This afternoon while sitting in a hunting blind near my bird feeders I spotted a small and very well camouflaged Brown Creeper working his way up a nearby tree looking for food. I got a photo (left; click on it for a closer look) which shows very well just how hard they can be to see when the are up next to tree bark. The creepers are hard to detect also because their calls are generally hard to hear due to how high pitched and quiet they are. The Brown Creeper spends most of it's life attached to the bark of trees, not only while feeding but while nesting as well-they put their nest behind a loose piece of bark on a tree. Although small this is one impressive bird and one of my favorite.
On the opposite end of the spectrum a large, easy to see, and not very well camouflaged Blue Jay came by as well. The
picture below is the first really nice Blue Jay shot I have taken because they are so easily spooked. Unfortunately there was no sign of the titmouse which I saw the morning before:(
My dad and I saw these two tagged crows at a Walmart here in Iowa. One of the crows which was eating something nasty looking in the parking lot had the letters CW on it's tag which we said meant a Cleaner of Walmart! We later came to find out that they were part of a biology study being done at a local college.
Hopefully that title got your attention. Today while out in my yard I noticed a large group of birds (particularly the Blue Jays) looking at one particular hole in a tree and after doing so they would fly away calling as loudly as they could. I figured there was an Eastern Screech-Owl in the tree and when I went up there it was no surpise that one immediately flew out. I followed the angry mob of birds through my yard and caught up once again with the owl and got a photo of it hissing at the other birds! It is not every day that you get to see such interactions between birds. 
This is just one of the 13 Short-eared Owls I a few nights ago! I also saw two Great Horned Owls which makes 15 total owls. We had the same number of owls as we had number of species. The photo was done in black and white to give it the feel of a cold December night. I love especially that you can see snow falling in the photo. I saw eight with one leaft to right move of the binoculars!
This afternoon while sitting in a hunting blind near my bird feeders I spotted a small and very well camouflaged Brown Creeper working his way up a nearby tree looking for food. I got a photo (left; click on it for a closer look) which shows very well just how hard they can be to see when the are up next to tree bark. The creepers are hard to detect also because their calls are generally hard to hear due to how high pitched and quiet they are. The Brown Creeper spends most of it's life attached to the bark of trees, not only while feeding but while nesting as well-they put their nest behind a loose piece of bark on a tree. Although small this is one impressive bird and one of my favorite.
