Birds, Birds, Everywhere...: Common Goldeneye

Showing posts with label Common Goldeneye. Show all posts

Monday, December 10, 2012

Broughton Beach

11.27.12

After already going to Broughton Beach a previous day and getting the sought after birds, my cousin was kind enough to take me back there with him, to get said birds. So nice of him!

Red-Tailed Hawk

Western Meadowlark - the only one, a pleasant surprise.

After so many Scaup, the Common Goldeneyes stood out to us like crazy! (Pictured about center)

This American Kestrel was hoovering quite close to us.

A fraction of the hundreds and hundreds of Scaup out on the river that day.

After 4 hours of scoping the distance birds, and walking the beach (I'd say at least 2 miles), we finally saw the Tufted Duck* among the ridiculous amount of Greater and Lesser Scaup. By then I was so excited to see it, I forgot to try to take a picture of it!!! I'm sure it would've sucked anyway, it was so far away.

Probably the same Red-Tailed Hawk from before.

A nice view of Mt. Hood.

We also saw:

Double-Crested Cormorant
American Pipits*
Great Blue Heron
Red-Breasted Merganser - female
Horned Grebe
Ring-Necked Duck

*Lifers!!!

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Ocean Shores, WA

Boy what a trip... It took a bit longer than we expected, but the delays made us miss the down pours but not the birds! =D

American Robins
Western Gulls
Surf Scoters
Red-Breasted Mergansers
Buffleheads
Common Loon
Snowy Owls* - it seemed to know we had a rough day and decided to come to us instead of making us find it :)
Bald Eagle - and juvenile
White-Winged Scoters
Sanderlings - it was crazy bc the first time we saw them it was a fairly large group and this time it was a single one (at first) then a bit later it was a group of thousands!
Black Turnstones*
Common Goldeneye
Greater Scaups
Western Sandpipers*
Horned Grebes
Northern Harrier
Western Grebes

*Lifers!

Snowy Owl - female or juvenile?

Black Turnstones

Snowy Owl - not positive if this is the same one or not... it seems like this one has a bit of a widow's peak.

Sanderlings

the Sanderlings took off in waves

thousands of them

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Siletz Spit/ Canon Beach

An attempt to catch the Snowy Owl at Siletz Spit. As we were closing in on the location that it has been reportedly spotted about two weeks before and two weeks before that, a local guy came out of his house, seeing us all geared up to ask if we were birding. He informed us the Snowy Owl left last week. We were a bit saddened by that, but the trip was well worth it anyway.

Since it was a long trip, I'm splitting up what we saw as we traveled.

Highway 26 Westbound:

Red-Tailed Hawk
American Crows
Mourning Dove
American Kestrel
Northern Flicker
Western Scrub-Jay
Mallards
Buffleheads
Double-Crested Cormorant
European Starlings

Canon Beach:

My goodness that place was dead, as far as birds are concerned. Oh.. actually that would be quite literally too. We saw less than 10 Western Gulls, no birds on Haystack Rock, that is except 2 dead Cormorants :(. Although, on the other side of the rock were several male and female Black Scoters and near the parking lot, a few House Sparrows.