Birds of May and June

May and June were busy months for birding, so busy that my plan to write one post about all the action has turned into a plan to post three! (You can see the first one, about baby juncos, here.) All of the rest of the baby bird activity going on in my yard will get a separate post, but first I'd like to showcase some birds that I'd never seen and/or photographed before, as well as some of my favorite bird shots from the past two months. First up: birds I've never photographed before. Remember, you can click on photos to enlarge them, which I highly recommend doing!

An evil-looking chicken. I've photographed chickens before, but never one so sinister-looking!

The first group of birds were photographed at a park that I love near Little Buddy's house. The park is home to a bunch of different farm animals, including sheep, goats, pigs, ponies, cows, chickens, rabbits, and geese, as well as a variety of wild birds. I did include a domesticated goose on the list, as I've never photographed one (who knew that they had blue eyes?), but everyone else is wild. I was especially pleased by the cowbirds, since I don't think I've ever seen them before. I was also very excited to get some closeup shots of barn swallows (in an actual barn!) because I've found that swallows are virtually impossible to photograph on the wing.

Male brown-headed cowbird.

Male brown-headed cowbird.

Female brown-headed cowbird.

Male house sparrow.

Female house sparrow with a beak full of bugs for her young.

Male house sparrow. They were nesting in the rafters of the pig shed.

Chinese goose (domesticated).

Barn swallow couple.

Barn swallow. This open-beak shot shows you how they are able to scarf up bugs while flying at high speeds!

Barn swallow closeup.

I scored a few more birds for my list at another park I visited while looking after Little Buddy. Among these are a pair of violet-green swallows that I hastily shot when they landed in the dirt a few feet away right as I was despairing of ever getting a good photograph of one as I watched them whirl and swoop over a wetland. I think they were gathering nesting material. I also got a photo of a house wren (which I've seen before) and a couple of sparrows that I hadn't.

Violet-green swallows.

You can see how they got their name!

House wren

White-crowned sparrow.

Savannah sparrow.

A third park is one of my favorite places to photograph. It has a bonanza of not only birds on and around its bay and wetlands, but things like frogs and turtles, too! I'm hardly alone in photographing there, as you will almost always encounter a pro with one of those $20,000 lenses as well as some hardcore amateurs. (I'm pleased to say that my new lens elevates me into the ranks of the latter group, at least in terms of equipment.) The colder months are actually the best time to get the widest variety of bird photos because quite a few species spend the winter there and the lily pads haven't blanketed the best cove for photographing, but it's always worth looking around. On my most recent trip, I scored a wood duck and a nesting grebe!

Male wood duck, eclipse (or non-breeding) plumage.

Female pied-billed grebe on a nest. 

And then there are the backyard birds. The hermit thrush is not one we've seen in our yard before. It spent several days hanging around, drawing a great deal of ire from the towhees. I see pileated woodpeckers every once in while around my house and they are common out at Cutie the Pyrenees' place, but I haven't had a good chance to take any pictures. I hope eventually to get better photos than the ones I got, but you can at least see what one looks like. I'm much happier with the rufous hummingbird photos--we haven't had a rufous around for the last few years, so these visits by a female are a delight. And I managed to score a photo of something you rarely see: a hummingbird catching bugs! Unbeknownst to most people, hummingbirds also eat insects to get the protein that nectar can't supply. I was taking pictures of the hummingbird slowly motoring around among the branches of one our cedars, but didn't know I was capturing an insect hunt until I looked at the images on my computer and saw the hummingbird with beak open, about to grab some little flying critter.

Hermit thrush.

Pileated woodpecker.

Female rufous hummingbird. You can see the rufous coloring on her sides. Males also have reddish feathers on their heads.

Female rufous hummingbird

Female rufous hummingbird catching an insect.

You can see another great photo of this hummingbird here.

The following photos represent an interesting case: I have neither seen nor photographed a Western tanager. However, my CAMERA has photographed a Western tanager. My parents spotted this striking bird visiting our backyard birdbath while I wasn't around and my father had the presence of mind to grab my camera (which is always kept near the back door for just this reason) and take several photos. It came around the twice that day, but if it's been back since, I haven't seen it. I could hardly keep these photos taken in my yard with my camera from you simply because I didn't take them myself!

Western tanager, non-breeding male. Breeding males have vivid red faces/heads.

Male western tanager.

Late spring is a busy time for all birds, so I've had many opportunities to photograph the species that call my neighborhood home, as well as a few other familiar birds I've encountered on excursions.

First up are three photos from the latter category:

I highly recommend getting over the fact that pigeons are pigeons and instead marvel at their plumage. 

