A watchful pied-billed grebe surveys the lake for danger.

I didn’t even see them at first; unlike the mallards that are everywhere you look on the lake, the grebe is quiet, still, and shy.

This pied-billed grebe is content to stay put for now. I swear, this is a different picture.

Yesterday I checked out the Foster Island trail along Lake Washington’s Union Bay and saw another pied-billed scooting along, again among the lily pads.  Also like the last encounter I nearly overlooked it.  Their maximum wing span is only about 24 inches, so they’re pretty easy to miss.

Another day, another pied-billed grebe.

Since the extinction of the Atitlán Grebe (Podilymbus gigas) in 1989, the pied-billed grebe has been in a genus of one.  It’s closest local relatives are horned, red-necked, and western grebes.

A Brewer's blackbird awaits the next cheesy, corn-based snack food.

He looks like a small crow, but the distinguishing yellow eye can be seen clearly in a close-up:

Close-up of the male Brewer's blackbird's yellow, somewhat creepy eye.

The birds were traveling in a pack of about eight, with about an equal mix of males and grey females.

The female Brewer's blackbird.

The species is named after orinthologist Thomas Mayo Brewer and not, as I had assumed, the profession of brewing beer, so it is proper to capitalize the first ‘B’ in the species name.

A red-winged blackbird perched in a tree at Green Lake.

Through clever photo cropping and tweaking the brightness and contrast, I was luckily able to reveal the telltale red shoulder epaulets of the species.

Red-winged blackbird photo adjusted to show epaulets.

Very early in the encounter, the blackbird showed his wing markings very clearly, and I didn’t want to move on without a clear photo.  Tracking him into a nearby treetop, I waited patiently for the markings to be clearly visible again.

A stubborn blackbird refuses to show its colors.

Ten minutes later, I was still waiting for my “money shot.”

You'd think he'd just be cool and show me what I'm there to see.

Finally, I decided to move on.  Luckily my first photo could be manipulated to give species confirmation or I’d still have the red-winged blackbird filed under the “spotted, but not clearly photographed” category.  When I get a better photo I’ll add it to this post, but for now I’ll settle for pictures of a bird that I could identify with certainty, even though the pics themselves don’t really do the job as well as they could.

This bird most closely resembles a spotted towhee, but a car spooked it away before I could get a better picture.

I only got two more pictures, neither offering much in the way of additional clarity:

A spotted towhee? Any help would be appreciated.

I don’t think it’s another Oregon junco; the Oregon junco has a light-colored bill instead of the dark one on this bird.  One of the best features to identify a spotted towhee, though, is its bright red eyeball, and none of my pictures show that.

I know you have a bright red eyeball in there somewhere, spotted towhee!

The spotted towhee is a common resident in the region, so I’m sure we’ll meet again.

The world's largest seagull (those rail posts are about five feet apart)

Most seagulls aren’t much to look at, but the clean separation between the white and gray areas of the glaucous-winged gull are, relative to its comparables, rather attractive.

Pelagic cormorants nesting in the pilings of the Anacortes ferry dock.

Being the novice birder I am, I thought I was photographing a heron species.

A very tame cormorant allowed for a great photo op.

If you look closely, you can see the green reflective sheen of the back feathers, which set the pelagic cormorant apart from the similar Brandt’s cormorant.

Look at the shiny green bird!

The next time I travel to the lovely San Juan Islands I hope to get even more bird pics.  I saw plenty of species, including a couple of bald eagles and great blue herons, that I was unfortunately not opportunistic enough to photograph.

A white-crowned sparrow examines its photographer.

As promised, I returned to Union Square to try to catch another species in action, and these pictures were taken quite possibly in the same tree as the house sparrow of the previous post.

A better view of the white-crowned sparrow's stripes.

I find myself in Union Square often, and I’m sure I’ll uncover another bird or two in the near future.

A house sparrow near the Union Square fountain.

In order to get this close-up photo op, I had to pull a morally ambiguous maneuver — a couple of tempting grains of sushi rice from nearby Uwajimaya placed on a nearby rock.  Knowing that sparrows are quite similar to one another, I knew I would need a few pictures in order to make an identification.

Our sparrow annihilating my sushi rice bait.

Uh oh. I may have been spotted...

The sparrow quickly left the rock for a safer perch, but I was able to track him into a nearby tree.

You can run, but you can't hide.

A defeated sparrow looks his stalker in the eye.

There are a lot of different bird species in and around the Union Square fountain, and I will be sure to look for more there again soon.

A swimming mallard in Meydenbauer Bay.

Being as prevalent as the mallard is, and on five continents no less, there is very little I can add here that hasn’t been said already.  With that in mind, I’ll turn things over to the great Sean Connery (on Saturday Night Live’s Celebrity Jeopardy, portrayed by Darrell Hammond with Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek):

Alex Trebek: That’s beautiful. And finally, Sean Connery’s also here let’s move on to Double Jeopardy where the categories -

Sean Connery: Not so fast Trebek.

Alex Trebek: I really thought that was going to work.

Sean Connery: Well, you were wrong, you mountebank. I pose a conundrum to ya, a riddle if you will

Alex Trebek: I don’t want to hear it.

Sean Connery: What’s the difference between you and a mallard with a cold? One’s a sick duck and I can’t remember how it ends, but your mother’s a whore. [ Laughs ]

A red-breasted sapsucker scampering on a tree trunk.

The Choctaws believed that the sapsucker was a “newsbird;” its arrival in a yard or nearby tree was believed to foreshadow upcoming news.

Something is about to go down when the sapsucker comes your way.

I can’t recall whether I soon heard any important news after this encounter, but it might have just been an omen meant for someone else.