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| Pokeberry Peek-a-Boo |
I thought the rain was done for the day, so I headed out for a walk down to Blue Heron Lake via the two tile stairways. It was windy and cold, and all the birds were smartly hanging out on the leeward side of Strawberry Hill.
I stopped at a pokeberry bush to see if there was any action since a hummingbird had been chittering near it, and it made me wonder if the tiny pokeweed flowers actually had nectar. The hummer buzzed off before I could even lay eyes on it, but first one hermit thrush, then another and another, popped out from the ground cover and darted into the berry bush. The hermit above had just snagged and swallowed a berry so fast that I couldn't fire the shutter in time to catch it.
I walked home and was just about to get on the bike when the rain started up again, putting the kibosh on my ride, but at least I hadn't been caught out in the open on foot.
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| Hermit thrush about to leap into the berry bush. |
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| Hermit in the Berry Garden |
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| I'd been going after a nearby Townsend's warbler when I was distracted by this brown creeper. There was a lot of bird activity on the east side of the hill. |
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| At least three Steller's jays started whooping it up behind me, and I wondered at first if a hawk or owl had flown into a nearby tree. But then I saw this guy with what looks like a peanut and wondered if they were all going ga-ga over the nutritious morsel. |
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| Heron Feet |
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| I wonder if this is one of the pied-billed grebe youngsters I photographed in their nest last spring. |
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