Junco on a snowy morning

This is a junco looking for some food after a late winter snowfall. He is at the back of our side yard and found some sunflower seeds we spread in front of the Bird Cam. There were many other juncos that fed and a couple of mourning doves appeared in the background of some of the pictures of juncos.

Crystal Springs Birding on February 21, 2009

Yesterday we met a large group of people for an Audubon-led tour of Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens in SE Portland, across from Reed College. This first picture was taken by Beth - I'm good at finding birds in the scope - Beth is good at looking through the scope!

One of the many ducks we saw was an American Coot. Here is one of the photos I took with our digital camera.


We also saw a cormorant, lots of wood ducks, buffleheads, Canada geese, mallards, a red-tailed hawk, a varied thrush, a ruby-crowned kinglet, a song sparrow, bush tits, red-winged blackbirds, American wigeons, pie-billed grebes, Stellar's jays, and more. We also saw our first daffodils, rhododendrons, and daphnes of the season. More on our birding and more photos on a later post!

Web Links

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/

This is the first of several links I will include for web sites where you can find great information about birds and birding.

Mapquest

Getting Started

I took this photo last year at Stubb Stewart State Park. This was before we bought our scope, but here is Beth still valiantly trying to spot birds in the distance with her small binoculars.

Mostly I included this post and picture to learn how to upload photos to the blog! I met with some success so look for more and more up-to-date photos soon.

My First Entry

We had a great birding weekend right here in the neighborhood! We went to Dawson Creek Park on Saturday AND Sunday. Among our sightings were a red-breasted sapsucker and an Anna's hummingbird - both spotted in the 'sapsucker tree' we discovered on our first tour of the park with the Audubon Society. We also saw hooded and common mergansers, wood ducks, buffleheads, widgeons, lesser scaups and Canada Geese. We also saw a couple of the acorn woodpeckers flying.


Today we saw an adult bald eagle on the very top of a fir tree right in front of the library! It was an amazing sight. I got pictures of nearly everything. I forgot the camera on Saturday, so we don't have a photo of the sapsucker. Maybe next time. I also learned a lot more about the digital camera we have and took some great photos on Sunday of the ducks, eagle and hummingbird!


There were a lot of people in the park and several with scopes and/or digital cameras with high power lenses.