Red Crossbills on the Farm!!

This morning a flock of about 30 Red Crossbills came flying and chattering in to the big fir near our house. They were so chattery when they flew I thought they were siskins. I grabbed my camera and took lots of blurry, far-up-in-the-tree photos. When I looked at what I'd taken, I saw that they were Red Crossbills. We have had them here before but only in small numbers yip yipping from one tree to another in the woods and then disappearing. This was my first opportunity to photograph them. The photos are not good, but diagnostic. After several minutes of feeding in the cones, always with the same male sitting on top keeping guard, they flew off toward the distant woods. I put a few of the photos on my bird list blog. Here are more. I love Crossbills!

Guard bird on top of tree

Leucistic Turkey?

Three turkeys that I assumed were escapees have been wandering around our farm off and on since November 19, 2014. One is blond and the other two normal turkey-colored. None of our neighbors claim them. Now that I look at the bill on the blond one (in my photos), I notice it is paler than the others. So are these wild turkeys... with one leucistic?

Okay, the birding community has not answered my question but I have by researching on the web. Wild turkeys can have many abnormal color phases, including this one according to photos I found online. I'm declaring them to be wild turkeys.

Interestingly (to me, anyway), many of the reported light colored wild turkeys seem to be the boss turkey, as this hen is. She always leads the group and decides when to move on and in what direction.

Local heritage turkey breeder Rev Woodruff says that all turkeys can interbreed, although the heavy Broad-breasted Bronze and White turkeys cannot do it naturally. They are inseminated artificially. The males are too heavy breasted to breed the females and the hens are too heavy breasted to incubate eggs. Ms. Woodruff says my hen looks to her like she has some Buff or Bourbon (heritage breeds) in her ancestry. She also says "there might be some partial barring on one of the ordinary bronze morph which suggests either some Heritage ancestry for their entire parent flock or partial expression of the genes that produce Oregon Grey" (a color morph in wild turkeys).

On the other hand, according to National Wild Turkey Federation biologist Ryan Mathis, people frequently ask if their turkeys are wild/domestic hybrids. He says it’s possible, but unlikely. Natural color abnormalities often occur among birds and so people will confuse these characteristics with those of a wild/domestic hybrid. Color abnormalities that occur in wild turkeys include black (melanistic), red (erythritic), white (albinotic) and the most commonly reported, “smoke gray phase,” which is an incomplete albino.


So I still don't know if these are wild with possibly some domestic blood or domestic gone wild. And I still wonder about that pale bill on the blond hen. I'll continue to post updates if I get more information.

Common Snipe or Wilson's Snipe

I can't keep track of what the Snipe that frequents our farm is called, Common or Wilson's. It's common here so that's what I call it. I posted a video on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcLJ8LYdNYw&feature=youtu.be  I love the way this bird bobs when it eats.

When it is hiding from us, it holds perfectly still and blends into the background. I wish it would stick around this spring and find a mate and raise miniature bobbing birds but I read that they breed east of the Cascades, not here.

Here it is being a part of the scenery.

Close up, it turns into a bird.

It would be *so* cute to have miniature bobbing birds here. I wish a second Snipe would show up of the appropriate gender, whatever that is.

Incredibly Bad Raptor Photos

What is it? We saw it today on our raptor run. It was between Ridgeway Rd. and Hwy 22, Polk co., in a sheep field. I took photos with my camera and Johnny took lots with his through the scope. We must have acquired dirt of some sort on his camera. What a mess.Can anyone tell what this bird is from these dreadful photos?

Okay, I'm convinced that what most of you have said is true: it's a Rough-legged Hawk. Jeff Fleischer helped explain why it could not be a Harrier: "the white is on the tail feathers and not the butt". I have never seen a Rough-leg perch on a metal fence post but they have small feet, so I suppose they can. And, to prove it, Hannah Fritz sent me a photo of a Rough-leg perched on one. I would have liked to turn my raptor into an immature Golden Eagle but Jeff says an eagle is "just too big to be perching on a metal fence post". Another suggestion was Harlan's Hawk, a subspecies of Red-tailed Hawk. But Lars says Red-tails don't have wings longer than their tails while Rough-legs do and in some of these photos (he has good eyes) the folded wings of my bird extend beyond the tail. Harlan's wings are even shorter than our usual Western Red-tail. I finally found an online photo of a Rough-leg with a golden head and white base tail, so... it's a Rough-legged Hawk. Thanks to all for the comments.

Lincoln County Christmas Bird Count

I spent 3 hours happily wandering around The Thumb, also known, I just learned, as Brahma Bull Butte or The Hump. My informant told me that from where he lives at Road's End, it looks like a Brahma bull drinking from the ocean. Well, I don't think it looks much like a bull or a thumb but I had a good time hiking it today, although mostly I sat on top and scanned for Black Oystercatchers, which I did not find.

I had high hopes of photographing the birds I saw. Well, I photographed some of them but it's hard to tell what they are.

Several flocks of Red Crossbills flew high in the trees. This 4-some perched but I had to shoot into the sun so you'll have to take my word for it that they are Red Crossbills.

Just figured out if I really zoom up on one bird, you can see the crossed bill. Sort of.

