Sunday, April 7, 2019, began as a sort of humdrum birding day. Things were so bad I started alternating my birding with yard chores. Here are a couple of House sparrows… the male and an unusually good photo of a female.
Continuing with the sparrow theme, here is a photo of a Song sparrow, probably the only one we have.
Things got a little more interesting when this male Downy woodpecker came to the suet feeder and then took its time exiting the yard, giving me the opportunity for a few photos.
A Bewick’s wren has been visiting the suet feeder this past winter and it’s having a difficult time giving it up!
And this is when things began to get interesting! All last season I only saw hummingbirds of any species visit the watercourse twice, which is in sharp contrast to prior years when we had hummingbirds visit the watercourse multiple times on a daily basis. This afternoon a female Rufous hummingbird first came down to bathe…
And then a male came down for a bath!
I’m anxious for warblers to arrive but my records indicate that most won’t arrive until May. However, hope springs eternal and finally, after 5pm I saw movement in one of our madrone trees. I realized almost immediately that it wasn’t one of the American goldfinches that are now so prevalent… it was a male Yellow-rumped warbler (Audubon’s race) in full breeding plumage! The bird eyed both primary water sources in the yard and then left the yard after only a couple of minutes. I could so early have missed it.
And one bit of bad news. Early this morning I was on our west patio when a couple of birds flew into our very large madrone tree. I didn’t have my binoculars but was trying to ID the birds with rather obstructivee backlighting. Suddenly the birds flew, first a female, then a male followed by another female. I realized by their flight patterns that I was watching three Brown-headed cowbirds… our first recorded arrival this year. In past years, in our immediate vicinity they have parasitized White-crowned sparrows, Spotted towhees and Dark-eyed juncos.