On October 15, 2020, I spent about four hours of my afternoon in the yard watching and photographing birds.  There were a lot of birds in the yard and, unlike periods in the previous week or so, the birds were in the yard almost continuously.  Since we had a few unusual birds that I was unable to photograph I decided to make a record of what I had seen.  It wasn’t a great day for photography, and I wasn’t able to photograph two of the birds I would have most liked to: the Pacific wren and the Hairy woodpecker. Here’s the list of my sightings:  

Quail, California (≥6) 

The first group that appeared consisted of four males and two females.  The quails made two or three appearances and each time the group would consist of six quail, but with a different mix of sexes.  

Heron, Great Blue (in flight) 

Creeper, Brown 

Nuthatch, Red-breasted 

Chickadee, Chestnut-backed 

Chickadee, Black-capped 

Kinglet, Ruby-crowned (x2) 

Kinglet, Golden-crowned (x2) 

Flicker, Northern (f)

Hummingbird, Anna’s (m&f) 

Woodpecker, Downy (m, f) 

Woodpecker, Hairy (m) 

This is the first sighting of a Hairy woodpecker since last winter or early spring.  We had a male here last winter but it disappeared when breeding season arrived.

Wren, Bewick’s 

Wren, Pacific (x2) 

This is a rare and difficult to photograph bird for the yard with only one or two sightings per year.  My initial sighting was of the bird scurrying under some bushes but it (or another) returned later and came within a couple of feet of my feet.  

Raven, Common (in flight) 

Towhee, Spotted 

Junco, Dark-eyed – Oregon 

Sparrow, Golden-crowned 

Sparrow, Fox 

Sparrow, House 

Sparrow, Song 

I had photographed this bird about a week ago.  It has a lower mandible that is shorter than its upper mandible and is therefore easily identifiable.  

Robin, American 

Crossbill, Red (2f/j, f/j) 

My first sighting involved two females/juveniles that landed on a bird bath only about five feet from me, too close for me to bring my lens to bear or focus on the birds.  Later a single female/juvenile came to the yard and I was able to get some photos. 

Finch, House (4m,?f)

At one time there were at least four male House finches in the yard.  Last week I photographed a female Purple finch in the yard and I carefully examined all of the female finches to ensure they were’t Purple finches.

Siskin, Pine (≥10) 

I received a phone call while birding that a neighbor had at least 40 Pine siskins in the yard, spurring me to count the ones I was seeing at the same time.  The siskins have eruptions from time to time and they were scarce last winter but returned in bulk this spring.  

Goldfinch, American (2) 

Starling, European 

Total: 27 species 

Deer, Black-tailed 

Squirrel, Eastern Gray 

Chipmunk, Townsend’s 

raccoons (2 adults, 4 juveniles)

(n) = number of the species seen at one time 

(xn) = number of separate visits made by the species 

While I assumed that fall migrants had about finished trickling through the yard, we still have been seeing interesting birds. This male Red crossbill was the last adult male to visit the yard, although we continue to see a female and three juveniles which are still hanging together.

Golden-crowned sparrows have arrived for the winter…

This male Anna’s hummingbird will probably remain with us through the winter. We still have salvias blooming, but I don’t think they are supplying a lot of nectar since the hummingbirds are spending only a minimum amount of time at each blossom.

Here’s another photo of an Anna’s hummingbird which I assume is a female. (This time of year I sometimes find it difficult to tell juveniles from females.) This was the only photo I took this day and I might normally have just tossed it, but it’s a good photo so it’s saved in its own folder.

On October 1, 2020, I made an excursion north of Highway 20 and found this female Ring-necked pheasant near Samish Island. When I first saw her my first thought, having spent so many years in Texas, was that I was seeing a Greater roadrunner which often exhibits a similar posture!

On this same outing I found this Stellar’s jay in Bayview State Park, amazingly my first excursion into the camping area of the park in the 20 years we’ve lived in Anacortes.

This jay was susceptible to bribes!

This crow was sitting near the top of Madrone tree east of the Farmers Market.

On October 5 we had a visit from a Hutton’s vireo, which closely resembles a Ruby-crowned kinglet.

