Seven days of birding in Polk County

I spent 7 days camping at the Polk county fairgrounds so I could bird watch with my friends, Jim and Jeanette Scott. We visited over a dozen local birding hotspots and took 1 day trip to the Nestucca Bay NWR. Jim was our official photographer for the trip so no pics from me. You can check out his blog for some details on our outing at the following link:  http://cascaderamblings.blogspot.com With the cool weather and fog, bird activity was slow but we always have a good time together! I did get a few good pics, such as this one of a Northern Flicker:

and this Cedar Waxwing:

I have purchased a new camera and am slowly learning how to use it. It is a Canon Rebel. It came with several lens including a 75-300 but after using a Nikon P900 with 83x zoom it felt inadequate so I purchased a 150-600 Sigma lens for it! 

It does not have quite the zoom capabilities of the Nikon P900 but it has manual operations that I prefer. A manual zoom is needed for photographing birds that a partially obscured by foliage. 

I am back on the coast today for a week and went for a bird walk on the Waxmyrtle Trail along the Siltcoos river. One of my favorite pictures today was of a Green-winged Teal!

I like how the sun captures the green on the wing and the reflection in the water! Hopefully I will continue to get more comfortable with the new camera and will be able to add plenty of pictures in the future.