My intention was to continue processing and posting photos from our visit to New Mexico early last November, but I hit a proverbial a’bump in the road’ on a local excursion yesterday (Jan 16,2015) and can’t wait to post some of the photos I obtained.  I’ll return to the New Mexico photos later.

The day began rather slowly with a trip around March Point with only photos of a Common goldeneye to show for my efforts.  I wasted a lot of time attempting to get closer to the bird but in the end the bird was smarter than I and I couldn’t obtain photos of the quality I would have liked.

I continued to Fir Island and things weren’t much better.  The main herd of Snow geese were in distant fields with no public access.  I did encounter a flock of Chestnut-backed chickadees feeding on either seed pods or insects in them at the Fir Island F&W HQ tract.

I continued off of Fir Island to Conway where I managed to coax a Lincoln’s sparrow out of some bushes but failed to obtain quality photographs.

I then drove down a back road towards Mount Vernon where I encountered several fields of swans, in the same areas and under similar conditions where I had found them the previous week.  (The swans are either Tundra or Trumpeter… I have difficulty telling the difference under the best of circumstances and am not even going to make an attempt with flying birds at these angles!)  A smaller group of swans were in one field and from time to time they would fly towards or past me.  The sun was behind me so I managed to get some nice photos.

I finally headed for home relatively late in the afternoon but decided to stop at the Cap Sante Overlook (in Anacortes) before calling it a day.  This was a fortunate decision.  The male Anna’s hummingbird, which I had seen on multiple prior visits to the area, had changed his location slightly and was now back on exactly the same blackberry branches he had been on last summer when he was defending a territory.  (He’s back at it again as I’ve seen a second hummingbird in the area!)  The light was behind me and I reasoned that I might be able to get some photos with his gorget reflecting in the light, so I sat patiently taking photos for a good while as he flew various forays around the area.

I’m going to digress a little from the subject of our local birds to highlight some photographs I took in early November, when I was having my Adobe Lightroom problems. These first photos were taken at the Randall Davey Audubon Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I’ve found that location an excellent place to photograph birds, although their feeders, feeder contents, feeder locations, etc. leave a lot to be desired.

These first two photographs are of the Pink-sided race of Dark-eyed juncos, the most numerous birds at the Center.  The juncos there, as here with our Oregon race of juncos, seem to have significant variation in coloration.

On this particular trip I was able to photograph both a Stellar’s jay…

and a Western Scrub jay…

And one of my favorites from the Center is always the White-breasted nuthatch…

If you follow this blog you’ll know that I have had problems migrating from a PC to a Mac, especially as far as Adobe Lightroom is concerned.  I’m now hopeful that those problems are mostly behind me and that I can go back and post some of the photos I took early in the fall and start spending some time out in the field taking additional photos.  So here are some photos I took in the yard November 19, 2014 (pre-accipiter!).  If you didn’t see the raptor photos in the last post you might scroll down and take a peek.

Here are a few photos of Red crossbills.  I’m fairly certain this first one is a male…

This is where my identification skills get dicey… this may be a first-year male…

And I think this is a female…

This is a Red-breasted nuthatch, a common yard bird but one that’s often surprisingly difficult to photograph.

And finally, a couple of photos of an American robin.  The robins are another species that has virtually disappeared from the yard with the arrival of our accipiter.

I find it’s much more difficult to obtain really good photos in the winter months due to the lack of light.  I usually have to both lower my shutter speed and raise my ISO due to the lower light, and both adjustments are detrimental to obtaining really good photographs.  But we’re on the upswing now and every day brings a longer day and higher sun, so photographic conditions will gradually begin to improve.

I had thought that all my computer problems were behind me by mid-December but Adobe and Lightroom weren’t through with me yet!  I suddenly lost access to Adobe Lightroom with no good explanation from Adobe and confusing notices regarding their help desk function.  It turned out that when switching from my PC; to the Mac I downloaded their Cloud software (which they push unmercifully) and my ‘temporary license’ had expired.  I finally determined what happened and downloaded the stand-alone version I had purchased earlier in the fall, but to do so I first had to delete the Cloud version.  After those operations were completed I found I had lost my Lightroom catalog, which stores all the changes (cropping, exposure adjustments, etc.) I have made to ALL my photographs processed with Lightroom.  I was able to restore the catalog using a backup and it finally (as was so several times previously) seems that I am back up and running.  If I didn’t have so much investment in Adobe Lightroom I think I would consider some other photo-processing software.  And if you really want to get an earful, talk to some of the users of Adobe Photoshop who no longer have an option to purchase a stand-alone version of that software!

But you don’t visit this site to hear about my computer problems.  I haven’t taken many photos this fall due to the uncertainty of whether or not I could process the photos AND the fact that we have an accipiter in the neighborhood that is visiting our yard.  The birds are terrified of its visits and only come out a few times a day to feed.  Almost all of the really interesting birds are shunning the yard, and I am left with 30-40 Dark-eyed juncos (Oregon race) which appear for a few minutes to scarf up scattered seed before disappearing back into the relative safety of the trees and brush.  We do have at least one Slate-colored junco (about seven years running now) and perhaps two.

So… back to some bird photos.  I took these photos of a Bald eagle on 12/6/13.  The photo of the eagle in flight was taken from the Cap Sante Overlook and the photos of the perched eagle were taken on March Point.

 Moving on to the Samish Flats, I took this photo of a Rough-legged hawk…

And finally, I photographed this raptor in the same area.  I think it, too, is a Rough-legged hawk but in viewing the photos I’m not as sure as I thought I was when I took the photo.

As most of you know who even occasionally visit this site, I’ve posted precious few updates for the past two months or so and none with photos.  My problems stemmed from switching from a PC to a Mac and making the transition with Adobe LightRoom (which I use for photo processing).  Just today I think I can announce that, thanks to the help of a consultant, my troubles seem to be behind me.  The computer situation has been so overwhelming that my photography has suffered… time I would have spent in the yard or out running around the country taking photos was instead spent working on my computer problems… or in a ‘blue funk’!

These are my latest photos and I have to say, not some of my best.  I’ve been running the ISO up on the camera to compensate for the lack of light and my results with that tack have not been spectacular.  Nevertheless I feel the need to resuscitate the blog and I’ll work out the photography quality as time goes on.

One more note:  The birds have been rather scarce in the yard these last few weeks, probably due to the presence of an accipiter which visits the yard.  My wife actually saw it sitting on one of the staging sticks on the watercourse one day.  The birds come out and eat for a few minutes a few times each day, but they don’t linger and they aren’t taking baths where they can’t see the surrounding area.  I enjoy having an accipiter to photograph from time to time, and if I’m going to have to have one, this is the time of year for it to visit!

This Red-tailed hawk was sitting in a field… probably on Fir Island.  I should mention that this year I am seeing more Rough-legged hawks than usual on my forays.

This goose was in a large flock of Snow geese at the Hayton access on Fir Island.  It has unusual plumage color, to say the least!

And in the same flock, but considerably closer to the road, was this Cackling goose.  I have seen those on only one other occasion… a pair in the Samish Flats couple of years ago.

This is a different Red-tailed hawk I encountered on Dodge Valley Road.  I’m always glad to obtain photos of a Red-tailed hawk on something other than a power pole or line, and this day encountered two!

And finally, this American kestrel just outside LaConner.  Probably this same bird has been returning to the same area for several years now.  I have found kestrels to be extremely wary, but this one let me stop close by and take as many photos as I wanted!