On the afternoon of August 11, when returning to the house from a brief errand, I drove by a stand of thistle in the neighborhood and found a couple of American goldfinches feeding on one of their favorite foods.  I retrieved my camera from the house and returned to the site and took the following photos…

As I was observing the goldfinches I saw a female Western tanager (featured in a prior post) and an Olive-sided flycatcher in the area.

While driving around the neighborhood a small bird flew in front of my car and into the bushes beside me.  A little ‘pishing’ brought this Bewick’s wren out for some photos…

I spend a lot of time in the yard watching birds, and despite performing that activity nearly every day I never get bored and it’s unusual if I don’t either learn something new or have some question raised about bird behavior. Today’s post involves some hummingbird behavior I’ve witnessed over this season.

When the Rufous hummingbirds arrive in March there is a lot of activity around not only around the hummingbird feeders we put out, but also in and around our watercourse. The hummingbirds relish visiting the watercourse for a bath and/or a drink of water. There are frequently fights over the watercourse as well as the hummingbird feeders and the flowers in the yard. And I take a lot of photos of the hummingbirds in the watercourse.

But for some reason, it’s been probably close to two months since I’ve seen any hummingbird visit the watercourse. (I just checked my photos and the last photo I took of a hummingbird in the watercourse was on 6/7). And they never visit the other bird baths which don’t feature running water. I’ve taken lots of hummingbird photos since early June, but not a single one of a hummingbird in the watercourse.

I’m left with only the options of photographing hummingbirds on perches or hovering around flowers.

 leaves me with two questions:

Why don’t the hummingbirds utilize non-flowing bird baths… and

Why do the hummingbirds quit utilizing the watercourse relatively early in the breeding season?

On August 5 I was observing/photographing birds in the yard when a juvenile (female)  Brown-headed cowbird flew down next to the watercourse.  I took a couple of photographs of it…

and then as I was looking through my viewfinder another bird appeared in the frame.  It was a White-crowned sparrow and it proceeded to feed the young cowbird.  This is the second breeding season in a row that White-crowned sparrows have raised a cowbird.  The sad thing about this is that this White-crowned sparrow may be sealing its doom for the following breeding season.

And along the same vein, I was watching a male House finch as it flew into one of the madrone trees.  A small group of juvenile American goldfinches flew onto limbs in the general area, and one of the juveniles settled about a foot from the finch.

The young goldfinch leaned towards the House finch as if to beg food and the male House  finch leaned towards it and threatened it with its beak.  Immediately after the confrontation the House finch flew, and all the young goldfinches followed it.  This is exactly the same exit from the yard the young goldfinches make with their parents.  It’s as if the young goldfinches had imprinted on the House finch.

Another noteworthy event occurred on August 4 when three Eurasian Collared doves descended into the trees in the yard.  They seemed very interested in going to the ground but never did.  This may only be about the second appearance of these doves since we’ve lived here.

I managed another good photo of a male Downy woodpecker, probably the same one that appeared in my prior post.  This time the woodpecker was perched on the edge of a rock bird bath we have.

A European starling in the yard.  I’ve been plagued by these for the past couple of months.  During most of the year I have very few starlings in the yard, but when the young fledge I am absolutely overrun with starlings.  They foul the water in the bird baths and, if I leave it out, cost me at least a suet cake a day.  They’re finally beginning to taper off and it’s “good riddance”!

Here’s an interesting photo of a young male House finch.  When the birds are very young it’s either difficult or impossible to tell the males from the females.  But if you look closely at this bird you’ll see that some of the bird’s breast feathers are beginning to turn red, signaling that this is a male.

And to round out this post, a nice photo of a male American goldfinch…

We’ll start with a photo of a relatively rare bird that was in the yard on Sunday, 8/2.  We have seen only one other all season and I was very lucky to have been able to separate this bird from all the other traffic in the yard.  Do you know the species and sex of this bird?

After several weeks of unexceptional sightings (with the exception of the Western Scrub jay and a very few Cedar waxwing visits), things have begun to pick up.  I’m once again seeing warblers in the yard… in fact, last week I tallied three different species.  Here are photos of a male Wilson’s warbler and an Orange-crowned warbler…

The hummingbirds are mostly gone and are only rarely using the single feeder that I still have up, but here is one of the few remaining Rufous hummingbirds.  This appears to be a juvenile male.

As I believe I might have mentioned in a prior post, Downy woodpeckers in the area apparently had a successful breeding season since for a long time we were being visited by a couple of juveniles.

Here’s a photo of a male House finch feeding on some ‘habitat enhancer’ on the ground…

And finally, a photo of an American robin which just finished a bath!

And the photo of the mystery bird at the top of this column?  It’s a female Western tanager.  We only had one other this year and it was a male which made a single appearance a couple of months ago.