Little Blue Heron!!

We went for a quick trip tonight to Smith and Bybee Lakes in search of the juvenile Little Blue Heron that has been reported there over the last couple of days. With the help of some fellow birders we met on the lake, we were able to locate the Heron and they even let us use their spotting scope. What a wonderful find! Here are a couple of really bad photos of the Heron.



If you look in the upper middle section of the photo, you can see what looks to be a very small Egret. That is the Little Blue Heron!


Here is a a very blown up photo of him.


Here's a photo of one portion of the lake. There were tons of birds there!

The bird on the left is a fledgling American Coot. The bird on the right is something that we haven't identified as of yet.

Here is a photo of (what I'm sure is) a Grebe of some kind. Again, don't know what type.

Here's just 2 of the dozens and dozens of Great Egrets on the lake.

Great Egrets with a lone Blue Heron.

More Great Egrets

Here's a photo of a Red-Tail Hawk on the way home. We were cruising down Marine Drive and had just a split second to photograph him. I figured all of the other picture from today are pretty bad, so why not this one too!

The next set of photos are of birds unknown....

hmmmmmm

Notice the white "eye ring"? Not a clue. I looked all over to try to ID this one and couldn't find anything that fit.

Don't have the slightest idea

I thought I could ID these two in the foreground of the picture because of the white near the bill. Again, I couldn't find anything that looked right.

The bird in the middle of the log seems very odd to me. He has an oddly shaped and colored bill and his legs are a bright yellow instead of the regular orange of a Mallard. The bird on the right side of the log also seems to have strange markings.

I couldn't find any info on a duck with facial markings like the one in the top of the photo has.

This one is probably stupidity on my part but I can't figure out which ducks have the purple and white markings on their wings (like the guy on the right).

I thought these were Mallards flying over me when I snapped the photo. After I downloaded them I realized that they weren't.

This photo just seemed to have a lot of different species in it. I just thought that I would post it and see if anyone can recognize any of the birds.

What is this little guy?

This little guy flew into the yard early this evening and from the moment we saw him, we felt that something was different. Who knows? Maybe we're crazy. Alas. The life of a birder.

Tualatin Hills and misc. photos

I went to Tualatin Hills Nature park yesterday and walked around for a couple of hours. Still chasing the ever elusive Pileated Woodpecker. Didn't find him. I really didn't see a whole lot. It was pretty yucky, drab weather but still a overall good day (what day isn't good when you are birding?). I did manage to get one photo of a bird that we can't identify. The picture is below.

So, here are some photos from yesterday and a few others thrown in.

I should note that we (Michelle and I) haven't quite moved into the 21st Century yet. We still have dial-up. We (hopefully) will be getting cable or DSL in the near future, but for now, it's only dial-up. The reason for me telling you this is so that you realize that we have to shrink these photos big time so that they can actually upload to the blog. As it is, it still takes forever. If we didn't, the process would time out and we would never be able to post pics. So, if there is ever a photo that you want to see the original of (i.e. for identification purposes) just let us know and we will send it via email instead. We realize that the detail is lost when we post to the blog.

Thanks for stopping by! Good Birding.



A female Red-Winged Blackbird. Most photos in birding books don't do them justice.


A Robin with some nesting material in her beak.



A White-Crowned Sparrow. I saw more of these guys than I ever have before.



Here is the unidentified bird I was talking about. It was a smaller one (5-7) inches. I had no point of reference, so I'm not exactly sure. It wasn't making any calls. I was there and then it was gone. It was in a marshy area just outside of Tualatin Hills Nature Park.



Tree Swallows getting ready to nest. There was a flock of at least 30 of them, just outside of the park, after the Beaverton Creek bridge.


Here's another shot of them.




An Osprey just relaxing of of Marine Drive.

The are such awesome birds!

A Female Mallard that swooped down right in front of me. It was pure luck that I got this photo.

Another one let me get really close. Pretty tame around there.

This is, I'm assuming her mate. The were sitting together.


Here is a nest that Michelle found right outside of her workplace, not but 2 feet from a parking space for the building. If you look close, you can see one egg in the center of the photo and another one near the top, also in the center. They weren't happy about me looking at it so I took one photo and got away quickly.

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.

What is this bird?

We need your help, fellow birders. Michelle took this photo today during a short hike through Mt. Tabor. She estimated that it was about 5-6 inches, but it was hard to tell because it was way up in the top of a tree. She said that it sang continuously atop his perch but she heard no other bird responding. So, here are the photos. Thanks for your help.







Good birding!