More Birds Again...and SNOW!

It got cold enough to snow last week, and guess what?  It did!  Luckily, it didn't amount to much, but still, I want SPRING!

There is a 60+ degree day in our forecast this coming week, and the rest in the 50s, so we are headed in the right direction.  Whew. 

During our recent recrudescence of Winter weather, I somehow managed to get outside and see birds, even though I had no intention of doing so in the 25-30 degree days.  What happened on one of those days was this:  a rare gull had been seen atop the Columbia Park marina roof, and it's easy to just drive by there slowly, check with the binoculars from the car, and move on.   As I happened to be over that way for an appointment, afterwards I decided to swing by the marina.  No joy on the gull.  Well, I was in the park, which has a lot of spots where gulls enjoy hanging out, so next I decided to just drive slowly through it, checking as I went.

No rare gull.  However, I did spot this bird atop a sycamore tree:

Juvenile Bald Eagle!

So that was swell.

I continued my slow drive through the park, and then headed back to the marina, where I noticed the gull flock there becoming agitated.

They took off and scattered, thanks to a visit from that very same eagle.

I did not see any gulls being snatched up by the eagle while I was there.  But since I was there, even though it was only 27 out, I decided to get out of the car and walk a short ways over to Bateman Island to see if anything else interesting was going on.

During my brief (very brief) sojourn, I spotted some lovely Common Mergansers:

The above birds are the males, and the one below is the female:

Then the eagle made another pass over the area, and scattering of mergansers happened.

And then my fingers froze, so I hightailed it back to the car and home.

It just so happened that the very next day I had another reason (art supply shopping) to be near that same marina...so guess what I did?  Yes, I popped by simply to take a quick look, or so I told myself.  It was still far too cold, as you can tell by this photo I took from the marina of Rattlesnake Mountain:

The first thing I saw when I arrived was a flock of America White Pelicans.  Hurrah!  They spend their winters in warmer climes and their appearance is a harbinger of Spring.  

This pelican seemed to be having a tete a tete with a cormorant:

The next fun bird I found was one that I heard before locating -- the distinctive call (more like a croak) of the Common Raven.  I located it easily enough, as a flock of crows was busy chasing it away.  As you can see in the one pic I managed to snap, the raven has a wedge-shaped tail, which, along with its call and slightly larger size, distinguishes it from a crow (fan-shaped tail).

Finally, I spied a few Common Goldeneyes paddling about (this is a female):

Lots of good birds to see!  I never did find the rare gull (but I'd already seen another rare gull there a few months ago, so I wasn't that disappointed).  However, I did run across the birder who keeps tabs on the marina rooftop gulls on a regular basis, name of Elke, and she said the one I'd been looking for had most likely moved on.  Oh, well.  So it goes!

That was it for me for cold-weather birding efforts.  

Thus, I spent a lot of the past week indoors, and got some more artwork done.  For one of our sketch group sessions, we did this oddly shaped building (from the Netherlands, I believe), which had what I dubbed the "ribcage door":

Next, I tackled a complicated Italian street scene -- this was a separate effort from the group sessions.  For this I used toned paper and dark brown ink, and then did most of the painting in gouache, which is an opaque watercolor medium.  The gouache paints were part of my recent art supply purchase, and they worked out quite well!

Our second group session piece was a weird landscape with strange rocks -- I have no idea where this is or even what it is, but I did enjoy painting it (using watercolor this time):

Okay, on to the Hounds!

Pippin had his first-ever dental cleaning this past Monday (he is four).  The vet expected a few extractions, but we lucked out -- he wound up not needing any!  Total opposite of poor Truman's experience.  Whew.  He still wasn't very happy about the whole thing -- here he is that evening:

He perked up by the next day.  And not long after, he felt cheerful enough to romp in the snow!

That's all from here -- and that was plenty!

Have a good week out there, everyone!