New Product!

Most of you know, we (Seth and Michelle) own and operate NePo Suet Company here in Portland, OR. We just wanted to let everyone know that we have a new product available starting today! NePo Cricket Cakes! The cases will be regularly priced at $75 per case (12 cakes), but for the month of October we will be offering them for only $55 plus free shipping to anywhere in the U.S.!

These suet cakes are packed full of dried crickets and made with the same quality, love, and care that you have come to expect from NePo Suet!

We will only be offering 20 cases for the month of October, so remember to order quickly.

Dried crickets are almost a perfect food for wild birds. They are more nutritious than just about any other feeder insect. We have been testing these in the backyard for a month now, and the birds absolutely 

love them! 

NePo Suet Company

Please check out our newest blog at http://neposuet.blogspot.com/

Our small little suet company has started to grow! We decided it was time to create a blog about our suet. Please have a look and pick yourself up a few of the best suet cakes on the market.

Take care and good birding!

More photos from the yard

Here are a few photos from the last week or so. The Band-Tailed Pigeons are still hanging around. The most we counted at one time was 7! It was awesome to see so many at once.

The American Goldfinches are slowly starting to return, but they have lost most of their summer colors and are now the more muted yellows. They will winter with us by the hundreds.

Of note, this last week we saw, not only the Common Nighthawk (see post below this one) but a Pacific-Slope Flycatcher also stopped by! That's only the second Flycatcher we have ever had in the yard.

So, without further adieu, here are a few pics...

We have really enjoyed playing host to these Band-tailed Pigeons.


They are great fun to have around.


They are usually resting atop this telephone pole/wire in the mornings. This pole, strangely enough, is actually in our backyard. Here you can see 5 of them.


Here are four of them in one of our homemade fly-thrus.

One of the more colorful American Goldfinches stopping in for a quick drink. Once they get their bright yellow summer colors we usually don't see them again until the start of fall when their colors are a little more drab.

A female Bushtit. They are coming in the yard 20 or 30 times a day now.

A Lesser Goldfinch snacking on a sunflower leaf.

The Lessers decimate our sunflowers leaves during the summer. They seem to enjoy the leaves as much as they do nyjer seed.

A very friendly House Finch taking a sip.

What a treat!

Well, on our last post, Michelle and I were treated to a rare sight for us, an Anna's and Rufous Hummingbird on the same feeder. We have seen dozens of photos of multiple Hummingbirds at a single feeder, but it just doesn't happen in our yard.

Then, just one day after the Anna's and Rufous, we were treated again, but this time, it was 2 male Rufous Hummingbirds! It was amazing to watch them. The was some aggression but not enough to make either one fly away. This encounter lasted about 2 minutes and we took about 100 photos. It was awesome!

Here are those photos and some of our other visitors. Good birding!


It was so awesome to see these 2 male Rufous at the same feeder!


They were talking turns for most of the time. One would fly up and the other then would fly down.


I'm surprised that any of the photos turned out, as I was shaking as I snapped them!


Yea! I'm singing some show tunes!

A Scrub-Jay grabbing some suet.

A very pretty Pine Siskin.

This little guy just looked picturesque.

One of our resident Song Sparrows is a little suet hog!

This week in photos

We hope everyone had a great week! We were really busy with our community organization, We've Got Time to Help, so we didn't have a chance to post until now.

It has been a busy yard, too. We have been filling up the feeders just about everyday and going through about 8-12 suet cakes a day. We love it, and with the sun coming back for a few days, maybe we will get some Springtime visitors.

Here's wishing everyone good birding and a great weekend! Enjoy that sunshine!


A female Northern Flicker at her favorite feeder.


a female Downy Woodpecker taking some suet.


The brightest American Goldfinch that we have seen this year. He would not sit still or let me get close to get a good photo.


A hungry group of House Finches.


A Junco with a weird shoulder patch.


A Steller's Jay taking some suet.


A Chestnut-Backed Chickadee and a Townsend's Warbler grabbing some tasty suet.


A male Rufous and female Anna's hummingbird!! This was the first time we have ever had 2 species of Hummingbird at the same feeder. It's even rare for the same species to share a feeder in our yard.


It was so cool! It took us a while to realize that this is not the same male Rufous that we have been seeing. This one had different markings and he was not aggressive at all. There is a male Rufous that seems to have "claimed" the yard and he has no compunction about chasing any bird out of it. But this male below, wasn't chasing anyone off and even seemed a little intimidated by the female Anna's. There are a couple of other "oddities" about this specific Rufous at the end of the post.


A female Anna's


A female Rufous


A male Anna's


A male Rufous (look close and you can see his little tongue).


Here are a few photos that we found odd. Notice the green patch on the top of the Rufous' head? We have not seen this before and it's not on the other male(s) that come into our yard.


Also, notice the tail feathers. There seems to be no markings or coloration on it at all. I have looked through dozens of photos of different Rufous Hummingbirds and they all seem to show markings/coloration on the tips of the tail.


Here's a closer look at the tail. Is this normal?

Salish Ponds

This Sunday evening, Michelle and I decided to run up to Salish Ponds in Gresham to see if the Osprey that nest nearby were back for the Summer. No such luck, but Salish Ponds are always nice and it's a great little hike around them. Sometimes, the birding is great, other times, not so much. This time wasn't too bad. We didn't see many songbirds but there was a lot of waterfowl out and about.

Here's how the city describes the ponds "Located between Halsey and Glisan streets at the site of an old rock quarry, the 70-acre Salish Ponds Wetlands Park opened in October 1999 and is Fairview's largest city park.
Visitors can see hawks, geese, ducks, rabbits, coyotes and other wildlife. The Salish Ponds Trail connects to the Reynolds Middle School Campus and the Gresham-Fairview Regional Trail to the west. TriMet bus 77 serves Salish Ponds Wetlands Park. Get off at 207th Avenue and walk south two blocks to the Salish Ponds Trailhead."

You can actually see quite a few more birds than they list, if you go at the right time. Anyway, here are a few photos from our walk. Good birding!

This was a nice surprise, there are still some Ring-Necked (we still think they should be called Ring-Billed, but that's our opinion) Ducks hanging around. Usually, they are gone by late March, early April.


This is a photo of 2 silhouetted Robins. We really like how this one turned out.

There was a lot of Mourning Dove activity at the ponds. Here is just one of the many we saw.

Here is a pair of Mourning Doves in a distant tree.

Canvasbacks are also usually gone by now. Everything seems to be a little off schedule this year. We have our assumptions that it was that nasty winter we had.

A female American Wigeon. There was also a single male swimming around.

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I could resist throwing a photo of the female Rufous Hummingbird in the mix. Can you blame me?

Suet for sale

Please see our new website at: http://neposuet.com

Thanks!