[birding] Bicycle Birding & some garden birds

[Lisa Millbank]

It was a nice day for the ASC bicycle birding field trip, although the birds were pretty quiet, as expected in August.  We rode from Avery Park through OSU campus to the county fairgrounds.  Along the way we watched various swallows, finches, Western Wood-Pewees, Brown Creeper, White-breasted Nuthatch and several Red-tailed Hawks and American Kestrels.  We looked at speckled galls and oak apples, and acorns which are just beginning to fall, soon to delight the Acorn Woodpeckers and Western Scrub-Jays.
We didn't see much of a variety of birds today, but some species were numerous: many young American Goldfinches were begging as the families flew between areas of thistle and tarweed, a line of young House Finches nibbled blackberries while perched on a fence, and among all the Turkey Vultures I noticed a fledgling whose head was gray.  
This afternoon we stopped at the community garden, and a pair of White-crowned Sparrows is still feeding a brood of fledglings.  I think it may be their third brood.  When I approached one of the parents to take a picture, 3 or 4 babies went scrambling and tripping over some ruffly kale leaves to hide among the vegetables.  I attached a picture of one of the parents about to feed a halictid bee to the babies, at http://groups.google.com/group/mid-valley-nature/browse_thread/thread/1e660f4a8de6b6db.
Peanut Queen, our scrub-jay friend, was disappointed in the small amount of peanuts we had with us.  The above link has a picture showing her in her mangy-looking molting plumage, sitting around and hoping that some more peanuts might appear.

Lisa
www.neighborhood-naturalist.com

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