Recently in Birdspotting Category

Last weekend we trekked over the mountain passes (on the two of the very few days in the past month that they've been reasonably clear!) and headed to central Washington to attend the Othello Sandhill Crane Festival.

Every year in late March, tens of thousands of Sandhill Cranes stop in the fields around Othello to feast on waste corn and grasses before continuing their trip from central California up to northern Canada and Alaska, where they nest and breed.

Although that area of the Columbia basin only averages eight inches of rain per year, it drizzled for most of the trip (resulting in lousy light for photography), but we still saw several fields filled with cranes and geese, and also some other new species, including Burrowing Owls. On the way home we made a few side-trips, as well.

Check out the entire set here.

I've finally uploaded photos from a side-trip to Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge the day after we took the Puffin cruise in August 2008. We hiked about halfway down the spit (a mere 2 miles!) before calling it a day and heading back. Three new species, and lots of familiar ones such as these Western Sandpipers.

See the whole set here.

With talons that huge and sharp, there's no way I'm telling this Great Horned Owl that he's not a migratory bird.

A few photos from a stop last September at this fascinating sanctuary that is located just south of Vancouver, BC. Check out the set here. Four new species for the birdspotting list, and a dramatically improved shot of the owl!

I hired a Steller's Jay for some photography work in July. He worked for peanuts... literally. View the entire set here.

The Port Townsend Marine Science Center offers what they call Puffin Cruises on several Saturdays during the summer. The cruise goes to Protection Island NWR and other bird hotspots near Port Townsend.

We went on August 9, and here are some mediocre photos from that excursion. But hey, six new species spotted (most important among them the puffin, seen above), and a zillion eagles!

So with the house and tree-filled yard it was obvious that a bird feeder (or six) would liven things up, especially for Jasper.  So far there's now a Chickadee feeder (featured on a previous Caturday), two suet feeders -- one cheap basic metal cage and one fancy tail-prop feeder purchased after the brief sighting of a Pileated woodpecker in the pines -- a hummingbird feeder, a basic tube feeder (to distract the House Sparrows), a thistle sock, and a peanut wreath for the jays.

They've done a fine job of attracting the wildlife, with a herd of at least a dozen chickadees spearheading the wildlife extravaganza of Bushtits, House Sparrows, House Finches, Goldfinches, Bewick's Wrens, Nuthatches, Steller's Jays, and Northern Flickers... who are apparently the big winners here as the three of them have apparently decided they like to eat EVERYTHING.

To whit, I've recently started work on a BirdCam using the hardware leftover from the old Houseboat camera. It's not ready for prime time yet, but behold the first few tests...

This is how the chickadee feeder is supposed to work. Note the bird bath and two suet feeders in the background on the right side of the image, and of course, a chickadee who immediately figured out the feeder was for him.

This is a Flicker having an identity crisis.

Memorial Day weekend was wildly successful both in terms of birding and seeing great music at the Sasquatch Festival. Though they wouldn't let me take the SLR into the festival, I did take hundreds of shots throughout the county both before and after the music was done. Check out the wildlife and scenery gallery here. Final tally for the trip, twenty new bird species spotted, and many improved shots of others.