Here is one of our neighborhood Dippers, cleaning those precious wings, probably stimulating a little extra waterproofing oil from the glands, generally keeping the feathers smooth and in proper order.  BIRDS OF OREGON  by Marshall, Hunter, et al. puts it succinctly: “Few birds are as astonishing as the American Dipper.”  They are found in many clean mountain

I was minding my own business, but so, perhaps, was Harry the Hairy.  He was drumming repeatedly on the cracked utility pole next to our house.  His business was to wanr off any other male Hairy Woodpeckers within drumbeat distance. I was busy digging out St. John’s Wort plants that needed to be moved.  It was hot,

This is the Bullock’s Oriole nest near the Ashland Dog Park. Note in the second and third picture there is a yellowish and roundish shape sticking up above the edge of the nest, now with its tops knocked off.  That shape is the head of one of the nearly fledged young’uns.                      GARDEN BIRDS:  A pair of Lesser Goldfinches

Here are three different shots of a the same adult male Bullock’s Oriole along Bear Creek in Ashland this morning.  Spotted by Bill Hering this guy sat in full sunlight, and waited until I got a couple decent shots.        There was also a busy oriole nest not far from the dog park’s parking lot.  The top had

There is one bird that can put a grin on my face every time. That is the Calliope Hummingbird.    It may be the smalllest hummingbird in North America but it doesn’t know that. Both the male and female are still here up the creek in near Gold Hill, Oregon. They nest higher up in the Siskiyous

Country music this bright summer morning.  Nashville style.  Nashville WARBLER style of course.  On Upper Granite Street, above 2300 feet the Nashvilles were in the treetops, singing from the canopy of oaks and madrones and cottonwood.  Their song is usually 1–2-12345. Near the cneter of this image is a blurred yellow figure with a gray, that’s

I was the one sittin’ around.  The birds were busy, far more productive.                         Male Lesser Goldfinch at top, female just above this text.  Here’s a female Black-headed Grosbeak:             And here’s a year-old male, not yet in mature plumage: And Stella, or one of her cousins:   The Band-tailed Pigeon still fills the feeding platform occasionally.  And an Anna’s Hummingbird male

We watched this female Wood-Pewee flyctach and give her wheezy sounding call on a sunny, torrid actually, hillside of scrubby trees and dense weeds.  It was just uphill from Milepost 10 on Dead Indian Memorial Road.  Mid-day with temps over 90 degrees.  No other birds were visible except for swallows who seem to relish the

There have been some stellar performances in our garden this day.  There are always Steller performances by jays with that moniker.  But today we had two very different stars. First came the young Downy Woodpecker, freshly fledged.  And he knows an easy job when he sees one.  The suet feeder.  And feed he does.  Sometime defying

So here’s the Lesser Goldfinch as I promised in my last post: While he was feeding on the new thistle feeder, his apparent mate was over at the platform, performing her simplest dive: Olympic seed-bobbing.               And there were the usual suspects, at their usual posts:             But then a less regular customer stopped by.  First there was a starter