It’s been awhile since I posted to my blog.  It’s not that I haven’t been busy… I’m logging at least a warbler a day.  Most of the warblers seem to be juveniles, which makes them more difficult to identify and especially to distinguish from females of the same species.  But the photography and the processing have kept me very busy, and as usual I’m running behind on the processing.

On August 19, 2018, I watched as a Turkey vulture flew from a neighbor’s yard to the top of a fir tree in our yard, the first time I’m aware that a vulture has actually perched in one of our trees.  A handsome devil that will soon be heading south!

Here are a couple of female Anna’s hummingbirds that are hanging around the yard.  We have at least two male Anna’s fighting for control of feeders and still have at least one female Rufous hummingbird still in the yard.

A male Bushtit perched above the watercourse.  The Bushtits almost never access the water in the watercourse.

Photos of a female Wilson’s warbler accessing the watercourse.

For contrast, here is a beautiful male Wilson’s warbler who visited the yard on August 29…

This is an Orange-crowned warbler, which has turned out to her our most frequent warbler species visitor this year (displacing Wilson’s warblers).

On August 26 I received a visit from our second Black-throated Gray warbler for the year.  I consider this one of the rarest warbler visitors to our yard.

I consider the Brown creeper one of our best camouflaged birds and you can see why in this first photo.  The second photo shows the bird accessing our stone bird bath.

After grousing about the lack of warblers this past summer (just two sightings of any warbler species between July 1 and August 12) I had an exceptional sightings day on Sunday, August 12.  On that day I had a single visit from a relatively rare warbler, a Black-throated Gray.  I ended the day keeping 46 photos of the rarity, a tribute to the occasion!  And it was this visit that opened the proverbial floodgates!  

I hoped the bird would return the next day (Monday August 13) so that I could enhance my portfolio (as if it needed enhancing at this point!) but although I spent considerable time in the yard I saw no warblers.  I did obtain some nice photos of Bushtits, including young ones being fed suet from our feeder.

Tuesday, August 14, brought both male and female Wilson’s warblers and at least one adult Orange-crowned warbler.  Other relative rarities included a House wren (a summer breeding migrant not seen for the past coupe of months) and a Warbling vireo, a very rare visitor.  

(Photos for this day covered in prior post.)

Wednesday, August 15 brought a single male Wilson’s warbler.  

On Thursday, August 16, we had a visit from a male Yellow warbler, a somewhat rare migrant to our yard.  We also had flyovers by a sub-adult Bald eagle and an Osprey.

Friday, August 17 brought a juvenile Orange-crowned warbler (distinguished from the adult I saw three days earlier) and another (male?) Yellow warbler visit, both coming late in the day and approximately ten minutes after a neighbor’s Texas relative left after spending the better part of three hours birdwatching in the yard.  It wasn’t a total loss for the visitor… she was able to add California quail to her life list.  

Saturday brought yet another rare warbler visit… a female Townsend’s warbler (some of the 24 photos I retained were taken from about four feet away!)!   (Yes, that’s two exclamation points to mark the occasion plus the third one at the end of this sentence!)

Least you think we’re running a zoo here, on each of these days I spent approximately 3-4 hours in the yard, mostly in the afternoons prior to 5:30pm when I abandon my post to catch the national news and see just how much greater this country has been made during the day.  Add to the watch time processing time for the several hundred photos I’ve taken during the week and you can see just how a very happy retiree spends much of his time.  And don’t forget posting to the blog, sending special emails to friends regarding sightings and trying to maintain relationships with friends scattered across the country.  

Everything must end, and our run may be ending.  My wife looked out the window this morning and saw an accipiter surveying the yard from a low perch on one of my prominent staging rocks.  I’ve seen very little in the yard since!  

I should perhaps add a note of clarification… when I describe a bird as ‘rare’, the term applies only to sightings in our yard and not to the region as a whole.  What I consider a rarity in my yard my be more common in someone else’s yard or in other areas of the county.  And if you’re out birding ‘on the move’ you will naturally tend to see more birds than just sitting in one place and hoping to attract birds to photograph.  

This said, I want to welcome birding friends who would like to bird the yard.  I ask that you call me first to let me know you want to drop by, wear clothing of subtle colors (not white or bright colors!) and refrain from excessive movement if I am in the yard with you actively trying to photograph.  Conversation is usually acceptable except when we have a visit from a rarity.  

After mentioning the lack of summer warblers in our yard in my post relating to August 12, yesterday I spent a few hours in the yard after having been alerted to the presence of an Orange-crowned warbler.  Due to the lack of warblers this summer, I was very excited to finally be seeing another warbler in the yard, even if it was the more common Orange-crowned.

The Orange-crowned warbler set off a ground-swell of fall visitors which I’ll share with you.  During my time in the yard we had a fly-over from a Turkey vulture, a migrant which was here this summer but will be leaving in the next month or two to migrate south for the winter.

We had multiple visits from both male (top) and either female or juvenile (bottom) Wilson’s warblers, which I consider the most common warbler to visit our yard.

We also hade a Bewick’s wren visit the yard.  We had a breeding pair in the yard for much of the summer but they haven’t been showing themselves for the past several weeks.  This one landed on a perch that made photography difficult, but I managed a couple of photos.

After being worried about the local California quail population for much of the summer, we are now overrun with several coveys of different sizes.  Here’s a photo of one of the adult males followed by a photo of one of the almost-grown juveniles.

And finally, our star visitor for the day… a Warbling vireo.  If we’re lucky we manage about one of these a year.  Since we saw this one so early in the migration maybe I can hope for another!

Just a quick note to let you know that the fall migration is on, at least at our house!  I’ll replace this photoless post with another later in the day (Wednesday), but this is hopefully a helpful notice to be on the lookout for fall migrants here in Skagit County, WA.  I had a banner day in the yard yesterday and have a lot of nice photos to share, so check back later today for an update to this post.

I went virtually the entire month of July without seeing but one warbler, and that has continued into mid-August!  UNBELIEVABLE!  There’s been some kind of serious problem with our usual warblers (Wilson’s, Yellow-rumped, Orange-crowned and Yellow) this spring/summer.

On August 12, 2018, at about 6:20pm, I was sitting very near our watercourse topping it off and watering a few of the plants around the yard.  The spray usually attracts some birds and I noticed an active bird on the edge of the yard that kept disappearing into madrones and bushes.  I couldn’t get a good sustained look at the bird… It resembled a Black-capped chickadee from a distance (without any optical enhancement) but I realized that it probably wasn’t a chickadee.

I made a fortuitous decision to run inside and get my camera, and when I returned with my telephoto lens the bird was still in the yard (fate was working with me this day!) and I immediately saw it was a Black-throated Gray warbler, one of the rarest warblers we get here on Cap Sante.

The bird made three separate trips to the watercourse to bathe, making liberal use of all the staging objects I have around the water.  As I started taking photos, from as close to the watercourse as I ever get, I abandoned my usual practice of waiting patiently until the bird strikes a good pose to take a photo.  I just began taking photos whenever the bird was in my viewfinder.  I soon had 95 images, 46 of which I retained!

For comparison, here is a photo of a Black-capped chickadee I took earlier in the afternoon.

And here are a few of the photos I took of the Black-throated Gray warbler, apparently a juvenile female.

Can this be the start of the fall migration?