Loye Holmes Miller, attached as a young ornithologist to a primarily fossil-collecting expedition to the John Day Basin in central Oregon in 1899, collected and recorded the birds he encountered at three sites. Two of the sites — Bridge Creek, 16 km northwest of Mitchell, Wheeler Co., and Blue Basin, 19 km north-northwest of Dayville, Grant Co. — were described in sufficient detail to allow them to be relocated. This paper compares the results of bird surveys conducted in 1983 at those two locations with the information provided in Miller’s accounts, to determine what changes in the avifauna might have occurred since 1899.