A week in the yard

Here are a few pics from our yard in the last 10 days or so. Hope you enjoy them and we hope everyone is having a wonderful Summer!

This is one of the resident Anna's Hummingbirds that we are lucky enough to host in the yard. She is pretty tame and sits for lots of photos.


We caught her doing this the other day and we have since seen it multiple times. She just sits there, and every once in a while, she would open her bill, and then snap it shut. Could she be flycatching? It wasn't hot, so I don't think she was panting. Any ideas?


Here she is doing it again. We have tried to find some info on it, but nothing so far has described what she's doing.


Such a gorgeous bird!

Here is a female Rufous Hummingbird. She flew to this feeder as I was standing next to it, photographing a Downy Woodpecker.

Here's the Downy on it's favorite suet feeder.

He also lets me get pretty close. Such cool looking birds.

Such a cute little face!

As I was photographing the Downy (above), this Cooper's swooped into the yard. The only bird to not get out of the yard was the Downy I was taking pics of. He stayed on the suet feeder, frozen stiff. Poor guy.

I backed away from the Downy so as not to scare him out of the tree and into the hawk's view. As I backed away, the Cooper's flew into the tree I was under and about 5 feet from the Downy. If you look close, you can see the Downy of the right side and in the middle is the Cooper's tail. Fortunately, the hawk flew off and the Downy lived to see another day.

2 of the many newly-fledged Scrub-Jays coming into the yard. Notice the all gray heads.

Another one of the fledglings. Very cute and fluffy.

Here is a newly-fledged Robin. There are young ones all over the yard. Jays, Robins, Sparrows, Chickadees, Cowbirds, Cooper's Hawks. It's a great time to be bird watching!

A Black-Capped Chickadee grabbing a snack.

Here are 8 abandoned (we think) Chickadee eggs. The nest box is on the side of the house and we watched them build it for weeks. Then, they just stopped coming to it. So we took it down, thinking we would just find an empty nest and this is what we found! So the box went immediately back up, but we still haven't seen the Chickadee pair going to it. Why would they abandon an entire nest?

Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge

Today, Michelle and I decided to go birding somewhere new. We have been all over the place, but we have never made it to Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge. The rain was coming down and the wind was howling, and that was before we even left the house. I don't know what possessed us to go out into the yucky weather, but we are sure glad we did! 54 identified species today! (Species list at bottom of post)

Not only was the weather perfect, but we saw 2 new Life List birds! The rain was coming down in sheets as we drove out to TRNWR and we were expecting it to be a pretty miserable day, weather wise. By the time we arrived at TRNWR, the sun was out and it was fairly warm. The wind blew all day but not so much that it wasn't enjoyable.

Then, after we left the refuge, we stopped at Vanport Wetlands. We were just in time to see a Bald Eagle hunting the area for some dinner. We saw quite a few types of waterfowl, too.

Then, on the way home, we took Marine Drive. There were quite a few waterfowl along the river and a lot of raptors on the land side, one of the raptors was a juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk (pics below). Overall, it was a great day birding and a great day spent together!

Hope you enjoy the photos!


Here is the sign in the main entrance to Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.


Here is just one of the countless gorgeous views at the refuge.


After searching the lower area, we hiked up to the Ridgetop Overlook. On the way back down the trail, we both spotted this Great Horned Owl coming in for a landing!


He was gorgeous. This was a Life List bird for us.

He sat there for about 5 minutes and then took off for parts unknown. But, not before we got about 40 photos of him.

A Western Bluebird. We saw quite a few of them on the trail just behind the Refuge Headquarters. Another Life List bird.

Another Western Bluebird.

And one more Bluebird for good measure.

On the way home, we took Marine Drive and found a ton of raptors. This juvenile (notice all the white) let us get so close. Exciting stuff!

One of the 4 bald Eagles we saw today. This guy has just a hint of color on the tail, so we assume that he is about as close to a full adult as possible.

One of the many groups of waterfowl we saw today. This group of Northern Pintails was at Vanport Wetlands.

