Seattle Backyard Birds and How to Attract Them.

When I first bought my house here in Seattle the yard was a wasteland of non native plants and invasive species. One of the only saving graces of the yard was a 50ft tall western hemlock. One side of the yard was completely overrun by 20 ft tall skyrocket juniper with English ivy and holly bushes filling in the gaps. The bird species that frequented the yard was pretty much confined to the sparrow, which is also an introduced species. 

Our lot is small (50ft x 100ft) and I never really expected I could create much of a sanctuary for birds, but I did not like ivy or holly, and I hated the juniper bushes. Over the last seven years I removed most of the non native species of plants from the yard and replaced them with native ferns and trees in the hope it might help bring some native birds back to the property. I never expected how successful this would be. This spring we have an abundance of birds in and around our yard, and I am sure it is due to the changes in flora that we have made, in addition to the overall changes in flora choices around the neighborhood.

One of the first things we did was remove the skyrocket juniper. These things were overgrown and ugly. There were five of them and at the ground they were as much as 2ft in diameter. Most people choose to cut trees they don't want to the ground, I decided that if we wanted birds we needed food for those birds. I cut several of the stumps at 4 to 5feet above the ground and left them to rot in place. I have also added a few ferns to grow in the stumps.

The next thing was to remove all holly and ivy from the property. These are invasive species. Ivy supports almost no bird life and crowds out other native species. Holly is invading our northwest forests and is very difficult to remove. several birds feed on the berries which unfortunately causes it to spread even faster.

I am an advocate of large native trees on small lots. I planted several western red cedars a couple Douglas fir and several western hemlock. They were all small saplings, which will be removed and replaced as soon as they get too large for the area. I also planted several vine maples and at least 6 varieties of ferns. Other plants I used are devils club, Oregon oxalis, Oregon grape, thimble berry native blackberry varieties, and numerous other random plants. Not everything is native however. I planted a grape vine, and a whole bunch of raspberries. I also have some anemones to add a little color to the yard.

Our side yard.

Each year the plants in the yard become more established and each year we have more birds. So far this year the list of birds in our yard has been amazing considering the size of the lot. What is even more amazing is the number of birds that have chosen to nest in our yard. Here are a few of the birds. All of these photos were shot while standing in my yard in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle.



Anna's Hummingbird





Song Sparrow



All of the following photos are of birds that are nesting in our yard. The bushtits are not nesting this year, but did last year.

A chickadee perched in the grape vine.

Chickadee

A Bewick's wren moving in to a nest box. It seems like the Bewick's is more common each year. There is not a place in Phinney Ridge you can go without hearing the call of the Bewick's.

Bewick's Wren

This pair of Stellar's Jays are currently building a nest in our yard.



Stellar's Jay



Stellar's Jay

Although there is no nest this year, we did have a bushtit nest in our hemlock tree last year.

Bush tit

One more note about nesting birds. The first couple of years we had several house sparrows move in to our nest boxes. House sparrows are pretty agressive birds and dont really help gain native species of birds. I removed the eggs from these boxes and then moved them different locations in the yard. Sparrows no longer use the boxes, and chickadees and Bewick's wrens have now moved in.

Other birds in the yard.

Savanah Sparrow?

Mallard pair that returns every year to the puddles in the ally way.

A juvenile American Robin

Golden Crowned sparrow with a broken wing. This bird ended up at the PAWS wildlife rehab center in Lynnwood.

American Crow.

A sharp shinned hawk in the neighbors apple tree.

Northern Flicker

I made it my goal to get photos of each of the bird species that I have seen in our yard. This however has not been possible, so here is a list of the other species I have seen in our yard.

Starling (A non native, invasive species)
House Finch (Common)
Pigeon (Sometimes)
Peregrine Falcon (Several times a year)

Ruby Crowned Kinglet (Common)
Dark Eyed Junco (Common)

Other species that I have seen from our yard but not necessarily in the yard.

Coopers Hawk (I see this guy hunting in the neighborhood)
Bald Eagle (Probably the Greenlake pair, fairly common.)

More Hawaiian Birds on Kauai

 Yesterday I finally found the place to see some native Hawaiian birds.  The taro fields here in Hanalei are filled with marsh birds and of course plenty of the introduced species, but the five minutes that is was not dumping rain did make for some good photo time.

Red crested cardinal

Black capped night heron

Alae 'Ula (Hawaiian Gallinule)

Hawaiian Stilt

Pacific Golden Plover

wedge tailed shearwater

Erckel's Francolin

Wandering Tattler

Some Birds of Kauai.

I have spent the last few days shooting photos of birds here on Kauai.  Its nice to be able to shoot photos of birds I have never seen before.  Keep in mind that most of these birds although pretty are actually introduced species to the Hawaiian Islands, and that over 25% of the native birds on Kauai have become extinct.

I will post more photos to this post as I shoot them. 

