It’s been a while, and I still have some of my own bird photos to post from my last outing, but I’d like to finish with the bird photos my father sent some weeks ago. My folks had to cut short their usual summer stay in Washington State, so there won’t be any bird photos from him from there–but he might keep up the birding back in the San Francisco Bay Area.

First in the remaining photos are Turkeys. Not usually seen in those parts, but apparently someone released them there and they’ve been doing well. Here’s an image you might not expect to see when you go out on to your patio:

There were also some other turkeys out in the field which is their front yard; this is a photo of just a few of them, one of the clearer shots. There were more than just one mating pair, and not a few young’uns.

My father was kind of surprised that the young turkeys were not more picked off by the many predatory birds in the area; perhaps mama and papa turkey are more protective and ferocious than most people would expect. One such predator is the Red-tailed Hawk:

But you can really see where it got its name from this photo with the bird preening:

There was also a Killdeer, a very close relative to the Plovers I’ve been seeing here in Tokyo. The Killdeer is one of those birds that fakes injury to distract potential predators from her young. My father had an experience at a running track where the Killdeer came out kind of often when you ran by.

Here’s one that my father initially mistook for a kind of duck, mainly because you can’t see its bill too clearly in this photo. If you could, you’d see it’s not a duck’s bill. This, instead, is a Pigeon Guillemot.

But the really neat birds my father got (on an old camera, not as good quality or zoom, alas) were a species I’ve always wanted to see: the Pileated Woodpecker. These are fascinating birds, big as crows, with an outrageous red crest. I mean, what a neat bird.

That’s all the San Juan bird photos. Coming soon will be birds I got recently in a very good new birding spot I discovered: Rinkai Park, very close to Tokyo Disneyland. Perhaps even a better birding spot than the Wild Bird Park near Haneda, and this one has no entrance fee.