If you’ve been following this blog you learned that I finally received my birding lens (Nikon 200-400mm f4.0) back from Nikon’s LA repair facility in early September. I was without the lens for about EIGHT weeks while Nikon procured a needed part that had failed. During that time I resolved to purchase a new lens, chiefly for backup purposes. I got on a couple of waiting lists and after a little over a month I was able to purchase a Nikon 500mm f5.6 prime lens, a difficult to obtain lens due to apparent production shortages. (I have a friend who had been waiting for over a year for one of these lenses and, as fortune intervened, I was able to procure one for him at the same time as my own!) The new lens is very sharp and it will probably become my primary lens and I’ll use the old (repaired) lens as backup… but I’m still working through that strategy.
In the meantime I decided to change the way I documented bird sightings in the yard. After spending 12+ years of trying to document weekly sightings I’ve decided to discontinue that practice and just document special birds on an annual fall and spring migration list. This is stiil definitely a work in progress and I expect it to evolve more this fall. In the meantime the list will allow me to bring attention to interesting birds that I’ve photographed in the yard in the past month.
As most of you are probably aware, we had heavy smoke from wildfires in the area for many days and I wondered if that might have affected migration. We had what I considered a very muted migration this fall. There was also a very large die-off of migrants in New Mexico that was apparently due to early snow, but that shouldn’t have affected our southward migration here.
Getting to sightings, we had a single Cedar waxwing show up in the yard on September 5, but I didn’t get a photo. On several previous days a waxwing showed up by itself, a somewhat strange occurrence for such a gregarious bird.
On September 7 we had a single Varied thrush show up in the yard, our earliest Fall appearance by far. I managed a distant photo… the species hasn’t returned.
On September 8 a juvenile Hutton’s vireo (featured in my prior blog post) made it’s appearance and we also had a Black-headed grosbeak, a species that had been gone from the yard for over a month.
On September 11 the Hutton’s vireo again made its appearance as did our first Fox sparrow for the winter season.
September 14 was a banner day, with a Hermit or Swainson’s thrush, two visits from the Black-headed grosbeak, three visits from Orange-crowned warblers and a Pacific Slope flycatcher.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to obtain a photo of the thrush, which I assumed was a Hermit thrush due to the time of year and the fact that it had a reddish tail which contrasted with its back. However, we also had thrushes on the 18th and the 20th and I decided that we might have had one of each. (More about this in my next post.)
Temporarily leaving the migratory category, I took these photos of a White-crowned sparrow and a male Northern flicker in the yard on the same day.
Straying from the yard, on September 15 I drove by the Cap Sante Marina and saw two yellowlegs in the northwest corner. I returned with my camera and obtained photos. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think these are Greater yellowlegs as opposed to Lesser yellowlegs.
On September 18 I took my new lens on its maiden outing to Fir Island where I saw three Turkey vultures, a female Wood duck, several Yellow-rumped warblers, a Townsend’s warbler and a Common yellowthroat, but I obtained no photos worth posting.
We’ve had other significant visitors that I’ll cover in my next blog post.