The Chestnut-backed Chickadees were everywhere, and impossible to photograph. There are two in this photo, believe it or not.

A very scruffy Anna's Hummingbird was more cooperative and also vocal... but, well, scruffy.

Dark-eyed Juncos, Oregon variety, were the most cooperative, pecking in the gravel in front of me.

Way out in the ocean sits Wizard Island (at least that's what I know it by). Today there was nothing on it but a Peregrine Falcon, much too far for photos but I tried anyway.

You may wonder how I knew it was a falcon. I didn't for sure until I was watching with binoculars and it flew somewhat closer to me.

By cropping to a bigger but very blurry bird, you can see, I think, that this is a mustachioed peregrine.

Other birds seen but mercifully not photographed were Steller's Jay, Raven, Crow, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Varied Thrush, Wrentit, Fox Sparrow, Song Sparrow, Pacific Wren, gulls and a fly-by Cormorant. 

After leaving the Thumb/Hump, I drove to Oceanlake to see if I could find my missing Black Oystercatchers on the rocks there, since it was low tide and some rocks were exposed. However, since most of the rocks were accessible from the beach, they were covered with people. A few were too far for people to venture onto and there I found three of my missing BLOY.

And a Turnstone. I thought it was a Ruddy when I saw it as it had a very rounded dark area on its breast and light legs. And it was alone rather than in a flock, as I've always seen Black Turnstones. But it looks more like a Black Turnstone in photos so I'll wait for the experts to tell me. ... And the answer is: Ruddys are rare in Oregon in the winter and have lighter heads and upperparts than my bird has.

Turnstone behind Black Oystercatcher

Also in the water and on the rocks were about a dozen Surfbirds.

Although this photo is blurry, it shows their flashy black and white tails and yellow legs.

Of course, there were Western Gulls of all ages foraging, too.

From Oceanlake I drove to the Salmon River and East 3 Rocks Road where I saw one of the two White-tailed Kites that have been seen there recently. Then I headed home.

What a lovely, warm, sunny day for mid-December. The birds were just a bonus.

Farm Bird #150!! Pygmy Owl

We have seen Pygmy Owls all around our neighborhood, but not here. Until today. I hiked down to the creek and was looking across the cold, wild water at an oddly colored lump by some logs on the far bank. The lump turned out to be a dead salmon.

 I sat there wondering if it was from one of the Grand Ronde tribal "fish flings" where they throw milked out salmon into the creek upstream from us to replenish nutrients, or if it was a spawned out salmon that died naturally in Agency Creek. A tiny kinglet interrupted my reverie as it flew across and landed in a tree near me. I had no binoculars with me but did have my camera so tried to get a photo of the rapidly moving little bird. I gave up and put my camera down, noticing then an odd lump on a branch in that tree. I used my camera to zoom in closer to see what it might be.

 The lump is circled with an arrow pointing to it in the photo below.

 A little closer and the lump turned into a Pygmy Owl. See it?

Here it is, looking at me.

I took many photos. In most of them, it looked like a lump.

Sometimes, a very fluffy lump.

I checked the photos I had taken and noticed that part of the owl was blurry in them so started to take more... at which point the owl had given up finding lunch, apparently, and flew off. I saw it fly and watched it go but have no idea if it kept going or landed somewhere. It simply vanished. If I had not taken these photos, I would have thought I'd imagined the whole thing.

What a thrilling way to get farm bird #150!

Crane or Heron??

We have always said we had a Sandhill Crane hang out here by the creek for several weeks in 1978 and then one day disappear. But now, looking at the photo I scanned in, it looks more like a juvenile Great Blue Heron to me. The photo is lousy and we can't remember if the bird had a red crown or not. But it doesn't appear to have a "skirt" as a crane of any age should have, I would think. And the two tone head appears like a juvenile heron. I can't tell if the bill is more heron-like or crane-like. But I think my farm list just went down to 149. Help!

The word is in and the unanimous word is that my Sandhill Crane is a juvenile Great Blue Heron. Sigh.  The good news is that the only item on my bucket list was to get 150 species on my farm list. Now I'm back to 149 and can live longer.

Dan Gleason, ornithologist and professor, gave a great way to distinguish cranes from herons:  Look at the neck and you can see the kink in the middle. This is an anatomical feature of all herons and not something that you would see on a crane. If you look at a skeleton of a heron you can see where two of the vertebrae connect in a way that makes a kink rather than a smooth “S” curve. This allows the head to sit just slightly more rearward and muscles that attach here can provide just a bit of extra thrust to move the head forward, like a spear-thrower. Another feature that occurs internally at this point in the neck is the position of the gullet. For most birds, the gullet runs from the mouth along the front of the neck and into the stomach. In herons, right at the point of this kink, the gullet runs from the front of the neck to the rear of the neck. This protects the gullet from being crushed when the heron stabs for prey in the water. It is right at this kink where the neck makes hard contact with the surface of the water, thus the tissues along the front of the neck and the vertebrae of the neck protect the gullet. Cranes have a smoothly curved neck and because they are not plunging their neck into water forcibly, there is no need for the gullet to be protected as in herons.