Birding in the yard has been an almost all-consuming hobby over the past few weeks, leaving me little time for posting to my blog.  After a rather disappointing late June and July visits to the yard by migrants have finally picked up and I am seeing the first indications of a fall migration.  We’ve logged three new species in the yard this year (Chipping sparrow, Lazuli bunting and a Bob White quail) but I have to day that August 6, 2021, was perhaps my best birding day of the year.  

On this particular day my birding was overlapping with hosting visiting family members and with the Anacortes Arts Festival. We began our day with an early morning walk through Washington Park followed by breakfast at home.  I opted for a nap instead of accompanying the crowd downtown, but since we were having one of our recently rare cloudy days, which offered enhanced birding photography opportunities, I decided to give yard birding a brief try.  It was an auspicious decision!  

One of our (meaning our yard’s) rarest migrants, a MacGillivray’s warbler, appeared in the yard in midmorning.  It had been years since we had seen one and I had no good photographs of one. This bird visited two of our water features and took a short time exploring the yard. I obtained what I consider some excellent photos. 

I believe this MacGillivray’s to be an adult female, but here I offer a caveat.   You should take ALL of my sex/age identifications as only guesses, especially at this time of the year.  Identifications are now being complicated by several factors:  the breeding plumage of some adults is beginning to fade, first-year juveniles are now being added to the mix and migration is beginning to take place, adding birds we don’t normally see.  All of these factors add confusion to some identifications.  You should view any age/sex identifications I offer with some degree of skepticism. 

But back to August 6: the usual birds were out and about the yard but we had at least two juvenile Brown-headed cowbirds… one being fed by a Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco and the other by a pair of Spotted towhees, both species that in past years have been consistently parasitized by cowbirds.  Interestingly enough, one of the juvenile cowbirds was being fed by one of the aforementioned species and also a couple of White-crowned sparrows!  (The following day (8/7/2021) we watched one of the cowbirds being fed by both a junco and White-crowned sparrow!  I have no explanation for this and it goes against my understanding of the raising of cowbird chicks.)  

A male Wilson’s warbler very briefly entered the yard and I was able to photograph it.

I took a break from birding at midday and resumed my activity later in the afternoon with a photographer/friend. We contented ourselves photographing some of our regular birds, having to sort through a large population of House sparrows who have been born on neighbors’ property but come to our yard for food and water.  It’s discouraging but it’s something we just have to endure.  

My friend left later that afternoon and within five minutes of his leaving a male Townsend’s warbler visited the yard.  We usually get about one visit a year from this species and it’s almost always in the fall. I was able to obtain some excellent photos of the bird. 

So I had observed and photographed three warbler species in our yard, two of them quite rare.  I think I can declare the fall migration officially ‘on’!  I now have 304 photos to process from this one day’s activities (in addition to a backlog of several weeks)!  

After some long hours in the yard in June and July with few relatively rare birds, I had a very nice day on July 26… at a cost of several hours of yard birding I took about 350 bird photos and it has taken me a couple of days to process the photos. I’ll share some of those photos…

I had three different species of warblers enter the yard. The first was a female Wilson’s warbler, normally our most common warbler but in short supply this year.

The next warbler to appear was an Orange-crowned warbler. One actually entered the yard twice but the second time was fairly late in the day and I was unable to get photos of the second visit.

The third warbler visitor was a male Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler. I normally eschew posting birds at feeders but to document all three species I’m posting one of the only two photos I was able to obtain. This bird came to a hanging bird bath and is probably not the same bird that was an almost daily visitor to our water feature this spring.

We had several visits from either a female or juvenile Black-headed grosbeak. I think at least one visitor was a juvenile due to its apparent unfamiliarity with our bird feeders.

For the first time ever I managed to get two Brown creepers in the same photograph (not shown here). I suspect that one was a juvenile due to its eagerness to explore various areas of the yard.

We have at least a couple of juvenile Spotted towhees that visit the yard. I love these juveniles and marvel at how little they resemble their parents at this stage of their development.

We had at least three coveys of California quail regularly visiting the yard but we may be down to only one covey composed of larger chicks at this point.

And finally, we had a juvenile (adult pictured here) Red-breasted nuthatch make numerous visits to our watercourse. I don’t think it ever worked up the courage to actually bathe or even drink, but it spent considerable time accessing staging sticks and rocks around the watercourse and trying to avoid other bathers.

After a June with relatively few interesting visitors, I had a very interesting July 4, 2021, afternoon.    

If my relatively unreliable short-term memory serves me correctly, I remember only about three warbler visits during the month of June.  One of the visits was of a pair of Yellow-rumped warblers that appeared and spent a brief amount of time in the yard before leaving.  But my first interesting bird on Independence Day was a male Yellow-rumped (Audubon’s) warbler that entered the watercourse for a bath.  I wasn’t able to obtain any good photos, but I have many from one that had been an almost daily visitor this past spring.  

While passing time in the yard I photographed an Eastern Gray squirrel eating green madrone berries while hanging upside down.  I have seen birds eating the berries but this is the first time I’ve seen a squirrel doing it.  

We had a visit from a Brown creeper, a regular visitor during the spring but rarer during the summer.  These birds fascinate me and I always enjoy seeing and photographing them.  

We’ve had visits from Black-headed grosbeaks since late spring.  The visits are always irregular and are usually focused on a small platform feeder or inverted suet feeder.  On this day we had at least two visits from a male.

