In my most recent post (from early this, 1/20) morning I complained about the dearth of winter visitors. This afternoon my wife alerted me to the presence of a male Varied thrush in our watercourse.  I grabbed my camera and tried a different strategy… sneaking out the front door where I was hidden by a wall and a large pot of bamboo.  The technique worked and I was able to set up without the thrush seeing me.

What’s that clicking sound???

I was careful, and lucky… the thrush puttered around the watercourse and yard for 10-15 minutes.  I managed a LOT of photos, not wanting this opportunity to get away from me.

As soon as the thrush left the yard a Golden-crowned kinglet, a species that has been conspicuously absent from the yard this winter, flew into the watercourse but failed to present an opportunity for me to photograph it.

Since I had a good blind location and there were numerous birds in the yard, I remained in my location for awhile.

We had at least seven Golden-crowned sparrows in the yard…

There were at least three Spotted towhees in the yard, this one eating blossoms, buds or fruit off of an Evergreen huckleberry…

This Song sparrow took break from feeding in the yard to visit the watercourse…

A male Anna’s hummingbird took a break from guarding feeders for a brief bath in the watercourse.  I briefly had an opportunity for a photo of it hovering above the watercourse but I wasn’t fast enough to take advantage of the situation.

Finally (by this time I was getting cold!) I noted a Brown creeper visiting our stone birdbath across the yard.  This is a fairly rare visitor to our yard.  In this case I was lucky in that I was in position with my camera ready when I saw it.  It was driven off by another bird but not before I documented its visit.

My posts this winter have been somewhat sporadic.  There were the three hand/arm surgeries in October (from which I’m still attempting to recover my typing skills), then there has been a considerable amount of rain, heavy overcast and now wind in the interim.  Added to these problems is the fact that I just haven’t encountered as many interesting birds as in some past years.

Despite my handicap I recently managed to generate a 14-page vignette for a history project relating to my elementary school, but every key accessed by my ring and little fingers on my right hand still requires considerable slowing.  (My worst nightmare is a word like “lollipop” but fortunately that word doesn’t arise in my writings very often!)

I was recently made aware of reports of a Black phoebe that had been seen at the Headquarters Tract of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) on Fir Island.  The phoebe was considerably out of range, usually being found only as far north as southern Oregon.  We’ve seen many on our travels through CA, AZ and NM.

The WDFW HQ tract on Fir Island is a large piece of land with a vast area of phoebe habitat (they’re almost always found around water) and I had no idea where the bird might be.  On Jan 18 I drove around the two parking lots and was on my way out when I spied a small bird fly-catching about 100 feet away.  I parked and carefully moved down to Wiley Slough and over the next couple of hours managed a few photos of the phoebe.

On Jan 19 I returned despite windy conditions only to find at least 5-6 (apparently juvenile Barn?) swallows working the area.  The phoebe made a couple of brief appearances but was probably discouraged by all of the swallow activity, which, by the way, made it very difficult to track the location of the phoebe.  As I was leaving the tract I again found the phoebe and managed more photos, but at a decided greater distance than I would have liked.

While at Wiley Slough waiting for the phoebe I amused myself by photographing a couple of female Buffleheads that sporadically cruised up and down the slough.

Each winter the cold weather and snow drives the beautiful Varied thrushes down from the mountains.  They begin appearing at our house in the fall but return to their higher elevation breeding grounds in the spring.  As far as photography is concerned, each year the Varied thrush is a target bird for me.  We almost always have at least a few visit our yard but this year the visits have been somewhat scarcer than in prior years and the birds have been much shyer.

I’ve had some luck with finding one or two in the area of the Cap Sante wetland on occasion but on Saturday, January 6, 2018 I found the situation for which I had been hoping.  There were several thrushes around the wetland.  Most were sorting through the leaf litter but I think some may have been visiting holly trees in the area.  I found an accommodating male that allowed me to creep to within about eight feet of him and I took almost 100 photos, most of which had to be discarded due to his almost constant motion of turning over the leaf litter looking for bugs and worms.  (He appeared to be VERY successful!)

Both the Varied thrush and the American robin are members of the thrush family (“cousins”, so to speak).  For contrast, here is a robin that was in the same area…

Strangely enough, during episodes of heavy snowfall I have seen the thrushes eat seed off the ground whereas robins won’t touch it.

After I had almost exhausted my film supply  🙂  I drove down to the northwest corner of the Cap Sante marina where earlier in the morning I had seen three Pied-billed grebes, one more than I had ever seen there previously.  I took few photos of them before calling it a day for my photography.

And a little hint for my loyal readers…  this May (5, 10 &17) I will emerge from retirement and again teach a beginning birding course for the Anacortes Senior College.  Interested parties can begin signing up for the three-week course in February.  I’ll post additional details on this blog before the end of January.