We are now having almost daily visits from Golden-crowned kinglets.

This takes me through October 5, 2020. I still have some interesting photos in the hopper, so stay tuned!

(All the photos in this post were taken with my new Nikon 500mm f5.6 lens.)

In my last post I mentioned my outing south towards Fir Island, where I saw several migrants but was unable to obtain any noteworthy photographs. Upon arrival back home we had a visit from this thrush. When I see a thrush at this time of year I always assume (perhaps not justifiably) that the bird is an incoming Hermit thrush, but I didn’t get a photo of the bird’s breast and it doesn’t have a reddish tail, so I can’t rule out this bird being an outgoing Swainson’s thrush.

On September 19 our first visitor was one I’ve been waiting on for over a year… a male Red crossbill! On this particular visit the male appeared to be alone, but later the same day several juveniles/females visited the watercourse and bathed together.

Our next visitor this day was an Orange-crowned warbler. The orange crown is usually very difficult to see in the field, and perhaps you can see why from this photo. We’re looking directly at the bird’s crown with no evidence of any orange showing. I usually get to see the orange crown when the bird gets wet which tends to reveal the orange crown.

Here are the photos of the female/juvenile Red crossbills which visited later the same day.

The bills of these birds are uniquely adapted so that they can insert their bills in fir cones and pop the seeds out. An interesting feature of this species is that some birds are “right-billed” and some are “left-billed”. These birds are both left-billed while the male pictured above is right-billed.

On September 20 our first migrant visitor was a Pacific Slope flycatcher, a rare, but not unknown visitor to the yard.

Our next visitor was an incoming Hermit thrush, this one exhibiting the reddish tail which differentiates it from its similar appearing ‘cousin’, the Swainson’s thrush. Hermit thrushes will be with us through the fall/winter season before leaving in the spring to migrate to their breeding grounds to the north and east.

Our last visitor I’m picturing on this post is another rare visitor that shows up in the neighborhood maybe 3-4 times a year, but it makes it to our yard much less often. As I sat in the yard, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large, dark-colored bird land in our Golden Chain tree. I didn’t have a direct view of the bird but as it flew to where I could better see and photograph it I was startled to realize that it was a Stellar’s jay! This was an even rarer visitor than the Red crossbills!

I’m going to assume that this wraps up my yard migration sightings and posts, but I’ve gotten quite a few good photos of subsequent visitors. I’ll begin posting those next.

If you’ve been following this blog you learned that I finally received my birding lens (Nikon 200-400mm f4.0) back from Nikon’s LA repair facility in early September. I was without the lens for about EIGHT weeks while Nikon procured a needed part that had failed. During that time I resolved to purchase a new lens, chiefly for backup purposes. I got on a couple of waiting lists and after a little over a month I was able to purchase a Nikon 500mm f5.6 prime lens, a difficult to obtain lens due to apparent production shortages. (I have a friend who had been waiting for over a year for one of these lenses and, as fortune intervened, I was able to procure one for him at the same time as my own!) The new lens is very sharp and it will probably become my primary lens and I’ll use the old (repaired) lens as backup… but I’m still working through that strategy.

In the meantime I decided to change the way I documented bird sightings in the yard. After spending 12+ years of trying to document weekly sightings I’ve decided to discontinue that practice and just document special birds on an annual fall and spring migration list. This is stiil definitely a work in progress and I expect it to evolve more this fall. In the meantime the list will allow me to bring attention to interesting birds that I’ve photographed in the yard in the past month.

As most of you are probably aware, we had heavy smoke from wildfires in the area for many days and I wondered if that might have affected migration. We had what I considered a very muted migration this fall. There was also a very large die-off of migrants in New Mexico that was apparently due to early snow, but that shouldn’t have affected our southward migration here.

Getting to sightings, we had a single Cedar waxwing show up in the yard on September 5, but I didn’t get a photo. On several previous days a waxwing showed up by itself, a somewhat strange occurrence for such a gregarious bird.

On September 7 we had a single Varied thrush show up in the yard, our earliest Fall appearance by far. I managed a distant photo… the species hasn’t returned.

On September 8 a juvenile Hutton’s vireo (featured in my prior blog post) made it’s appearance and we also had a Black-headed grosbeak, a species that had been gone from the yard for over a month.

