First a little administrative news. In the past few weeks it has gotten much more difficult to upload photos to my website (BlueHost). I contacted technical support a few days ago and they made some changes they thought would help, including disabling some ‘plugins”. I assumed this meant plugins they use administratively, but they might have meant plugins I use. One the plugins I use distributes copes of new posts to subscribers. If you are a subscriber and stopped getting emails of new posts let me know and I’ll try to get the feature up and running again.

The two days I had of extraordinary bird sightings (see prior posts) are apparently history.

As of May 8 things have settled down to much too normal conditions for the past few days. I had hoped to have return visits from some of the rarities (flycatcher, tanager, etc.) but those visitors apparently just passed through, deciding not to take advantage of our superior habitat. But that hasn’t kept me from spending significant time in the yard.

Yesterday (May 8, 2020) was a beautiful day, warm and with full sun. I was hopeful that a change in the weather might spur visitors but was somewhat disappointed. I say ‘somewhat’ because as I was preparing to enter the yard I looked out the window and saw what I assumed was an Orange-crowned warbler flying around the watercourse. I realized that the behavior wasn’t right (one of the assets of more experienced birders!) and looked closer. It was a Warbling vireo, a very rare visitor to the yard although we have had one on one or two other occasions.

I grabbed my camera and headed to the yard. I managed a couple of photos and knew they weren’t going to be good ones, but was confident they would give me a more positive identification and record of the bird’s visit.

I was now committed to waiting for the vireo’s return! I had a long time to wait… over two hours, but I weds finally rewarded with the bird’s second appearance. This time I managed a better photo.

In between activity generated by special visitors I spend my time taking what I hope will be good photos of some of the more common visitors. This male House sparrow is a much too common visitor. I have recently been overrun with House sparrows after having had them all but disappear a few weeks ago.

I never saw this next special visitor ent4er the yard. I looked up and saw a male Audubon’s Yellow-rumped warbler sitting above the watercourse. It never tried to access the water but gave me ample opportunity to get several nice photos.

I made mention in a prior post of a pale Red-breasted nuthatch visitor. It was back again on this day. In processing the photo I noticed that the water had a distinct yellow tinge and was wondering if the sun had somehow caused the coloration. Then I realized that it was the blooming Golden Chain tree behind the watercourse that was the cause.

Here’s a photo of the Golden Chain tree with a male American goldfinch. I can’t begin to express my frustration at being unable to track yellow birds (primarily warblers and goldfinches) into, out of and around this tree! I’m assuming you can see the problem!

Just when I had about given up hope of seeing any warblers, at about 5pm a male Wilson’s warbler made an appearance and availed itself of a bath. I obtained a lot of photos.

This male House finch posed with a backdrop of the Golden Chain tree.

A female Northern flicker stopped by for a little suet. She wouldn’t present a full body shot but I was able to squeeze out a head shot between tree branches.

And finally, at the end of my day in the yard, a pair of quail began wandering around the yard, picking up seed that had fallen to the ground from feeders. This male California quail stands watch while the female feeds.

I was surprised to get through the day without a single sighting of an Orange-crowned warbler, but late in the day I looked out a window and saw one bathing in our stone bird bath (no photos of this event). I’m still hoping for a late arrival of a Yellow or MacGillivray’s warbler.

Thursday, April 30, 2020 

I began this day thinking that nothing could eclipse the previous day’s birding/photography, but I was wrong. Here’s an overview of the day’s sightings and photography:

In the yard from about 12noon until 5pm, then again briefly from about 6:00-6:30pm.

Photos:630  

Warblers:

• Orange-crowned 
• Wilson’s (male) 
• Yellow-rumped Audubon (both males) 
• Black-throated Gray (first of season) 
• Townsend’s (first of season) 

I’ll begin with the Orange-crowned warbler, since it mustered the most visits. I estimate the species made at least 20 visits to the yard and there were at least a couple of visits when multiple representatives of the species were in the yard at the same time.

While this visitor is not a migrant, I always enjoy getting photos because it’s not a frequent visitor to the watercourse and I don’t like to photograph birds on feeders. It’s a Red-breasted nuthatch. This one is a little on the pale side.

Another frequent visitor was the Wilson’s warbler, all of which were male.

We has visits from two male Yellow-rumped warblers but I was unable to get anything but a record shot of one of them. I noticed this one high in a fir tree overhead.

We had a single visit from a Townsend’s warbler, a female.

Our next special visitor was a male Black-headed grosbeak, our first of the season.

Next up, a Ruby-crowned kinglet. This bird, and its cousin the Golden-crowned kinglet (not pictured), are normally fairly common in the yard during the winter months. This past winter however, they were conspicuously absent.

