Category: Birds

The Occasional No

A close-up view of the head of a female northern flicker with her mouth open, taken in our backyard in Portland, Oregon

Last fall I experimented with taking pictures out of my office window of the birds that visit the backyard, such as this female flicker at the suet feeder. At first I tried shooting through the glass but the pictures were far too soft, so I opened the window just enough for the big telephoto to fit through.

The smells and sounds of the outdoors brought the cats over to investigate, one by one, but I shooed them away so I wouldn’t have to worry about them jumping through the opening to freedom, sweet freedom. Scout grunted when I pushed her back, looking puzzled. We were so rarely at cross purposes that she had to be sure I hadn’t mistaken her for one of the other cats. She tried for the window again and I gently pushed her back, then again, and again, before she finally wheeled about and walked out of the room with her tail raised high.

She asked for so little, but what she wanted, she wanted. Usually what she wanted I was happy to give her, but even I sometimes had to tell my beloved Scout, “no”.

As soon as I closed the window and returned to the couch, having forgiven my insolence, she jumped onto my chest and purred.

She was the best.

Bird Bath

An American robin bathes in our birdbath

A couple of years ago we started a hummingbird garden in memory of my mother-in-law. Many of the plants were chosen specifically to attract hummingbirds, while others were selected to expand it into a wildflower garden, plus we added a young dogwood to round things out. We also picked up a pretty little birdbath since we hadn’t had one for years, not since I accidentally knocked over our cheap one and broke it. A number of birds, such as this American robin, have been enjoying the bath ever since.

A-ha!

A female dark-eyed junco (Oregon race) perches on a purple coneflower stem

Purple coneflower is one of my favorites in our garden and we have a vigorous patch at the edge of our back patio. I deadhead them during the summer to encourage new flowers but at the end of the season I leave them be as I knew birds were eating the seeds in the dried-up cones during the winter — I just didn’t know which ones, as I had never seen any birds on the dead flowers. I had assumed my seed-eaters were finches but just discovered their true identity: dark-eyed juncos.

Junco plumages vary across populations, this is a female of the Oregon race which we commonly see in our backyard, she’s perched on one of the coneflower stems.

A Mystery

An American bittern stands in the water next to Rest Lake at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Ridgefield, Washington

This is one of my favorite bittern pictures as it shows the way I often wind down a day at Ridgefield, watching bitterns near the end of the auto tour before I have to leave to beat the closing of the automated gate, the setting sun leaving the bittern to hunt in shadow. These last moments always make me wonder — what do bitterns do in the dark?

Lifer

A male horned lark

During the winter horned larks can be found in large numbers in the Northwest, but mostly on the eastern side of the Cascades. There are a few resident populations on the western side where I live but I had never seen a horned lark until this January when I found a male foraging near Schwartz Lake at Ridgefield.

I use Northwest Birds in Winter by Alan Contreras when I want to get more specific info on the distribution of one of our birds during the winter than you can get out of a general purpose field guide. I bought my copy in 1997, about a year after I moved here, when I met Alan at an Audubon event and he signed my copy. It’s definitely not a field guide and not useful for identifying birds, but a nice complement to my army of guides when I want to dig a little deeper.

A close-up view of a male horned lark

Skittish

A close-up view of the face of a female northern flicker on a rainy day at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge in Ridgefield, Washington on January 15, 2012. Original: _MG_2234.CR2

I loved the little woodpeckers in the woods behind our house when I was growing up but I didn’t discover flickers until I got into birds & photography in graduate school. I put my neophyte bird guide skills to the test as I tried to identify the bird making a ruckus in the tree outside my apartment. I found my mark and have loved flickers ever since.

The race we typically see in the west, the red-shafted flicker, is slightly different from the race I first met in the east. I have long hoped to get a close-up of the red-shafted male with his spectacular red mustache, and one was calling out from the nearby trees when I photographed this female at Ridgefield, but he never joined her down in the grass. She gave me great looks as she fed in the rain, however, and I was thankful for the opportunity as flickers are usually pretty skittish.

We even have them in our yard, they are a particular favorite of our resident bird-watcher Emma, and she and Sam and I got a great look from my office this afternoon as a male bathed in our birdbath. No way to get pictures without disturbing him, I can’t park my car in the backyard and photograph him Ridgefield-style. But he gave us a nice long look at his feathers as he splayed them about in the water and seemed nonplussed by his furry fan chirping at him from the cat tree.

📷: Canon 7D | Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x III
🗓️: January 15, 2012

(Almost) Missed You

An American bittern sits in dried grasses

As you know by now, one of my favorite things to do at Ridgefield is to photograph bitterns. After having such great success last winter and spring, this year I’ve seen them mostly in glimpses and rarely had a chance to photograph them. I was tickled to have the chance to photograph this one in January, showing how well it’s coloring matches that of the dried grasses in which it loves to hunt.

I took the picture below last winter with my iPhone, just wanted a quick shot of my favorite place to look for bitterns, I took it with the phone since the view is similar to what I see with my eyes as I drive along. It’s a bit hard to see but there’s a bittern almost dead center in the picture, on the opposite side of the channel a few feet up from the water line.

Suffice it to say they’re hard to see but I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Once I get to my favorite bittern areas, I wait until there’s no traffic behind me and then let the car creep along as slow as possible as I scan the grasses for these elusive birds. I normally take our Subaru to the refuge but this spring I’ve been taking our Civic, mostly to see if I could tolerate driving a stick shift at the refuge.

The biggest problem I encountered is exactly this scenario. At these speeds, the car is right at the stall speed and it requires a lot of pedal work to keep the car front stalling out. It’s doable, but annoying, and probably not so great for the clutch. So my preference for the next car will be an automatic, although if the stick is a particularly good one, the irritation at Ridgefield might be balanced out by fun on the commute.

And honestly, I’m done talking about cars, starting now!

By the by, the body of water on the other side of the the berm is Rest Lake, and those white dots are tundra swans that winter at the refuge in the hundreds. The bittern above was also at Rest Lake, but at a different spot than this one.

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