On September 11 the Hutton’s vireo again made its appearance as did our first Fox sparrow for the winter season.

September 14 was a banner day, with a Hermit or Swainson’s thrush, two visits from the Black-headed grosbeak, three visits from Orange-crowned warblers and a Pacific Slope flycatcher.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to obtain a photo of the thrush, which I assumed was a Hermit thrush due to the time of year and the fact that it had a reddish tail which contrasted with its back. However, we also had thrushes on the 18th and the 20th and I decided that we might have had one of each. (More about this in my next post.)

Temporarily leaving the migratory category, I took these photos of a White-crowned sparrow and a male Northern flicker in the yard on the same day.

Straying from the yard, on September 15 I drove by the Cap Sante Marina and saw two yellowlegs in the northwest corner. I returned with my camera and obtained photos. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think these are Greater yellowlegs as opposed to Lesser yellowlegs.

On September 18 I took my new lens on its maiden outing to Fir Island where I saw three Turkey vultures, a female Wood duck, several Yellow-rumped warblers, a Townsend’s warbler and a Common yellowthroat, but I obtained no photos worth posting.

We’ve had other significant visitors that I’ll cover in my next blog post.

I had been scheduled to teach a birding photography class at the Anacortes Senior College in May, 2019. That course, as so much else that has changed in our lives since last year, was cancelled due to the COVID virus. I’m going to take the opportunity this site provides to illuminate an important asset for birding photography in your yard and illustrate my point with photos of a juvenile Hutton’s vireo I took on September 11, 2020.

Perhaps the most important attraction feature you can provide in your yard is water. There are many species of birds that can’t be attracted by any food you provide. These are generally insect-eaters such as warblers, vireos, flycatchers and the like. However, almost all birds are attracted to water. Moving water is best… the moving water and sound helps attract birds’ attention. But a simple stationary bird bath will also attract birds.

I prefer that my photos not appear to have been taken without any man-made object in the photo. So when you view my photos, if you were’t privy to the environment I’ve created in our yard, you could imaginatively assume that the photo was taken in a purely natural setting. I work hard creating such an environment and chief among my tools are what I refer to as “staging objects”, sticks and rocks strategically placed around feeders and water sources not only to attract birds, but also to facilitate photographing them.

And just as importantly, these staging objects give you, as a photographer or observer, more opportunities (in both time and poses) to photograph or view a bird in a number of different settings. If you are a photographer, I believe it is important that you vary staging perches from time to time so that all your photos don’t appear to have been taken at the same exact location. To facilitate this you should use objects that are three dimensional… rotating the staging object changes its orientation and therefore the areas on the object where birds will land. I keep an inventory of staging sticks so that I can rotate them into a setting and keep the photographs fresh.

When I have the time I like to eliminate the visual aspect of a saw cut on the end of a staging stick, which indicates what might not be a natural setting. The best technique I have found for this is to burn the end of the stick using a torch, then rub the burned end in dirt to eliminate the burned area!

With regard to rocks, you may have a couple of large prominent rocks and it may be tempting to upend a pointed end. By placing such a rock with a FLAT side at the top you can cap it with another rock and then rotate the top rock to keep things fresh. While rotating staging objects may not be important for an observer, it will eventually become important for a photographer! It’s not unusual for me to take over 300 photos of yard birds in a single day, so rotating perches is important!

To get on with this lesson, as I previously noted I’m posting photos of a single juvenile Hutton’s vireo (an unusual visitor) on a single visit to the yard. I took a total of 41 photos of this bird on five different perches. I retained a total of 15 photos. Why did I retain so many? Most were quality photos (this bird is apparently a juvenile and looks a little rough) and depicted the bird in multiple poses… oriented to the left, right, looking over its shoulder, leaning off a perch, etc. Here are some of the photos…

You can probably pick a favorite, as can I, but I just couldn’t delete good photos of a relatively rare bird!

So I hope I have made my point concerning the value of staging objects in your yard.

PS: Donations of staging sticks are gratefully accepted. One of my best staging sticks was donated by an architect friend who understood the value of three dimensional objects!