Stellar's Sea Eagle

I was at the zoo today and saw the most amazing bird: the Stellar's Sea Eagle. You can't get a sense of the scale of this bird by the sketch, or the impressiveness of its beak (partly because it's foreshortened in this view), but it is amazing.


The Stellar's Sea Eagle is one of the largest eagles in the world by weight, but its measurements don't add up to the Harpy Eagle or the Philippine Eagle. Still, though, it's an impressive bird.

Doodled from this photo.

Bonus Bird: Golden-crowned Kinglet

The best part of deciding to become attuned to birds is that they just pop out of nowhere... not really, of course. They're usually around, but I'm more likely to see them now that I'm looking.

This is one of the surprises, a Golden-crowned Kinglet.


It snowed last night in Seattle, but the snow turned to rain and this morning was a slush-fest. I was running some errands, on foot, and I decided to walk up the viaduct from University Village. At the top of the hill on 45th I came across a small group of tiny (3 - 4 inches from beak to tail) birds with golden crowns.

I'm sure I looked like a complete idiot, frozen on the sidewalk staring into the shrubs, but it was so wonderful to see these goofy little birds go about their business. I was giddy, both from finishing my hill climb and from seeing a new-to-me bird. Whee!

Doodled from this wonderful photo.

Accipiter striatus: Sharp-shinned Hawk

It's been a blockbuster at the feeders over the last few days... I guess a foot of snow will do that for you.

Yesterday morning we had all the usual suspects, plus a Northern Flicker that huddled up to the house to try to keep warm (seriously, right there on the top step).

And then everybody cleared out, and fast, because a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk showed up looking for some breakfast.


Sharpies are pretty common in this neck of the woods, especially around feeders where the pickings are anything but slim. This morning's hawk let me take a good look while he perched in our tree. He was a small hawk with dark wings and a barred tail, with yellow eyes. After he flew away I went looking through the guide books and Cornell's Birds of North America web site, and learned that juvenile Sharpies have yellow eyes and light eye stripes.

The hawk wasn't the only predator we had in the yard yesterday. Right after he left, Ghost the neighbor cat came to stay a while - I had to flush him out from under one of the chairs.

Agelaius phoeniceus: Red-winged Blackbird

It was the strangest thing... I peeked out of the bedroom window just in time to witness a flock of Red-winged Blackbirds swarm the sunflower seed feeder.

They were here long enough for the Juncos to collectively wonder "What's up with that?" and then they were gone.

I've seen Red-winged Blackbirds in the yard before, but not until the end of the winter, and even then only one at a time. Usually I don't see them anywhere but at the pond, where there are tall grasses to hide and nest in.

Very strange, indeed.

Doodled from this photo.

Carpodacus mexicanus: House Finch

Another of the feeder birds. We get these guys in droves... OK, not as many House Finches as Sparrows, but quite a few on a regular basis.

We get two finches in our yard -- these guys and the Goldfinches, and their diets are apparently different. The House Finches like crack... er... black oil sunflower seed, and the Goldfinches are mostly about nyjer thistle.

Doodled from this photo.

Passer domesticus: House Sparrow (female)

Let me just state, for the record, that I am not a huge fan of the House Sparrow. They're marauders, they're piggy and they're not very nice to other passerines...

But...

If you set out food for everyone else, the sparrow will show up to the party. If you want to see anyone else, you have to expect to see the sparrows. Sometimes in large numbers.

And because I'm a fan of finches, grosbeaks, juncos and the occasional cowbird (though thankfully, those don't visit in large numbers), I put up with the sparrows.

Doodled from this photo.

Junco hyemalis oreganus: Oregon Junco

My favorite of the winter birds, doodled from memory... as you should be able to tell because Oregon Juncos tend to be ground feeding birds, so not likely to be seen from this angle. There are other things wrong with this doodle, but you get the dark hood and lighter beak, which are two distinguishing features of the Oregon Junco.

When it gets colder than cold (as it has been lately), I throw black oil sunflower seed out the back door to the porch for the juncos. The sparrows and house finches duke it out at the feeder, but the juncos forage on the ground so I like to level the playing field just a little bit for them.

Sitta canadensis: Red-Breasted Nuthatch

Red-Breasted Nuthatches (along with their cousins, the Pygmy Nuthatches) are some of my favorite birds in this region. I tend to see them in the fall and spring, with the chickadees and woodpeckers, which leads me to believe that they may summer in the mountains and come to the basin for winter.

They're gregarious and social, and right now they're major players in the festival of songbirds in the parks.


What I love about them is that if you hear that they're close, you can stop for a few moments to get a look, and almost invariably, one scout will come down from the branches to see who you are and what you're up to. I don't know if the scout is the one who picks the short end of the straw or if it's the most outgoing bird of the group, one that might actually be interested in figuring out what's going on.

Either way it's kind of cool.

Doodled from this photo.

Cathartes aura: Turkey Vulture

Last weekend on our hike we saw this bird:


You can tell by his silhouette that he's a turkey vulture (note the black body with lighter wings), but you can't really see much of his head, which would be the real giveaway.

They're large birds, with a wingspan of up to 72 inches. They're not raptors; they're scavengers that eat carrion almost exclusively. They summer in our neck of the woods, so it could be that the vulture we saw was either starting his fall migration or getting ready to.


These are not attractive birds, but because they eat carrion it makes sense that their heads would be mostly featherless.

Doodled from this photo.

Fish Lake

Happy Labor Day! Today we went on a 7-mile hike starting at the Fish Lake trailhead of the Columbia Plateau Trail in Cheney, WA.


