Backyard Birds

Dark Eyed Junco Junco hyemalis

I put a couple new bird feeders in the back yard last weekend and the birds hadn't visited them yet. One of the bird books said that birds will come investigate shiny things, so I put a chocolate wrapper near the feeder. Success.

These little juncos are very fast and frenetic. Always twitching and hopping. They mostly eat seeds off the ground and they like to hang out in the pear tree.

Female junco here.

House Finch - Carpodacus mexicanus

and

Black-Capped Chickadee - Poecile atricapilla

The chickadees are supposed to be some of the most tame birds, but that didn't seem to be the case yesterday. This one was the only one that came near the feeders and the french doors in the kitchen (where I was sitting taking pictures.)

Western Scrub Jay - Aphelocoma californica

Every 15 minutes or so, the Jay would swoop in and disturb all the little birds at the feeder. I think he was just doing it to assert his dominance or something because he never bothered to take any seeds.

American Crow - Corvus brachyrhynchos

Like the Jay, the Crow was curious to see why all the little birds were so excited.

An Anna's Hummingbird flew by also, but unfortunately I didn't have my hummingbird feeder out anymore. But I hurriedly made some more sugar water and it's ready now.

Lesser Goldfinches - Carduelis psaltria

Finches love the niger seeds and there's often a bit of a scuffle at the feeder. Here you can see the house finch flying in from the right and scaring away the goldfinches.

A couple more goldfinch action photos here and here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our friends Sopan & Keren invited us over for Thanksgiving at their house. (We brought the biscuits as usual.) They are incredible cooks and the dinner was amazing. We learned that they subscribe to Cook's Illustrated and have gotten most of their Thanksgiving recipes from that magazine over the years.

It was a good sized group, 9 adults and 4 kids. Everyone had a good time and Sami liked the turkey so much he started eating it off the kids plates. The best part was the desserts. There was an incredible hazelnut-chocolate-walnut pie and an apple cranberry pie made with vodka in the crust. Apparently using vodka allows you to add more liquid and makes it easier to roll the crust out, then it evaporates in the oven leaving the "perfect" pie crust.

Ms. Sami joins the AARP

Bizarre isn't it?

We've been getting address labels for Ms. Sami for quite a while. Once we got labels for Samir.

Recently "they" sent Sami an offer to join the AARP. Of course he's not retired, so he's not eligible to join. But he did wonder what discounts he could get on stuff if he tried using the membership number.

Wild Arts Festival 2007

Yesterday afternoon Sami and I went to the Wild Arts Festival. We knew a lot of the art would be our of our price range, but we figured there might be some nice gift type items for sale too.

Sami bought this small chickadee print by Debby Neely for only 6$ including the mat.

I got this cool little glass vase made by Kate Saunders at Lewis Creek Glassworks.

The design on it is a bracken fern.

American Kestrel - Falco Sparverius
AKA Sparrow Hawk

The Portland Audubon was hosting the show, so they had a couple of their ambassador birds there.

This one was called Captain Jack Sparrow Hawk and was missing his left wing.

Kestrels are the smallest falcons in North America.

Great Horned Owl - Bubo virginianus

We learned that these owls are also called the "neighborhood owl" and it's true. We did see one in our neighborhood a few months ago and even made a blog post about it.

This bird was perfectly healthy, but had been illegally raised as a pet so he couldn't hunt for himself.

Another view of the owl here.

Another Mystery Solved!

Harlequin Glorybower - Clerodendrum trichotomum - AKA Peanut Butter Tree

I took this picture a few weeks ago (Nov 1) in the powerline park and thought the tree was really interesting, but I had no idea what kind of tree it was and didn't even know where to start.

Yesterday, I was on a fieldtrip with my SBAP class and saw another one of these trees. Luckily someone in my class recognized it and was able to tell me what it was.

The strangest thing is that I think we have one of these Glorybower trees in our yard. I didn't see any of these seeds on the tree (if there were any, they've fallen off already), but I do remember taking a good look at the flowers and leaves on the tree and they looked exactly like the ones pictured. Unfortunately I didn't think to crush a leaf and smell it, because I certainly would have remembered a plant that smelled like peanut butter! Oh well, I'll remember it for next year.

But there's still one more mystery... Why doesn't our tree have seeds on it? The literature says that the fruit should persist until January. Did the birds eat them? Is ours sterile or something? I don't know.

BTW, this post is called "Another Mystery Solved" because Agnes solved a mystery of her own this week.