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!

I’m still working on porting my photos to the new iMac, so there won’t be any photos for this blog post. However I do have some significant news.

I noticed on Sunday, November 16 (2014) that our Pine siskins had returned. I took the trouble to investigate my historical records and noted that the siskins VERY ABRUPTLY  disappeared in August, 2013. They are normally our most numerous winter yard bird, but in that respect they were replaced this last winter by Dark-eyed juncos of the Oregon race. The juncos have always been numerous, just not as numerous as the siskins. I had seen numerous small birds flying around the yard and suspected Bush tits, but they turned out upon observation to be the siskins.

Yesterday the siskins were all over the yard, and I estimate that there may have been as many as 20 or more in the yard at one time. They seemed elated at the new (to them) watercourse and at one point I observed six bathing within about a foot of each other,  others in parts of the watercourse I couldn’t directly observe, and still others fluttering around the watercourse. So here’s a big “welcome back” to our Pine siskins!

And also on Sunday, while watching the siskins, I saw a single female Red crossbill in the watercourse. On Monday I observed three male crossbills in the watercourse at one time, then later a mature female and two younger females. Then still later another male, this one a seemingly uniform reddish-orange, visited the watercourse. This last male was very distinctive , seemingly lacking the mottling in coloration that seems to be the trademark of the species. So all told there were at least seven crossbills visiting the watercourse, four males and three females.

Given that the weather will probably hold another day (clear skies since last Thursday, when we returned from New Mexico), I’ll probably try to spend at least part of the afternoon in the yard with my camera. (More about New Mexico in a future blog.) I’ll be taking photos of the siskins that I missed last winter and hoping that unusual male crossbill makes a return visit.

And I’ve made some progress with my computer struggles, just not with my photos. This blog was written on my new iMac using a Microsoft ergonomic (split) keyboard. I had been extremely handicapped up until Sunday with having to use the extremely small Apple keyboard, my PC notebook keyboard and Appole’s mysterious mouse instead of my Logitech Optical Trackman. I’m now back in the groove and have the key entry tools that I’ve used for so long and to which I’ve gotten so habituated. And my iMac is communicating and exchanging data with my iPad and both will be doing the same with my new iPhone 6 which is supposed to be delivered sometime before the middle of December! This old dog is learning some new tricks (training session on the iPad this Tuesday morning) and it will soon be a new day coming!

I’m in the middle of a process to convert from a PC environment to an Apple environment. I’m actively using a new iMac and iPad but I have yet to convert my photos and Adobe Lightroom software to the new hardware.  And to make matters somewhat worse, the weather hasn’t  been conducive to photography.  Therefore, it’s been awhile since I last posted to this site.  I anticipate that I’ll try to have my problems worked out by about November 21, if not sooner… but that’s just a guess.

As part of this conversion I’m moving to a new email address.  I would post it here  but I understand that there is automated software that trolls the internet looking for email addresses to which spam can be sent.  However if you are a friend, send me an email to my old address, or post a message to my website and I’ll reply giving you my new email address.

I look forward to getting this site back up and running again with some new photos and hope you will return!

I’m going to open with some photos to get them to the top of the blog, and then position a text commentary at the bottom.

I’ve had several friends ask about my watercourse that was reconfigured with the help of ProScapes in early July.   This photo is of the watercourse and most of my yard photos are taken with the birds either in the watercourse or perched on nearby rocks or “staging sticks”.  I’m quite happy with this third iteration of the watercourse and am certain that any substantive changes are behind me.

These next three photos are of Yellow-rumped warblers.  I believe that all of these photos are of males of the Audubon race, but it’s sometimes difficult to classify the birds at this time of year with their non-breeding plumage and females and juveniles all moving through.

This next bird is a Spotted towhee (probably a male as evidenced by its bolder colors), generally a year-round resident of the yard.

