2019 - More and More

A couple days before I left on the Wasco jaunt, I returned south with a birder friend and his 2 sons who are in college, but now on break, one of which is a birder.  This time we were able to view both the male and the female, and below is the female.

This is where the expression, "By the scruff of the neck,'came from.

6/24/19

I went up to the Mt Hood area with the same people who I went with to see the Spotted Owls, as we were wanting to work on our County list there.  Mountain Bluebirds are one of my favorite species, but it is hard to get good photos.  Their color is the same as the sky, so you really need a dark background to bring that color out.  Here are 2 shots for comparison of such.  

Male Wester Tanager

Male Mountain Bluebird.  Isn't he a beauty!  Too bad he was looking the other way.

The same male Mountain Bluebird. 

Yep, we do have raccoons in Oregon.  These 4 youngsters may look cute, but they can really eat lots of cat food, and can be quite ferocious.

Raccoons 

One of the local squirrels

Baby Mallard

Virginia Rail

7/2/19
It was going to be a cloudy, cool day, so as my home projects are on hold, I headed to Luckiamute Landing, along the Willamette River to look and listen for Red-eyed Vireos.  This is the only place in the county where they breed, and I was not disappointed.  There was one calling incessantly.  However, he stayed high up in the cottonwood trees.  I did try my hand at photographing Cedar Waxwings in flight as there were plenty of them fly catching over the river.  Out of some 125 pics, these are my best two.  It is hard enough just to get one in the frame let along for one to come out good.

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

Downy Woodpecker

7/8/19
Don and I went south a couple of counties to work on our Lane County lists.  We did OK.  This first pic is an immature Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and represents the most northerly nesting on the west side of the Cascades.  The pic below is one of my favorite birds: Lazuli Bunting.  The sun made for an overexposed pic and it is also a little fuzzy, but still gives and idea of how beautiful some birds are.

Immature male Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Male Lazuli Bunting

7/10/19

Back where I took some pics of the waxwings was a report of a rare Bank Swallow, so I thought I'd go over there in the slim chance it might still be around.  I did not refind it, so parked myself where I could take more waxwing pics, so here are the best 2. 

Cedar Waxwing

Cedar Waxwing

7/10/19
Here is a picture a friend took of a Gray Fox.  They are probably considered rare here in Western Oregon, and most likely due to the proliferation of Coyotes, which means plenty of competition for food.

7/17/19

Once again, I accompanied Don Berg and his 2 sons birding.  He was wanting to work on his Deschutes and Jefferson Counties, so we took the jaunt over to the east slope of the Cascades, a straight drive east, taking 2 hours.  It turned out that the wind was a factor in diminishing our success.  Birds just don’t like 20 MPH winds.  But we managed to see a some and so Don got off to a start for those counties.  His son Jonathan is really into birding and needed a few lifers, all woodpeckers, and we were able to find 2 of them - White-headed and Black-backed.  I got a reasonable pic of the White-headed.

One place we stopped was the Wizard Falls Fish Hatchery.  The river here is cold and clear, and there were 2 American Dippers, an adult and juvenile.  I got carried away taking pics as one allowed fairly close approach.  These are one of the most amazing birds!  They live along these fast flowing waterways in the mountains of the west.  Their food items are all taken out of the water.  Sometimes the dive down some 20 feet below the surface to find such.  One food item is the caddis fly larvae.  These larvae build an encasing around themselves of tiny stones with a hole at one end.  When a dipper gets one, he will smash this casing enough to extract the larvae.  Here are my best shots. 

White-headed Woodpecker.  His white head is discolored
to sooty as he has been feeding in a burn area

Townsends Solitare

Belted Kingfisher

He has some grub

Here's Junior. You can tell he is young because of the light
colored bill and his tail is not quite formed fully

Metolius River next to fish hatchery

Fishing the Metolius.  You can see a dipper (barely) just upriver from this man

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2019 Continued

Well, my jaunt was shortened quite a bit.  Rosie told me NOT to take the truck where I should not, but I disobeyed and pulled a dumb stunt, and had to return home for repairs.  Not sure if I will get them done in time to get back out there, so here are some new pics in the meantime:

One of the local Violet-green Swallows.  At least one pair will be nesting at our place.

American Robin with food.

Male California Quail at our feeding station

Female California Quail at our feeding station

Western Bluebird.  If our cats leave them alone, a pair will nest here for the 3rd year.

A pair of Blue-winged Teal at the local refuge

Yellow-headed Blackbird.  Am having fun trying to capture birds in flight

Wandering Tattler.  A pair showed up at some sewage ponds just south in Benton County, a first county record.  Except for the rare inland vagrant in fall, they always hug the coast in migration in both spring and fall.  

Female Northern Harrier 

A pair is nesting right next to the road at the refuge, in the same place they did last year. 

Western Grebe

6/5/19  I had the opportunity of heading a few hours south of where I live to go out with a friend on a short Spotted Owl foray.  Two of the young birders heading down there could not leave until their college classes were done for the day, so they and another birder and I could not leave until 2:00 PM.  We have a good friend who works for the BLM with Spotted Owl management, and this was in the plans for some time.  He was able to locate the female of a pair quite easily, and we were treated to some close up views and opportunity for pictures.

Probably most of your have heard that this species is considered endangered, which makes it all the more intriguing.  There are reasons for such which I’ll explain.  Loss of habitat has been the obvious one.  They prefer old growth forests here in the NW, of which very little remains.  And what does remain is fragmented and protected.  The more recent threat is the range expansion of the Barred Owl, a common owl of the east which has moved west in the last two decades.  They are larger, more adaptable, and so aggressive that they have been usurping the Spotted Owls from their territories.  So in the last few years federal agencies have embarked on a mission to eradicate the Barred Owls by simply shooting them.  This is in the early stages and has only been tried in a few parts of the range of the Spotted Owl.  

One last bit of information which is not well known, which also does not help the Spotted Owl is that they are quite unwary.  They simply don’t spook easy or fly off like most other wildlife.  In fact, the Indians had a name for them which meant something like “stupid bird.”  It appears they are not wary of predators very much either, so the young are usually eaten by Great Horned Owls, Goshawks, and other birds of prey.   But at least this makes it easier for wildlife technicians to monitor them.  Part of their protocol is to feed them mice.  If the owls have young, they will take the mice to the nest to feed the young, and so the techs can then tag and follow the new birds.  You will notice one of my pics has the bird flying off with a mouse.  

Well, it was a fun day.  I ended up adding a few others to my Douglas County list as well, leaving my just 4 shy of the 200 level, so I suspect I may get back there and put in a little effort to reach it soon.

Spotted Owl.  Can you see the spots on the back of his head?

6/7/19
Cassin's Vireo is a relatively common bird in Western Oregon, but it had eluded my camera, until today.   Rosie and I went looking for a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak just south in Benton County on our day off, and while we did not have success, one consolation was being able to take  a decent pic of this bird.  The lighting as not very good and I had to spruce it up a little with the photo software.  It is really not quite this yellow on the undersides, but it is the best I could make it for now.

Cassin's Vireo

6/11/19
It is slated to quite hot in this 4 days stretch, so I decided to go over to the coast birding and try to add a few to the adjacent county - Lincoln.  I was highly successful in adding 5 species.  No pics of any of those 5 but here is a Great-blue Heron, and finally a decent pic of a Cedar Waxwing.

Great-blue Heron

Cedar Waxwing

I have decided to post these pics as I am heading out on a short jaunt to an eastern county Tuesday, and plan to start another blog with pics.