It's been too long...

Good morning to all! Sorry that we have not been up on the proverbial ball lately! We have been super busy with getting our suet company, NePo Suet, going and we haven't been birding nearly as much as we would have liked to (but isn't that always the case?).

So, without further ado, here are some bird photos and we hope to be a little better about posting in the future!

Female Anna's Hummingbird


Yellow-Rumped Warbler grabbing some suet.


We have seen the Spotted Towhee in our backyard quite a bit this winter!


The Sharp-Shinned Hawks are still regular visitors.

An Orange Variant House Finch.

A Red-Shafted Flicker having lunch with us!

An Orange-Crowned Warbler snooping around the backyard.

The Red-Breasted Nuthatches seem to be in smaller numbers this year (at least for us).

A beautiful male Lesser Goldfinch.

A Chestnut-Backed Chickadee hanging out on a sunny day!

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?

Snow...Round 2

Well, it snowed again here in Portland. About 2 inches fell last night, and boy, did it bring the birds in! We woke up this morning to a yard overflowing with birdies. The Lincoln's Sparrow was back (he hasn't been here since the last snow) and the Warblers were back in force. It's over half melted now but it was sure pretty while it lasted. Here are some photos from the yard. Hope you enjoy.

For the last week or so, we have only been seeing about 5-10 Juncos in the yard. Today, we easily had 40. We just need to snow to come in and fill the yard back up.


2 of the 5 or 6 Yellow-Rumped Warblers that are in the yard full time.


A Ruby-Crowned Kinglet was nice enough to pose for a close-up.


We are now getting 4-5 Townsend's Warblers in the yard during the day, too.


Such gorgeous birds.


The Yellow-Rumped Warblers feed more on the ground than they do on the suet.


The House Finches seem to be getting their breeding plumage.


A Chestnut-Backed Chickadee and a Red-Breasted Nuthatch sharing some suet.


We have been seeing more of the Bushtits recently. They weren't coming around very much in the last month or so.


This morning, there were dozens and dozens of Pine Siskins and Lesser and American Goldfinches on the thistle feeders. I know the thistle sacks look dirty, but I assure you that they are washed regularly.


A Song Sparrow, 2 House Sparrows, Golden-Crowned Sparrow and a White-Crowned Sparrow.


This morning, Michelle heard a loud crash against our living room window. A Pine Siskin had struck the window pretty hard. When I went out to get him, we were both sure that he wasn't going to make it. He was on his side and his legs looked mangled. We picked him up, put him in a box and gave him some food and water. After about 20 minutes, I opened the box to see if he was still alive and, WHOOSH, he flew out of it and into the garage. It took us about 10 minutes to catch him and release him in the backyard. He flew off and seemed to be completely recovered.


A Towhee, Golden-Crowned Sparrow and a House Sparrow.


As we were in the office watching birds through the window, we heard another crash against the window, but this time, the crash came from the inside. Apparently, our cat Gem didn't like the idea of a squirrel on our window ledge. So she threw herself against the window got tangled in the blinds and made one heck of a racket while doing it.


Then, one of our dogs, Black Top, got in on the action. At first, he didn't seem to know what it was or what to do.

Then, he threw himself against the window. The squirrel shot of the ledge and ran into a nearby tree, thankful to have made it out alive!