This was a particularly pleasant weekend birding at home since there was still a fair amount of snow on the ground here in Whatcom County. I watched my and my neighbor's feeders and the surrounding skies sporadically, mostly over morning coffee and identified 16 species, one of which was a total surprise. We live in the Columbia neighborhood in Bellingham about a mile north of downtown. The species I saw were:

House Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Fox Sparrow (a first for my yard)
American Crow
Glaucous-winged Gull
Varied Thrush (not common here)
Steller's Jay
House Finch
Pigeon
Starling
American Goldfinch
Black-capped Chickadee
Chestnut-backed Chickadee
Dark-eyed Junco
Spotted Towhee
and the real surprise (a first for my back yard which is nowhere near a wetland) a female Red-winged Blackbird.
The Blackbird came to my feeder that is between the garage and a Serviceberry bush that is slammed up against the garage.

I've been slowly working at making my yard more bird friendly, and it's nice to see so many birds take advantage of it.

Now my two requests for posters:
Please, if you're going to use abbreviations for birds would you mind writing out the name of the bird the first time you use it in a post and put the abbreviation in parentheses. For example: House Sparrow (H.S.). The abbreviations do not come naturally to a lot of people and it makes reading the post a lot easier. It would be a kindness.
Also, would posters please be a little more specific in locating the places they're talking about. Not all of us know even in which county some of the places are.
It would be another kindness.

Steven Aronoff
2301 West Street
Bellingham WA 98225
671-9439
oceras at msn.com<mailto:oceras at msn.com>