While I assumed that fall migrants had about finished trickling through the yard, we still have been seeing interesting birds. This male Red crossbill was the last adult male to visit the yard, although we continue to see a female and three juveniles which are still hanging together.

Golden-crowned sparrows have arrived for the winter…

This male Anna’s hummingbird will probably remain with us through the winter. We still have salvias blooming, but I don’t think they are supplying a lot of nectar since the hummingbirds are spending only a minimum amount of time at each blossom.

Here’s another photo of an Anna’s hummingbird which I assume is a female. (This time of year I sometimes find it difficult to tell juveniles from females.) This was the only photo I took this day and I might normally have just tossed it, but it’s a good photo so it’s saved in its own folder.

On October 1, 2020, I made an excursion north of Highway 20 and found this female Ring-necked pheasant near Samish Island. When I first saw her my first thought, having spent so many years in Texas, was that I was seeing a Greater roadrunner which often exhibits a similar posture!

On this same outing I found this Stellar’s jay in Bayview State Park, amazingly my first excursion into the camping area of the park in the 20 years we’ve lived in Anacortes.

This jay was susceptible to bribes!

This crow was sitting near the top of Madrone tree east of the Farmers Market.

On October 5 we had a visit from a Hutton’s vireo, which closely resembles a Ruby-crowned kinglet.

We are now having almost daily visits from Golden-crowned kinglets.

This takes me through October 5, 2020. I still have some interesting photos in the hopper, so stay tuned!

(All the photos in this post were taken with my new Nikon 500mm f5.6 lens.)

In my last post I mentioned my outing south towards Fir Island, where I saw several migrants but was unable to obtain any noteworthy photographs. Upon arrival back home we had a visit from this thrush. When I see a thrush at this time of year I always assume (perhaps not justifiably) that the bird is an incoming Hermit thrush, but I didn’t get a photo of the bird’s breast and it doesn’t have a reddish tail, so I can’t rule out this bird being an outgoing Swainson’s thrush.

On September 19 our first visitor was one I’ve been waiting on for over a year… a male Red crossbill! On this particular visit the male appeared to be alone, but later the same day several juveniles/females visited the watercourse and bathed together.

Our next visitor this day was an Orange-crowned warbler. The orange crown is usually very difficult to see in the field, and perhaps you can see why from this photo. We’re looking directly at the bird’s crown with no evidence of any orange showing. I usually get to see the orange crown when the bird gets wet which tends to reveal the orange crown.

Here are the photos of the female/juvenile Red crossbills which visited later the same day.

The bills of these birds are uniquely adapted so that they can insert their bills in fir cones and pop the seeds out. An interesting feature of this species is that some birds are “right-billed” and some are “left-billed”. These birds are both left-billed while the male pictured above is right-billed.

On September 20 our first migrant visitor was a Pacific Slope flycatcher, a rare, but not unknown visitor to the yard.

Our next visitor was an incoming Hermit thrush, this one exhibiting the reddish tail which differentiates it from its similar appearing ‘cousin’, the Swainson’s thrush. Hermit thrushes will be with us through the fall/winter season before leaving in the spring to migrate to their breeding grounds to the north and east.

Our last visitor I’m picturing on this post is another rare visitor that shows up in the neighborhood maybe 3-4 times a year, but it makes it to our yard much less often. As I sat in the yard, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large, dark-colored bird land in our Golden Chain tree. I didn’t have a direct view of the bird but as it flew to where I could better see and photograph it I was startled to realize that it was a Stellar’s jay! This was an even rarer visitor than the Red crossbills!

I’m going to assume that this wraps up my yard migration sightings and posts, but I’ve gotten quite a few good photos of subsequent visitors. I’ll begin posting those next.