The next interesting visitor was an Orange-crowned warbler, normally a common visitor to the yard but rather rare during the spring migration this year.     

Our next visitor was a new species, which as the discoverer traditionally gives me naming rights!   I named it the Anacortes Tailless Towhee.  

Next up, an adorable Warbling vireo which visited the watercourse but never accessed the water.    

If this wasn’t enough, a Hutton’s vireo, which closely resembles a Ruby-crowned kinglet, paid us a visit.  I initially thought the bird was a kinglet but realized my mistake once I began  processing my photos.  

We’ve had at least three and quite possibly more coveys of California quail parade through the yard this summer.  The only way we can tell the difference in coveys is by the size and number of chicks, but trying to count the chicks is an almost impossible task as they dart around into and out of cover.  And the number in the covey tends to decline day after day as chicks are lost to predators.  This year use have as numerous a population as we’ve had in several years.

In early July we had an accipiter make a pass at a covey but all the chicks managed to dart into our brush pile for safety. I expected that once an accipiter had discovered the quail in our yard it would be a regular visitor but I’ve seen it only that once.

By the end of the day (just before 8pm) I had taken 275 photos in approximately four hours of birding in the yard. I had photographed visits from two species of warblers, two species of vireos, Black-headed grosbeak(s), a creeper, House wrens feeding young and one of our coveys of quail… along with a host of other species.

In early June I had a cousin visit Anacortes for training relating to chartering a yacht.  He told me that fellow classmates had video (with audio) of a male Northern bobwhite calling from a fence along the Tommy Thompson Trail.  We were unable to transfer the video to my phone, and the cellphone image of the quail wasn’t definitive identification, but having lived in Texas for much of my life, the bird’s call was unmistakable!  My cousin and I spent some time identifying where the video had been recorded and after some detective work we were successful.  (The video had been taken due east of the Skateboard Park at 23rd Street.)  But this was several days after the recording and the quail was gone.  

On June 15 we had a plumber visit the house who knew I was into birding photography.  He mentioned that he had seen or heard a Northern bobwhite near their facility located in the industrial area near 30th Street and west of the Tommy Thompson Trail.  This indicated that the bird had ranged from about 23rd Street to 30th Street over the past couple of weeks (unless there are two of them!).  

On the morning of June 18 my wife met with a discussion group outside at the Seafarer’s Memorial (about 16th Street) and contacted me, telling me that she heard a bobwhite in the area.  I grabbed my camera and commenced the hunt.  At one point I heard the bobwhite and figured that I was within yards of it but it was apparently in a very thick hedge and I couldn’t locate the bird.  The vocalizations stopped and I began driving around attempting to locate the bird.  I came around a corner in a parking lot and the bird was right in the middle of the street!  Thus began a long period of photography but under less than ideal conditions (bright sunlight, deep shadows, intervening shrubbery, manmade background).  It was apparent the bird had little or no fear of people as a couple of people walked past it when it was confined by a wall.  

So here are a couple of photos I took of our wayward traveler.  The bird’s natural range is from Texas west to the Atlantic coast, with perhaps a limited area or two east of the Cascades.  How it got here in Anacortes is anyone’s guess!  

I had yet another fruitful day of bird observations and photography on June 14, 2021.  The day was heavily overcast with intermittent drizzle, reducing the amount of light for photography but at the same time giving everything a very even light with no shadows.  

I began my day photographing a female Rufous hummingbird and ended my day photographing a female Anna’s hummingbird, both feeding on salvia, a great hummingbird attractant!

The previous day (6/13) I observed our first juvenile California quail… they seemed a little large for our not having seen them previously but I had obtained only a brief distant view of them.  On this day, however, a covey was in full view… and it was not the same covey… these were much smaller!  I watched as the covey scurried about the yard.  At one point an adult female brought the covey to within about ten feet of me as I sat, very uncharacteristic of the caution usually exhibited at this stage of the juveniles’ development.  One of the chicks apparently separated from its siblings and wandered around the yard by itself for a while, apparently oblivious to the dangers it faced.  It finally took up with another pair of quail that had no chicks, so we had a pair of quail running around with only one chick!  I’ve noticed in the past that the parents apparently take care not to mix coveys, perhaps for just this reason.  

While I was busy photographing the juvenile quail a male Black-headed grosbeak flew into the yard and landed at a location in full view, not its usual practice.  I was able to take several photos of it before it flew to a feeder.  

I next noticed that our resident House wren was finally using a staging stick I had placed next to the bird house it was using.  For a long time the wren had ignored the stick and used the top of the bird house for a perch.  I moved to an advantageous position and took many photos of the wren moving around the staging stick.  Interestingly the pair of House wrens had moved into the bird house almost immediately after a family of Black-capped chickadees had moved out, and I had watched as one of the wrens spent the better part of a day disassembling the chickadee nest inside and throwing the pieces out the door!  It was fun watching the wren bringing sticks that were 6-8″ long and trying to maneuver them inside the one inch diameter door.  As it is there are two or three sticks left sticking out the door!  The wrens’ nest materials are much cruder than than those used by the chickadees, so I am anxious to see what the inside of the house looks like when the wrens leave.  

All in all it was a great day from a photography standpoint… so good that I’m even including this photo of a male House sparrow!