Thanks to voter investments, Metro has been able to protect and restore some of the most special natural places across the greater Portland metro region.
Those places attract not only human visitors, but native birds, fish and wildlife.
Please enjoy some of our favorite wildlife photos taken by staff and park visitors at Metro destinations in 2015.
And if you have a favorite nature photo (with wildlife or otherwise) taken in the greater Portland metro region, be sure to enter it into Our Big Backyard quarterly photo contest. Win an annual Metro parks pass, an overnight camping trip at Oxbow Regional Park, a tennis court session, or a round of golf for four people including cart at Glendoveer Golf and Tennis Center. Please include a 50-word caption. Send your picture and description by Feb. 29, 2016 to [email protected].
Get outside and explore
In February, thousands of ladybugs awoke from winter hibernation at North Abbey Creek Natural Area in the North Tualatin Mountains.
What exactly goes on at night at Metro natural areas? A critter camera in March captured images of the resident elk herd at Killin Wetlands Natural Area.
Hey, what is this thing?!
During the day, deer forage at Killin Wetlands Natural Area.
Aloha resident Anne Lenzi won the Our Big Backyard photo contest in spring 2015 with her photo of a rough-skinned newt at Cooper Mountain Nature Park.
A sunny day in April brought out the mallard ducks at Blue Lake Regional Park.
A plea came in early summer for drivers to slow down and watch out for the black-tailed deer fawns on the roads at Oxbow Regional Park. The fawns are born in May and can often be seen with their mothers in late spring and early summer. Vulnerable to many different predators, fawns' best defense is their camouflage.
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savannah sparrow with bug
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Volunteer site stewards enjoy special experiences in nature, sometimes at sites not yet officially open. Phil Nosler, a volunteer site steward, took these photos of wildlife at West Bliss Butte near Damascus.
Goats -- as far as the eye could see. St. Johns Landfill welcomed 1,038 goats in May and June to graze 40 of the site’s 240 acres. The goats were particularly helpful along the steep slopes at the landfill edges and in the ditches that parallel the roads. The landfill closed in 1991. Environmental monitoring continues as the site transforms into St. Johns Prairie.
OK, one more of the goats.
Along Johnson Creek, a juvenile rabbit hides in the brush.
Coyote pups found a meal at St. Johns Prairie in the summer.
A whitetail dragonfly dances in the grasses at River Island Natural Area. Decades of gravel mining and devastating floodwaters in 1996 changed the course of the Clackamas River and left their mark on the 240-acre natural area just upstream from Barton Park. This past summer, work began on a two-year, large-scale restoration effort that will return River Island to a natural, wilder existence
The bumblebees enjoyed the all-you-can-eat buffet of large-leaf lupines at Beaver Creek Natural Area in Gresham by Mt. Hood Community College. The orange pollen basket on the bumblebee is a collection of pollen on its hind legs.
Beaverton resident Terry Taylor won the Our Big Backyard photo contest in autumn 2015 with her photo of a great-horned owl on her property, which is bordered on two sides by Cooper Mountain Nature Park. "Momma and her baby have been living, hunting and training her the trees aroudn the park all spring and summer," Taylor wrote.
And let's not forget our favorite video of the year showing the nighttime shenanigans of native beavers and invasive nutria working together to build a dam overnight at Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area. Though the photos were taken in 2014, the video came out earlier this year.
Here's to more wildlife at Metro destinations in 2016! Thanks, voters, for making these magical moments possible.