On February 26, 2020, I launched a birding excursion south to Fir Island with a friend. I made stops at several of the Fish and Wildlife access points (Jenson and Hayton) with my final destination being the WDFW headquarters tract at Wiley Slough.

I have had some interesting sightings there over the past few weeks… the Black phoebe that has been there for a couple of years and a Northern shrike which has eluded my camera on at least two occasions. Lately I had heard the rumor of a Northern waterthrush there. Many years ago I had photographed a waterthrush on the tract, but it was in a small stream and mostly obscured by all sorts of undergrowth. The photo was so bad I had to have ‘expert’ help in identifying the portion of the bird visible in the photograph.

As I arrived I thought I might have seen the shrike but it quickly flew from view. Next came the phoebe, but I also got just a quick glance at it before it disappeared down the waterway. No matter… I have some very good photos of the bird which I posted to this blog at some time in the past. As I waited for the phoebe to reappear (it never did) I noticed a small, rather obscure bird moving across the mat of debris floating in the slough. It wasn’t the Song sparrow that I had been watching… it was a Northern waterthrush! It was out in the open with good light behind me… almost perfect photographic conditions!

Over the next thirty minutes or so I took over 100 photos of the bird as it reaped the bountiful harvest of insects in the debris mat. I saw it with worms, a beetle and various other insects too small to identify. Here are a few photos…

The waterthrush is apparently a member of the warbler family, so why is “thrush” part of its name? “Northern Water warbler” doesn’t roll off the tongue especially easily, despite the alliteration, but at least it would more closely align the bird with its famiiy name. .

February 13, 2020 began as a rainy day. By about noon I thought the rain was supposed to stop so I set out on a birding excursion. (I later learned from my wife that the rain did stop in Anacortes, but it rained on me all my way to Fir Island and back.) As I was driving along Young Road I encountered this Red-tailed hawk perched on a fence post holding a rodent it had just harvested from a farm field.

I could see a wing tag and leg band but at this point I was unable to read the wing tag due to wind blowing it up on the bird’s back.

After a minute or so the hawk flew to a nearby tree.

I was able to relocate the hawk and obtained more photos of the hawk in the tree messing with the rodent.

The hawk then flew again, but the wind was fairly strong and the hawk just soared in place just outside my car. This allowed me to get another series of photos of the hawk in the air.

This was the last photo I took, with the hawk looking down at me. I drove on, leaving the hawk to dine on its meal.

I’m guessing this hawk was probably trapped at SeaTac and relocated to the Skagit Flats. The wing tags are so the hawk can be easily identified if it returns to the airport. This isn’t the first hawk I’ve seen in that area with a wing tag.

I think I can safely say that the hawk is eating well!

Sorry, but I had such a good day on 2/2/2020 that I decided to share more photos taken in the yard. For the most part it was the same old birds (the story of my life for the past several weeks) but very good photos.

Here is what I had hoped to obtain the previous day…. a male Anna’s hummingbird with its gorget reflecting.

Here is a female Downy woodpecker… we also had a male in the yard.

And a Bewick’s wren giving me the eye! We’ve recently had two in the yard, but I usually only see one at a time. I’m not sure whether or not this is the same bird in both photos.

Note that I’ve sent out two posts within minutes of each other. Scroll down to see that you haven’t missed the previous post.

I think I set a personal record of the number of photographs taken in one day in the yard on 2/1/2020… 307!

When we returned from Saturday breakfast with friends I noticed a feeder war between two male Anna’s hummingbirds in the yard, so I got my camera gear assembled and ventured out. I began to take photos, but unfortunately the males moved on and a pair of females moved in.

Later, in the afternoon, a male Varied thrush entered the yard and I went out again to try to photograph it. The thrushes have been quite wily this year and though I waited for a long time it never came around the corner of the house where I was waiting.

So I didn’t obtain my target photos, but while I was waiting I had lots of opportunity to photograph other birds. The overwhelming number of birds in the yard were Dark-eyed juncos (Oregon race) but I never get tired of photographing them. I’m amazed at the feathers on the birds’ hoods and how they meet the rest of the feathers on the birds.

This was one of the first birds I photographed… a Fox sparrow.

And what is probably the same Fox sparrow in a different light. I never see more than one in the yard at the same time, so I presume we have only one regularly visiting the yard.

One of the male, aforementioned Dark-eyed juncos…

A female Dark-eyed junco of the Oregon race…

One of the female Anna’s hummingbirds attempting to take command of one of our feeders…

Here is one of the male Anna’s hummingbirds I wanted to photograph, but it wasn’t displaying its gorget.

This was the rarest bird (for our yard) I encountered during the day… probably a first year juvenile White-crowned sparrow, but it could also possibly be a tan morph of the species. We only see this plumage (juvenile) in the summer in the yard, but when traveling to New Mexico we encounter the tan morph extensively. As I’ve said in a previous post, I consider the reservoir for these birds to be in the greater New Mexico area because there are so many of them.

And here is the adult of the same (White-crowned sparrow) species…

One of two Song sparrows in the yard…

A male Spotted towhee, one of at least three in the yard…

And the star of the day, a Bewick’s wren. These aren’t especially rare birds, but they are very active and generally prefer an underbrush environment which makes them difficult to photograph.

I was especially happy with this photo… a male and female Bushtit in the same photo and not on a (suet) feeder.

A female Bushtit…

My plan had been to post photos from some of my recent excursions beyond the yard, but with the bonanza of photos I took on 2/1 I decided to do another yard bird post.