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Category Archives: birds

Early Morning Birdwalk

I was up early and out on the wet hillside this morning, hoping to hear birds and try to figure out which ones were singing. It was a glorious morning after all the rain we’ve had this week. Rubber boots were the fashion statement of the morning. I meant to take the big camera but, somehow managed to leave it behind so once again, Instagram to the rescue. Really, I mean to get serious about photography again. Soon. Really.

 

That’s our nicest pine tree

 

The ground is starting to heal nicely after the April 17th brush fire

 

Sunrise!

 

I think these are Douglas sunflowers

 

I don’t think the pines down in the draw are going to survive

 

Here’s something new

 

Lots of chokecherry blossoms this year

 

Target practice?

 And birds. Here is the list of birds I was able to identify by sight or sound:

California Quail

Dusky Grouse

Red-tailed Hawk

Mourning Dove

Rufous Hummingbird

Calliope Hummingbird

Northern Flicker

Western Wood-Pewee

Willow Flycatcher

Say’s Phoebe

Warbling Vireo

Red-eyed Vireo

Common Raven

Tree Swallow

Violet-green Swallow

Black-capped Chickadee

Mountain Chickadee

House Wren

Western Bluebird

Mountain Bluebird

American Robin

Gray Catbird

Orange-crowned Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Spotted Towhee

Western Tanager

Black-headed Grosbeak

Brewer’s Blackbird

Brown-headed Cowbird

Cassin’s Finch

Pine Siskin

Black-headed Grosbeak

My desk is in a loft office on the second floor of our house. There is a window directly over the garden and when I am sitting here I have views of the hillside and a ponderosa pine. The other day, while diligently working on wedding photos from last weekend, I heard the fluttering sound of wings against the glass. I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anything and the sound was gone. It repeated a few seconds later. Curious, I walked over to the window and looking down, I saw a Black-headed Grosbeak perched on top of the garden fence.

I backed away from the window while keeping my eyes on it and soon the bird returned and clinging to the siding it looked in the window and then over at a round decorative piece covered with lavender beads.


The bird flew/hopped to the other side of the window and again fluttered at it as if to beat it senseless with its wings?

 

This behaviour happened several times over the next half hour or so. There’s no ledge so the bird could only hold on to the position for a few seconds at a time.

 

 

 

And then the bird left. The grosbeak must have felt that it had subdued the lavender beads and they were no longer a threat to him. I have seen territorial birds attack windows and mirrors when they see their reflections and perceive them as another bird in their territory but for some reason, this bird was obsessing on the purple beads. What’s up with that?

 

White Bird Pond

After two and a half weeks on the road, we are back at home in the Methow Valley. Here, a warm day is sixty degrees and wildflowers are beginning to bloom and the snow is gone. The trip to the southeast was quite an adventure taking us, mostly me, to new places and climates; seeing new birds and other wildlife.

All of these images came from one small pond at the Six Mile Cypress Preserve near Fort Meyers. It has been a dry winter and spring in Florida so birds are concentrated in some locations. This pond was maybe fifty yards across and when we arrived there were at least 70 white birds and one Great Blue Heron. The white birds were White Ibis, Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets and Wood Storks.

 

Lots of end of the day grooming

 

 

 

Spanish moss makes for an especially pretty stick. It might even attract a mate.

 

 

I wonder if she will like me if I bring her a stick?

 

Yup, still gorgeous.

 

Every feather in its place

 

 

This one took grooming lessons from a dog I think.

 

 

 

These Wood Storks in the trees above us were very restless, constantly moving about. The two are engaged in active noisy bill clacking at each other. I don’t know if that means they like each other or they don’t like each other.

 

 

 

 

Spring Cleaning

Spring is the time to clean out the nest boxes around here. We enjoy the birds year ’round and especially like to have secure places for them to nest and raise their young before moving on. Violet-green Swallows and Tree Swallows, Mountain and Western Bluebirds are all nesting birds we like to encourage. Unfortunately we have learned that the diminutive House Wrens will wreak havoc on other nesting birds, especially the swallows. The tiny wrens will fill a box with sticks, even if there is already another nest present and they’ve been know to attack and kill the bigger swallows. It’s a tough world out there.

 

Fence post yard art

 

Pulling out an old swallow nest

 

The Mountain Chickadees followed us and kept up a running dialogue on our efforts

 

Ken points to a tiny skeleton of a baby bird that did not fledge

 

Here is a beautiful swallow nest lined with soft feathers. The adults collect these feathers to provide a cushy setting for the eggs and babies.

 

There’s one of those chickadees. They do not use our nest boxes for nesting although they do use them for winter night roosts.

 

 

 More yard art, this time in the snow

 

This tiny chickadee must have been sick and died over the winter in one of the boxes.

 

Snowy Owls

This year there has been a major irruption of Snowy Owls throughout the NW and other parts of the country. These bright white owls nest up in the far north and most years a few of them show up in Washington in the winter and occasionally lots of them migrate south. There are different theories as to why some years so many stray so far from their traditional wintering grounds – lack of food, overly bad weather, a succesful breeding season producing too many owls for the available food and so on and so forth. Whatever the reason, it is always a treat to get out in the field and see them.

Four of us drove more than 100 miles through Okanogan and Douglas Counties searching for them and we were fortunate to find two just before the cloud cover lowered nearly to the ground. This was the closer one and really, it wasn’t very close for my meager camera equipment. There are lots more Snowy Owl images out there of far better quality than mine. For me, it’s more about seeing the bird and being graced by its presence.

In addition to two Snowy Owls, we also saw a large flock of Snow Buntings, a Gyrfalcon, sevearl flocks of Horned Larks, numerous Rough-legged Hawks, a Merlin, quite a few American Kestrels and lots of waterfowl on the Columbia, Methow and Okanogan Rivers, including Trumpeter Swans and a pair of Eurasian Wigeons. It was a good day of birding.

 

 

As we watched, this bird spent much of the time preening

 

I like this image because it shows the big feather-covered foot

 

 

If you are interested in searching for Snowy Owls, here is a map showing reported sightings around the country.