On of the primary staging objects in my front yard is what’s left of a madrone tree that lost the upper two-thirds of its height in a wind storm several years ago. Despite its grievous injury the tree lives on, serving as a primary staging object for visiting birds. This season it produced an especially abundant crop of berries and I was anticipating a ripe opportunity to photograph birds enjoying its berries. Unfortunately, just as the berries ripened the birds made very quick work of the berries which I, despite daily monitoring in the yard, completely missed!
I had guests for about three weeks in September/October and despite spending significant time in the yard I had little time for developing photos or posting to my blog. On October 17, 2026, I set up for observing and photographing birds in the yard mid-afternoon. My time in the yard was at first unpromising. The sun was out, providing too much contrast and areas that were deeply shaded, but I persevered. My first interesting visitor was what seemed like it could be a female Slate-colored Dark-eyed junco. (I had photographed what had clearly been a male a week or so earlier.)
This is the male I photographed on October 3, 2026.
My next interesting visitor was a Pacific wren, a very infrequent and difficult to photograph visitor. The bird is in almost constant motion and is difficult to follow when looking through a telephoto lens. Added to the photographic difficulty are the low light conditions and the frustration of not being able to use a faster shutter speed. The bird(s) made two separate appearances in the yard and I made the most of them. In processing my photos I realized I had gotten much better photos than I expected.
I also had a brief visit from a Ruby-crowned kinglet, a much rarer visitor than its cousin, the Golden-crowned kinglet that also visited.
A mature male Red crossbill showed up at the pedestal bird bath only about six feet away… too close for the focus on my telephoto lens.
I remained in the yard much later than usual (5pm), hoping (in vain) for a visit from a Varied thrush that has occasionally visited the yard lately.
I finally gave up my yard monitoring and went inside to prepare dinner. As I was looking out the kitchen window I got a quick glimpse of what I thought could be a Hermit thrush disappearing into the bushes! A minute or two later it reappeared and bathed in the watercourse. Desperately wanting photos of this very rare visitor, I grabbed my camera and photographed the bird through the glass in the kitchen window. The resulting photos were severely degraded due to the extra intervening glass, the fading light and the bird being wet… but at least I had gotten a record photo.
As I watched to see if the thrush would reappear I saw a Varied thrush at my stone bird bath… too far away for a quality photograph in the fading light.
Finally, since I had gotten some good photographs of a Song sparrow, I’ll just toss them in as well.
