Tag Archives: white breasted nuthatch

Last of the Arizona birds

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A blurry shot of a dark eyed junco. I saw a lot of these while we were in Flagstaff.

My 2nd sighting that week of a mountain chickadee.


Some type of yellow warblers or finches. After pouring over my Stokes Birding Guide, all of the little yellow colored warblers look the same. Any ID’s on these would be great appreciated

My first plumbeous vireo. Looked a little like a cerulean warbler but that white circle around his eye made it easier to identify.

I thought this was another white breasted nuthatch but the all white head is throwing me off. Maybe a juvenile?

This looks like a female goldfinch but it could be anything.

So many little birds. And I was snapping as fast as they were zipping around. At first I thought I was getting all the same bird but I realize now there were several different ones out there.  So many of these little birds look different in the fall than during breeding season. Or they could be females or juveniles.  Anyway, I was having too much fun running around the woods at the Flagstaff Arboretum taking pictures to stop and look them up while I was there. I’m more of a “shoot now and look it up later” kind of person. That doesn’t always work out when you are looking pages of birds and all you have is a small blurry shot.

3 new birds at Picture Canyon

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White breasted nuthatch hanging upside down.

Northern Flicker posing on a branch.

My first Mountain Chickadee.  The Carolina and Black Capped chickadees don’t have the white stripe over their eyes.

My first acorn woodpecker.

My first white crowned sparrow. Easy to spot with those two black stripes on his head. I’m not sure what the one above it is. Some other type of sparrow.

One of the views of the canyon as we started to notice the dark clouds heading our way.

One of my favorite places in Flagstaff was the little know Picture Canyon trail. I had read about it on some of the Arizona birding sites. It was free and we only saw one other person on the Tuesday we were there. Half way through the canyon we started to hear the thunder and did not want to be caught on the cliff so we moved pretty quickly back to the car. We got back just as it started to rain. I got 3 new birds from this canyon. I had also read there are some rare Lewis woodpeckers there but we could not find them.

Rare birds for me in an Atlanta cemetery

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This eastern towhee was very accommodating. He just sat there staring at me.

Another towhee looking for food on the ground.

Dark eyed junco getting some food.

Upclose. The cemetery was full of these guys.

Mouthful of seeds.

Posing on the planter.

As I was taking pictures of the juncos, this white breasted nuthatch flew into a tree right in front of me. He only stayed for a few seconds and it was the only one I saw that day.

Two days before Christmas I had a few hours to kill in the morning. I headed for the Oakland cemetery in downtown Atlanta. It was cold (35 degrees is almost death degrees for this Florida person). I had tons of layers on and actually remembered my gloves which I wore the entire time I was there. Oakland cemetery is a very old historic cemetery with a few local famous people buried there (including Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone With The Wind). When I first got there around 8:30 there was no one else around but by 9:30, people were wandering around. Tourists come to visit and locals walk through when walking their dogs. A few joggers cut through the cemetery as well.

The cemetery was full of birds but not a lot of variety. At first I thought the above were all first sightings but after digging through some old pictures when I got back from the trip, I had seen all of the above only once before and gotten really bad pictures which I never posted. I have not seen these birds in Florida, only Atlanta so I was excited to get shots of them. There were several towhees and tons of juncos everywhere. A few other more common birds were there but more on those later.

Check out more pictures at Our World Tuesday 

Also, check out more birds at Paying Ready Attention for