With a great scarcity of 
birds at my backyard feeders I went to Bear Creek Park for Great Backyard Bird Count last weekend. The lakes remain frozen, the creek yielded a few Mallards and a male Common Goldeneye floating downstream. The remaining 16 species were residents of the winter dormant forest. My contribution to Citizen Science.
The Oregon Junco I saw on Saturday was hiding in a bush, so this is a photo I took 2 years ago.
Going out the next day I found a flock of American Tree Sparrows at Cherry Creek Park. The camera decided not to focus on anything, so this is a not-focused picture. Of course the lake is still 98% frozen, however some winter ducks managed to find a sliver of open water. Common Mergansers, Common Goldeneyes, a distant Scaup, and Hooded Mergansers were sharing water space with Ring-billed Gulls. 5 Bald Eagles were standing on the ice keeping watch. They were even more distant than this Eagle I photographed a few weeks ago.
