faerye , to random
@faerye@pie.gd avatar

I am a big fan of the tweedy elegance of Gadwalls so I’ve always wanted to see their babies.

Well, I have justified my kneejerk identification of this large family as Gadwalls, so I have now seen Gadwall ducklings! They look…like mallard ducklings, only done in watercolor instead of as cartoons. Elegant right out of the egg?

A female gadwall leads her fleet of ten very new downy ducklings through the green water of a marshy lake. She is a slim elegant duck with orange-lined bill, subtly smoky eyestripe, and brown feathers that mostly look like a female mallard’s. There’s a jauntiness to her folded wingtips, however, and a patch of cinnamon on her side that mallards simply don’t have. Her babies look much like new downy mallards, but the soft yellow of their faces is lighter, and the brown eyestripe and cheek dot are thinner and less decided. They also have sweetly orange little bills, and less brown on top of their tiny soft heads. They are almost following her in pairs, but they are so new and in such a hurry that they are all crowded up almost on top of each other, and any strict organization in rows has falllen away in favor of keeping up with Mum!
ALT
  • Reply
    • + loren
    dendroica , to random
    @dendroica@ecoevo.social avatar

    Camped last week at Little Crater Lake, one of my favorite spots in the Cascades. Mid-week the campground was virtually empty, and the open subalpine meadow nearby was the stage for a dozen Common Nighthawks swooping and peenting in the dusk. When night has darkened the forest, the sky remains sourcelessly bright for a span of fifteen minutes, and in silhouette they cut across it on long, long, pointed wings, a smooth aerial dance of moment-to-moment improvisation.

    pansytram , to random
    @pansytram@mas.to avatar

    Students walked out of the PSU graduation ceremony waving Palestinian flags and a huge chunk of their fellow students waved flags in solidarity. One student wrote "PSU profits from genocide" on their hand and held it up to a live camera. Students crossed the stage wearing or waving Palestinian flags and some interrupted Ann Cudd's speech with chants and booing. The booing was so loud she had to stop! Much love to the comrades in Portland!

    Lazarou , to random
    @Lazarou@mastodon.social avatar

    I am not a fan of amusement rides and I feel justified today

    https://news.sky.com/story/firefighters-rescue-28-people-stuck-upside-down-on-oregon-ride-13153377

    andrewbriscoe , to random
    @andrewbriscoe@mastodon.social avatar

    Central Cascades

    I was trying to find a location with less rain showers this weekend and somehow ended up camping in the mountains. 🤔 Today was so fun and I want to remember that when the snow showers start in the morning. The mountain views have been stunning. Seeing how close I can get to Mount Washington tomorrow. Maybe the weather will be totally fine but I’m prepared to bail if I’m not able to stay warm.

    Square Lake at sunrise. Orange and purple clouds reflect into a relatively calm alpine lake. White mist floats above the lake in the distance. A few trees are on the opposite shore.
    Three Fingered Jack. The large jagged rocky peak has three points, for the three fingers. An alpine meadow with some gray dead tree trunks are in front of the mountain. New green trees are thriving in the fire’s wake. Portions of the dark rock and ridge line are covered in white snow, but the peak is not. Beautiful blue skies.
    The Old Summit Trail enters the Jefferson Wilderness. A sign on trail right says Mount Jefferson Wilderness, Deschutes National Forest. The trail traverses an exposed forest with some green trees and some burnt ones. Light blue sky with artistic white clouds.

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    I’ve been visiting my family in Central OR so much, I hadn’t been to my favorite marsh near home in MONTHS! So I stopped by briefly today to see what’s going on.

    Mallard duckling broods of at least 3 different ages! Killdeer taking a bath. A female red-winged blackbird so mad at a great egret near her (presumed) nest that she rode it around in between divebombings! Great blue herons flying from bank to bank in inscrutable chords. Swallows stuffing their tiny faces!

    A killdeer sitting in water it has agitated in spreading rings, feathers all fluffed up. Its usually sleek head is riffled so its very large orange-eyelinered eye looks more proportional. A drop of water is just visible on its downturned black bill. All the latte-colored feathers of its head and back are bristling with texture, and its wings are held slightly askew, showing hints of the light pumpkin shade hidden in its tailfeathers. It looks sort of dyspeptic, but they always do to anthropomorphizers, because of the exaggerated cartoon sad-brows their facial stripes somehow create.
    A barn swallow perched among dead licheny branches, seen past several of them that cross in foreground. Its little beak is seen in profile, wide open to make noises much larger than the bird itself. The contrast between the deep blue feathers on the back of its head and body and the sweet-potato shades of its face and paler belly just makes the bird seem louder!

    A mallard female swimming through weedy lake water with a surprisingly young brood of ducklings behind her. The seven younguns (one hidden) look soft as thistledown, with golden-feathered faces marked with brown stripes and whorls. They look only a few days old, still bright and soft and little balls of energy. She soars in front of them, dark brown and tan like a 70s corduroy coat, looking very regal and smug, and extremely large in comparison. Something about the way they are bunched in her wake indicates the little ones have been hurrying and falling over each other to keep up.
    ALT
  • Reply
    • + loren
    ahimsa_pdx , to random
    @ahimsa_pdx@disabled.social avatar

    If you live within the Portland city limits, and earn less than 60% of area median income, then you qualify for a free cooling unit.

    You can call 311 or apply online:

    https://www.portland.gov/bps/cleanenergy/about-cooling-portland/apply-cooling-unit

    More details in this story from OBP:

    https://www.opb.org/article/2024/06/13/cooling-portland-free-air-conditioners/

    The PDX 311 phone line is staffed seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

    OregonLive Bot , to random
    @OregonLive@mstdn.social avatar

    Portland to provide thousands of free air conditioners this summer; those in need can now call 311 https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2024/06/portland-to-provide-thousands-of-free-air-conditioners-this-summer-those-in-need-can-now-call-311.html

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Trying to remember to post my photos when not out and about!

    This is my great treasure from yesterday: I realized that sometimes the Hairy put its head out to meet the parent. Only once per feeding, and usually right when the parent landed, so my attempts took a lot of patience — from my mom as well as me!

    I just love woodpeckers so much!

    A mother Hairy Woodpecker perching at her nest hole in a large aspen trunk. Her baby (single as far as we can tell, sadly) has thrust its scraggly head out to meet her and get fed, and kindly left it out long enough for me to snap a picture! Judging by beak size — because the spiky feathers standing up are a little deceptive — the baby’s head is perhaps three quarters the size of its mother’s already! She is sleek in black and white feathers, with a big dark eye in a graceful slender head with a strong bill. The baby’s eye is wreathed in wrinkles of black skin, and its feathers, stripes of white and black and a startling tomato-colored mohawk, are sticking out, looking fluffy or crusty by turns. Mom, morsel given up, looks pensive with her head tilted. Baby looks eager and its bill is open for its near-continuous peeping!
    ALT
  • Reply
  • Expand (1)
  • Collapse (1)
    • faerye OP ,
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    My mom has been back to visit the Hairy and his frazzled parents three times since I left. 6/12 and 6/14, the scamp was still demanding food. 6/15, our little beggar had flown!

    In honor of this, I’m posting a photo of the little one from last week. Photo is from 6/10, 2 days after the one I’m replying to, but you can see some differences in plumage already.

    Congratulations on fledging, little woodpecker! We love you.

    A baby Hairy Woodpecker sticking his head out of a big nest hole in a knot on an aspen trunk. He looks a little scrubby and wide-eyed, but no longer quite as obviously dinosaurian and unfinished. His size is similar to that in the previous photo (perhaps three quarters his mom’s size) but his feathers are smoother, and some colors have come in more fully in the plumage. His red Mohawk no longer has a clumpy, spiny look like fresh hair plugs, but lies down nicely. Juveniles of both sexes can have this red crown, but the extensiveness of his stripe makes him almost certainly male! The black in front of his eyes is tipped with white. And below the eye, where wrinkles of black, seemingly featherless skin were gathered before, the white stripe has enlarged and filled in to make a fine white mustache. Under his chin, also, the feathers have filled in nicely. He also never used to stick his head out except when his mom or dad was there! Getting bolder, little guy!
    ALT
  • Reply
    • + loren
    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Apparently Oregon farms are growing fewer strawberries because California is elbowing them out of the processed market now (our lovely, very sweet berries don’t ship as well) so I, for one, am doing my part by eating many farm-stand strawberries! 🫡🍓

    https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/28/oregon-farmers-strawberry-season-production-growth/

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    I dunno, I really love this park, but do you think they could get some woodpeckers in? 🤣

    (These are just the picidae that I got photos of in the parking lot.)

    A male hairy woodpecker hanging onto the side of a pale aspen. We can’t see the nest hole at this angle, but he has a line of drool on his bill that I’m sure has to do with providing foods to the unseen (but heard) youngsters! He has a slightly dingy white breast and white-spotted black coat, with jaunty eye stripes and a tomato red blaze on the back of his head you can barely see here.
    The female hairy woodpecker at the same nest hole, seen in profile with a green caterpillar in her beak. Hairy woodpeckers have long bill that’s often compared to a nail or chisel, but this bird looks so slender, all her feathers lying down sleek to her gracile skeleton, that on her the long bill just accentuates the narrowness of her lines. Her black and white color scheme contribute, as if she’s been drawn with an ink pen. We see her tough knobby talons clinging to the rough wood of the edge of her nest hole. We don’t see the young, but we can imagine their insistence from a certain air of harried patience on the mother.
    A northern flicker on (you guessed it) an aspen trunk. It has a very thick pointed beak for loud hammering, a smooth set of feathers in gray and latte tones covered with wild black belly spots, and a bright red mustache, for it is a red-shafted northern flicker. The aspen trunk has large scars in its white surface, healed over but obviously raspy rough.

