Birds of Oregon

Bird-watching activity ground to a temporary halt as I headed west for the holidays...I am now in Bend, Oregon, at my sister's farm, which includes a horse, five goats, eight hens, three cats, and two dogs.  And also my 12-year-old nephew.  And apparently some type of small brown bird!  I know I should know what this is, but I am woefully ignorant.  Ah well, all the more discoveries to make!



En route to Bend, I spent a few days in Portland, visiting friends (including Deanna and Wilfried, from my Chile/Argentina trip) and also the Audubon store.  There I purchased these:

New binoculars!!!  Unfortunately, I didn't have them with me when I saw the bird apartment house above.  I think I'll just strap them around my neck permanently, to be ready for the next time.  :-)

Chickadees!

Today is a bit calmer, though it is still snowing lightly.  About twenty mallards moved through this morning, and some mergansers could be seen fishing a bit further out.  A few crows have been flying by from time to time.  No sign of the gulls.

We do have some new activity at the feeder, however.  Confirmed: tufted titmouse.  In fact, there were three of them perched simultaneously at the feeder!  Here's one of them:


The nuthatch also returned, scooting down the bottom-side of the branch and then pecking around on the top.  Here he is in the tree:


and at the feeder:

And then there was a new bird!  Smaller than the titmouse and with a tiny little bill.  I looked it up and there it was: black-capped chickadee.  "Usually the first to find a new feeder," it said in Birds of Michigan.  Well, not the first, but pretty close!  And now it's the chickadee that is tough to get a picture of.  Will have to wait for next time.

So my stack of reference books now looks like this:

The one on the top is the most useful at the moment, and is organized by color.  That is, if you see a black and white bird, you just turn to the black and white section and leaf through until you find the bird you're looking for.  They start small and get bigger, so the first bird is the black-and-white warbler, measuring in at 5 inches, and the last is the bald eagle at 31-37 inches with a seven-foot wing span.  I am finding this organizational system very handy.

As you can see, there are a lot of brown birds; hence the moniker "LBJ," I suppose.  None of them have shown up at the feeder these past few days, so I have yet to venture into this section.  When they come, though, I will be ready!

It's Hard to Take a Picture of a Nuthatch

New birds at the feeder!  One was easy to identify, even for a beginner like me: a cardinal!  So lovely.  The other was gray and white and small.  I saw him heading down the underside of a nearby tree, head downward.  From time to time, he looked up toward the feeder, maybe waiting for the cardinal to leave? He flitted over there but I could never get the camera on him in time to take a picture, even though I stood with the door cracked open and camera ready, freezing as the icy bay wind blustered through the crack.  Just as I gave up, of course, there he was.

Here is the cardinal, in any case (he was more obliging):


So I'm actually not sure I didn't see two little gray birds: the white-breasted nuthatch and the tufted titmouse.  I know these don't look anything like one another, but I think I saw both at different times.  I will have to pay more attention to the beak next time.

Post-Blizzard

We don't have any wave action here; no tides pulling the water to and fro, so when you see waves on the bay, that means only one thing: wind.  And boy did we (and do we) have waves on the bay.  The blizzard is over, but the wind continues.  The sun peeked out for a moment yesterday, and I snapped this picture:

What you don't see in the picture is the frenzy of bird activity that was occurring everywhere.  Gulls were soaring and diving, mallards were bobbing and swimming among the waves, busily feeding, mergansers (I have learned this is spelled with an "s," not a "z") were offshore diving (I would have totally missed these without the binoculars), and crows were pecking along the shoreline rocks.  The storm must have brought in some fish and other goodies.

Along with this bonanza, we provided our own by refilling the bird feeder, which had fallen uncharacteristically empty while I was on my trip.  As a direct result of this, I saw my first non-shoreline birds (besides the crows) yesterday!  A blue jay and a red-bellied woodpecker.  I was quite excited about the red-bellied woodpecker, first because it is beautiful, and second because I managed to identify it with my bird books, having not seen one before.  I had an idea it was a woodpecker because it was clinging to the side of the tree when I first saw it, and it had a strong, pointy beak.  Red head and mottled wing, and bingo! There it was.  Strangely enough not much of a red belly, but then I didn't really get a good look at the belly.

I had a lot of trouble identifying the gulls.  The Sibley Guide to Birds has every bird known to man in it!     I looked through page after page and could not find a white-headed gull with a black band on its tail.  Finally I figured out it was an immature ring-billed gull...at least, I was pretty sure.  The other, bigger ones were herring gulls, I thought.

