Slight relapse

With three days left before Spring officially arrives here we had a slight relapse. Last evening three inches of snow fell in two hours. It was wonderful!

Then this morning it looked like Spring again when a flock of Robins came to play in the snow.

Robins, pussywillows and snow

American Robin ~ Turdus migratorius

Fooled me!

As I walked along a road this morning I heard the loud cry of a Red-tailed Hawk, so loud that I knew it must be close; but look as I would I couldn’t locate the caller. Then I caught sight of a bird about 30 feet away that I had been searching for earlier, one rarely seen in this area and when I focused on him I could see that it was he who was making the call.

Cornell’s website All About Birds enabled me to identify the caller as a Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri), a bird found only west of the Rocky Mountains and in the section of “sounds” on the site there was a call they noted as “mimicking Red-tailed Hawk”.

Who? ~ Who?

Northern Pygmy-Owl Glaucidium pinicola

This morning when I first caught a glimpse of this little one through the fog I thought I was just seeing a leaf in the top of a bare chokecherry. He is about the size of a sparrow and weighs only two ounces.

(If you are interested, you can find more information about him here .)

Baby blue

Blue grouse chick, Dendragapus obscurus

This little fellow is just the size of a baseball at present, but he will weigh about two pounds when fully grown. Blue grouse, AKA Dusky grouse, are still plentiful in western Montana where they prefer to live at elevations around 6,000 feet or higher. (Photographed in the Reservation Divide roadless area).

Not everybody likes rain

Very early this morning we had a brief thunderstorm and some much-needed rain. Just after I went out to feed the birds, this baby Pine Siskin came in to the feeder for his breakfast looking wet, disheveled and forlorn. The sunflower seeds cheered him up. I think it was his first rain.

New family in the neighborhood.

The light was all wrong for this photo but somehow it is still haunting me at the moment. Perhaps it’s just the water.