New York City Birding

Michelle and I went to New York for 3 days last week. We were pretty busy but we did get to spend about 9 hours birding in Central Park. It was incredible! If you have never birded Central Park before, you should definitely plan to do so. We saw dozen of species and about half a dozen Life List birds! We also were lucky enough to see Pale Male (the Red-Tailed Hawk) and then Zelda (the wild Turkey) in Battery Park.

Here are just some of the photos we took in no particular order. Let us know if you enjoy these! Have a great day and good birding!

A Blue Jay (a life lister for us).


Another Blue Jay posing for us! The fall colors were incredible.

A Common Yellowthroat in the middle of NYC. This photo was actually taken on our way to Central Park. This little bird was in a small shrubby area in a huge plaza.

Another Common Yellowthroat in Central Park. They were everywhere!

A beautiful male Cardinal! Another lifer for us!

Here is his gorgeous female counterpart. It was so cool to see these birds!

Another male Cardinal. Just stunning birds.

Another female Cardinal that let us get pretty close.

An Eastern Phoebe, yet another life lister!

A Golden-Crowned Kinglet grabbing some lunch.

A Hermit Thrush. These guys were everywhere, too.

And here he is...Pale Male! If you haven't heard about this most famous of Hawks, you should definitely read about him. It's a wonderful story!

A Peregrine Falcon flying over us while we were walking down 5th Ave. We saw a few Peregrines during our trip.

A Red-Breasted Nuthatch trying to find a place to hide his pine nut.

This is a terrible photo, but it's the only one we got of a juvenile Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker! A life lister for sure! This is the only one we saw during our excursion.

Here is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker. We saw a few of them and yet another added to our life list!

A row of House Sparrows on a fence in the park. We have never seen so many House Sparrows as we did in NYC.

A Red-Tailed Hawk sitting right above a woman who did not know it was there.

Another Red-Tailed Hawk in the park. We just thought this would make a great photo.

A juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk cleaning his beak after finishing off a squirrel.

Here is the same juvenile Red-Tailed sitting on top of the aforementioned squirrel.

He let us get pretty close. He wasn't going to let anyone take away his lunch!

Here he is in another tree. We guess when a bird lives in NYC it gets pretty used to people everywhere.

Another Golden-Crowned Kinglet eating some berries.

A Ruby-Crowned Kinglet showing his beautiful plumage.

Another Ruby-Crowned Kinglet in Central Park.

A flock of Ruddy Ducks and the skyline.

A Song Sparrow sitting pretty.

A Tufted Titmouse! A life lister that we were really hoping to find! Such cute little guys!

A White-Breasted Nuthatch digging for bugs. We rarely see them in Portland but they were all over Central Park.

A Winter Wren coming out of its hidey-hole.

Another Winter Wren just off one of the paths through the park.

And here is Zelda, the wild Turkey that lives in Battery Park. We hadn't heard of Zelda before our trip so you can imagine our surprise when we came across her!

A few photos

Sorry that we haven't been posting lately! We have been crazy busy with our suet company and our community organization. We are going to be gone all week, so we wanted to post a few photos before we went. We're traveling to New York City this week, so when we get back we will post some east coast birdies! Hope you enjoy!

Also Scott Lukens, the owner of the Backyard Bird Shop chain here in the NW, was on Garden Time TV this week and he mentioned NePo Suet! Thanks Scott! You can watch the short video here: http://www.youtube.com/v/QIt7tcKnaKk

One of our resident male Anna's Hummingbirds on his favorite feeder.


A Townsend's Warbler taking a quick bath.


A small flock of Bushtits bathing together!


A Brown Creeper in our Mountain Ash tree! This is a very rare visitor to the yard!



A Ruby-Crowned Kinglet taking a dip!

The first of season Spotted Towhee!

Exciting stuff!

We're not sure how many of you know, but we (Michelle and I) also run a community organization called We've Got Time to Help. We have gathered a (ever expanding) group of unemployed volunteers that go out into our various communities and help those in their time of need. We have done all sorts of projects from roofing, plumbing, moving, yard work, etc. etc.

For every unemployed/underemployed person in Oregon, there is a person that is in need but can't afford to hire someone or can't (for myriad reasons) help themselves. That's where we come in, or try to.

Yesterday, we got the shock of a lifetime! We were awarded with one of the Huffington Post's top 100 Game Changers for 2010! We couldn't, and still can't, believe it. It is such a wonderful honor and, we think, undeserved. Arianna Huffington also talks about our group in her new book, "Third World America". It has been an incredible last couple of days.

If you would like to see our story, please go here. You can also vote for us on this page.

Thanks for stopping by and a huge thank you to all of our volunteers! Without so many of you, we could not have helped so many!

Northern Pygmy Owl!

Yesterday, Michelle and I went out for our last training hike before climbing Mt. St. Helens next week. We chose to do the Elk Mountain/King's Mountain loop in the Tillamook National Forest. After we left the summit of Elk Mountain, about 500 feet down the trail towards King's Mountain, we came across a Northern Pygmy Owl just sitting on a tree stump! It was awesome to see and a Life List bird for us! Below are a couple of photos.

When we first was him (from about 100 yards away), we actually thought it was a Swainson's Thrush. But after walking a little closer, we could tell that it was an owl!


It was great to have him/her just sit there and pose for us. We rarely ever find owls, let a lone such a tiny little guy!

A few backyard photos

The yard has definitely been getting busier over the last few weeks. Most of our regulars are in and the food is going quickly! Here are some photos from the last week. Hope you enjoy!

A female Anna's Hummingbird making herself pretty.

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She lets us get pretty close to her.

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The Anna's and the Rufous both enjoy all the flowers coming up.

A juvenile White-Crowned Sparrow on our roof.

This juvie White-Crowned Sparrow seems to have been adopted by our resident Song Sparrows. The juvie follows them around and seems to be begging from them. The Song Sparrows don't seem to mind a bit.

Here is the White-Crowned Sparrow asking for some food from the Song.

A male and female American Goldfinch with a House Finch sitting between them.

A Red-Breasted Nuthatch enjoying some suet.

We haven't seen very many Black-Headed Grosbeaks this year, but this female Grosbeak visits almost everyday. Here she is grabbing a drink from the drip line.

Here she is grabbing some black-oil from underneath a feeder.

This photo was taken from our Birdcam. The Flicker has just recently started using the birdbath.

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