New York City Birding

Michelle and I went to New York for 3 days last week. We were pretty busy but we did get to spend about 9 hours birding in Central Park. It was incredible! If you have never birded Central Park before, you should definitely plan to do so. We saw dozen of species and about half a dozen Life List birds! We also were lucky enough to see Pale Male (the Red-Tailed Hawk) and then Zelda (the wild Turkey) in Battery Park.

Here are just some of the photos we took in no particular order. Let us know if you enjoy these! Have a great day and good birding!

A Blue Jay (a life lister for us).


Another Blue Jay posing for us! The fall colors were incredible.

A Common Yellowthroat in the middle of NYC. This photo was actually taken on our way to Central Park. This little bird was in a small shrubby area in a huge plaza.

Another Common Yellowthroat in Central Park. They were everywhere!

A beautiful male Cardinal! Another lifer for us!

Here is his gorgeous female counterpart. It was so cool to see these birds!

Another male Cardinal. Just stunning birds.

Another female Cardinal that let us get pretty close.

An Eastern Phoebe, yet another life lister!

A Golden-Crowned Kinglet grabbing some lunch.

A Hermit Thrush. These guys were everywhere, too.

And here he is...Pale Male! If you haven't heard about this most famous of Hawks, you should definitely read about him. It's a wonderful story!

A Peregrine Falcon flying over us while we were walking down 5th Ave. We saw a few Peregrines during our trip.

A Red-Breasted Nuthatch trying to find a place to hide his pine nut.

This is a terrible photo, but it's the only one we got of a juvenile Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker! A life lister for sure! This is the only one we saw during our excursion.

Here is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker. We saw a few of them and yet another added to our life list!

A row of House Sparrows on a fence in the park. We have never seen so many House Sparrows as we did in NYC.

A Red-Tailed Hawk sitting right above a woman who did not know it was there.

Another Red-Tailed Hawk in the park. We just thought this would make a great photo.

A juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk cleaning his beak after finishing off a squirrel.

Here is the same juvenile Red-Tailed sitting on top of the aforementioned squirrel.

He let us get pretty close. He wasn't going to let anyone take away his lunch!

Here he is in another tree. We guess when a bird lives in NYC it gets pretty used to people everywhere.

Another Golden-Crowned Kinglet eating some berries.

A Ruby-Crowned Kinglet showing his beautiful plumage.

Another Ruby-Crowned Kinglet in Central Park.

A flock of Ruddy Ducks and the skyline.

A Song Sparrow sitting pretty.

A Tufted Titmouse! A life lister that we were really hoping to find! Such cute little guys!

A White-Breasted Nuthatch digging for bugs. We rarely see them in Portland but they were all over Central Park.

A Winter Wren coming out of its hidey-hole.

Another Winter Wren just off one of the paths through the park.

And here is Zelda, the wild Turkey that lives in Battery Park. We hadn't heard of Zelda before our trip so you can imagine our surprise when we came across her!

A few backyard photos

The yard has definitely been getting busier over the last few weeks. Most of our regulars are in and the food is going quickly! Here are some photos from the last week. Hope you enjoy!

A female Anna's Hummingbird making herself pretty.

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She lets us get pretty close to her.

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The Anna's and the Rufous both enjoy all the flowers coming up.

A juvenile White-Crowned Sparrow on our roof.

This juvie White-Crowned Sparrow seems to have been adopted by our resident Song Sparrows. The juvie follows them around and seems to be begging from them. The Song Sparrows don't seem to mind a bit.

Here is the White-Crowned Sparrow asking for some food from the Song.

A male and female American Goldfinch with a House Finch sitting between them.

A Red-Breasted Nuthatch enjoying some suet.

We haven't seen very many Black-Headed Grosbeaks this year, but this female Grosbeak visits almost everyday. Here she is grabbing a drink from the drip line.

Here she is grabbing some black-oil from underneath a feeder.

This photo was taken from our Birdcam. The Flicker has just recently started using the birdbath.

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Long time, no post

Sorry it took us so long to get a post up here. As some of you know, we are training to climb Mt. St. Helens in August. We spend almost all of our free time hiking and climbing or making suet for our company. We have hiked/climbed 5 mountains in the last 30 days. Most of the photos below are shots from our hikes, but to start things off, here are a couple from the yard.

We hope everyone is having a great summer and we will try to get posts up more frequently.

A fledgling Downy Woodpecker being taught where to eat by momma.


Shortly after this photo was taken, a Sharp-Shinned Hawk came through the yard and we suspect the mom was taken by him. We haven't seen her since, but the juvie still visits everyday.


A Towhee on the top of Angel's Rest in the Gorge.


A Swainson's Thrush on our way to the top of Nesmith Point.

A Cedar Waxwing the the top of Angel's Rest.

A Flicker at Powell Butte.

An Orange-Crowned Warbler on Angel's Rest.

A Red-Breasted Sapsucker feeding babies at Powell Butte. We found 3 different Sapsucker nests at Powell Butte.

A Violet-Green Swallow at the top of a very foggy Saddle Mountain.

Another VG Swallow let us get pretty close.

It's hard to see, but this is a White-Crowned Sparrow and a Violet-Green Swallow, also on Saddle Mountain.

Another, closer, White-Crowned Sparrow.

A Lazuli Bunting at Powell Butte.

A Dipper on the trail at Wahkeena Falls.

A Gray Jay on the trail to Nesmith Point.

A group of 4 Gray Jays. We saw six at this spot, at least 3 were fledglings.

A Hairy Woodpecker at the same spot as the Jays.

A Raven saying hello at Wahkeena Falls.