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.

Marine Drive walk

I went for a walk yesterday from 148th and NE Marine Drive down to 122nd, then from122nd to Glisan and then home. It was a great walk and I saw about 30 species. I did add one new bird to the Yearly list - a Common Loon! Here are some photos from the walk.

Also, on Wednesday night, Michelle and I saw 3 Killdeer just off of 106th and NE Halsey, in a parking lot of a restaurant. We didn't have the camera with us so I'm going to try to get some photos of them this weekend.

Here's the photos. Enjoy.


Song Sparrow


A Savannah Sparrow. They were all over Marine Drive!


Another Savannah

A Robin enjoying a nice, refreshing bath.

He was really going to town!

A Lesser Goldfinch. Michelle took this photo and I really like how the light is reflecting off the water. It reminds me of a dream sequence in a movie.

A Mallard skimming the water

A Brewer's Blackbird building her nest.

Here's the Common Loon. He kept diving for fish and he would stay under water for such a long time. One time he stayed under so long that I was actually worried for his safety. Geez!

One of our regular Chestnut-Backed Chickadees.

Here's a lone Bushtit. Once, in early winter we had a flock of about 75 Bushtits in the yard. Now, we are lucky to see 4 together. At least they are still coming in, though.

A Bewick's Wren singing away!