I am really excited about the Seahawks pick of Shaquem Griffin in the 5th round of the NFL Draft today. I'm excited for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that I think he will really help our team.

American White Pelicans. Today was the day I moved to one bird away from the 253 in the 253 club. This "club" is made up of birders who have 253 species of birds on their Pierce County, WA life

Great Blue Heron Another sunny day today, and migration is starting to pick up. First stop today was at the middle waterway on the Tacoma Tide Flats. A small flock of Least Sandpipers were the best birds

I've been posting as @Birderguy for a month or so and have decided that the user name @birdbanter better describes my interest and content. I want to develop a blog where there is interaction between birders

Hello. I'm Birderguy, and have decided I prefer to go as Birdbanter on Steemit as this more accurately discusses my interests and direction of posts. If you follow birderguy please consider following

Birding in the Port of Tacoma area can be excellent, but the juxtaposition of good birding in small bits of habitat mixed in a heavily industrial area can mean looking for beauty in areas that are easier

In winter Sharp-tailed Grouse often feed high in birch trees on the catkins. Each winter one of the hard-to-find species in Washington State is the Sharp-tailed Grouse. They are on the state endangered

A Fork-tailed Storm Petrel pattering on the water seen on a pelagic birding trip on the Monte Carlo on a Westport Seabirds trip. Storm Petrels are small pelagic birds, many species rarely seen from shore

Most birds, in addition to evasion use camouflage as a part of their strategy for avoiding predation. In the tropics many brightly colored birds blend into the multi-colored forest with all of the fruit,

Peregrine falcons are exciting to watch. This Peregrine is just taking flight. The landscape of our planet has changed dramatically in the last few hundred years, and even more so in the last century.

Even on a less that perfectly clear day the vistas on a hike at Mt. Rainier can be breathtaking. Living in western Washington, U.S. has the decided benefit of having a wide variety of bird habitats. One

One bonus of having moved to a place where I can look at Commencement Bay (Tacoma, WA) and the Port of Tacoma is that I get to watch ships come and go. It is easy to grow very used to the massive size

Birders throughout the U.S. and Canada often become avid twitchers for birds that are uncommon or rare in their county. eBird is the online site where a large portion of North American birders record their

Male Barrow's goldeneye. When I started birding it was uncommon to see a birder with a telephoto lens/camera. In those days cameras and lenses were expensive, and digital photography did not exist, so

The Zhen Hua 28, a repurposed tanker moving giant cranes from China to Tacoma, WA Today out our front window we saw this crazy looking ship. It looked like a giant ship with huge cranes on the deck. We

In the mid 20th Century the national bird of the United States of America, was endangered in large part due to the deleterious effects of the pesticide DDT on breeding success. DDT was widely used throughout

Hooded mergansers are the small merganser of the three species we see in Washington. They are 18" long and 22.4 ounces (46 cm and 670 grams). Red-breasted mergansers are a little longer but 50% heavier,

This morning it was crystal clear with a strong wind and bright sunshine off and on, and as it had snowed last night it was still cold. I got out for a mid-morning walk on the waterfront trail in Old Town

Sometimes it is tough to see more than a silhouette of a bird you are trying to identify. When you are looking into a bright sky, the light is often coming from the same direction as you are looking making

Today I drove toward Mt. Rainier to see if I could find any birds of higher elevation. It was a beautiful drive, but birds were hard to come by, and I settled for finding a distant American dipper at a