What I really needed was a more locally-focused guide, something that narrowed down the choices for a beginner like me.  Mark and I had been to Horizon Books the night before and gotten me a few early Christmas presents: Audubon's Field Guide to Birds...Eastern Region, and Birds of Michigan.  I knew I wasn't supposed to peek, but I was desperate!  I went straight to the secret hiding place...but they weren't there!  A pleading phone call to Mark revealed their location: in plain view on the table in front of me.  Honestly, who would have thought to look there?

There were only two kinds of gulls in the Bird of Michigan Field Guide: herring gulls and ring-billed gulls.  My diagnoses were confirmed!  But it was good to have Sibley's, as it had shown the immature version with the black on the tail.  So I can see that one needs to have a good collection of bird books.

Here is the woodpecker:

I had a better view of him at the feeder, but prefer his picture in a more natural state.  Then we have the mallards, so busy:

The herring gull:

And finally, the blue jay:

So the updated list so far: mallards, mute swans, American crows, common mergansers, blue jay, red-bellied woodpecker.

Birds in a Blizzard

Another crow sighting...a couple of them, poking along the beach in the driving wind and blowing snow.  Which brings up the question: how do birds stay warm?  Randy answered this question on our trip by pointing out that sometimes they don't, and they end up freezing to death.  I had supposed maybe they had some special insulation and didn't feel the cold like we do (practically hairless, we are!).  I suppose geese do have their down, but what about these crows?  I feel for them, as this is the forecast for today:

Nowcast as of 10:00 am EST on December 12, 2010

Now Blizzard Warning in effect until 7 am EST Monday... At 11 am...blowing snow. Snow. Snow may be heavy at times. Temperature around 22. North winds around 25 mph with gusts to 40 mph. At 1 PM...blowing snow. Snow. Snow may be heavy at times. Temperature around 21. North winds around 26 mph with gusts to 40 mph. At 3 PM...blowing snow. Snow. Snow may be heavy at times. Temperature around 20. North winds around 29 mph with gusts to 40 mph.

Yes, we are in a bona fide blizzard.

The Elusive American Crow

It's a lovely morning here in TC...nine degrees Fahrenheit, but here comes the sun.  A couple of black birds were spotted nosing around on the beach, subsequently binoculared and looked up...drum roll, please...we have the elusive American crow!  Another clue might have been the "caw! caw!" that could be heard right through the walls of the house.

Here's one of the crows:

and here is the lovely sunrise, reward of the bird watchers:

Swans!

Five mute swans; three adults and two juveniles, as near as I can make out from these two helpful books and better binoculars, found in the cupboard:

Heather's life list so far, not including Chile and Argentina:
Mallards
Mute swans

The First Bird

So I just spent three weeks in Chile and Argentina, on a nature tour with my mom.  Prior to this trip, I was not interested in birds.  Not at all.  I had actually even stated this plainly, to an outdoorsy person on whom I should have been trying to make a good impression, in response to his declaration of a special love for birds: "Oh, really?  Hmm.  I really don't care about birds at all."   It was quite true at the time, and pretty much the end of our conversation and potential glorious life together.

I think it might have been because my eyes are just not that good.  I really can't see birds very well.  But what I discovered on this trip was BINOCULARS.  Using binoculars is like having super-powers: you can see tiny little specks up close!  It's like having a window into a secret world.  And a very interesting secret world it is!  And it's all over the place!  The whole planet is populated with birds, it turns out, giving you reasons to travel to all sorts of beautiful, exotic places.

So I turned into a bird watcher, even with the "baby binocs," as my new bird-watching friends called them, that had been loaned to me by a friend for the trip.  I didn't want anything too heavy, but felt I should have something along.  So I had these 10 X 25 Bushnells, suspended around my neck with a string.  These ones:


We began our trip in Santiago, Chile, and continued southward to Tierra del Fuego, then wound our way northward, stopping at the Valdés Peninsula, the pampas near Buenos Aires, and Iguazú Falls in the northern part of Argentina.  So I can say I began my bird-watching career in South America.  But this blog is not going to be about that; this blog is about my new life as a bird watcher in my home territory.  How I know I have turned into one is this: upon returning home, I glanced out the window.  In the bay were some birds!  It was freezing cold and snowing, but there they were, swimming along.  Now, my previous self would have just noted, "Oh, ducks!"  But my new bird-watching self went immediately for the binoculars and looked carefully at the birds.  It was hard to see through the falling snow and darkness of dawn, but I made out a green head, white collar, and rusty breast.  I looked in the bird book. Yes, there it was, confirmed:  mallards.

Now I kind of knew this already, having seen many mallards growing up, and I even know another kind of duck that we have out here:  merganzers.  They have more of a pointy head.  But I just wanted to be sure.

Here are the mallards, my very first bird sighting in my new life as a bird watcher:

So there you have it:

Heather's Life List so far, not including Chile and Argentina:
Mallards