Our next special visitor, and a rare migrant to our yard, was a female Black-throated Gray warbler. This was the first of the season for this visitor and I only managed one photo, which due to quality I refer to as a “record shot”. It’s not a good photo but it’s a record the the bird was in the yard.

I’ll feature a couple of Rufous hummingbirds next. First the female feeding on the blossoms of an evergreen huckleberry.

A male Rufous hummingbird hovering above the watercourse. I never get tired of photographing these situations due to the challenge of the moving bird and the fine details of the bird’s feathers. And due to the birds’ rapid wingbeats the result you obtain is serendipity.

This is a Pacific Slope flycatcher. Since this bird is extremely rare in the yard, I suspect that it is the same one that visited the previous day.

Finally, a very unexpected visitor to the yard. I looked up from whatever I was doing to see a male Western tanager land in a madrone tree directly in front of me. Unfortunately the bird was backlit to some extent but I managed over a dozen photos before it decided to move on.

April 29, 2020, was to be maybe the best bird photography day I’ve had while living here (since 2008). I began birding about 11am and continued until about 3pm, taking 503 photographs and logging two first of season migrants and one very special visitor. For a change of pace, most of the photographs (by far) were special visitors (migrants) with few photos taken of the more common yard birds that have gotten me through the past several months.

My intention for this spring migration was to log the number of visits per day by the migrants, but I was overwhelmed by the birds and realize that I can’t perform photography and log birds at the same time. And there were many times when I had to make a decision about which of the migrants I wanted to photograph when more than one species was in the yard at the same time.

I’ll start with a photo of a male Rufous hummingbird taking a bath in the watercourse. This bird makes several trips a day to the watercourse for a bath, and although this isn’t a frontal photo, I enjoy viewing the bird’s wings and tail, views you don’t often get to examine in the field.

New photos of the species in the prior post, a female Yellow-rumped warbler of the Myrtle race.

Early in the day a very special visitor… a Pacific Slope flycatcher! When photographing this bird I initially thought it was a vireo, and it added to my tentative identification by “dip-bathing” in the watercourse. In processing the photos I realized that it probably wasn’t a vireo and sought confirmation of the specific flycatcher ID from a more a knowledgable birding friend,.

Now another bird I can’t recall ever having seen in the yard, a male Yellow-rumped warbler of the Myrtle’s race. (Compare with the female pictured above.) Note the white throat and the yellow crown.

Another bird making its seasonal debut here in the yard was the male Wilson’s warbler. In past years I considered the Wilson’s warbler to be our most frequent visitor, but its been far eclipsed by the Orange-crowned warblers this year.

Before I move from the subject of warblers, I’ll display a couple of images of this year’s most frequent warbler visitor… the Orange-crowned warbler.

This wrapped up the unusual, migrant and ‘first of season’ birds for the day, but not the photography. This female Rufous hummingbird was accessing one of our madrone trees.

And for contrast, here’s a female Anna’s hummingbird trying to decide whether or not to enter the watercourse.

Although in the neighborhood, Eurasian Collared doves have stayed out of our yard until recently. Several months ago raptors got two in the vicinity of our house. Now there are at least two pairs back visiting the yard.

But it wasn’t over quite yet! Near the end of the day we had a Brown creeper, a fairly rare visitor, enter the yard and take a tour of watercourses, giving me an unusual number of opportunities to photograph this visitor.

This was probably the best birding photography day I’ve had since we lived here (2008), and I thought that things couldn’t get any better. I was WRONG!

April 29, 2020, brought a lot of non-birding activity that kept me away from the yard for much of the day.  I did see an Orange-crowned warbler, by far our most common warbler species to date, pass through the yard early in the morning, but I had no opportunity to photograph it.  I didn’t manage to get into the yard with my photographic gear until about 3:30pm, and by then it was pretty heavily overcast with a few drops of rain every now and then.  

I set up in the yard and watched a couple of Orange-crowned warblers pass through the trees high overhead, but they seemed much more interested in gleaning insects than in accessing any of our water features.  I finally had one enter our Golden Chain tree and investigate our watercourse but it never came down to the watercourse.  I managed a few photos of it in the tree camouflaged by the tree’s blossoms which are now in full bloom, making it a challenge to see yellow birds (as in American goldfinches) in the tree.  

It was close to 5pm and I was getting cool and somewhat discouraged and about to go inside when a warbler flew onto a staging limb I have just behind the watercourse.  I began taking photos and the bird first came down to the watercourse, then back up to staging sticks, then to our stone bird bath with me taking photos of it all along its path!  

