I tossed-and-turned early Saturday morning thinking about places I might find an unusual species or two. Intuition took me south from West Linn a few miles to one of my favorite spring-time stops, the St. Louis Ponds. But after seeing everyone in the area of the ponds wearing orange hunting vests and carrying firearms I decided to see if I could locate the Pygmy Owl Jill and I heard in a wooded section of Champoeg State Park a couple of weeks before.

The trail, a little over a mile long, relatively flat but well drained, produced good looks at bunches of forest species including GOLDEN CROWNED KINGLET, RUBY CROWNED KINGLET, BEWICK'S WREN, HERMIT THRUSH, BROWN CREEPER, PACIFIC WREN, and a one-eyed BARRED OWL. 

Before leaving the park I decided to take a quick look through the Oak Grove, it has been a great spot for Acorn Woodpeckers, and Great Horned Owls.  I struck out on both of those, but did get to see a large mixed flock of CEDAR WAXWING and WESTERN BLUEBIRD competing, I think, for insects in one of the many drainage ditches that run through the area.  As I was heading back to the car, I came across a trail of feathers that lead from the northern edge of the Oak Grove to a low branch on an oak tree in the middle of the grove.  While looking closely at the first batch of small feathers, I thought American Kestrel, but when I came across an area the bird had been consumed I realized something much much larger had met its end. 

The "P" in the map below designates the best place to park for access to the nature trail, the yellow pin marks the center of the Oak Grove picnic area. 

I am putting photos of the BARRED OWL, and feathered remains at the top of this post for convenience of the reader. 

I first interpreted the lack of pupil and the bluish color of the owl's right eye as blindness - but someone kindly pointed out to me that the owl just happened to have one of its nictitating (protective) membranes deployed at the time of the photo.

A close up view of the eyes:

The pen used as a reference in the first photo of the feathers is 114 mm (4.5 inches) long.  From that, I approximate the humerus at 115 mm in length. Too large for an accipiter but, squarely within the known range of lengths for the humerus of Red-tailed Hawk according to "Avian Osteology." Avian Osteology. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.

The coloration of the feathers also look good to me for a RTHA.  I guess the question now is - what ate it?

The base of tree in the right-center of the frame is where I found the majority of the remains. I've drawn an ellipse around the area of branch where dinner was obviously consumed, approximately 12 feet above ground.

A close-up of the branch as observed from the other side of the tree:

Now back to the forest birds of the nature trail.

Hermit Thrush:

Golden-crowned Kinglet:

Ruby-crowned Kinglet:

Bewick's Wren:

Brown Creeper:

Pacific Wren:

A couple photos of the nature trail itself: