I don’t have any new species to display but I have taken a lot of new photos.  First I should mention that as of about two days ago (5/15) the Bushtits I featured on one of my prior posts were still feeding young in the nest.  Just prior to leaving for Texas (on 4/17) the Bushtit’s nest had been substantially completed and I assumed that the young would have fledged by the end of April or shortly thereafter.  When I checked the nest on 5/ the parents were still actively feeding young.

At the same general location a couple of days ago I visited late in the afternoon and thought that I saw at least three, and possibly four, male Western tanagers on a Red elderberry bush/tree.  The berries are not yet mature/ripe, but a day later I photographed a couple of crows eating the berries.   If you want to photograph birds find yourself a Red elderberry tree with ripe berries… the trees attract a wide variety of birds.

Back in the yard, I’m having several visits a day from one or more male Black-headed grosbeaks.  On one occasion I saw a female, but it has yet to be spotted on a feeder.

About a week ago we began having visits from Wilson’s warblers, generally the most common warbler visitor to our yard at this time of year.  These are beautiful birds!

The Turkey vultures have returned to the Pacific Northwest and will be with us until again migrating south this fall.

This male House finch is a regular visitor to the yard lately and it seems to be without a mate thus far.

And finally, leaving the yard once again and back to the wetlands, I found this American robin in the bushes with a beak full of salmon berries!

So many birds, so little time!  I’m still processing the 880 photos I took on an April trip to Texas to photograph some of the spring migrants through Central Texas.  In the meantime I haven’t been able to stay out of my own yard photographing birds.  On Tuesday (5/10/2016) afternoon, within about a five-minute time period, I photographed three warbler species:  a male MacGillivray’s, an Orange-crowned and a male Wilson’s.  In addition I’ve seen (and photographed several Yellow-rumped Audubon’s warblers passing through.  And since last week we’ve had a male Black-headed grosbeak visiting the yard daily.  Today I saw the grosbeak fly from the watercourse giving me hope for some really good photos in the future.  And also today, we saw the first female grosbeak on one of the feeders.

So here are a few photos of some of our visitors…

Got to love these warblers… in this case a male Yellow-rumped Audubon’s.  

This is a post-bath female Downy woodpecker.

A female Cowbird, bad news for all other songbird species.

This is our male Black-headed grosbeak.  It sings in the woods during the day, but shows up in the yard multiple times each day.

This European starling is one of many that show up for suet to feel its young at this time of year.  It’s discouraging to keep the suet feeders up (to the tune of a couple of cakes per day), but the Downy woodpeckers and Northern flickers access the suet for the same reason and I can’t bring myself to deprive them of the food.

A White-crowned sparrow accessing the watercourse for a bath.

We have at least one pair of California quail that show up in the yard each day.  On this particular day the male was alone and he walked up to within 10-12 feet of me for a drink.

We still have a good supply of Pine siskins visiting the feeders and water.  These birds occasionally disappear for long periods of time but in some winters can be our most numerous yard birds.

A male House sparrow, a species I generally detest but I liked this photo.

A Spotted towhee singing.  Presumably this is a male, but it seems that we may have two males feeding around the yard in addition to at least one female who doesn’t visit as often.

And my pride and joy… a male MacGillivray’s warbler that visited the yard on 5/10.  This is maybe the second or third visit by this species we’ve seen in the last 7-8 years, and I may have only seen one or two in other locations.  This isn’t a great photo, but it’s enough for an identification.  Unfortunately I had problems with focusing during its visit.

I just returned from a birding expedition to Central Texas a few days ago.  My intention had been to process the photos I took there and post some of those to my blog, but on April 30 (2016) I was able to sit in the yard for a couple of hours for purposes of some bird observation.  Over the course of 2.5 hours I tallied 22 species and took 191 photographs, 96 of which I saved after processing.  Such is the luxury of a 4T external hard drive.  Here are some of the better photos I took:

The American goldfinches arrived just before I departed for Texas.  They make good subject matter for photographs!  Here are a few photos of male goldfinches:

This is a photo of a female American goldfinch:

Here are photos of male and female House sparrows.  The box in which they usually attempt to nest is this year being occupied by a House wren.  (This represents a large improvement!)

Here is the House wren:

And here is the House wren making the nest-building process much more difficult than it has to be.  It seems the wren has an affinity for sticks that are too long for the lodgings, but it usually manages to wrestle them into the nest box!  I may try to obtain some better photos of the nest-building process on Sunday.

A male Downy woodpecker that visited one of the bird baths…

A female Rufous hummingbird that stopped by the watercourse for a bath.  We have male and female Rufous hummingbirds and male and female Anna’s hummingbirds.

And finally, a female Yellow-rumped warbler that also took a quick break in the watercourse.

In past years I have usually considered the Wilson’s warbler to be our most frequent visitor,  but this year I have yet to see one.

I’ve spent considerable time in the yard lately watching for spring migrants, mainly warblers.  So far I’ve had a lot of visits from Orange-crowned warblers and only two visits from one or more male Yellow-rumped warblers (Audubon’s).  Unfortunately, for the next photo, I didn’t realize that I had my 200-400mm zoom lens adjusted to the low end of the telescopic scale when I took this (and other) photos, and it cost me dearly in at least two ways that I won’t take the time to explain here.

This next photo is of a male Anna’s hummingbird (presumably the one who spent the entire winter with us!) bathing in our watercourse.  Unfortunately both species of hummingbirds have thus far shown a proclivity for bathing either early in the morning or in the evening when I must make compromises with shutter speed,and ISO.

We have a pair of crows building a nest in one of the tops of the fir trees in our front yard.  It’s located very high in the top of the tree where I fear it could be at risk from ravens… and it’s so high there is probably nothing I can do if the ravens find it.  Building progress went from sticks…

to moss gleaned from surrounding rock and some old bark mulch in the yard.  This isn’t a very good photo, but it shows one of the crows on the way to the nest with a ball of the moss.

This Rock pigeon, affectionately known as ‘Whitey) has returned for the second year.  It eats a lot of food and before the season is over it will probably be inviting a few friends, who are unwelcome because they eat a LOT of food meant for the other birds.

Finally, here is our latest visitor.  So far it has limited itself to the outer regions of the yard which is mostly natural habitat, but if it moves much closer to the house we’re going to have a Mrs. MacGregor situation here.  And if that isn’t bad enough, this morning it showed up with a friend.  And where there are two rabbits there are bound to soon be more.  Since the rabbits are relatively rare here, it probably signals a lack of coyotes.

I was rather shocked in late March to discover an almost complete Bushtit nest on one of my regular neighborhood driving routes.  The nest resembles a sock hanging from a limb, so the eggs and incubating adult(s) are hidden from other birds that might disturb the nest.  My first thought was that it was left over from last year, but I reasoned that it was so obvious that there was no way I could have missed it.  A little observation revealed it was built in very short order for this year’s breeding season.  (The Bushtits do no reuse their nests.)

I watched over a multi-day period and although the exterior of the nest was apparently finished, the birds continued to pad the inside during the time of my observations.  I was concerned when we had a heavy rain a week or so ago that the nest might get water-soaked and fail, but though it has sagged rather significantly it is still holding up.

The Bushtits are very small birds, roughly the size of kinglets but with a longer tail.  Interestingly, the sexes of the birds can be told apart by their eye color.  The male has a dark eye while the female has a mustard-yellow ring around a dark center.  (Sorry, but although I have recently successfully completed cataract surgery, I’m not an anatomist and  can’t scientifically identify the parts of the eye… especially those of birds!)

So here are a few photos of the birds, in some cases bringing nesting materials back to the nest…