On Sep 5, 2017, I was monitoring bird activity in the yard when I spied a warbler flitting among the trees in a grove of madrones at the edge of the yard. The bird was unusually active and I couldn’t get a good look at it. I saw that it had a gray head and considered a MacGillivray’s warbler but the yellow colors on the bird didn’t look right. I next considered a Yellow-rumped warbler due to the patches of yellow on the bird, but the yellow wasn’t in the right locations. I realized that I was seeing a new warbler for the yard and one with which I was not familiar.
I was desperate for a photo of the bird for identification, but its depth in the madrones and it’s flitting activity were in danger of precluding this. Suddenly the bird flew towards me and landed in the open less than ten feet away on a staging stick that I had erected only a few days previously. I was able to take over 30 very good photos of the bird. After it left the yard I rushed to process the photos so that I could identify the bird. I knew it was a warbler and after a little investigation identified it as a female American redstart, a bird I had seen and photographed in Texas (and probably AZ) but that I had never expected to show up in our yard in Anacortes. Needless to say, this was a very, very unexpected visitor to our yard.
The next day (Sep 6) I pulled into our driveway and immediately spotted an accipiter (probably a Cooper’s hawk that’s been roaming the neighborhood) preening on a log in the yard. I had no chance to get into the house and retrieve my camera before the bird flew.
A short time later I looked out our kitchen window and saw the/another female American redstart bathing in the watercourse! How could this be?! I ran for my camera but as is so often the case, by the time I got into the yard the bird was gone. However I wasn’t about to give up in case the bird returned so I camped in the yard for awhile. The redstart didn’t return but I observed/and photographed another rare visitor… a female Black-throated Gray warbler! My photos of this bird weren’t that good due to its shyness around other species of birds using the watercourse.
On Sep 9 just after noon I looked out the kitchen window and spied a female Yellow-rumped warbler (Audubon’s) bathing in the watercourse. I knew I had caught it during the middle of its bath and that it probably wouldn’t be there long, so I watched to see where it flew after bathing. Just after it flew, movement at a stone birdbath caught my attention and I used my binoculars to observe an Orange-crowned warbler bathing. With this inspiration, I went out and sat just out of the rain under the eaves of the house… but there was no further activity while I was there.