Saturday's Critters # 568

 Welcome to Saturday's Critters! Hello and Happy Saturday!

 If you love all God's creatures like I do and also like to blog about them and take critter photos this is where you can share your critter post. Link up your post and share your critters, join in with my critter party ! You can share any kind of critters the real ones, pretend ones, statues and paintings, a new or old post!

These photos are from our trip to Alaska, after we left Denali NP we drove to Glacier View Alaska. Our next two nights were at the Majestic Valley Wilderness Lodge. 

1. Views from the lodge's balcony. At the end of our day sightseeing, the evening included a glass of wine while enjoying the view. We talked a bit with the chef and his dog sat nearby, the gardens and flowers were beautiful along with the mountain views.

The fireweed in Alaska and at the lodge looked beautiful.

2. The gardens and flowers were beautiful.

3. The Majestic Valley Wilderness Lodge. 

During the winter, people who love to ski can fly right to this lodge, they use a helicopter to drop off skiers on the mountain top to do some extreme skiing. 

4. There was a nice fire pit in the garden area. 

5. We enjoyed a breakfast buffet one morning, below are some photos of the dining room and lodge. 

6. The Gray Jay or is it called the Canada Jay now? We saw a few of these birds in the trees close to the lodge. 

7. We took a morning walk before breakfast, below it seemed like mostly Sparrows were being seen. The top left possible Lincoln Sparrow and the middle and top right are the White-crowned Sparrows. My one lifer that I saw but could not get a photo of was the Boreal Chickadee. 

Below is a view of the Matanuska Glacier, this view was right off the Glenn Hwy and close to our lodge.

8. Off the highway we saw a small pond with lots of ducks. It looked like most were the female and young Greater Scaup.

There were a few young Scaup, I assume they are also the Greater Scaup.

 

Hubby and I did some skywatching in the evening on the lodge's balcony. 

I am linking up to Heidrun's Mosaic Monday  I hope you can stop by and visit Heidrun and check out the Mosaic Monday post.

Thanks to all my visitors and for your past and present comments. Stop back to see any replies to your comments. I appreciate everyone who loves and respects wildlife. Thank you for linking up a critter post.

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Thank you for sharing your critters and post!

Saturday's Critters #182

Welcome to Saturday's Critters!

If you love critters like I do and also like to blog about them and take critter photos this is where you can share your critter post. Link up your post and share your critters, join in with my critter party ! You can share any kind of critters the real ones, pretend ones, statues and paintings, a new or old post!

I am so behind in sharing photos, I have months of Florida photos, some from home and most recently from our Washington state trip. I will be flip-flopping all around with photos. These are from our 1st day in Washington state, we visited Mount Rainer National Park.

A Gray Jay  below was seen at one of the park's overlook parking lots.

The Varied Thrush is one of my favorite Washington birds, I love it's colors and markings.

The Northern Flicker.  In the western states, they are known as the Red-shafted Northern Flicker. The east coast has the Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

A Stellar Jay, commonly seen in Washington State.

We stayed at a B&B Mountain Meadows Inn at Ashford Washington. We were only 7miles from the park entrance.  The elk below were seen near a farm along side of the main road.

Sharing a barn for Tom's The Barn Collective  , I saw this while walking a trail behind the barn from a local Ashford park.

My linky

I appreciate and thank everyone who links up their post and for all the wonderful comments! I hope you enjoy my post and photos too!

Here is a list of my linky parties;
Also visit:  I'd-Rather-B-Birdin. Thanks to the gracious host: Anni.

Tom's The Barn Collective  Thanks to Tom for hosting.


Happy Saturday, enjoy your weekend!  

Jays,Crows & Kin

I am linking up with Wild Bird Wednesday and Nature Notes


I am diving into my archives for this post which includes the Jays and Kin in the Corvidae family..Some photos of the Blue Jay are from my backyard and other shots are from my travels.

The two shots above are from my backyard. The Blue Jay is a regular year round visitor in  my yard.  It loves peanuts in and out of the shell. They are loud and always announce their presence on my deck. They are able to imitate a hawk sound so well it really fools me and my little birds.

The Stellar Jay was a common sight during our Washington State travels.. It has a sooty black head and crest, blue wings and tail.

Sorry, for the quality of this shot above but it is the only one I could find of the Gray Jay I was while traveling around Wyoming and Montana.  I need to do some checking on my back up files for a better shot of the Gray Jay. It is a beautiful bird, it is dark gray above and pale gray below. This Jay does NOT have a crest.

The Clark's Nutcracker was seen at Bryce National Park. This bird has a long bill, gray body with black wings.

 And the (Corvidae) Corvid family also includes the following

 The Common Raven has a heavy bill, long wings and tail. The Raven seems to be a more common sight in the western part of the USA.

These Ravens were seen in the Bryce Nat'l Park in Utah.

The Black-billed Magpie was a common bird seen in Yellowstone Nat'l Park. They were usually hanging around the parking lots. They have a black head and breast, white belly and an elegant long tail.

 The Corvid family includes a list of Crows. Above is the American Crow seen in my backyard. The American Crow is overall black, also has a heavy bill, broad wings shorter than the Raven. Somewhere I may have a shot of the Fish Crow seen during my travels.. I wish I had labeled my older photos, to save a lot of searching. 

I am missing a few or more Jays for my lifer list.. Some day it will be nice to see some of the other Jays like the: Brown Jay, Pinyon Jay, Mexican Jay and my favorite the Green Jay.  There are also three Scrub Jays: the Western Scrub Jay, Island Scrub Jay and one I have seen the Florida Scrub Jay. Did you know there were so many Jays?

Thanks for stopping by my post and for all the nice comments.

Join in and post your birdies and to see more beautiful and wonderful bird photos please visit:
 Stewart's Wild Bird Wednesday and Michelle's  Nature Notes.  Thanks to our host Michelle our host Stewart.  Happy Birding and have a wonderful week!