Birding, Our New Hobby

So, we've been talking about birdwatching for a while now.  We've even looked at a few birds.  But our birdwatching has taken a more serious committed turn in the last week.  All it took was a restful and rejuvenating long weekend on Orcas Island.  We stayed at this amazing place that was out in the woods with amazing gardens and lots of birds.  We also did a fair amount of hiking (first serious hikes of the year, at 4 or so miles each) and saw our first woodpecker!!

We now own two (soon to be several more than two) bird identification books, a bird song identification CD set and two pairs of binoculars.  On a side note, both pairs of binoculars were given to us secondhand by my father, and one of them is surprisingly nice.  We took some fun pictures of the birds this weekend, which I'll share below.  I have also learned that my favorite bird (so far) to watch at a bird feeder is a red-breasted nuthatch.  And Beth (or anyone else), if you have corrections to our identifications, please let me know.  You can also check out my new list on the left side of the blog of the birds that we've seen and identified since we started our list.

All credit for the pictures goes to Margo.  Her camera rocks and she has a lens that I've seen many people eyeing with envy.

So here is a picture of my favorite bird, the red-breasted nuthatch.  I love watching these guys climb all over the bird feeder, even upside down.  The male nuthatch was also extremely aggressive towards the other birds if he was at the feeder.

The birds we saw the most of were the dark eyed juncos.  In our region, we have the Oregon morph, which is a fancy way of saying that they have different coloring here, namely a black hood.  Once we had identified what they were, we saw TONS of them EVERYWHERE.  I suspect that will be the case with many birds as we go along.  They are cute and sassy.  The dark eyed junco is on the left, and joining him at the bird feeder is a pine siskin.  We also saw quite a number of these little guys.

We had some debate about whether this next guy is a house finch or a purple finch, but eventually went with purple finch (they're not actually purple) because he's pink over so much of his body.

The spotted towhee was a little more elusive and we don't have any great pictures of him.  We actually have seen these before, but this is our first picture.  The first time we saw them, I thought they were some kind of weird robin.  They're similarly sized and the red breast was confusing.

This is one of the birds that we've had the most difficult time positively identifying.  I think it's a winter wren, but it might be a house wren as well.  He was singing at us quite assertively from his little perch.

This little lady was actually in the pond at the house where we stayed.  The picture isn't great, but it's the best shot we got.

We saw these buffleheads pretty far out on the water, but they were so pretty I just wanted to share them.

We actually see great blue herons pretty frequently when we get out of town, but Margo got some really nice pictures of this one that landed in a nearby tree on one of our hikes.

And finally, our most exciting sight of the trip, the hairy woodpecker.  We've heard plenty of woodpeckers before, but neither of us has ever actually seen one.  The picture isn't the best, but it's hard to take a picture of a moving bird when you're looking straight up the tree.  We think he's a hairy woodpecker because his outer white tail feathers do not appear to have spots, which would appear on a down woodpecker.

We're already planning all of the places we are going to go to look for more birds.  We also purchased a hummingbird feeder and a birdbath for our balcony, since we aren't allowed to have regular birdfeeders on our balconies.  And after seeing the red-breasted nuthatch throwing everything he didn't want out of the bird feeder and onto the ground, I understand why.