Look What the Wind Brought

There's a wind advisory for our area today and tomorrow with gusts of 35 - 45 mph. I know this isn't even close to hurricane force winds, but this evening the wind was so strong that it knocked out our power for a couple of hours. We live in a basement apartment so when the power goes out, it's dark, especially on a cloudy evening. With nothing better to do, I stood at our door and watched the wind blowing branches and garbage cans around the neighborhood. So it is amazing that with all that movement all around, my eyes caught sight of two little birds hopping about the relative shelter of our garden across the yard. And they weren't the usual house sparrows, either. Cursing the fact that my binoculars were in the car, I grabbed my camera instead and zoomed in, through the dusty glass in the door and all the yard debris. This is the best shot I got. I believe this is an adult (right) and immature (left) white-crowned sparrow. (You more experienced birders out there let me know if I misidentified these, please!) Not a lifer for me but a first for our yard/neighborhood and certainly an unexpected treat.

Speaking of birds, Heather of the Hills jogged my memory by thinking that the first photo of the tropical birds in my last post was a trogon and sure enough, it is a white-tailed trogon. And Maree from Art & Creativity said that the second photo was a Bali mynah. She's got a lovely watercolor of one over on her blog, as well as some good natural history information on this highly endangered bird. Thank you ladies!!! I still have not tracked down what kind of toucan that is, though. Sadly and surprisingly the Woodland Park Zoo's website does not have a complete list of all of their species.

As I've been trying to write this post, the power has gone out yet again, so now that it is back on I am going to post this before it goes out a third time. At least this time when it went out, I had found new batteries for the flashlight!

S***, I realized I made a boo-boo. It was Eve who mentioned the trogon!!! I'm so sorry, Eve! I had lit candles during the power outage and it must've been the lead in the candle wicks affecting me. A million apologies!