    faerye OP ,
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Here are a couple of the dozen-ish Lewis’s Woodpeckers I saw once we got past the parking lot. 🤣

    A woodpecker climbing around on a big dead Ponderosa pine, mostly stripped of its bark. There’s a nest hole — this individual’s nest, apparently — a couple of feet away at the top of the photo. The light shows off the iridescent shadings in the Lewis’s dark green wings and back. Its forked tail, pressed against the pale dead wood for support, is the same shade. Its long, wide-toed foot is sticking far out to the side, so it has a broad stance. The head is sort of in profile, so we see a bit of the big eye and red face, but also the dark head with odd two-tone riffle of white at the nape and collar, as if it has a distinguished peppering of white hair.

    A Lewis’s woodpecker or ‘Christmas woodpecker’ as I wish the ornithologists would rename them, sitting on a big dead branch and posing in the golden-hour sun. It has a long sharp beak turned up, from which its weird woodpeckery tongue is slightly protruding! It has a velvety scarlet face and a big lambent eye that looks a little shocked. It has a dark green back and wings, and fancy pink breast feathers, a bit ruffled up. Behind it, cloudless blue desert sky.
    ALT
  • Reply
    • + loren
    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    In Bend for just over an hour before having this moment of utter bewildered depletion where I’m tearing myself away from a sapsucker to watch a woodpecker, which flies higher in the tree and spooks a sapsucker. Total overload! And that was BEFORE the Hairy mama feeding her babies, or the many Lewis’s!!!! :sapsucker: 🤩❤️🖤🤍 :sapsucker:

    alexskunz , to random
    @alexskunz@mas.to avatar

    Deep dark green lush mossy coastal forest at Ecola State Park in Oregon.

    A few more: https://www.alex-kunz.com/coastal-forest/

    DemocracyMattersALot , to random
    @DemocracyMattersALot@mstdn.social avatar

    Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-OR) | DEMOCRACY REPORT CARD

    https://accountability.gop/profile/rep-cliff-bentz/

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Today I checked out a heron rookery nearby! My conservative count (already possibly incremented by my photos) was 15 herons, probably all fledglings — NO verified responsible adults.

    I mean, would you not trust these faces to take care of themselves?

    Three juvenile great blue herons in a conifer tree. Two are sitting on a twig nest and the other, on a branch on the other side of the trunk, is holding its wings very wide as if saying ‘not them, look at ME!’ All have ridiculous dark blue soft feather crests, like the hairstyle on Beaker from the Muppets. The two whose eyes we clearly see have bright yellow, very dinosaurian eyes. Their beaks, top mandible blue instead of yellow, look sort of dusty and doughy, as if formed but not yet finished. Their necks are streaky mauve, white and blue, which makes them look even messier. The attention-seeking one has his neck at full extension, which looks ridiculous.
    ALT
  • Reply
  • Expand (7)
  • Collapse (7)
    • + loren
    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    So last Friday when I went on , I spotted a bushtit nest! I didn’t know that bushtits made hanging pouches, but I was sure if I was patient, I would get a look at whatever wee bird engineers were messing with it! Sure enough, I did: the female bushtit is still seen through branches, like the nest, but the male did some poses for me 😊

    The male bushtit in profile, looking more pensive. In profile you can see the narrow, slightly curved shape of the small insect-grabbing bill, and more of the shape of the bird. There’s still no neck — it’s a very orbicular little bird — but it does have a proportionally quite long tail which adds to its character and charm!
    Seen through the branches and leaves of the bush, a long hanging-pouch style nest. It looks to be made primarily out of moss, and if I did not swear to you I saw birds interacting with it, you might think it was made for a faerie terrarium by a rather twee Etsy seller! It’s pendulous and larger at the bottom, like a knit Christmas stocking with a chocolate orange in it.
    The female bushtit, glimpsed in heroic profile and somewhat obscured by twigs. Her pale eye is trained on the future, out there…bushtit chicks…bushtit domination! Her tiny sharp bill is upraised in firm determination. If anything, she is even more spherical than her mate, having puffed up her soft mouse-colored feathers quite prodigiously.

    A male American bushtit with his face turned directly toward the camera. It’s a tiny bird of a soft dust-mote taupe color and no discernible neck. It’s clinging onto a thorny bush with its capable big black claws, and its tiny face looks alert. Its soft chest and belly are turned toward us and look touchably fluffy!
    ALT
  • Reply
    • + loren
    Kite , to random
    @Kite@mastoart.social avatar

    went to the zoo today. brought my . these were the best of the lot i think. i mostly took photos of the large painted animal cutouts by Mike Bennett.