I've tried to take a lot of photos of male red-winged blackbirds since getting my birding lens, but their inky blackness make them hard to photograph well. I liked how this image captures the bird's rather cheeky expression.

"Don't mess with our nests!"
A pair of male red-winged blackbirds chase a crow away from their nesting site.

Our birdbath is extremely popular, so I take lots and lots of photos of birds bathing. The jay photo in the following group is among the very best birdbath photos I've every shot.

A VERY wet Steller's jay.

See more great photos from the jay's splashing bath here.

Red-breasted nuthatch.

The sapsuckers are wonderfully striking birds...

...but this one looks a bit ridiculous with the wet feathers exposing the skinniness of its neck! Note also the juvenile junco bound and determined to take a bath at the same time in the background.

You'll need to click on this photo to enlarge it to see the detail that I like best about this photo of a drinking red-shafted flicker. Flickers feed almost exclusively on ants and on this bird's red "mustache" is a little red ant that got away!

Here's are a few other photos from the yard:

This chestnut-backed chickadee is scolding me for accidentally getting too close to its offspring.

I caught this starling with its mouth opening unleashing a stream of brassy starling calls.

A crow picks a cherry from the neighbors' tree.

A robin gobbles mahonia berries.

This male robin spied me with my camera, flew to the back of a chair about six feet away from me, puffed himself up, and gave me a LOOK. I didn't need to speak robin in order to understand his meaning: don't even THINK about going near his newly-fledged children! 

During these past two months, I've been able to add the hermit thrush, the Western tanager, and house finches to our list of all the different bird species that have visited the yard over time. Just the other day, I went out with my camera to investigate an unfamiliar bird call and discovered it was being made by an osprey at the top of a nearby tree! If I can count (and I have) bald eagles as visitors to the yard since they periodically come by to sit in trees within a hundred feet of our house (three of them came calling one day a few weeks ago, two of them pictured below), I've decided I can count this osprey, too. What exactly it was doing here, I don't know, as they usually stick very close to the lake, but it was definitely a cool score. It's not the first time I've photographed an osprey, nor the best photo of an osprey I've taken, however. That would be one of the ones I shot in Florida when I came upon an osprey drying its wings on a branch just above my head. I've included it here because it's a cool picture.

A pair of adult bald eagles in the neighbors' tree. A third eagle soared high overhead, occasionally communicating in shrieks with the two in the tree.

Suburban Seattle osprey.

Rural Florida Panhandle osprey.

As you can see, it has been an exciting couple of months of bird photography, and I haven't even gotten to the baby birds yet! Avian activity will naturally die down a bit after all the little birds have grown up, but I look forward to taking more bird photos this summer, especially of hummingbirds. And who knows what will show up next in the yard or surrounding trees? It definitely keeps life interesting (I saw nineteen different bird species in the yard on a single day two weeks ago) and I will no doubt be posting more photos in the future!

Keep up with all the best and the latest in the bird photography department by following c.creativity on Facebook!

Addendum to Backyard Birding

Black-capped chickadee.

In my previous post on the birds found in my backyard, I had mentioned my vexation at being unable to get many (or any) photographs of two of the most handsome birds that frequent our yard: the rufous-sided towhee and the red-shafted flicker. The towhees were ever-present, at least aurally, but eluded all but one of my attempts to photograph them. Several flickers visited the front yard, but they are every bit as flighty as the jays, if not more so, and flew off any time I attempted to approach the windows with my camera. I was delighted, then, to get some great photos of both species over the last few days. They were all taken from inside the house, but they do a good job of capturing not just the likenesses of the birds, but the avian dynamics within our neighborhood ecosystem.

A glimpse of a male Anna's iridescence.

I got lucky, one evening, when a towhee decided to splash around in the little birdbath on the deck. This birdbath is about ten feet from the windows of our family room. When I went to grab my camera sitting on the end table right up against the window nearest to the bath, the towhee saw me and hopped to the edge of the dish, ready to take flight. So I dropped down on my hands and knees and, yes, crawled with my camera over to where I could discretely raise myself up behind one of the arms of the couch, camouflaging myself as a piece of furniture, and took these pictures. (Once again, I recommend you click on the photos to see them enlarged, if only to admire the rufous eye of the towhee!) I then settled myself on the couch and took a few more pictures as the towhee did a bit of post-bath browsing in the moss. Between each foray, the towhee would retreat either to the fence or the shrubs surrounding the deck and I had a chance to appreciate towhee's lightning speed! With a hopskipandajump that was almost faster than the eye could follow, it would flash between the safe spaces before venturing out to look for snacks. No wonder I hadn't been fast enough to take towhee pictures when I was out in the yard! I'm thankful that this one paused long enough to take a nice bath while I blended in with the furniture.

