Columbia Children’s Arboretum

Have you ever struggled to describe which tree a bird is in? Have you ever struggled to identify a tree making it difficult to know how to manage it? Join local arborist, ecologist and birder Ryan Gilpin for a series of online and field classes designed to help birders more confidently navigate the plant world. Ryan will focus on observing specific characteristics of trees to gather more information. This information can be used to assign a name to a plant, but the goals of the workshop are more about observing and describing than naming.

Field Trip: Columbia Children’s Arboretum is a park with one of the most diverse tree populations in Portland and a pretty great place to find warblers and many other bird species. If the birds are out and active, we will bird the park and practice using as specific of language as possible to describe where we are seeing the birds and how they are interacting with the plants around them. If the birds are quiet, we will scout for fruit (anything that contains an angiosperm seed). But students who attended all 8 sessions should be able to use all of these features together to begin identifying trees more holistically. All trees should have a readily identifiable feature in-mid May, and hopefully we can practice bringing it all together. We should be able to describe which tree we are seeing a good bird in to our fellow students and identify most trees to be able to learn more about them.

Join us for the online portion of this field trip:

• Botany for Birders: Fruit with Ryan Gilpin

  • May 14, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Accessibility

Distance: approximately 1 mile

Elevation changes: very flat

Trail: paved in areas, packed dirt in areas, bridges, plan on going off trail to explore plants

Pacing: slow

Sun exposure: mostly shaded

Bathrooms: Portapottys available year-round

Parking: along muddy side of road on NE Meadow Ln

Public transit: The 6 Bus has two drops about a mile from the meeting location

Meeting Location: Meet on the EAST side of park (Google often sends us to west side/NE 6th Dr.)! We will meet near the gate at the end of NE Meadow Lane.

Field Trip Details

• • Class: Saturday, May 17, 9:00 am – 11:00 am
  • Class fee: $45 members / $65 non-member