Three Warbler Day

I only spent about two hours in the yard on June 1 but came up with three warbler sightings with photos of all three.  At the time I was photographing this first warbler I assumed that it was an Orange-crowned warbler due to the muted colors.  In such circumstances my main focus (pun intended) is on obtaining photos, so I don’t worry so much about identification as I reason that I can always determine species when I process the photos.  Such was the case here, and after seeing the wing bars I realized that my initial ID was probably incorrect.  After examining this (and two other photos) I have decided that this is a first-year female Yellow warbler.  I’m not an expert on these matters and if someone has a different opinion I would like to hear it…  Hearing none, I’ll move on…

There’ no doubt as to the identity of the second of my warbler visitors… it was a male Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler and of the three warblers it was the only one to actually visit the watercourse.

The last of my warbler visitors for the day was a male Wilson’s warbler.  This isn’t the greatest photo but it documents my sightings.

A female Anna’s hummingbird

A male House finch obtaining a drink of water,,,

This is (probably a juvenile) female Downy woodpecker

And finally, a male Red-winged blackbird. We’ve had several pair flying up from the city’s wastewater treatment pond (where they nest) to access our feeders.  There has been substantial traffic over the last couple of weeks, especially since the young fledged and learned to make the journey up the hill to our yard instead of having to relay on the parents having to transport seed back to the nest.  However the traffic has started to slow and my budget for seed is beginning to return to more normal conditions.