Been away for a while...

We apologize for not posting in the last few months. We will try to get a little better about posting regularly. Here are a few photos from the last few months with more to come soon. None of these are in particular order. Take care and good birding!

A Steller's Jay waiting for a handful of peanuts

                                         

A Song Sparrow taking a quick bath

A Bushtit getting ready to take off after grabbing
 some suet

Townsend's and Black-Throated Gray Warblers

3 Warblers bathing at one time! Orange-Crowned,
Black-Throated Gray and Townsend's!

Same 3 little guys

3 Black-Throated Gray Warblers at the same time!
This was a yard record for us. Normally, we
 only get one at a time.

This Orange-Crowned Warbler flew in through
 the garage, then through the kitchen and into the living
 room. He landed on a plant near the ceiling.
It took us a while to get him to fly back out.
This was 2 days after a
Steller's Jay did the same thing.

7 Band-Tailed Pigeons in our backyard. They
are frequent visitors to our yard.

This Band-Tailed Pigeon obviously thought he was a
House Finch. He kept trying, though.

A Wilson's Warbler on one of our hikes

A Hermit Warbler on the same hike

White-Crowned Sparrow on top of Saddle Mt

Evening Grosbeaks fighting over some seed. We think
 that is a House Sparrow in front of them

An Orange-Crowned Warbler in the yard
(not in the living room)

Evening Grosbeaks gathered for some dinner

A female Western Tanager grabbing some suet

Here she is again

We don't think the Evening Grosbeaks liked sharing,
 but no body seemed to want to speak up

A Band-Tailed Pigeon in flight

Evening Grosbeaks waiting for the bird bath

Another Evening Grosbeak

Evening Grosbeaks on the right and a solitary
 Black-Headed Grosbeak to the far left

A female Evening Grosbeak

One of our resident Anna's Hummingbirds in our
 front yard

It really likes the maple tree in the front of the house

Another Anna's eating from the Fringecup

A beautiful male Robin

A Yellow-Rumped warbler pretending to be a
 hummingbird

Yellow-Rumped Warbler grabbing some suet

Every spring we get Anna's Hummingbirds grabbing
bits of dryer lint for their nesting material

Savannah Sparrow Yard Bird!

For the first time ever, we have had a Savannah Sparrow in the backyard! We have seen it many times out in the field, but never in our own yard. It showed up last night and was back here bright and early this morning.

We also have the iBird app on our phones and when we play the Savannah Sparrow song, we get quite a few replies from a 1 or 2 block radius. Fun stuff!

The Savannah is in the middle surrounded by Juncos and White-Crowned Sparrows.

This was about as close as we could get without it flying off.

Hanging out in our Quince tree.

A few backyard photos

We finally had a sunny (read: not rainy) day here in Portland! WooHoo! It has been so wet and yucky lately that we haven't been getting many photos. So yesterday we decided to get a few. Nothing spectacular but fun to look at anyway. We hope you enjoy!

A Steller's Jay coming in for some of their favorite food!


A Scrub-Jay testing each peanut to make sure it measures up to his standards. If it doesn't, he puts it back and keeps looking until he finds just the right one. Sometimes they even bring a peanut back and exchange it for a better one.


Aha! I think we have a winner!


A Robin contemplating a bath.


The bath is a "GO", I repeat the bath is a "GO"!


A female Red-Breasted Nuthatch looking as pretty as ever.


The same Nuthatch deciding to grab a bite to eat.


A Pine Siskin trying to figure out how to crack a black-oil sunflower shell with it's tiny beak.


A Junco having an afternoon snack.


Another Junco looking for that perfect sunflower seed.


A Fox Sparrow singing away yesterday. There are two of them and this is the latest we have ever had them in the yard. Usually, they are here during the dead of winter and then they skedaddle. But this year, they have been hanging around and seem to be in courtship. We are hoping to see some baby Fox Sparrows in the near future!


A Flicker trying to decide what to eat next.


A female Downy Woodpecker grabbing some suet!


A male Downy doing the same thing on the same feeder.


Could Bushtits be any cuter?

Merlin and Flicker

Looking through our photos that we took of the Merlin in our neighborhood 2 days ago, we discovered that a Northern Flicker was flying by at one point. We thought it was kind of a cool photo.