Late (too late for photos) we had a Hermit’s thrush visit out yard with at least six of its cousins, American robins.  If memory serves me correctly that’s only about the second one we’ve seen in the five years we’ve lived at this location!

And just when I feel the obligation for a post, yet don’t have any fresh photos, fortune seems to shine my way.  On the way back from breakfast on 9/21 I noted that a regular visitor, a Pied -billed grebe, had returned from wherever it has been for the summer.  I needed to run an errand and a while later loaded my camera and monopod in the car and headed back down to the marina.  By this time the grebe had gone but there was a Harbor seal in the area so I decided to see if it would pass my way.  It didn’t, but I kept noticing a slight disturbance by the edge of the water… too shallow for a seal.  After watching for awhile I spied a mink.  Sometime in the past year a group of women rowers (all friends) were kind enough to take me on an excursion to photograph the mink, but we didn’t see any on the morning I was in the boat.  However I had gotten a recent report that one had been seen just outside the marina and now I had found one that had migrated deep into the marina.  I probably took about 80 photos… here are a few of the best.

While I was stalking the mink I noticed about five Killdeer along the shore and took some photos of them.

Killdeer

I thought we were supposed to have rain, but since we didn’t and it was partly cloudy I decided to spend some time in the yard since it’s been a good week for birds in the yard.  It wasn’t long before a Yellow-rumped warbler visited the watercourse… it had very pale colors and was probably either a female or a juvenile.

Yellow-rumped warbler

Next up was a Golden-crowned kinglet that made several trips to the watercourse and ended its visit by taking a bath.  I obtained some better photos of the kinglet but I’m posting this one so that you can see that in addition to the golden crown, this bird, like its cousin the Ruby-crowned kinglet, has a bright orange crown that it can selectively show.  The orange is usually covered by the yellow crown, but in this photo you can see a hint of the orange.  I think that the light coloration at the base of the bird’s beak indicates that it’s the product of this year’s breeding.

Golden-crowned kinglet with usually hidden orange crown showing

I promised some surprise photographs in my last post and we’ll be into them shortly.  Yesterday I was driving my wife through the neighborhood on our way to the store when some movement in a neighbor’s cedar tree got my attention.  I focused just in time to see a large wing protrude from behind a branch.  I backed my car around the corner (technically illegal in most jurisdictions!), parked in front of the neighbors house and got out of my car to investigate.  Fortunately I didn’t have to ask permission to trespass as the neighbor had seen me and come out of the house to see what I was doing.  A little moving around garnered us an angle where we could see a Barred owl in her tree.

For at least a year we’ve heard owls calling in the Cap Sante neighborhood.  I had other neighbors call me once when an owl was adjacent to their house, but it flushed as I crept around the house for a photo.  But this experience would be different and allow me to finally obtain some good photographs of the owl.

I rushed home and obtained my camera and returned and took over forty photos of the bird.  When I returned from the store it was still there but flew shortly after I arrived.  However my wife passed the location a couple of hours later and she said it was back.  I was hopeful that it might lay up there every day, but there was no sign of it this morning.  So without further tale, I give you one of our neighborhood Barred owls…

It was a great day for photography and the photography part of my day ended with the Barred owl.  But… the birding part of my day hadn’t ended.  At home in my office later in the afternoon my wife called to me that there was a warbler in the front yard.  Sightings had been meager over the past several weeks, but I looked out my office window and spied a Golden-crowned kinglet… and a lot of other bird activity.  I stepped out on my balcony and almost immediately saw a Brown creeper making its way up a dead tree in the yard and then soon after that I saw what was very clearly an Orange-crowned warbler.  Sorry, no photos of these birds but their presence may mean I’m back in the yard photography ‘business’.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted photos.  It’s not that I’m out of photos, but various circumstances have interrupted my photography.  Until yesterday (more about that in my next post) things had been rather slow around the yard.  I worked for several days on some small homemade feeders that would exclude non-clinging birds such as European starlings and House sparrows.  Then I went on a multi-day trip to Oregon in a futile search for migrating shorebird photographic opportunities.  So this post will be mostly catchup, but stay tuned for some exciting photographs from the neighborhood!

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A couple of weeks ago we had a few days of nice weather and I managed to find a few terns (presumably Caspian) fishing in Fidalgo Bay.  Shooting flying fowl is always challenging and can be fun, and I had a great time photographing the migrating terns as they searched for food.

Capian Tern with part of a meal!

Caspian Tern with usual head-down posture

On the trip to Oregon my bird photography was disappointingly limited, and I managed only one fairly good photo of a male Wilson’s warbler and several photos of one or more juvenile White-crowned sparrows.  I did get a few other photos but most of them were disposable!

