New Year’s Eve. I went out in the yard early in the afternoon for a little birding photography only to find the birds apparently had other ideas. I sat around for half an hour or so with hardly any birds showing, so decided to check the Cap Sante marina and the neighborhood. Things weren’t much better at the marina. However I want to mention a couple who had come into the northwest corner of the marina and cleaned up all the trash on the shoreline left by recent king tides! After they left I photographed a Great Blue heron fishing along the shore.
I saw, but was unable to photograph, a Yellow-rumped warbler in one of the marina parking lots. For years one of the areas along the side of one of the parking lots has seemed to attract fall Yellow-rumps, and there was at least one wintering over.
I returned to the house listening to Beethoven’s (only) violin concerto, and wanting to listen to the entire piece I parked outside the garage instead of driving inside. As I sat in my car I was idly watching birds that had returned to the yard while I was away, a bird that flew into our denuded Golden Chain tree caught my attention. It could have been a Song or Fox sparrow, but it was in a location not frequented by those species. I grabbed my camera from the seat beside me and discovered a rare winter visitor… a Hermit thrush! I obtained a few mediocre photos. Later, when processing my photos I looked out my NEW office window (with a commanding view of the yard) and thought I might have seen the thrush again, but I only saw it from the rear and couldn’t be sure.
The birds had returned to the yard so I did also and took the following photos.
Female Bushtit…
Female Northern flicker…
Female Dark-eyed junco – Oregon race…
Female Varied thrush…
We conducted a feeder watch was part of the Christmas Bird Count on December 30, 2022, the previous day. Inexplicably, our extended covey of about 20 California quail, which are in our yard multiple times virtually every day, failed to show at any time during the day of the count. And the Hermit thrush, a very rare visitor didn’t show until the day after the count and therefore couldn’t be counted.