The bird action seemed to follow me around today. Bushtits right outside the window. Ditto the turkeys who rearrange all the bark mulch. A nuthatch duo that appeared in our garden–together, one of each flavor. A Great Egret at Fairview that insisted on flying in front of my lens as I shot at this sparrow. Today’s leucy sighting:
A Song Sparrow with white face and throat. An quarter century ago I saw a leucistic Song Sparrow at Golden Gate Park’s North Lake, San Francisco. That bird had a white background color down his chest and pale streaks on that white.
Avianreport. com says: “Only 236 of the 5.5 million birds reported each year had leucism or albinism, making up a tiny proportion of birds with abnormal plumages. In other words, only about 1 bird in 30,000 has leucistic or albinistic plumage. Based on these results, leucism and albinism are very rare occurrences among birds.”
As I was aiming at the abnormally whitish sparrow, and then a normally white egret flew by, “Hey, you wanna see white…?”
On the marsh: pintails and g-w teal. On lawn nearby: cacklers.
On state property, at ODFW, our Oregon state bird:
Fairview Wetlands, Marion, Oregon, US
Nov 17, 2022
17 species–two sightings were firsts for this location and I have submitted over 100 checklists for this location
Northern Shoveler X
Gadwall X
Mallard X
Northern Pintail X
Green-winged Teal X
Ring-necked Duck 6
Killdeer 2
Great Egret 1–first time at this location
Red-tailed Hawk 1
American Crow X
European Starling 4
American Robin 5
White-crowned Sparrow 1
Golden-crowned Sparrow 2
Song Sparrow 1 leucistic
Western Meadowlark 2–first time here
BUSHTITS IN OUR ROSES
A gang of these tiny songbirds…each with a heart the size of…?
Note the one teas rose that intends to keep blooming until Thanksgiving. Around the garden and through the window, mostly:
Today we had the usual 9 turkeys. yesterday the nine were here, then a separate flock of five arrived. That fourteen equals the maximum number we ever saw at one time last winter.
Tuesday, late afternoon, along rural road near Dundee:
two coyotes
Salmon may get the Klamath River back. Damn those dams. Click here. They’d better get it done before there’s another Republican in the White House.
How to reduce road kill–click here.
Pallid Swifts and climate change–click here.
954 Ratcliff Drive SE, Marion, Oregon, US
Nov 17, 2022
19 species
Wild Turkey 9
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Northern Flicker 1
Steller’s Jay 1
California Scrub-Jay 6
American Crow 3
Black-capped Chickadee 1
Chestnut-backed Chickadee 1
Bushtit 20
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Red-breasted Nuthatch 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
American Robin 1
House Finch X
American Goldfinch X
Dark-eyed Junco 15
Golden-crowned Sparrow 7
White-throated Sparrow 1
Spotted Towhee 1
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