~ by Sumalee ~ Last summer, V. and I hiked longer trails than typical for us. These were upward of eight miles, and we revisited these...

~ By Vicky ~ On our woodland birdwatching outings, we often spotted small nests woven into the branches of spindly trees, but the nests...

~ By Sumalee & Vicky ~ The Coast: La Playa Blanca and Chomes After getting our birding eyes primed for Costa Rica with the help of...

~ By Vicky ~ The Road to Monteverde For years we talked and dreamt of international travel. Our passports were renewed and hot off the...

~ By Sumalee ~ We have to start out with the pictures first, to get the heartbreak out of the way in order to write this story. Here are...

~ by Sumalee ~ About a year ago, V. and I were strolling the many straight lanes, once paved gravel roads, of a bygone U.S. Army training...

~ by Sumalee ~ Some time ago, V. and I made a discovery: the better birders we are, the fewer new birds we see. In our birding infancy,...

~ By Vicky ~ The wettest fall followed the driest summer yet experienced in all my years living in Oregon. And yet the lady and I were...

~ by Sumalee ~ You would think that neither of us would look forward to standing around in the rain peering through foggy, wet binocular,...

~ by Sumalee ~ “The early bird gets the worm” truly exemplifies an early birding foray we undertook recently to William L. Finley...

~ By Vicky ~ We went on a long weekend trip to Camano Island, WA to accomplish a few things. Firstly, to visit S.'s mom and see her new...

~ By Vicky ~ One of the many joys of home ownership is being able to do what one wants with one's own home and property. For instance,...

~ by Sumalee~ We do love birding for its own sake, but a wee part of both of us also wishes for that public affirmation, the imprimatur...

~ By Vicky ~ The lady and I had some difficult decisions to make: Go to Eastern Oregon for songbird migration, or to Klamath for more...

~ By Sumalee ~ We wanted to get out of town and see birds by the thousands: why not Sandhill Cranes? Although S. had seen Sandhill Cranes...

~ By Vicky ~ Prior to making our Birding Unfettered website about our birding adventures, S. and I had wanted to find a way to document...

~ By Vicky ~ We all know that the year 2020 was a wash. Covid was making its mark on the world. For a whole year and counting. Weird and...

~ By Sumalee ~ We embarked on a hike in Central Oregon that we had attempted before but abandoned due to weekend crowds. Today, a...

~By Sumalee~ As of this writing, V. and I have been to fourteen National Wildlife Refuges, most of them in Oregon, a handful in...

~By Vicky~ For fifteen years I have never been able to appreciate the perpetually monotonous grey days of a rainy Oregon winter. Moving...