And finally, I don’t generally photograph birds on feeders, but I liked the looks of this male Anna’s hummingbird accessing a feeder that is new for this year.  We have Anna’s hummingbirds here year-round whether we put out feeders or not, so I try to help them through the winter with some supplemental food.  We are careful to keep a feeder thawed on days with the temperatures below freezing.  Several years ago, when we had snow on the ground for about two weeks we had a male Anna’s hummingbird that survived that weather… but I don’t know how.

(You might note that while the hummingbird and front part of the perch are in relatively sharp focus, the stem of the feeder is blurred.  This feeder is quite small and the distance between the stem and hummingbird is probably less than three inches.  I’m probably about 20 feet away with a 400mm lens.  And that, my friends, is your photography lesson for ‘depth of field’ for the day!)

Now on to the narrative with the status of my yard birding…

I’ve noticed a lot of seasonal changes here in the yard. They seemed to have begun on about Saturday, October 11, 2014. I can’t attribute any of the changes to the weather although I’m sure that in some respects it has been at least partially responsible.

As those of you know who follow this blog, I had almost continuous birding-related photographic opportunities in the yard for most of the summer. The weather allowed me to spend more time in the yard and to some extent, the more time I spend in the yard the more birds I see and photograph. However the bird sightings have now fallen off, not only in terms of the diversity of species but also, with a few notable exceptions, the numbers of birds. In my mind and as I stated above, the big drop occurred on about October 11. This last week I’ve been able to spend some time in the yard and I’ve spent a lot of time peering out our kitchen window to assess bird activity, but for the most part things have changed… and not for the better.

There have been a good many periods of virtually no bird activity in the yard for an hour or more. I know because I’ve sat in my usual location with sometimes not so much as a single chickadee, nuthatch or even sparrow being evident. This could be partially attributable to a raptor… this past weekend on successive days I saw either an accipiter or a Merlin glide over the tops of the fir trees, meaning the bird had to be at least 150’ off the ground. In my Saturday sighting I saw a crow dive-bombing the top of a tree about two blocks away, and a short time later its activity continued in the top of one of my neighbor’s fir trees. I hadn’t observed the raptor enter the tree and it flew before I could ready my camera. However I haven’t seen a raptor in the yard in at least a couple of months.

We had a notable exception to the number of birds in the yard late in the afternoon on Sunday, October 19, 2014. I spend an hour or so in the yard on two occasions that day with very little to show for it. We had company coming at 4pm so I gave up the birding about 3:45pm. After our company arrived I glanced out the kitchen window and saw a lot of bird activity in the yard. Subsequent observations from the house allowed me to count at least four Yellow-rumped warblers that were in the yard at the same time. In all my observations for this year, I have never seen more than two Yellow-rumped warblers in the yard at one time. There also appeared to be other interesting birds, namely Golden-crowned kinglets. (Earlier in the afternoon I had a Ruby-crowned kinglet perch less than three feet from the end of my lens, but at that distance it was much too close and active for a photograph.)

It’s possible that the activity was related to the weather… we had an unseasonably warm day with temperatures in the mid-to-high 60s. Interestingly enough, I noticed that the high, broken clouds we had were coming from the southwest while many of the wind gusts were coming from the north! And we had been told, quite accurately, to expect wind in the afternoon and rain that evening. The weather forecasters got it right for once!

So, as I think I may have warned in previous blog posts, the times they are a changing. My opportunities for spending extended time in the yard will be gradually reduced as we ease more into fall. Not only will the weather be more inclement, but the number of birds in the yard may make it not worth my while to spend extended time in the yard for photographs. However, when the door is shut on one opportunity the door to another opens. I’ll probably soon be making vehicle expeditions to the western part of Skagit County searching out photographic opportunities among the raptors and shorebirds that will constitute my fare for much of the winter months. And this may mean that I won’t get the opportunity to update my blog as often. In theory the more inclement weather might give me the opportunity to catch up on processing some of the backlog of photos I took this past summer, but that’s always a formidable mountain that doesn’t always get addressed.