New Yard Bird!

April 16 2021, saw warming temperatures and for the following two days (4/17-18) I spent several hours in the yard each afternoon hoping to welcome new warblers. I had come to the conclusion that the visits by a male Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler that had been visiting the yard for the past couple of weeks were all the same bird and, other than a brief glimpse of an Orange-crowned warbler, I had been disappointed.

We have begun to see the arrival of American goldfinches at about the same time as the beginning of our Golden Chain tree’s leafing out. We’ve had a significant reduction in Pine siskins and the appearance of a third sick one since sometime in December. All of our many Dark-eyed (Oregon) juncos have left except for a single pair. We apparently have families of chickadees in each of two nest boxes.

So it was with some degree of disappointment that late on the afternoon of April 18, 2021, I had had no significant sightings of interesting birds. I was thinking of calling it quits for the day when I became aware of a new visitor. It briefly landed on one of my staging rocks but flew to our stone bird bath before I could react. My first impression as I photographed the bird was that I didn’t know what it was, but when I calmed a little I realized that it was a Townsend’s solitaire, a species I seldom see and one that’s never been seen in our yard. We’ve had them in the neighborhood on brief, rare occasions in several past years, but I wouldn’t have suspected that our yard habitat would be attractive to the species. I managed several photos (almost all the same pose) before the bird flew out of our yard and into neighboring parkland (forest). As you might imagine, this bird made up for all the time I had spent monitoring the yard over the past several days!