Our time at Black Butte Ranch began on a sour bird-note, but thankfully it improved greatly as the week went on.

On July 5th Jill located a Yellow Warbler's nest being tended to by both adults.  We didn't have the camera with us but we were carrying our binoculars so we were able to see four young birds vying for position whenever one of the parents arrived for a feeding.

The next afternoon I went back for pictures and while going through the images later that evening I noticed there were now only three nestlings, and one looked very different from the other two. Unfortunately the pictures were poor, back-lit and mostly out of focus - so I went back the morning of the 7th and re-photographed the birds with much better results.  

When I revisited the nest site two days later for follow-on images I found just one nestling being cared for by two adult Yellow Warbler, it was Brown-headed Cowbird. I was so upset that I just turned and walked away without taking a single frame.  

With that said, I thought I should start the photo-section of this post with the series of pictures of the Yellow Warblers before the Brown-headed Cowbird became the lone nestling, and then finish up on a happier note with a selection of our favorite images from our visit to c. Oregon.

For those who would prefer to jump straight to the photo album please click here.

Click the arrow to begin a slideshow - once started you can control the speed and screen size with your mouse.

Yellow Warbler Nest (six frames):

Moving quickly on to our non-controversial favorites. First up - a pair of Williamson's Sapsucker.

Female:

Williamson's Sapsucker (female)

Williamson's Sapsucker (female)

Male:

Williamson's Sapsucker Williamson's Sapsucker

The next set (of images) is Jill's favorite.

Warbling Vireo alternating between feeding fledgling and bathing (nine frames):  

On a walk through a meadow I was happy to see this Wilson's Phalarope jump up and lead me out of the area :-)

Wilson's Phalarope Wilson's Phalarope

While looking for Three-toed Woodpecker we came across a large number of Lewis's Woodpecker in the GW burn:

Very low in the base of a tree, we found this Red-naped Sapsucker regurgitating it's catch:

On the morning of July 13th, Kris Kristovich photographed the fledging of the nestlings - the subject line of his email to me read "today leaving the nest  ...... right after you left". That fortuitous timing couldn't have happened to a nicer person.

Red-naped Sapsucker Red-naped Sapsucker

Second up from Calliope Crossing is one of my favorites, a pair of Western Wood-Pewee feeding two very recent hatchlings.  We say recent because we never got a look at the little ones and the nest is quite shallow, we say two because we watched one of the parents simultaneously remove two fecal sacs.  According to The Birds of North America - Online "Both male and female feed nestlings (CB). Fed by regurgitation for first 4–5 d", however as you will see below the presumed male is observed regurgitating it's catch to the female who in-turn delivers the food to the brood - (8 frames):

When we said we were saving the "happier images" for later in our post we didn't think we would have images of fledgling Yellow Warbler to share with you but we do!  We hope you enjoy the images of a recently fledged Yellow Warbler that showed up for us during a bird walk along the Metolius River:

Yellow Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Below is an image we were lucky to capture of a very busy mom!
Yellow Warbler Yellow Warbler Yellow Warbler Yellow Warbler

Shortly after sighting the fledgling warbler above we located a very frisky pair of nestling Northern Flicker being fead - they are obviously close to fledging ( 4 frames):