We were originally headed to Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, but we got turned around on the highway and found ourselves at Fish Lake. It was a beautiful day, so why not?


Turns out there was plenty to see on our mostly flat, paved trail, including chipmunks, some kind of water rodent (water vole?), frogs and many birds.


I don't know who this is... a House Wren, perhaps?

This guy is a turkey vulture. I'd blow up the photo so you could see his reddish head, but it's too fuzzy (the photo, not his head).



Columbia Plateau Trail State Park is a rail-bed trail (that explains why it's mostly flat and paved) that, according to the web site, "... traces the original path of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railroad."


As you might expect, we saw and heard several trains over the course of our walk.

Psaltriparus minimus: Bushtit

Another Portland bird, one that I'd never seen before... didn't know it existed, even.

I was enjoying breakfast with my mom when we noticed some really small birds in her lilac bush. Then there were more... and more... and then it got ridiculous. A flash mob of tiny birds.

Very social... lots of noise. There, and then gone, as quickly as they appeared. (Actually, they moved briefly to my mom's giant butterfly bush before they went away.)

We watched them as long as they were around and then dove into the field guide.


They were bushtits. Described as "drab" and "nondescript," they're gray-ish. And small... very small.

This doodle looks like it's a "Black-eared" bushtit, and thus not a sample of what I saw in Portland - they live in the southern US.

Doodle based on this photo.

Charadrius vociferus: Killdeer

The killdeer is a medium-sized plover, and since we see them around here (the Inland Northwest), it's a bird I'm likely to call an upland sandpiper.

The last one I saw clearly was in Portland, while I was on a walk with my mom. I got a look at a tail while one flew away - their backsides are pretty flashy, you know. Turns out the killdeer we saw belonged to a small family group that took up residence in the Christian High School's field.


Killdeer use the "broken wing" technique to lure predators away from their nests, which, according to my grandmother, can be anywhere they see fit to lay an egg.

I'm a big fan of their giant eyes... pretty bird.

P.S. Pardon the giraffe.

Osprey in the Park

"Look, it's an eagle!"

That's what the six-year-old boy at Manito was yelling as the osprey flew wide slow circles around the pond.


Osprey are called fish eagles, and seahawks, but they're actually their own species.

Pretty cool.

Black-headed Grosbeak, day 2...

... or, further proof that I am not a watercolorist.


Despite my ineptitude, you get the idea. When I'm gazing at the feeder full of sparrows and the occasional house finch, this big(ger) dash of orange and black makes me sit up and take notice.

Pheucticus melanocephalus: Black-headed Grosbeak, day 1

Last week I saw an immature male black-headed grosbeak at one of the feeders. Today it was an adult male. He seemed generally unconcerned about much, which might have eventually become a problem as we had a hawk visit the yard today for a snack (here's hoping he picked up a sparrow instead of any of the finches).

Their bills are finchy - big, seed-eating bills. About the size of a starling, black-headed grosbeaks belong to the same family as northern cardinals. They summer in our neck of the woods


This is the initial doodle - look for color tomorrow.

Doodled from this photo.

The James Dean of Birds

Yet another corvid, the black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia): haughty, scrappy, voracious and omnivorous. This bird simply doesn't care what you think. He'll sit in the middle of the street for dinner, and if he's feeling nervy, will just make you go around.


From some angles it looks like the black-billed magpies feathers are all black, but if they catch the sun the right way they look kind of blue-green.

Doodled from this Flickr photo.

Why did the quail cross the road?

Huh... I have no idea... and I'm not sure the quail did either, because he was sitting in the middle of the road, not in much of a hurry to go anywhere, despite the fact that my car was barreling at him at, well, faster than he could run.


Good thing my brakes work, is all I have to say. (Well, that, and it's a good thing for me no one was following me at the time.)

California quail (Callipepla californica) doodled from this flickr photo.

--*--*--

Coincidentally, I've doodled a California quail before, in a post from late last October. There's been a little bit of improvement since then... I still have miles and miles to go before I can produce consistently decent work, but I've improved a fair amount in the last seven months of doodling.

Whee!

Anas platyrhynchos: Mallard

Several weeks ago, the local paper published a photo of a mallard hen nesting in the midst of a group of tulips outside an office building in downtown Spokane. The newspaper, in its infinite wisdom, decided to publish the address where the duck was nesting.

Sure enough, while mama mallard was on a constitutional, some less-than-upright individual vandalized the mama's nest.

She came back and laid a couple more eggs. As of this morning, she was still incubating.

The photographer has nicknamed mama mallard "Tulip." Interested parties have taken to leaving small cups of water and duck food for her.

Hopefully, Tulip's remaining eggs will hatch and the ducklings will safely make their way to the river a couple of blocks from her nest.


Mallard duckling doodle based on a photo by Flickr user Raj the Snapper.

Branta canadensis: Canada Goose

I counted four pairs of Canada geese at the pond this afternoon... that's four more pairs than were there at the beginning of the week.

They're big birds, and pretty uncommon at that park, so I'm not sure what is making it seem so inviting right now...

In other news, the Shovelers are still around, but the Buffleheads seem to have moved on; I saw them fly off the pond on Monday morning and haven't seen them since. I heard from another park visitor that both the heron and the osprey were seen there earlier today.

I think one of the funniest things about Canada geese is that they're dabblers. It's kind of silly when they upend themselves.

Turdus migratorius: American Robin

A set of robins... very common birds that have given me fits this week, especially in weird postures (top right - that one definitely belongs in the "meh" category). The one on the upper left is a baby... just out of the awkward "I'm all quills" phase and just before the "I've grown into my feet" phase. It's my favorite of the bunch.



Crazy.