Accepting the Birds that Come

It is currently 39 degrees and sunny in Seattle, but I'm sitting here at my desk in a heavy coat because my dogs want to have access to the front deck.  Sigh.

Long ago, when I was an art student, studying drawing and photography, I learned a valuable lesson:  don't wait for the perfect subject, draw what's in front of you.  It seems like an easy principle to master, but it turns out it's one of those things you have to learn over and over again.

Starling and Sparrow, familiar visitors, in an uncommon mutual pose.

Take birds, for example.  As a birdwatcher, and as a photographer, I am always hoping for the next big, unexpected find.  For some rare (or at least previously unseen) bird to fly onto my yard list, or alight on the bushes at the dog park.  Of course, the definition of "rare" means that it's something which very seldom happens.  So the artist who waits for "rare" subjects -- unless he takes off for Tahiti like Gauguin -- may have a long wait.  (I couldn't come up with Paul Gauguin's name to save my life just now, so I Googled "Tahiti Artist" and it was the first hit -- I love the Internet.)  There are days when I take my camera outside and I think, "Nothing here but more chickadees, Juncos and pigeons.  I have thousands of pictures of them, why do I need more?"

Beautiful rich colors make this Junco stand out.

The answer is, "I don't."   But I need to take more pictures of them.  It's not the end product, it's the process.  That may sound like a cliche, but it's true.  Most basically, because it keeps your skills and your eye sharp -- the way practicing scales keeps a musicians hands limber and ears tuned.  But it's also true for a couple of other reasons (that I know how to articulate).

First, is receptivity.  As an artist -- photographer, writer or birdwatcher -- receptivity is one of the most important traits you can possess.  (Reactivity is another, but I'll write about that some other day.)  You could compare it to the chemical nature of film (remember film?  If you're too young, Google it).  The chemicals on the film are sensitive to light and they react in its presence, creating an image.  Similarly, the artist has to be available to the "light" of the world around him, has to let it in and let it change him.  The inner film develops these images, stores them, and they become the raw material out of with art is created.  Standing on my deck, with my camera, I am at my best when I can cultivate a state of open receptivity.  If I was religious I could phrase it as, "Not my will, but yours be done."  In other words, I will accept what comes. I'll photograph what's in front of me instead of complaining that I don't get anything "new".  Out of that openness comes possibility, the chance for something unexpected and creative to occur.  Without that openness, nothing is possible.

A distinctive mostly white Pigeon surveys the deck.

I love pigeons!

Henry James -- not usually one of my favorite writing mentors, but you really can't escape his influence -- advised us to strive to be someone on whom nothing is lost.  The emphasis on striving (James said, "try" but it's the same point) is important.  It's a goal we can't reach.  Still, it's crucial.  As soon as I begin thinking, "Oh, they're just chickadees, just pigeons, I've seen them a thousand times before," then the doors of my perception are closed.  The world is being lost on me.  The chickadees that I see today may or may not be the actual birds I've seen before -- it's very difficult to tell.  (Actually, sonograms of the songs of individual birds can help you identify whether the particular birds in your yard are the ones you've seen before -- another topic to get into later.)  With pigeons it's a little easier.  I saw four pigeons on my deck yesterday and, because I forced myself for a moment to put down all the things I was worrying about and everything I "should" be doing, I got some really great photos of them.  Two of them I knew and two were really striking, mostly white birds that I'm not sure I've seen before.  I love pigeons, but familiarity can blunt even our greatest passions.  Only openness and receptivity -- being the present moment without any certainties -- can reignite that love.  My pigeons reminded me of that.

Like the Four Stooges having lunch.

And ultimately, the birds that I see today are not the birds that I've seen before -- and I am not the person who saw them.  A photographer knows that from moment to moment the light moves and the image changes.  The photographer changes too.  No amount of clinging to my opinions or preferences will prevent that.  Tomorrow, the birds will be different and I will be different.  The tree will have a few less leaves, the monster dog on the deck beside me will be a little bigger, and the light will keep moving.

