Sunday, belatedly

I never did write anything about our outing to Bay Farm Island, which may have been described as "birding in the 'burbs."

Sunday was another glorious sunny day. The birds were out in force, and this time we could actually see them. So often, we joke that the birds are laughing at our feeble attempts to locate the source of their sounds. This little fellow is a chestnut backed chickadee. He is America's western chickadee.


This is a black phoebe. Another Western bird.


An Anna's hummingbird. This is a truly tiny bird. She weighs less than a nickel. Having handled an injured Anna's, I can tell you that holding such a tiny creature is a truly amazing experience. These little birds are tough. Hummingbirds think they are the biggest, fiercest creatures in the air. We usually locate them because they "scold" us as we walk by their perches. While Robb had been waiting for me to catch up with him (he took the wheelchair and was outpacing me) he was amused by a hummingbird that kept repeatedly rising out of a flowering bush and surveying its territory.

Not every bird we saw was tiny.


That's a snowy egret in the foreground, and a great egret in the back. Mallards are beautiful ducks, but we hardly notice them because they are so successful and wide-spread.


We did notice this bird, when Robb narrowly avoided being pooped on. He is one of my favorites, the black-crowned night heron. They are large, impressive hunters, and very common around our home. Check out the bark on that tree!

And speaking of plants, here is a little bit of autumn color. If we had been out in the woods, instead of on a bike path in the suburbs, the only thing this bright would have been poison oak.