Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!   I hope all is well with all of you.  May God Bless you during this season and into the New Year.

For Russ Morgan

12/12/19

I headed over to Lincoln County today to try and see the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker which has been coming to Chuck Philo’s suet feeder, and quite consistently of late.  When I was just coming into Toledo where he lives, he called me to say it has been sleeping just under his suet feeder for about 35 minutes, and told me to approach his house from the church just next door.

When I got there I viewed him once, and then he took off.  I went inside and we waited for about 1/2 hour.  My hope was to get good pictures of him, but since the weather had cleared, I decided to head to the North Jetty where up to 25 Snow Buntings have been hanging out for a number of weeks.  Plus, I wanted to best my last photos of them on Mary’s Peak a few weeks ago as well.  They were decent, but we always try to “one up” our best ones.

As I neared the base of the jetty, I could see a few in the grassy dunes, so knew I was in luck.  To my vision a few flew around the far end of one of the dunes, so I figured I’d sneak slowly around the far side hoping to catch one on the ground, where I always see them.  But as I was rounding it, I noticed one in the tall grass not 5 feet from me.  I was also surprised I did not scare him off.  I am not accustomed to seeing them at eye level eating grass seeds, and was not sure my lens would even focus that close, so I flipped the switch to under 10 feet and took a dozen or so, and the close up of the more brown one is the best result.

I stalked them around the dunes for a while, and the other shots are the rest of my best ones, and I’d say these turned out better than my ones on Mary’s Peak, so am happy about that.  

It was back to Chuck’s next.  He had seen the bird come and go a couple times, so it was just a matter of time.  He finally showed after an hour or so.  However, the situation was such that the sun was low right in back of him, and I could only get decent shots of him eating suet, so these will have to do, for now.  

I decided to dedicate these shots to my friend Russ Morgan who is recovering from a very recent hip replacement, which can’t be any fun.  He’ll be down for a little while, but I’m sure it is just temporary.  He’ll be back photographing birds before we know it.  I figure these shots of the bunting, which are of a difficult to get bird, should be an uplift to him.  They may even speed up the healing process, because Snow Buntings are really “hip” birds - pun intended.  

This is the one which was about 5 feet away.  Pretty Cool!

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Gyrfalcon

There is one word that best describes the Gyrfalcon - MAJESTIC!  I was assisting Paul Sullivan on the Gilliam County raptor run, and we chanced upon this gray phase Gyr.  (Likely the same one Paul saw last month about 7.6 miles from this location)   It was sitting on a rock jack and we slowed and then stopped about 100 feet away and were able to view it for about a minute. She was nervous and fidgety, shifting positions a couple of times.  Unfortunately I was only able to get a few pics through the windshield, and these are blurry.  The final two are of the bird after she (we think because of the size it was a female) about 3/4 mile away.  

Because they are such rare winter visitors, seeing one can be a unique experience that won’t happen very often in Oregon.  This is only the 7th time I’ve seen one in the state.  You can tell this is a gyr because of the long broad tail in proportion to the wing tips, and also the fine white barring on the tail.  This bird has just eaten as can be seen from the super large crop.  

Too bad the close pics are blurry or you could also see only a mustache rather than the helmet of the peregrine, and a fine white superciliary line.  She was as large as any red-tailed hawk.  This bird was fairly whitish on the breast/chest area giving way to many darker spots lower down.

Gyrfalcon:  Broad long tail can be seen here

The fine barring can be seen here, as well as the huge crop

A long shot after she flew

The same image heavily cropped