Male Wilson’s Warbler

Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow

On Sunday (8/25/2013) I decided to conduct a little experiment and document my bird sightings and observations I had in the yard.  It would be a document too long to list here so I’ll just offer the highlights.

I finished filling bird baths and feeders about 10:50am, a little earlier than I usually get out into the yard.  I had no sooner taken a seat in my chair when I saw a bird fly to the very top of my neighbor’s fir trees.  I thought it was probably an American robin but something didn’t look right so I uncapped my telephoto lens to get a better view of the bird… and I was glad I did.  The bird turned out to be a Stellar’s jay, a not by any means rare bird but certainly a rare visitor to our neighborhood.  I photographed the bird and then immediately called other birding neighbors toward whose property the bird had flown.  These other neighbors have better habitat than I and they guessed that they hadn’t seen a Stellar’s jay in the past couple of years, which would be about my guess as well.  (In processing my photos on the computer later, I surmised that due to the feather configuration on this bird it was probably a juvenile.  Maybe there’s some hope that it will stay and make its home in the neighborhood!)

Stellar’s jay – juvenile

I was still marveling at the jay’s appearance at 11:08am when movement in the sky caught my attention.  I looked up in time to see a Peregrine falcon soar overhead, heading north but veering west as it approached the end of the island.  While this bird probably isn’t a rare visitor, it’s relatively rare to see one because they are almost always found flying and most of the time I’m not staring up into the sky.

At 11:27am an Anna’s hummingbird arrived in the yard and accessed a hummingbird feeder at which I never take photos because it is in the shadows.  I noticed this morning that this hummingbird was nicely silhouetted against the sky and, instead of sitting on the feeder it was hovering and then dipping to the feeder.  I realized that this was perhaps an opportunity of which I hadn’t availed myself in the past and I took a couple of photos of the bird silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

Anna’s hummingbird

At 11:58am a Rufous hummingbird buzzed the watercourse but left the yard without lingering.  I’ve probably logged one or two visits a week from a Rufous hummingbird for the past 2-3 weeks, but I generally consider each sighting my last for the year.  The vast majority of Rufous hummingbirds left for migration several weeks ago and we are left with mostly Anna’s, some of which will spend the winter with us.

At 12:55pm a juvenile male Anna’s hummingbird entered the yard and hovered within about three feet of me while perusing the yard.  It then flew from where I was sitting to the watercourse, stopping for a short bath.  I was able to obtain a fairly good photo of it bathing, despite the morning light not having yet reached the watercourse.  While not apparent from this photo, one of the photos I took indicated that the developing gorget extended down the side of the bird’s neck and there was a small patch of color on the bird’s head, thus the identification of a male.

Anna’s hummingbird – juvenile male

I was on the proverbial horns of a dilemma at 1:04pm when a juvenile Spotted towhee, which had been eating seed in the shadows, decided to make an appearance at the better-lit watercourse… and at the same time a female Yellow warbler showed up in the yard!  Since the warbler was in motion I elected to concentrate on the towhee and snapped several photos before turning my attention back to the warbler.  I managed about four photos of the warbler but only while it was sitting on a section of fencing… hardly a natural setting.  (The photo appearing below was taken on the previous day – sans fence.)  The warbler then flew to the watercourse but was intimidated by the towhee and they both disappeared to the other side of the watercourse mound where I couldn’t see (or more importantly, photograph) them.

Female Yellow warbler (from 8/24/2013)

Spotted towhee – juvenile

The Yellow warbler left the yard high and flying south, but the towhee returned to the watercourse for more photos at 1:16pm.

So I spent about three hours in the yard, much of the time with highly contrasting light on what started as a sunny day.  And while you’ve read only about the highlights of my sightings and photography, there was a lot of activity in the yard during this period.  And virtually all of the time I spend in the yard increases my knowledge of bird behavior.

On Wed, Aug 14, I drove down to Smokey Point and birding my way back… Milltown, Fir Island and the Swinomish Channel.  I photographed the following birds on my excursion:

FIrst up, a Common yellowthroat…

Next up was this Bewick’s wren, one of two I saw and photographed.  However only this one furnished usable photographs despite my best efforts.

I photographed this male Wilson’s warbler on Fir Island…

One of the more interesting birds I discovered was what I think is a Swainson’s thrush.  It, and the next bird I photographed, were deep in the brush with minimal light available.

This next bird was somewhat of a puzzle,  I think it’s an Olive-sided flycatcher but it was in the deep brush and only a foot or so off of the ground… not the normal habitat I think of when I think of a flycatcher.

And finally, a couple of different male House finches at widely differing locations.  The second one seems to almost have a hummingbird’s gorget around its neck.