A-splishin' and a-splashin'...

...a-movin' and a-groovin'!

The turquoise dish provides a nice backdrop for this dashing bird!

The towhee hunting in the moss.

Two of the neighboring yards have massive cherry trees along their adjoining fences that have essentially been allowed to grow wild for the last 25 years, meaning they are now about forty feet tall and all of the cherries they produce are consumed by the birds. They attract crows, robins, jays, and starlings, and, rather to my surprise, since their diet is usually composed almost entirely of ants, the flickers. Ever since the cherries ripened last week, the backyard and the neighboring trees have been full of red-shafted flickers.

A male red-shafted flicker.

And just like everybody else, the flickers want to use the birdbath. I happened to capture an epic standoff between the robins and a flicker over bathing privileges.

It all started when a female flicker decided to land on the birdbath while a juvenile robin, under the watchful eyes of its father, was taking a bath.

"Get lost!" screamed Papa Robin.

The flicker, knocked off-balance by the robin's assault, struggled to regain its footing...

...as the father flew to his (seemingly oblivious) baby's side.

"Hi, dad!"

The flicker decided things were a bit crowded and departed, startling another robin, who took shelter in the mahonia.

But the flicker soon tried again.

Papa Robin flew back to defend his offspring.

This time it was the flicker who said, "Get lost!"

The flicker attempted to the take over the bath by getting in it.

The baby, not to be outdone, started bathing, too, and drove off the flicker with its flailing...

...but not for long! The flicker finally intimidated the juvenile robin into abandoning the bath...

...only to be confronted by the female robin.

A standoff where the flicker and a robin both circled around the rim of the bath while taking drinks ensued.

Things came to a head when the robin...

...took flight..

...circling the birdbath...

...while the flicker turned to follow it...

...in what was likely an attempt...

...to show the flicker...

...who was boss.

The flicker would have none of it!

She launched herself at the robin and won control of the bath at last.

Without any pesky robins to interfere, she fluffed up her feathers and got down to business.

And when clean, she took off in flurry of dramatically-barred red feathers that give this sub-species its name.

It's not just the robins and the flickers that want to use the bath, of course. It continues to be utilized by all of the cherry eaters and many of the smaller birds. Some of them are prodigious splashers!

This starling gets points for superlative spray!

This juvenile robin gets points for impressive technique...

...though it was a little unsteady when shaking off all that water when it was done.

This juvenile flicker, on the other hand, didn't seem to fully grasp that you had to get IN the bath if you wanted to take one! 

Many of the birds that have been frequenting the cherry trees now have their offspring in tow. It's fun to see the young birds learning the ropes.

A juvenile flicker perches on a fencepost while being fed.

This young flicker lingered far longer at the birdbath than its more cautious elders would.

Despite the handsome flicker plumage, the little one looks a bit like a goober here. The young birds are often still quite clumsy!

A female robin and a juvenile meet on the birdbath...

...but judging by her reaction, I think this must not have been this little one's mom!

The young robins can be told from the adults by their spotted chests and the subtle patterns on the rest of their feathers. It's a pity they don't keep that attractive patterning as adults.

Although the crows fledged long ago, it didn't stop this youngster from giving out a baby crow's "feed me!" call in hopes one of its elders would provide a snack. (Please forgive the quality of this photo--I took it through a screen.)

And last but not least, I spotted the little junco on our deck at dusk the other day! It still sports a fledgling's spotted chest, but it has grown full tail feathers since the last time I photographed it!

As you can see, things have remained quite lively on the bird front! And for good measure, I saw (but was not able to photograph) a brown creeper on the Douglas-fir a few days ago, bringing our yard's total bird count to 34. As I write this, I can hear a robin splashing in the birdbath. When I got up to see who was making the noise, I witnessed a nuthatch approach the bath and think better of it. A starling then took over the bath for a quick splash before ceding it once again to the robin. Once the adult robin flew away, a juvenile jumped in (frustrating the nuthatch once again) while another pecked the ground below. I can hear chickadees, juncos, and towhees calling nearby. The birdbath stood vacant for a moment, but the mahonia next to it shook as a robin feasted on its berries. Once the robin moved on, chickadees descended from the over-hanging conifers to take their turn in the bath. Following the antics, rivalries, and family dynamics of our local bird population continues to be a rewarding and absorbing pastime. I suspect that more pictures will follow!

Check out my previous post on birds.

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