    Mike, join fedi and i'll release the Gameboy Camera of your art at the Zoo :neocat_smug:

    a 2-bit, black and white photo of a large aquarium fish at the Oregon zoo. the fish is fairly nicely outlined and shaded despite the incredibly low pixel count resolution of Gameboy Camera photos.
    a 2-bit, black and white photo of a large bird (looks like a peahen) at the Oregon zoo. the bird is fairly nicely outlined and shaded against the background despite the incredibly low pixel count resolution of Gameboy Camera photos.
    a 2-bit, black and white photo of an otter at the Oregon zoo. the otter is somewhat hard to make out against the logs its climbing on with the incredibly low pixel count resolution of Gameboy Camera photos. i actually dont remember for sure if the pictured animal is an otter, beaver, or some other woodland/water creature.

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Looking at last Friday’s bird photos, and I’d love an external opinion. I managed to take a few photos of these elusive little ~sparrow-sized jobbers we kept seeing in the underbrush of a scrubwood margin on Sauvie Island. The only good match I’ve found for them is female or immature Lazuli Buntings, which would be a lifer for me. Anyone with more experience have an opinion?

    (Sauvie Island, Columbia River, NW , May 24)

    The right bird has stuck its head curiously out beyond its intrepidly grasped plant stem, while the left bird is more fully hidden. The head is a dusty taupe, with a slight white stripe through the upper part of the dark eye, and a medium-shade line continuing from the eye toward the back of the head. The beak is grey. Under the beak, two fairly distinct white jowl-stripes. Of such doctor’s-office drab markings are potential lifer identifications made!

    Two small birds clinging to the green stalks of weeds or grasses. Their body plan is similar to a sparrow’s, but their beaks have more of a finch’s broadness at the base. Their legs seem to be gray, and all their plumage has a soft, pastel, 90s designer-color feel. The belly is white, which gives way to pale beige nearer the wing. The upper breast is an anemic orange. The left one is showing the underside of its tail: dingy shite coverts and a medium gray tail. The folded wings are also medium gray, with two white wingbars, fairly distinct.
    ALT
  • Reply
  • Expand (5)
  • Collapse (5)
    • + loren
    ianrosewrites , to random
    @ianrosewrites@scicomm.xyz avatar

    Oregonians and visitors: If you've harvested mussels in the last week or so, it's best to toss them. There's a nasty outbreak of paralytic shellfish poisoning that has sickened at least 20 people.

    https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/28/oregon-coast-mussels-poisoning-outbreak/

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Yesterday I was helping a friend in his garden, and saw quite a few ladybugs. We’re told the Asian Lady is outcompeting local varieties, but I saw almost as many Western Polished Lady Beetles as ALBs. (The ALBs however were obviously engaged in furthering their success in : Content Note for beetle sex!)

    Asian lady beetles stacked on each other in a presumed mating. They are on the leaf of what I believe is a stinging nettle. Both have many small black spots on their ripe-tomato red wing-cases, and we get a good look at the little antennaed head each has tucked neatly below the broad shield of the pronotum.

    dmnelson , to random
    @dmnelson@mastodon.social avatar

    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Me: I am an adult. I am a serious birder. I won a spelling competition once. The word is ‘pelican’!

    American White Pelican: exists

    Me: PELINGCAN!!!!

    (Yesterday)

    An American White Pelican in flight, seen in profile. It’s in full breeding plumage, so its long bill is bright yellow with a weird half-circle ‘plate’ sticking up from the top bill three quarters of the way to the tip. Very odd-looking! Their body is pure eye-catching white with dark black wingtips. This one is caught near the top of the flap, so the black wingtips are prominently displayed against the bright shimmer of the inlet beyond, every feather held slightly apart like that of a vulture. It is skimming along close to the water, with a meadow in foreground. Behind it, an incised yard-deep bank shows different sediment layers and a green mess of brambles and grass rises up the mainland beyond.
    ALT
  • Reply
  • Expand (1)
  • Collapse (1)
    • + loren
    faerye , to random
    @faerye@pie.gd avatar

    Still processing photos, but got some decent shots of my first non-fleeting Bullock’s Orioles! She was particularly keen on getting her portrait taken and sat for quite some time. 🧡🖤


    A male oriole in the crook of another lichen-covered oak branch. His gold is more the deep juicy orange of a ripe mango, and he sports a black cap connected to his eyestripe, and a splash of white accenting his black wing. Despite the bold color scheme, he is shyer of my camera and is only visible from midwing up. His bill is also in very sharp profile.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •