Blurgansers.

nostr:npub1lv4hccv9t9y0wall78lkfamydwcyepmyxx05c8mkpk2lqnfyzcxshuru5g

When I was a little girl, we would find some species or other of chestnut like this in the little woods on our school grounds at recess and make them our "pets." I remember elaborate stories we invented about the transformations that would occur when their spiky layers started to dry and peel open.

These are so particularly bright & urchin-y!

Black-crowned night heron behind a thicket of branches, a.k.a. this week's Can-you- capture-this-bird-in-focus challenge*.

(*Answer: Not quite.)

nostr:npub1c5cejn3aa8l9lkye9vflejad6gwgw59wk3hmzsxdhh36mh807wcqdd644a Just gorgeous

Rodin's hummingbird*

(aka The Tiny Thinker)

nostr:npub1lv4hccv9t9y0wall78lkfamydwcyepmyxx05c8mkpk2lqnfyzcxshuru5g First come darts

Then come sallies

Then comes the epic battle between iridescent siblings on the color wheel as they aim their fierce épées at each other in a desperate territorial battle for the ages . . .

Biiiig stretch.

Spotted sandpiper (in the thick, grey morning light cast through wildfire smoke). #Oregon

This morning on Turner Classic Movies: The Breakfast Club.

In other skittish-birds-being- oddly-accomodating news, here's the black-crowned night heron I caught playing peek-a-boo with me from the bushes this morning.

(There was also, every fifteen minutes or so, a series of juvenile night herons that soared over the river--as though someone were standing at the far end of the trail shooting them out of a cannon.)

nostr:npub1lv4hccv9t9y0wall78lkfamydwcyepmyxx05c8mkpk2lqnfyzcxshuru5g Do you think if we shouted loud enough, it would work? Or if we became meteors? Willing to try anything.

Female Western tanager in the juniper tree this morning.

nostr:npub1lv4hccv9t9y0wall78lkfamydwcyepmyxx05c8mkpk2lqnfyzcxshuru5g Like some beautiful alien from the Emerald City of Oz. 😍

Wonderful little song sparrow full-throating it from eir perch overlooking the lake this morning. E checked in a few times to make sure I was enjoying the show. (I absolutely was.) #Oregon

At the end of a day full of unbreathable air and hazy skies yesterday, we finally got a rain-and-thunderstorm that epically soused the sky, vanquishing the particulate and gorgeously sotting the air with petrichor.

Even this poor white-breasted nuthatch, dowsed and sopping, seemed to appreciate the efforts of the clouds. #Oregon

I didn't get a photo of the yellow warbler I glimpsed (and, for a long while, heard) yesterday, but I did get a photo of one of the plum trees that was helping hide em from me. 😅 #Oregon

Here's a photo I tried to take of Crater Lake (when I visited earlier this week). The lake is pristine and tremendously blue, "Wizard's Island" is vividly green with spruce and pine, and it's truly a wonder of the world. Nevertheless, in the midst of the vastness of such beauty, sometimes you still find yourself crying out, to the bewilderment of the other visitors, "Ooh! Western tanager!"