Portland Oregon Backyard Birds: Photos from the last week...

Hello to all the birders out there! Hope you are all having a great week so far. Here are some more photos from around the area. As always, we hope you enjoy them and thank you for sharing this journey with us!

We got this picture early in the morning less than a week ago. It is a baby Red-Shafted Flicker in the back yard! There is a family of 6 that now visits the yard everyday!! So exciting!

2 of the immature Flickers. They were chasing each other all over the yard and squawking! It was really fun to watch.

Here's one adult and one immature. Neither one of them wanted to leave the suet cage. They bantered back and forth for almost 5 minutes. Very cool!

A Flicker defending his suet against a pesky Starling. Good for him!!

Another one of the immature Flickers trying to not fall off of the suet feeder!

A male Red-Shafted Flicker hybrid!

A Black-Capped Chickadee on a drip line of one of the bird baths.

A resident female Anna's Hummingbird (center) using the Nasturtiums for nourishment!

An American Goldfinch and a small group of Lesser Goldfinches.

We went to Mt. Hood Community College over the weekend for the Scottish Highland Games. We had a great time eating, shopping, eating, watching the games and eating. We also birded while we were there and thank goodness we did! Here is an active Bushtit nest at the college, just off of the running track. Michelle spotted it! See the little head poking out?

Here's the same nest. Bushtits were going in and out at a frantic pace. Whenever an adult flew off we could hear the nest and the babies inside it!!

Here's a different nest that we spotted near the water. Also active and also full of fledglings!! There is a little head poking out of this nest, too!

There were a lot of Cedars Waxwings flying about and singing their pretty, high-pitched songs!

We just liked the photo. Gotta love the Cedars!

An immature Song Sparrow.

This Belted Kingfisher was all over the place. It wouldn't let us get very close (not that they ever do!) but it kept flying past us.

A Dark-Eyed Junco. There were quite a few of them at Mt. Hood C.C.

We don't normally post any photos other than birds but this dragonfly was so cool looking that we had to post it!

Here's another species of dragonfly. This one was pretty cool, too.

The ever-acrobatic Red-breasted Nuthatch.

We don't know what took this chunk out of this Cooper's Hawk but I'd say that they Cooper's got pretty lucky to still be flying!

2 Bushtits and a Chestnut-Backed Chickadee.

Here is a strange Starling that has been coming into the yard for a while now. He doesn't seem to have any neck feathers and his skin is very red. When I first spotted him I actually thought that it was some rare bird. I got very excited and flustered. But upon careful and further review, Michelle pointed out that he just doesn't have any feathers on his throat. Just thought that it was kind of weird.

If you look close enough, you will see Lesser Goldfinches (top left), a female Black-Headed Grosbeak (middle) and 2 House Finches (bottom). We just thought that 3 species in one photo was kinda neat!

We saw this little guy just sitting in the grass, right under the nest box that the House Sparrows use. He wasn't moving around but his papa kept flying down with food and feeding him. We decided that we needed to get him back up to his nest, so we went next door and borrowed a ladder (our wasn't tall enough) from our wonderful neighbors. We have 4 dogs that roam the yard and Lord knows what they would do if they found a little birdie sitting in the grass?!

We carefully picked him up, climbed up 20 ft (way too high if you ask me!!) with the ladder and tucked the little guy back in. His mom and dad were squawking big time, but they calmed down after we backed off.