And the pigeons will have something new to say.

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 I've been a little busy this month doing NaNoWriMo and other writing related activities.  So far, it's been a pretty good year for writing.  If you're interested, you can check out some of my other work.  Starting with our sister Blog, Books and Beasts.  Also, the Seattle Mariners Blog, Sodo Mojo has been hosting my posts every Sunday morning for a couple of months.  You can check out some of my pieces (and the great baseball analysis of the rest of the site's writers) here. 

Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Timmy!

When we moved into this house -- last summer -- there were pigeons in our attic.  

Timmy's "parents" -- at least the seemed to be caring for him when we moved in.

We didn't know it was pigeons at first -- we thought it might be squirrels --but observation soon confirmed a family of pigeons.    Sexing pigeons is way beyond my ability, but I assumed (because there were three of them nesting together instead of roosting with a flock, and because two of them seemed to be closer to each other) that it was mated pair and offspring. They were beautiful birds.  The pigeons out here in West Seattle look much healthier than the birds downtown.  Sleeker, more fit, and their colors are brighter.  They are also wilder.  Pigeons downtown are so acclimated to humans that they come right up to you like aggressive panhandlers -- I once had a pigeon try to take a sandwich out of my hands.  But out here they keep their distance and act like wild birds (which they really aren't).

These pigeons seemed like a couple, and seemed to be taking care of Timmy.

It was the third pigeon that was most interesting -- the one I assumed was the offspring.  Like the others, he was a good looking bird.  But he was a bit odd.  In the evenings I often saw him flying around the house, sitting on the deck, approaching all the windows and trying to get in.  He would even peck at the glass.  I was afraid that he might fly into a window and hurt himself.  He seemed unsure about where he wanted to go or what he was doing.  And because he seemed a little --- well, handicapped -- we named him Timmy. (South Park fans will understand.)

But the pigeons were really a little bit of a nuisance.  They started raiding my bird feeders -- which upset the chickadees, who would sit on the branches and scold them (or scold me for not stopping them, I'm not sure which).  Also, there were concerns about damage to the house and contamination -- since they were nesting right over our kitchen.  We decided that the pigeons had to go.

So, during the daytime, when the birds were usually gone anyway, my roommate climbed up in the attic and made sure it was empty, and the landlord's maintenance guy sealed up the hole.  After that, we didn't see the birds anymore and I assumed that, finding their nesting place sealed, they had moved on.  (There are a lot more pigeons just a few miles south of here in the commercial area of White Center).  

Except, a day or two later (like something in a Poe story), we heard scratching in the attic again.  Could it be that there actually were squirrels up there, and they had another entrance?  Squirrels are much better and getting into small spaces than pigeons.  After about three or four days we called the maintenance man and he went up into the attic to check it out again.

And found Timmy.

Timmy is really a beautiful bird -- just a little odd.

Somehow, we had missed the poor guy when we secured the attic, and he'd been trapped up there for almost a week.  We felt awful.  The maintenance man captured him and brought him down.  He seemed very confused and disoriented.  He stumbled around our yard for a while, then sat on the roof of a neighbor's shed for several hours.  We put water up there hoping he would drink it.  I was preparing to try to capture him and take him to the wildlife rehab center.  But, finally, he flew away.

And we didn't see him much all winter.

There really weren't any pigeons around our neighborhood after that.  Every once in a while I would think of Timmy and hope he was doing well.  (For some reason, I didn't worry about the other two -- they seemed like capable birds to me.  I was sure they'd be okay.)  

And then, early this spring, Timmy showed up again.  He went back to perching on the drain outside the kitchen.  He was looking good, but he still acted a little odd.  Timmy seemed to be looking for his old home.  Pigeons, after all, are legendary for their homing skills, and even a -- well, handicapped -- bird like Timmy could easily find his way back to the place where he was hatched.

Timmy!

