page_title: John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
section_title: Fauna
hierarchical_section_title: John Day Fossil Beds National Monument / Biology / Fauna
caption_attribution_description: English: Common Nighthawk at Petgill Lake in Squamish, British Columbia, Western Canada. Français&#160;: Un engoulevent d'Amérique. Photo prise près du Petgill Lake à Squamish, en Colombie Britannique (Canada). Latina: Chordeiles minor (Forster,JR, 1771) Русский: Козодой малый, сумеречный виргинский козодой. Снимок сделан в Британской Колумбии, провинции на западе Канады.
context_page_description: John Day Fossil Beds National Monument is a U.S. national monument in Wheeler and Grant counties in east-central Oregon. Located within the John Day River basin and managed by the National Park Service, the park is known for its well-preserved layers of fossil plants and mammals that lived in the region between the late Eocene, about 45 million years ago, and the late Miocene, about 5 million years ago. The monument consists of three geographically separate units: Sheep Rock, Painted Hills, and Clarno.
  The units cover a total of 13,944 acres of semi-desert shrublands, riparian zones, and colorful badlands. About 210,000 people visited the park in 2016 to engage in outdoor recreation or to visit the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center or the James Cant Ranch Historic District.
  Before the arrival of Euro-Americans in the 19th century, the John Day basin was frequented by Sahaptin people who hunted, fished, and gathered roots and berries in the region. After road-building made the valley more accessible, settlers established farms, ranches, and a few small towns along the river and its tributaries.
context_section_description: Birds are the animals most often seen in the monument. Included among the more than 50 species observed are red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, great horned owls, common nighthawks, and great blue herons. Geese nest in the park each summer, and flocks of sandhill cranes and swans pass overhead each year on their migratory flights. California quail, chukar partridges, and mourning doves are also common. Others seen near the Cant Ranch and the visitor's center include rufous hummingbirds, Say's phoebe, yellow warblers, western meadowlarks, and American goldfinches. Visitors on trails may encounter canyon wrens, mountain bluebirds, mountain chickadees, black-billed magpies, and other birds.
  Large animals that frequent the park include elk, deer, cougar, and pronghorn. Beaver, otter, mink, and raccoons are found in or near the river. Coyotes, bats, and badgers are among the park's other mammals. Predators hunt smaller animals such as the rabbits, voles, mice, and shrews found in the park's grasslands and sagebrush-covered hills. Bushy-tailed woodrats inhabit caves and crevices in the monument's rock formations. Bighorn sheep, wiped out in this region in the early 20th century, were reintroduced in the Foree Area of the Sheep Rock Unit in 2010.
  Many habitats in the monument support populations of snakes and lizards. Southern alligator and western fence lizards are common; others that live here include short-horned and common side-blotched lizards and western skinks. Garter and gopher snakes and western yellow-bellied racers frequent floodplains and canyon bottoms. Rattlesnakes, though venomous, are shy and usually flee before being seen. The springs and seeps in the park contain isolated populations of western toads, American spadefoot toads, Pacific tree frogs, and long-toed salamanders.
   A 2003–04 survey of the monument found 55 species of butterflies such as the common sootywing, orange sulphur, great spangled fritillary, and monarch. The monument's other insects have not been completely inventoried.
  The John Day River, which passes through the Sheep Rock Unit, is the longest undammed tributary of the Columbia River, although two Columbia River dams below the John Day River mouth impede migratory fish travel to some degree. Chinook salmon and steelhead pass through the monument on their way to and from upstream spawning beds and the Pacific Ocean. Species observed at the Sheep Rock Unit also include those able to tolerate warm summer river temperatures: bridgelip suckers, northern pikeminnow, redside shiners, and smallmouth bass. From October through June, when the water is cooler, Columbia River redband trout and sculpin are among species that move downriver through the park. The Park Service has removed or replaced irrigation diversions along the river or Rock Creek that formerly impeded fish movement, and it is restoring riparian vegetation such as black cottonwood trees that shade the water in summer and provide habitat for aquatic insects.
caption: The common nighthawk is one of more than 50 species of birds seen in the monument.
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