SPORTS. AMERICA.
"The human fascination with large exotic mammals is mainstream; humans' rarer fascination for small vocalizing birds is still considered queer."
-Thomas Gannon, Birding While Indian: A Mixed-Blood Memoir
Orange-Crowned Warbler
Common Yellowthroat
Two Mallards & a little Bufflehead
The world's most photogenic Hairy Woodpecker.
Cooper's Hawk, showing off
This photo of this Red-Breasted Sapsucker could be the album cover for a 2000s psychedelic dream-pop band. I'm thinking it would be called "Antler Woman" by Child Drugs and would sound like Jewelled Antler Collective meets Lush with a bit of Candy Claws thrown in.
I've been birding a lot. Birding a lot and writing not so much. I went birding at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge near Portland recently and I saw so much without even getting that far into the park (see above). I also went birding with ClaireViolet at Union Bay in Seattle to try to see some Violet-Green Swallows and we did, but we saw way more Northern Rough-Winged Swallows along with some beautiful Barn Swallows:
Northern Rough-Winged cuties
Barn Swallows are one of the top swallows in terms of being really gorgeous, and that's honestly tough competition
There were a lot of water birds too:
GADWALL
Cutes Coots
Northern Shoveler (left) with two Mallards
Hooded Merganser
A Buncha Double-Crested Cormorants
Take another look at this Gadwall. They aren't anything to look at at first glance, oh another grayish brown duck, but look closer and it's feathers have an extremely intricate pattern. Like a fingerprint. Look at the Gadwall again. Again.
Some good Passerine action:
Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Downy Woodpecker
Seattle's cutest Marsh Wrens
Black-Capped Chickadee bb i love u
And otherwise:
Bald Eagle by the stadium loves SPORTS. AMERICA
Our yard has been crazy too. Since spring has started we've gotten a bunch of new visitors including Mourning Doves, Starlings, Purple Finches, and...well, and it turns out that those Violet-Green Swallows I went to Seattle to find? Well, they are nesting in our broken rain gutter. So I get to see a lot of them. I have to say, I absolutely adore Swallows. If I got to come back as an animal after I died I would choose to be a Swallow. They don't just fly, they FLY, zooming around catching bugs midair and doing corkscrews and loop-de-loops. They just always seem like they're having an absolute blast flying around and I think I could enjoy myself doing that. Not to mention I'd get a chance to so some migration. Anyway, I don't have any great Violet-Green Swallow pics yet, but I WILL get you all some soon. Here's the other feeder birds though!
Purple Finches!
Okay, Northern Flickers aren't new to the feeder but look at this dude's tongue and Nictating Membranes (weird inner eyelids)
European Starlings
Mourning Doves
Yesterday I heard a new bird sound outside our window. Violet-Green Swallows are nesting in our house's broken rain gutter. Photos to come. I didn't need to travel to King County after all...
Here's poem that has a bird in it:
ON SEEING A VERDIN IN THE BOTANICAL GARDEN PARKING LOT
Flitting from flower to flower.
Upside down now,
head smaller than a coin,
face like it was rubbed
with a dandelion.
The oldest song in the world
(complete with musical notation)
is called the Seikilos Epitaph.
It goes: While you live, shine.
Have no grief at all.
Life exists only for a short while,
and time demands its toll.
Love,
Sara