I went to the Hopkins Demonstration Forest today to escape the heat and to see if I could get eyes on the Swainson's Thrush, a bird best known for its distinctive song but rarely seen for more than a split second at a time.  I was surprised to get great looks at several of them for what seemed like minutes, and even more surprised to find a recently vacated Common Raven's nest complete with two nearby fledglings and two very vocal adults keeping a careful watch on my interaction with the kids.   

The quality forest recreational environment complete with educational kiosks scattered throughout this 140-acre site is impressive.

Common Raven Nests west of the central Oregon Cascades are uncommon - so I was delighted to come across one today.

The best 90 seconds I could piece together from this surprising encounter:

My target species - (the) Swainson's Thrush:

Five images are probably an excessive display, 

but it's taken me that number of years to get good views of this thrush, so the symmetry won out :-)

The drinking well that was a welcome sight on the way out:

Trail Map of the area

http://www.demonstrationforest.org/