I’m still without a functional watercourse at the house and we’re just at the beginning of the spring migration, so I haven’t had a lot of interesting photos to post. (More about the yard situation to follow.)
On March 29, while driving by the Cap Sante Marina on my way home, I spied a Common loon in full breeding plumage! I immediately drove home, retrieved my camera and returned to the marina. Fortunately the loon was still there and with a little maneuvering I managed to obtain some good photos.
I finally lost the loon among the docks and drove around to the Seafarers Memorial to see if it might be on the other side of the marina. It wasn’t, but I found another Common loon… not in breeding plumage and “sleeping”, but still keeping a wary eye on me!
I enjoyed watching this loon. There was never any apparent movement above the water surface, but as I moved carefully closer the loon appeared to slowly drift further from shore, carefully maintaining the distance between us.
Back to the yard. I haven’t had a functional watercourse since sometime before Christmas. My watercourse was losing too much water and the weather was bad (cold and rain) and I just didn’t feel like dealing with the problem under those conditions.
In March, with somewhat improved weather I began troubleshooting the watercourse problem(s). Having no success I summoned a commercial landscaping company to replace the liner. At this point, April 11, the watercourse fix is still a work in progress.
However, even without the watercourse, I’m seeing signs of the start of spring migration. On April 4, I had three separate visits from one or more Orange-crowned warblers. (Since all these birds look alike, I have no way of knowing whether I was observing one bird or three different ones or some combination.) These were my first observations of warblers in the yard this year. While I managed to photograph all three visits, none of the photos are good enough to post.
On April 6 I had another observation of an Orange-crowned warbler but failed to obtain a photo.
On April 7 I had a visit from a beautiful male Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler. This bird briefly flew around the yard, took a quick bath in a birdbath beside me, plucked a small insect from a Japanese maple, and perched on a wire fence not three feet from me to consume the insect! It was too close at that point for a photo but a great experience for me!
All of these warbler visits were very brief and I’m sure that had the watercourse been functioning, their stays, and my opportunities for photographs, would have been longer.
I had a nice photography day on April 10, 2022. I’ll try to post some of those photos fairly quickly.