For the past week or so I’ve spent a couple of hours a day touring March Point and occasionally Channel Drive here in Skagit County.  The birding has been productive, although by and large I keep seeing the same birds day after day.  But the good thing about photographing birds is that they are almost always in different settings or poses.

Earlier in the week I encountered a county mower, a large tractor with an articulated arm that was trimming grass and brush along March Point Road.  On the day I first encountered it, it was on the east side of March’s Point and wasn’t disruptive, but a day later, when I took some of the following shots it was a major factor in my birding.

I had discovered a small pocket of birds in one of my favorite stopping areas and had enticed a Ruby-crowned kinglet and small flock of Black-capped chickadees out into the open and was busily photographing them when I became aware of a loud mechanical noise.  I glanced away from my photography and saw the mower headed my way.  I thought I had a bright future at this location but I realized that my photography would be ending in just a matter of seconds, so I rather hurriedly squeezed off a few shots of the chickadees and gave up on the kinglet, which had gotten too close to my vehicle to photograph.  (Photographing kinglets is a rare enough experience that I hate to ‘leave any shots on the table’.)

On the east side of March’s Point I encountered the Black oystercatcher that has visited the area from time to time.  I can never count on seeing it there but have encountered it a good many times over the past couple of months.

The final feather in my cap (pardon the pun!) for the day was this Song sparrow hanging out in the rose hip bushes…