Lets start with a couple of birds that are natives.

And one in flight.  

And a brown booby

 The Albatross might be the most awkward bird I have ever seen, they are slow and clumsy. 

 Then I saw one fly.  This bird might be the most graceful bird I have ever seen fly.  From the moment this bird took off it never once flapped its wings.

Im not one to disturb nesting birds, but i walked up on this one accidentally.  I shot one photo and left. 

I am still working on getting a good photo of a great frigate bird, but its not the easiest bird to capture in the lens. 

And a non native species.  The cattle egret.  These are everywhere here.

Female white rumped shama

Male white rumped shama

hwamei, melodious laughingthrush

Red Crested Cardinal.

Ok I have to admit I am having a really hard time finding any native birds in this place.  The introduction of many non native species to the Hawaiian islands has decimated many of the natives.  The hike i did over the last two days consisted of sightings of Hawaiian wildlife such as the feral cat, feral goat, domesticated chicken, rats and mice.  I should admit however, that I am staying in a house in Princeville.  Due to a generous friend lodging was free.  Unfortunately Princeville is pretty much an environmental catastrophe of a housing development that would be best off washed in to the Pacific Ocean.  I was super excited to here that the main resort here went bankrupt which as far as i'm concerned is what goes around comes around.  Oh well, I guess I will concentrate on how pretty the non native birds are. 

Wildlife of the Bolivian Andes.

I try not to post photos of marginal quality on this blog, but this post will break that rule. For the last two weeks I have been climbing and trekking in the Cordillera Real here in Bolivia. I don't consider my self a birder, but I do like to know what the birds and animals I am seeing around me are. Having never been to South America and having no field guide, my only chance of identifying the birds I am seeing is to try and shoot a photo of them and them and hope it is good enough to identify later. Here are some of the photos I shot in the last couple of weeks. Some are quite good from a photo standpoint, some are really bad, but hopefully they will help me identify the birds. Some of the birds were pretty easy to identify so I have labeled them. Others I am still searching for.

Andean Geese



Bar-winged Cinclodes

Andean Flicker

White winged diuca finch.

Juvenile Caracara.

Not a bird. Some type of funky kangaroo rabbit hybrid. These things would make a great "b" horror movie subject.

Rufous-Collared Sparrow?

Not a bird, but I thought it was kind of cool.

Some type of coot? It looked like a coot, but its call and behavior was very different from ones I have seen in North America.

Mountain Caracara. Our local guide Juan informed us that this bird is said to bring good luck, which is always nice when you are sitting on the top of a 17,000ft summit and one glides by.



Some type of waterfoul. Yea that does not narrow it down much, but I am a crappy birder.

Puna Ibis

Andean Lapwing.

A beautiful bird that I only saw once on this trip. I know its a really crappy photo, but it should do.

Andean Gulls on Lake Titicaca.

Short Winged Grebe

Crested Ducks

Andean Condor. This guy flew withing 30ft of our camp, but unfortunately I did not have the 200mm lens at 18,000ft so this picture kind of sucks.

If anyone knows what any of the question mark birds are I would greatly appreciate it if you could leave it in the comments.

Thanks.

Nikon 70-200 f 2.8 vr lens review.

A few months ago I purchased a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR. This is a professional quality lens and certainly the most expensive lens I have ever purchased. It is a heavy lens, but not so heavy that I have to leave it at home on all of the backpacking trips. I have carried it above tree line on Mount Baker, and I did not find it so heavy that it is not worth carrying. Most people will claim that it is not really a long enough lens for shooting photos of birds, but with patience and a little luck even 200mm can produce some pretty good bird photos. None of the photos here were shot using a tripod. It is just not realistic for me to use a tripod for most of my photos since I am usually hiking. A tripod would make these photos sharper, but these are still pretty sharp. The VR makes on this lens allows me to shoot hand held photos like this while i am hiking.

In my experience the varied thrush is one of the most reclusive shy birds around. They tend to sit high in the trees and not make themselves visible very often. This bird is very common in the forests of Washington, and I have still never seen one there even though I hear them on almost every trip to the woods. Yesterday while walking with my dogs in Tofino, BC I scared this one that was sitting on the trail in front of me. I had the Nikon 70-200 on my camera and was able to shoot this photo.

This eagle photo was shot as I was walking to breakfast. This is one place where 50% more zoom would have been nice.

A couple of months ago I took this lens up to the north side of Mount Baker on a work trip. I was hoping to shoot photos of ptarmigan. Conveniently upon getting to camp a group of ptarmigan showed up. Unfortunately I did not have enough time with this lens in hand to get perfect photos, but this one was pretty good.

I have also used this lens at a political fund raising event and was fairly happy with the photos even though I am still in the process of learning the ins and outs of shooting indoor flash photos. In this case the lens far exceeded the photographer.

In the next couple months I will continue to post photos from this lens as I get more comfortable shooting with it.