Rarely Seen

I’m not one of those birders who keeps a “life-list.” I’m not even particularly interested in seeing “rare” birds, or birds that’ve wandered outside their normal range, which is not to say I’m not interested in getting pictures of birds I’ve never seen before. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been trekking to Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon lately — that and an attempt to get a hint of a tan. I certainly didn’t get the tan but had a little better luck getting some pictures.

I saw several birds in Wenas I haven’t seen or photographed before, with the help of a few members of the Audubon society. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took of the birds were taken under extremely adverse conditions — during rainstorms, or, at best, extremely cloudy conditions. The ISO in most cases were so high that my normal attempts to improve them using Aperture or Photoshop proved inadequate, though a new program, Topaz’s DeNoise helped a little.

That said, here are some shots of birds I’ve never seen before, beginning with this shot of a Calliope Hummingbird,

Calliope Hummingbird

an even rarer, Chat Ruth showed me,

Chat

and, finally, two woodpeckers. This White-headed Woodpecker, that Warren’s wife was kind enough to point out to Ruth and I the first day,

White-headed Woodpecker

and this Red-naped Sapsucker that I managed to find on my own by wandering through the pine trees.

Red-naped Sapsucker

Hopefully now that I know where to find them I’ll be able to go back and get much better pictures of them in the future as I’ve managed to do so many times in the past.

Ironically, I did manage to get some better pictures the last day I was there, but almost all of them were of birds I’ve gotten photographs of before. I’ll try to post those pictures tomorrow before Jim gets here for a week-long visit.