Well yesterday, after attending the Wild Arts Festival, Michelle and I decided to drive out to Commonwealth Lake Park out by her office in Beaverton. We were not expecting to see too much but we were pleasantly surprised when we got there. We saw quite a few species and got a new Life List Bird (we had not yet IDed the Ring-Billed Gull)!
We stayed for about an hour and had a great time. Here are a few of the photos form our visit. Thanks for stopping by!
Here's your sign! I could tell you how to get there but I promise that I would get you lost. It's not hard to find, I just suck at giving directions. That is why God invented Google Maps!
A non-breeding Pied-Billed Grebe. He was the only one of his kind that we saw. They are neat little birds, though.
An American Coot. We saw quite a few of them and this one was nice enough to pose for the camera. I nominate the Coot's feet for the "Weirdest Foot Award".
From across the lake we spotted this sleeping Blue Heron. So, after we got around to the other side, I crawled through the trees and mud to see if I could get a little closer to him.
I finally found him after a little search. He wasn't sleeping anymore.
He kept his gorgeous yellow eyes on me the entire time. I couldn't get any clear shot of him so I had to put the camera on manual focus to try and get him. It kind of worked.
This is a female Common Merganser. She was swimming around with 5 other females but no males.
We eventually saw the male Common Merganser down at the other end of the lake. There were 5 males. Kind of funny that they were split up by sexes.
Here is the newest addition to our Life List. A Ring-Billed Gull!
This is a Herring Gull. It took us a while to ID him but one of the photos we took, shows that he actually has a light eye, but this photo makes it look dark.
A male Bufflehead. Like the Pied-Billed Grebe, he was the only one of his kind that we found.
This is a domestic duck. Obviously some type of Mallard. I don't normally photograph the domestic ones, but he was just too pretty not to take a picture of.
An American Wigeon. There was well over 100 of them at the lake. There were 4 separate flocks of them with up to 50 birds in each flock. Such gorgeous waterfowl!
One of the smaller flocks of Wigeons. What a beautiful day it was!
4 comments:
You had a really good day birding!
What a great selection of water birds! You really had a good day there and got some great photos. Don't you love adding new birds to your life list??
So that's where all our birds have gone for the winter. All of these species familiar sights around our province in the spring and summer. All except the coot, tho some have seem it, it is kind of a rare species for our area. Congratulations of the life bird Ring-billed. They are most common around here along with the Herring Gull.
Beautiful website and thanks for posting all those photos! I found you accidentally on the NEXT BLOG feature. We will have to find that park location. What street is near it?
Check out my "Bloggers in Beaverton" web posts this holiday season!
Here is the link.
I also review movies for www.kgw.com and have two grandchildren in Montclair Elementary School.
Cordially,
Ellen Kimball
Beaverton, Oregon
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