He's been hanging around consistently ever since.  I don't know if he flies off at night and joins other pigeons in the roost, but he's frequently here late in the evening and early in the morning.  I've started putting food out for him on the rail (which is also popular with Juncos, House Sparrows, and House Finches and -- I'm afraid -- rats).  I'm trying to teach my dog, Lulubelle, not to bark at Timmy when he comes to eat.  She is dubious.  

For now, Timmy has sort of become part of our family.

Birdland West readers will be interested in my review of Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson, which is posted now at Books and Beasts.   It's a great book and a must read for all bird lovers.  Check out the review here.

 (Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Newcomers: Birds of Spring

For the past week or so, I've been seeing a couple of birds in my yard that I couldn't identify.   It was hard to get a good look at them, and they looked enough like the sparrows that have been so common this spring that I was getting confused.  As usual, my strategy was to take as many photos as possible and let Cannon sort it out.

Yesterday I finally got around to going through the recent photos and I discovered some surprises.

The first mystery bird turned out to be pretty easy to identify.  She (yes, in this case she is obviously she) posed for some great photos around the feeder.  Her rather nondescript brown coloring had baffled me from a distance, but as soon as I got a good look at her head and beak I was pretty sure I knew who she was.  It helps that I know her mate (at least, a male of her species) has been hanging around quite a bit lately.  He's much more distinctive and I recognized him right away, even though I haven't gotten a really good photo of him yet.  Earlier this year I even got a shot of the couple together on the feeder (or another couple a lot like them).

 

This is the best photo I've managed to get of the male House Finch, but he is immediately recognizable.

So my first mystery bird was a female House Finch.  Even without her boyfriend's flashy colors, she's a handsome bird.

Earlier this spring, I got a picture of a House Finch couple at the feeder.

The second contestant was harder to identify.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit that, at first, I thought he (in this case I have no idea what the gender is) was a Song Sparrow.  They're not quite as common in my neighborhood as House Sparrows, but they've been around this spring.  He has a sparrow-ish shape, and brownish streaking on the breast.  But it's not a Sparrow.  I had to call in help from a naturalist friend to positively identify this one.  Look at the photos and see if you can do better before you read on.

Identifying birds often comes down to details, and as my friend pointed out, the telling clue is in the tail.  "See how one outer tail feather on each side of the tail is white?" He asked. "Can you think of a common backyard bird that you see with this pattern on the tail?"  

Once you see that, it's a dead give-away.  The flashing white tail feathers are so familiar that it's usually all  I need to recognize one of my most loyal feeder birds:  the Dark-eyed Junco.  This little guy is a juvenile, probably a fledgling.  And that makes him the first of the new generation that I've positively identified in my yard this year.

Pretty exciting news.    

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Birdland West readers will be interested in my review of Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson, which is posted now at Books and Beasts.   It's a great book and a must read for all bird lovers.  Check out the review here.

 (Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

The Canon Rebel and the Zen of Bird Watching

I am a photo birder.

Though I've gotten better over the last year (mostly from learning what to look for) I'm still a little weak at "on the wing" identifications.  I have photographs (not always good photographs) of every single bird on my yard list and most of the birds on my life list.  I feel more confident that way.

Technically, this is not a great photo, but it captures something so specific to the species -- the Junco's tendency to dive straight down toward the ground -- that I really love it.

Plus, you can learn a lot from photos.  You can see things -- details of markings, movement, flight and behavior that are hard to catch in real-time observation.  And though I like to take a beautiful shot as much as anyone, that's not really my point in shooting wildlife.  My goal is to use the camera to expand my ability to see.

The camera that I use is a Canon Rebel XTi.  I bought it several years ago and the salesperson described it as the "top of the line of amateur cameras".  (It's at least one generation back now, but I'm very happy with it.)  The next step up, he said, was to the low-end professional cameras.  The XTi is lightweight, which makes it easy to carry, even with a large lens (although you have to learn to compensate for overbalancing when the lens far outweighs the camera).  Lately, I've been using a Sigma50-500 HMS lens, a step up (in size and range) from the Canon 75-300mm lens that I used for so long and was very happy with.  The reason I switched, initially, was not because I was dissatisfied with the smaller lens, but because it developed a glitch and stopped working with the camera's auto-focus.  Otherwise, I would probably still be relying on the 75-300.  It is light and versatile -- but mostly because I am a creature of habit.  

