I missed last week in getting this post up, so you get to tell about your best bird of the last 2 weeks. For me, no doubt. Great Gray Owl! Mike Denny showed Ken and me a known area, we watched the owlets branching and being fed by an adult, and the three of us sat by the side of an old logging road and recorded an episode of The Bird Banter Podcast. An incredible experience. I wrote a trip report on the blog here for anyone interested in photos and the whole 3-day story.
What was your best bird, or birding experience of the last 2 weeks. Share by leaving a comment on this post. I’ll try to approve quickly. By the way, some birding walks are reopening. The Theler walk with Fay and others is on for this Thursday, and Scott had a walk today at Ft. Steilacoom Park.
Westport Seabirds is opening some trips for the summer and fall. Birding in small groups with social distancing seems to be opening back up to a limited degree. Stay safe, but have fun.
Ed
I was walking in a nice urban Austin neighborhood (Hyde Park), and was surprised to see an immature Yellow-crowned Night Heron in a front yard. I initially thought it was a statue/lawn ornament.
They are striking birds, and can hold as still as a statue. Nice.
Yesterday, 2 Semi-palmated Sandpipers at the skokomish river overlook.
Wow. Early. Nice find. Ed
Watching downy woodpecker feeding juvenile bits of suet from my feeder on my deck railing while having a leisurely lunch on the deck (all three of us!)
Love suet feeder woodpeckers. Fun. Ed
6 common nighthawks noisily flying over Clover Creek toward lLakeSpanaway about 7 in evening
Love that flight call. It means summer is here. Ed
Actually I had two great bird encounters. The first was discovering a Pileated Woodpecker nest cavity and watching the male repeatedly return and feed the two calling kids.
We also had seven White Pelicans that returned for three days to our little bay. My son’s slow motion video shows them catching and swallowing fish.
Good stuff Carolyn, Keep on birding.
Finally got out on the Solstice Pelagic with Westport Seabirds! We had a great trip, and I was quite happy to see a South Polar Skua circling behind a fishing trawler.
So glad the trips are going again. Ed
Black Swift. I have kept a yard list since Darchelle and I moved into our house in Ravenna in April 2017 and for three years now I have been trying to add Black Swift to the list. On Tuesday afternoon I finally spotted two of them flying over the house. Yard Bird #71.
There was a day when they seemed all over. Very nice. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I was camping out near Winthrop so missed that day chance for a Pierce County BLSW, but really cool to see the reports. 400 in Seattle by Ryan M. Crazy. Ed
My best birds were a Red-breasted Sapsucker and a female Rufous Hummingbird at Nisqually NWR. The sapsucker was moving between about 5 saplings where it had cut out rectangles of bark and the hummingbird was following it to harvest the sap that was oozing into the new cuts, all about 20 feet away and unbothered by us standing there and taking photos.
Nice observation. Ed
My best bird over the last couple of weeks was a Yellow-throated Warbler female on a nest in a Bald Cypress next to the Texas Colorado River in the Austin area. Other birders said they saw babies, although I could neither see nor hear them. I did see the father bring food to the nest, however. When I returned to check up on them several days later, mother and babies were gone. Surprisingly, the father was singing like it was spring in the nearby trees. I would have thought he’d be busy feeding the fledglings.
Would have loved to see the Great Gray Owl family! What an amazing experience you had seeing them feed their young. Glad to hear all the Peregrine eyasses are still alive and well and starting to fly around Tacoma.
Oops forgot about this. Hard torn, had 7 white pelicans at point no point, but better yet, I believe on our trip with Mike Denny, 13 Ferruginous Hawks!!!!
Incredibly cool trip. Thanks. Ed
Hi my friends. My best bird in the last two weeks was a Flammulated Owl! This is the third year I have tried to get a FLOW on Bethel Ridge. I changed tactics this year and was successful. I also heard a Common Poorwill that night.
Ed, I can’t quite compete with Great Gray Owls, but closer to home, I did travel all the way to Tacoma today with Adam to see the Peregrines, whose 4 eyasses we have been following on YouTube. It was a day to fly! Apparently after 2 too-soon forays from which they had to be rescued 17 floors down, one chick successfully took a flight today, which Roger Orness got to witness. Adam and I were too late for that, but we enjoyed seeing the parents almost continuously hunting, but we had to leave before they could gather the kids in for dinner. We talked to a UPS driver who told us how he had personally rescued an eyass 3 years ago, which was one of his most exciting adventures of driving that truck! Luckily we didn’t have to dodge a downed falcon driving out, but we were certainly careful!
For more on the history of this brood, see Jerry Broadus’ account on the TAS website: https://www.tahomaaudubon.org/moments-in-nature/2020/6/2/tacomas-peregrine-falcons-through-jerrys-lens
Very cool.