The 54 species that we positively identified today:

Canada Goose

Cackling Goose

American Wigeon

Eurasian Wigeon

Mallard

Green-Winged Teal

Northern Shoveler

Northern Pintail

Greater Scaup

Bufflehead

Ruddy Duck

Cormorant

Blue Heron

Bald Eagle

Northern Harrier

Red-Tailed Hawk

Kestrel

Coot

Killdeer

Mew Gull

Herring Gull

Thayer's Gull

Rock Dove

Great-Horned Owl

Anna's Hummingbird

Downy Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Steller's Jay

Scrub-Jay

Crow

Tree Swallow

Black-Capped Chickadee

Chestnut-Backed Chickadee

Bushtit

Red-Breasted Nuthatch

Brown Creeper

Bewick's Wren

Western Bluebird

Robin

Starling

Yellow-Rumped Warbler (both Audubon's and Myrtle)

Townsend's Warbler

Spotted Towhee

Song Sparrow

White-Crowned Sparrow

Golden-Crowned Sparrow

Junco

Red-Winged Blackbird

Brewer's Blackbird

House Finch

Pine Siskin

Lesser Goldfinch

American Goldfinch

House Sparrow

Sharp-Shinned showing off

After a particularly nasty rain storm a couple of days ago, we started seeing a lot of the Sharp-Shinned Hawk again. She probably came through the yard at least 8 times that day. But, while she was here, she was showing off like we have never seen.

We assume that she was trying to dry out a little, but as soon as she landed, she had her wing and tail feathers spread completely out. It was great to see and fun to photograph. Enjoy!


Here she sits in one of our apple trees, right above a very busy feeder.


It wasn't so busy after her arrival.


Then, she flew up into the walnut tree and spread all of her feathers out.


She continued to scan the yard, but seemed more content just to sit and sun herself a little.

More Sharpies

Well, the trend continues. After mulling it over, talking with fellow birders and speaking with the Cornell Lab, we have decided to leave the feeders up. It was a tough decision, but I think the right one.

So, our yard is now an airport for RaptorAir. We really do enjoy watching the hawks and they don't have a high success rate. Studying their behavior is extremely interesting. We still get quite a few birds in the yard, just not quite in such high numbers.

Here are some more photos of the hawks and one of a Northern Flicker as he was escaping said hawks. Hope you enjoy.




The Flicker is extremely fast and agile when the presence of a hawk is detected.


The Sharp-Shinned Hawks just lets us walk all around the yard and watch them.


Here is one of their favorite watch-points. Can you see him?


Here is another good vantage point for the hawk. This shepherds hook is right in the middle of the yard so the Sharpies (this one is a juvenile) can see everything. They can even watch squirrels try to climb the hook while they are sitting on it.


The squirrels seem to know that the Sharpie doesn't want them. This squirrel sniffed around for 5 minutes, waiting for the hawk to fly off. As soon as the hawk was gone, the squirrel climbed right up and started eating. The hawks will fly from feeder to feeder trying to flush someone out into the open.


Sitting on a platform feeder...

or above a thistle feeder... you get the idea.

Right after I took this photo, the Sharpie (another juvenile) shot off the fence for a bathing Pine Siskin. The Siskin was too agile for him, though, and got away!

Yesterday's photos

Here are a few pictures from yesterday's yard activities!


Here is a Cooper's Hawk that landed in the yard a few times before succeeding in capturing a song bird (didn't see what species). I hate to see that kind of thing but the Hawk has to eat, too.


They really are gorgeous birds!


He couldn't seem to make up his mind on where to fly next.

A Red-Breasted Nuthatch. They just recently started coming back into the yard on a daily basis. These are one of my favorite backyard birds!

Very tame little guys, too! There were 3 of them hopping around our Mountain Ash tree all day.

One of the local Scrub Jays helping himself to some lunch. They have already started to bury their food already. Maybe we are in for an early winter??

Some Lesser Goldfinches just gathered around the water cooler.

I know it's almost impossible to tell, but this Black-Capped Chickadee is actually bathing in the Parasol. They use it to drink out of all the time but this was the first time we saw it used as a bath. How fun!

Hike down Marine Drive

Hi all. We need your birding expertise again. I took a hike down Marine Drive this morning, from NE 122nd to NE 33rd, and took a ton of photos and saw a lot of birds. However, I found 3 birds today (photos below) that we can't identify. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

Tomorrow, I will post more photos from today's trip and talk a little about the hike.



There were three of these blackbirds with white under their wings. They were about the size of a crow but didn't make the typical crow calls. Any ideas?

When I took these photos, I thought that this was a Red-Tailed hawk. After getting home and reviewing them, we realized that it didn't have the coloring of any other Red-Tails we have encountered. After reading multiple books we seem to be more confused than ever. Is this some kind of morph?

Here he is again. After I took this photo I thought that identifying it would be a snap. Obviously I was wrong.

This little guy was right above the water line. He was approx. 6 inches and had a lot of yellow on him. He acted sparrow-like. He didn't make any noise or calls so the photos are all I really have.

After I took this photo, he hopped down to a big rock and went under it. I waited for it to come back out again but it didn't. Or, if it did, it snuck past me.