Birds

Photography that’s for the birds

Katie over at Present Sense tells us about a beautiful bird photography exhibit called "Wings in My World" by Tom Talbott, opening this Friday night (September 7): Local photographer Tom Talbott has spent the past year photographing birds from Northern California to the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. To mark the end of this project, you are invited to view a selection of works at Windows Art Gallery during the month of September. Some of the stars of the show are from our…

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The Garden in Winter

Getting the garden ready for winter is often enlightening. As you are out cleaning up old stalks, raking leaves, or picking up wormy apples, you might also find some interesting ground beetles or other insects searching for food on a semi-dry or warm day. It’s often the first clue that there is more going on out there than it seems. This is a good time to think about how your garden serves the creatures who stay here for the winter –…

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Birds at the Burke

Some years back, I woke up on a spring morning to this crazy, loud banging outside my window, and what I found was a woodpecker hammering away at our neighbors' chimney flashing.  I was just as much intrigued as I was annoyed, since I'd never seen a woodpecker up close outside of a zoo, and I couldn't understand why in the world the poor bird was drilling its beak on metal. I soon discovered I wasn't the only one who's spotted…

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Cooper’s Hawk

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Scott Bremner spotted a Cooper's Hawk in Wallingford this week and sent us a photo. The photo to the right is by Nathan Hamm (taken at Montlake in 2006), but it's a nice big close-up so you'll be able to spot it if you see it in your backyard. AllAboutBirds.org notes that both the Cooper's Hawk and its look-alike, the Sharp-shinned hawk (which Nathan allows the photo at right could be) "are sometimes unwanted guests at bird feeders, looking for an…

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Urban Birdwatching

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There was quite a bit of excitement and chatter a few weeks back when we mentioned seeing a Flicker in our backyard, so we thought readers might be interested in a talk we saw mentioned on My Green Lake: Master Birder Martin Muller will be talking about the birds of Green Lake at the chapel at The Heartstone (6720 E. Green Lake Way N) on Tuesday, November 24th, 7 - 9 p.m: Audubon Society Master Birder Martin Muller lived in the…

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Flicker

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No, we didn't mis-spell the name of the photo sharing service. We're talking about the the Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus), a medium-sized member of the woodpecker family. We caught sight of one of these beauties on the roof of our neighbor's house pecking at the entrance to yellowjacket nest, waiting for the stinging little buggers to emerge and be eaten. That's all. We'd never seen one, and now we have, and they're beautiful.

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