Tualatin Hills and misc. photos

I went to Tualatin Hills Nature park yesterday and walked around for a couple of hours. Still chasing the ever elusive Pileated Woodpecker. Didn't find him. I really didn't see a whole lot. It was pretty yucky, drab weather but still a overall good day (what day isn't good when you are birding?). I did manage to get one photo of a bird that we can't identify. The picture is below.

So, here are some photos from yesterday and a few others thrown in.

I should note that we (Michelle and I) haven't quite moved into the 21st Century yet. We still have dial-up. We (hopefully) will be getting cable or DSL in the near future, but for now, it's only dial-up. The reason for me telling you this is so that you realize that we have to shrink these photos big time so that they can actually upload to the blog. As it is, it still takes forever. If we didn't, the process would time out and we would never be able to post pics. So, if there is ever a photo that you want to see the original of (i.e. for identification purposes) just let us know and we will send it via email instead. We realize that the detail is lost when we post to the blog.

Thanks for stopping by! Good Birding.



A female Red-Winged Blackbird. Most photos in birding books don't do them justice.


A Robin with some nesting material in her beak.



A White-Crowned Sparrow. I saw more of these guys than I ever have before.



Here is the unidentified bird I was talking about. It was a smaller one (5-7) inches. I had no point of reference, so I'm not exactly sure. It wasn't making any calls. I was there and then it was gone. It was in a marshy area just outside of Tualatin Hills Nature Park.



Tree Swallows getting ready to nest. There was a flock of at least 30 of them, just outside of the park, after the Beaverton Creek bridge.


Here's another shot of them.




An Osprey just relaxing of of Marine Drive.

The are such awesome birds!

A Female Mallard that swooped down right in front of me. It was pure luck that I got this photo.

Another one let me get really close. Pretty tame around there.

This is, I'm assuming her mate. The were sitting together.


Here is a nest that Michelle found right outside of her workplace, not but 2 feet from a parking space for the building. If you look close, you can see one egg in the center of the photo and another one near the top, also in the center. They weren't happy about me looking at it so I took one photo and got away quickly.