One of the nice things about Canon is their EOS lens system.  Basically, all Cannon SLR cameras use the same set of lenses, which gives you a very wide range of options.  They are also compatible with a wide array of lenses from third-party producers.  As I said, I've had good luck with my lens from Sigma.

This Bushtit behavior would be very hard to see with the naked eye.

My technique, so far, is really not much of a technique at all.  I take my camera with me to all sorts of places -- and most importantly I keep it close to the front door, so that I can get out onto the deck in a hurry.  My front yard provides a big part of my birding excitement lately -- I make as many discoveries there as I do when I go on excursions.  (Which maybe means I should broaden my areas of excursion?)

This photo is not clear and hard to identify, but along with the next one ...

It makes a positive ID:  Black-headed Grosbeak

With the possible exception of writing and playing with my dogs, there is simply nothing in my life as healthy and calming as bird watching and photography.  I find that the stillness that it takes to really see the birds around me is meditative.  I'm generally not a person who finds it easy to stay still -- much less quiet.  Really hearing the birds requires that I stop talking to myself, at least for a little while.  I wear glasses -- I see pretty well close up, but not at a distance -- but I have my camera focus adjusted for my uncorrected vision.  The slight blurriness of the world when I take off my glasses is actually an asset, I think.  (And I can now identify a number of familiar birds without my glasses -- House Sparrows from their markings and their sound, Juncos from the charcoal cowl and the flash of white on their tails, chickadees with the sharp pattern of black-and-white).  It allows me to relax and focus more on the entire space around me, rather than the details of one thing.  What I'm looking for is motion.  Songbirds are all about motion.  

In Zen and the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel's archery teacher told him, "Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! ... The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise .... "  I like that kind of photography.  

This Chickadee seems confused, landing on the wrong feeder.  But I would guess he's looking for ants.

A flash of yellow could be anyone -- too fast for the eye to tell.

Last week I was out on my deck and I noticed movement in the tall bushes by the sidewalk.  Bushtits often forage in those bushes, so that's what I expected at first.  As I was bringing the camera up, I saw a flash of bright yellow.  Definitely not a bushtit.  The bird was moving so fast though, flitting around in the bushes so much that it was almost impossible to get a good look at him.  Even through the powerful lens, my eyes couldn't catch him.  This is when the features of the Cannon Rebel really come into their own.  With the settings on automatic (I usually use the "sports" setting because it shoots so fast), you lose a lot of control over aperture and film speed and such, but the auto-focus is very good.  I simply track the motion, shooting as fast as I can.  The 50-500 lens takes some getting used to, because of its length and weight.  Some people prefer to use it with a tripod, but with small songbirds I find that too restrictive.  (Although it could work well at a hummingbird feeder).  I have learned to handhold this lens, and I can keep it steady now while I shoot.  Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out.  The great joy of this kind of shooting is when it takes the photographer himself by surprise. I shot hundreds of frames of my little yellow visitor, and even after I finished, I didn't have a clear idea of who he was.  He was moving too fast.  With my naked eyes (even with glasses) I never would have gotten a good enough look at him to identify him.  Binoculars probably wouldn't have helped much either.

But when I started looking through my shots I found wonderful surprises. 

Unmistakably a Wilson's Warbler.

The camera captures what the eye could never see.

If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

(Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Sizing up songbirds: My favorite trick for identifying birds

What's the first thing you notice when you glimpse a strange bird?

Not too long ago, I didn't know a black-capped chickadee from a Dark-eyed Junco.   Of course, I knew a hummingbird when I saw one, and I was familiar with gulls and crows.  But I spent too much time in the heart of the city, and I wasn't very good at being still long enough to really see the smaller songbirds around me.

Now, I probably recognize a dozen or more species of songbirds on sight -- sometimes just by the way they move or fly.  And though I'm not a very good "by ear" birder, I have learned the songs and calls of many of my most familiar species.

Color and movement command attention.  But are they the best keys to identification?

But a couple of unusual visitors in the past week have gotten me to thinking about the perennial bird watcher's question:  what is the best way to identify a bird in the field?  If you look around at bird books and blogs and magazines you will find endless information and advice on this topic -- much of it very good.  But, as a novice myself, I thought it might be helpful to say something about how I have learned to do it in the past year.  

So again, what's the first thing you notice when you catch sight of an unknown bird?

Probably color.  Color demands our attention.  And movement.  Location, in a tree, in a bush, on the ground.  Songs and calls.  All of these are vital clues.  But the problem is that there's so much relevant information, and often our chance to observe the bird is so brief, that it can be hard to know what we should pay attention to first.

I've learned a little trick that works very well for me, and often provides a key to figuring out a bird's identity.  It's not unique to me -- I've done a lot of reading in the past year and had the opportunity to pick the brains of people who know a lot more than I do -- but I've been able to adapt it to my area and habits.  What I've done is train myself to ask a different question first, one that's not nearly as instinctive as some of the others: How big is this bird?

Bushtits are the smallest songbirds in North America.

Among songbirds, size is crucial.  Knowing the approximate size dramatically narrows the possibilities.  Then the other things I notice -- color patterns, movement, location, song -- all become much more useful, because there are a lot less candidates to choose from.

If you're like I was, you're thinking, "How in the world do you expect me to guess the size of a bird that I see for less than a minute a hundred feet away?"  In my mind, when I started out, all small birds were "sparrows" and I was convinced I couldn't tell them apart.  Little did I know there was a whole galaxy of smaller-than-sparrow species to learn.

The trick is, you don't have to know how big a bird is in centimeters or fractions of a gram.  All you have to know is relative size.  How big is the bird compared to species you already know?  If you can place him between two species you know, then the task of identifying him becomes much simpler.

Everyone knows Robins, which makes them the perfect beginning metric for birdwatchers.

In my head, I have gradually built up a scale.  It will be a little different depending on where you live, and what birds you're familiar with.  But you don't have to know a lot of birds to start.  Two or three species is enough to start making valuable guesses about size.  (Even something as simple as "Is it bigger or smaller than a Robin?" can be very valuable.)

Crows are the largest songbirds most city-people see regularly.

For instance, in my neighborhood, the smallest songbirds around are bushtits.  (Actually they're the smallest songbirds in North America, about the size of an Anna's Hummingbird.)  And the largest songbirds are Crows.  (There are occasional Raven sightings out here in West Seattle, but they are very rare.)  Around here, if it's bigger than a crow, it's not a songbird.  You're into groups like hawks and gulls then.

My personal scale runs -- roughly -- like this:  Bushtits, Black-Capped Chickadees, Dark-eyed Juncos, House Sparrows, Robins, Steller's Jays, Crows.   This is a pretty good scale for where I live.  Nine times out of ten, if I get a good look (or a good photo) I can pretty quickly place the bird on my scale.

So when I glimpse that unknown visitor in the cherry tree, I ask myself about his size.  I know he's bigger than a House Sparrow, not quite as big as a Robin.  Once I know that, I can easily leverage whatever other information I have -- orange chest, black head and wings, white bars on the wings -- into a good identification:  That's a Black-Headed Grosbeak.

And what could be more satisfying to a bird watcher than that?


(I'd love to hear some of your favorite aids to identification.  Feel free to leave them in the comments.)

RELATED POSTS

Crows

Turf Wars

Bushtits

If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

(Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com.  If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Adventures with bird feeders

When I moved to West Seattle last year, I wanted to put up bird feeders.  But I didn't know anything about them.  For many years I lived in urban neighborhoods not at all suited for feeders.  My old neighborhood, in Ballard, was so busy with feral cats that I never wanted to attract more birds. So I was definitely starting from scratch.

I also had a limited budget.  The move strapped finances, so I wasn't ready to sink a lot of money into a new hobby.  I wanted to start as simply and inexpensively as possible.  

With no real idea what I needed, I stopped by the Home Depot.  I had done a little looking online.  The first thing I learned was:  you can spend as much money on bird feeders and paraphernalia as you want.  You can easily spend a fortune.  But I didn't have a fortune.

I'd already had some adventures with the chickadees in my neighborhood.

I also didn't know what kind of feeders I wanted.  Not having much experience, and not knowing what kind of birds to expect, I was stymied by all the choices.  There was only one thing I did know -- there were chickadees in my neighborhood.  Black-capped chickadees, and I had already had some adventures with them.  (I'll tell you more about that later).  So I decided, for a start, to buy feeders that would appeal to chickadees.

Perky-Pet Sierra Wild Bird Feeder

What I ended up with were the cheapest, most versatile feeders I could find.  At the Home Depot I found the Perky-Pet Sierra Wild Bird Feeder.  (See here or here).  They are plastic, pretty cheaply made, but work well and are easy for a beginner to figure out.  I managed to destroy one of them by sitting it on the rail of my deck where it blew off and crashed to the sidewalk below.  But they are versatile -- they can be used both as mixed-feed songbird feeders and as finch-style thistle seed feeders (the feeding ports flip up and down).  I had my first feeder operating almost at once (which I wasn't entirely sure I could do).  And, they are very inexpensive.  They were priced from three to five dollars at different stores.  This turned out to be good, because they suffered a heavy mortality rate in my yard.

Chickadees discovered these feeders quickly.  A day or two after I put them up, the chickadees came calling -- first one or two, then a steady stream.  Dark-eyed Juncos were close behind.  (The Juncos also like eating the seed that falls to the ground underneath.) Over the course of the winter, my feeders (I also added a suet feeder at some point) logged 17 species, a number of which I had never seen before in the wild. (See my "Yard List" here).  

Rock Pigeons were a problem at first, they would raid the feeders and spill all the food, but once we closed up the hole in our attic and evicted the pigeons, they moved on and we didn't have any more problems.  During the coldest part of the winter, Northern Flickers came to visit the feeders.  Seeing them twisting around to eat out the little songbird ports was a comical sight.  (They're even more fond of the suet feeders.)

Enter the villain of the piece.  Sometime during the winter the squirrels in my neighborhood discovered the feeders, and when they did, things got ugly.  First, I noticed that food was disappearing very quickly.  I caught the squirrels lurking around, but I wasn't overly concerned.  I didn't care that much if they ate some of the feed.  Then I started to notice damage to the feeders.  The inexpensive plastic was easy pickings for rodents.  One day, I went out to discover the feeder totally destroyed.  All the perches gnawed off and the ports torn up.  It was especially impressive since I had photos of the feeder from the day before showing it to be whole and intact.  Whoever destroyed it worked fast.

It wasn't long before I caught him in the act.

I tried switching feed to find something less attractive to the squirrels, but the birds didn't like it as much as the mixed fruit and nut type I was using, and the squirrels, now that they had discovered the feeders would not be discouraged.  I started losing feeders at an alarming rate.  Since they are inexpensive, I bought a lot of them, so I could replace them quickly, but it soon became clear that I was losing the war of attrition.  The inexpensive solution was not so inexpensive any more. 

I replaced the Sierra feeders with another model. Birdscapes Copper Festival Mixed Seed Bird Feeder. (See it here, and here). It costs a bit more -- almost twenty dollars at Home Depot.   In design, it's similar to the Perky-Pet model -- a plastic sheath with perches and ports.  But the external parts -- the perches and port openings -- are brass.  Squirrels aren't going to chew them up.  At first, I was afraid that the birds didn't like the new feeder -- there seemed to be a sharp drop in attendance when I put it out.  But within a week they were all back, and I haven't had any complaints since.  I've caught the squirrels on it more than once, but they can't destroy it, which is all I wanted.

I've been happy with the results of these feeders.  Now, with Summer coming on, I want to branch out, try some new kinds of feeders and new locations.

I'll let you know what I find out.

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If you like Birdland West, you might also want to check out our sister blog Books and Beasts, which focuses on reviews of books about animals and related topics.

(Many of the original photographs featured on Birdland West are available for sale as art quality prints.  You can check out all of our offerings at http://AlexWashoe.imagekind.com. If you see an image here that does not show up on our Imagekind site please contact me directly and I'll let you know about availability.)

Birds of Winter

Winter was  unusually wet and dismal in Seattle this year.  I grew up in Florida where the length of the days doesn't change significantly through the year, and maybe for that reason I'm generally not bothered by seasonal depression.  But this year I felt the winter blues.   This is the kind of weather people who don't live here think we have all the time.  And it hasn't let up for spring -- our March was the wettest on record, and April continues to be sodden.  But through all this gloom (and a fair bit of personal stress) one bright spot of pleasure and distraction has remained:  my bird feeders.

Last year I relocated from Ballard, just north of downtown Seattle, where I lived in one of the more industrial neighborhoods in town, to West Seattle.  We are now about as far South as you can go and still be in the city.  The neighborhood has more of a suburban feel, lots of trees along the streets, and we are surrounded by parks and greenbelts.  The difference in the bird life is amazing.  

 In Ballard, my neighborhood was dominated almost entirely by crows, who shared their turf uneasily with seagulls, pigeons, starlings, and sparrows.

   

(The sparrows lived mostly in the parking garage of the Safeway across the street and nested in the small trees along the sidewalk.  What is it with sparrows and grocery stores?  It is an almost ubiquitous combination in Seattle.)  And our neighborhood was so thick with feral cats that I didn't dare set up bird feeders.

Here in West Seattle, the situation is very different.  Bird activity is much higher, and the number of species are far greater.  Even though I moved here at the end of summer and didn't get my feeders set up until early Autumn, I've had amazing success.  I have positively identified 17 different species in my yard over the winter. (Not counting others -- including a Red-Tailed Hawk -- that have been in the neighborhood, but never actually on my property.)  This is my "yard list" for the winter and early Spring: 

Seen on our property (West Seattle)  June 2010 through December 31, 2010

1.       American Goldfinch (winter plumage)

2.       American Robin

3.       Anna's hummingbird

4.       Bewick's Wren

5.       Black Capped Chickadee

6.       Crow

7.       Dark-eyed Juncos

8.       European Starlings

9.       Northern Flicker

10.   Red-breasted Nuthatch

11.   Rock Pigeons

12.   Steller's Jay

Jan 1st 2011 through April 14 2011

13.   House Finch

14.   Song Sparrow

15.   Yellow-rumped warbler

16.   Bushtit

17.   House Sparrow

I'm pretty happy with that list.

 

Some of the birds have come to seem like constant companions -- friends even.   The chickadees, for instance, have been here almost every day.  Their curiosity and fearlessness makes them great birds for close observation.   

 

Also, the Dark-eyed Juncos, who not only eat at my feeders and in the yard below, but frequently even on the railing of my deck.  One Junco in particular, a fellow with prominent leucism (lack of pigment)  on his face, was a frequent guest throughout the winter.

 Anna's Hummingbirds have been another real blessing this winter.  They've hung out in my yard through snow, rain, heavy winds and (occasionally) sun.  There is at least one male/female pair in the neighborhood, so I am hoping to see hummingbird fledglings before too long. (Here you see a noticeably sluggish Anna's Hummingbird at my feeder during our first big snow in November. I had to go out every hour or so and bring the feeder in to thaw it out.)

This really just scratches the surface of the pleasure my bird watching has given me over the past eight months or so.  As I go forward with this blog, I plan to give many of my avian friends a more in depth look, and also to keep you up to date on the excitement of Spring in West Seattle.

Let me leave you, though, with a shot of one of my non-bird "friends" -- the clever and resourceful nemesis of birdfeeders everywhere.  I have more to say about him in the future as well.