Activity at Portland Feeders

Earlier this week I came down to Portland, Oregon to spend some time visiting with family before heading to the Oregon Coast for the Thanksgiving holiday next week. Ever since the morning I left the island all it has done is rain! Rain on the entire drive, rain through the nights, rain through the days! It's been good weather for enjoying things like Powell's Books, but not good weather for getting out and birding. No improvement is in sight - in fact, it is snowing right now on San Juan Island and we've got a chance of snow here on Monday! We'll see what happens.

Today I did take some pictures of a couple of species that enjoy my parents' bird feeders in Portland that I don't get to see on the Island. Here's one of my favorite birds, the Steller's jay. These guys are skittish and the pair that was around today wasn't too cooperative with the camera, so I'll see if I can't do better in the next couple of days, but this is the best photo from today:

The main visitors are the very plump local squirrels:

I've also seen red-breasted nuthatches and dark-eyed juncos, both species that visit my houseboat feeder, and black-capped chickadees, closely related to the chestnut-backed chickadees I regularly see. The other highlight this morning was a varied thrush pulling insects out of the leaf litter in the front yard.

Hopefully I'll get some more photos at the feeders this weekend if nothing else, but I'll be out at the coast rain or shine (or snow!) so there will hopefully be pictures from that, too!