I realized that this was an unusually pale Yellow-rumped warbler and knew that it was probably a female but gave it little thought until I was processing the photos later in the evening.  In processing the photos I realized that this was a Myrtle’s warbler, a much rarer (to our area) race than the more common Audubon’s race.  I believe that this is the first Myrtle’s race of Yellow-rumped warbler that I have ever photographed in the yard!  

So a little basic birding knowledge here.  Ever since I have been ‘seriously’ birding (late 1980s) the single species of Yellow-rumped warbler has been divided into two races, Audubon’s and Myrtle’s.  In researching this I discovered that at one point these two races, or subspecies, were combined.  At some point, (probably not in my lifetime!) the organization that is responsible for naming birds (the American Ornithological Society’s North American Classification Committee (NACC)) could split the species and declare the Audubon’s and Myrtle’s races separate species. This was done for towhees some years back; the Dark-eyed juncos have about six races/subspecies and this species also seems ripe for splitting!  But I’m getting too far from any expertise I have in these matters, so at this point if you are still interested you can do your own research!  (The Audubon.org website has a good explanation of the history of the Yellow-rumped warbler species.)     

So what characteristic makes this a female Myrtle’s warbler?  The  most obvious characteristic is the Audubon’s race has yellow on its throat (see male below) while the Myrtle’s race has white on its throat.  And the males of both species have a yellow crown, something lacking in the females.  

While the Myrtle’s warbler was still flitting around the yard I became aware of other activity around the watercourse.  I realized that there was another warbler (this one a male Audubon’s race of Yellow-rumped warblers) perched above the watercourse and so began photographing this much more colorful bird.  And while I was photographing it I noticed that two more Yellow-rumped warblers had flown onto the same staging snag above the watercourse.  I was just bringing my camera to bear on one of them, which was partially hidden by an intervening snag, when all four warblers flew from the yard.  I was unable to determine the races of the two warblers I didn’t photograph.  

So here, in all its breeding splendor, is a male Yellow-rumped warbler of the Audubon’s race.  

This was a great day for birding photography, but it was nothing like what was to come the next day!

April 24, 2020, proved to be another productive yard birding day.  I was in the yard from about 1pm until about 4:30pm and then again for a short time around 6pm.  During that time I observed about 10 Orange-crowned warbler visits and two Yellow-rumped warbler visits plus four visits from one or more Steller’s jays.  

I’ve been spending a lot of thought lately as to how I could better document visits from spring migrants and other rarer birds that arrive in the yard.  In past years I have recored a weekly tally of all visitors, with the number being the highest number I saw at any one time.  In cases which I could make a clear distinction between/among birds I would add them to the total.  The problem with this method is that I might record a count of two for a species seen during the week, but I might have actually had multiple single visits in a day or even every day for a week, so the count didn’t actually reflect my (or the birds’) activity.  So now I’m trying to think of a way to move towards number of sightings per day for each of the rarer and spring migrant species.  This would better reflect the flow of visitors through the yard and give me a better picture of the migration that I could use in the future… although each year is going to be different.  And this year is somewhat unique in that I didn’t make my annual trip to Texas and the COVID-19 virus has given us all some extra time for such activities.  (Wait, don’t tell me… too much information!)    

First, a little good news.  I was gratified to see that the male Downy woodpecker that is apparently blind in one eye survived the winter and apparently has a mate.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to fly (and land) without vision in one eye since two eyes are required for depth perception.  

And the Black-capped chickadee with a severely crippled leg also survived the winter and seems to be doing fine.  I photographed it hanging from the inverted suet feeder with no apparent problems.  

But to add to this inventory, I observed and photographed a White-crowned sparrow (one of three we have in the yard) favoring one leg.  I saw and photographed the bird on several occasions standing on one leg but then I also saw it use the leg on a couple of occasions.  So I assume that the leg must be injured but usable to some extent.  

So let’s get on to a few of the other 277 photos I took on this day… 

The most newsworthy appearance for the day was the return of a Steller’s jay, a rare visitor to the neighborhood. I topped off my inventory with 47 ‘keeper’ photographs taken during this species’ four visits to the yard.

I counted at least ten visits by Orange-crowned warblers to the yard, and two of the visits involved pairs.

The Yellow-rumped warblers (all Audubon’s) and all or most males, have been difficult to photograph so far this year. On this day I had two visits but only managed about two photographs that were keepers.

Our hummingbird visitors have dropped significantly over the past couple of weeks… other friends have voiced the same concern. This female Anna’s hummingbird is accessing the blooms on a native Red currant.

Strange bath-fellows… this White-crowned sparrow bathing with a male House sparrow. Thankfully these species don’t hybridize!

And finally, late in the day, a pair of California quail. For the first time ever we carried a covey of about 13 through the winter. In past years we wouldn’t see ANY quail, and it was always a mystery where they went.