On Monday, October 14, 2019, I had a combination of driving in the neighborhood and yard photography. I began the day monitoring the madrone berries to photograph what was eating them. This European starling, and a few of its friends, were in one of the madrone trees.

In the past couple of days I had gotten brief views of male Varied thrushes in the madrone trees, but photos proved difficult to come by. Persistence paid off… I finally obtained a photo of a (male) Varied thrush eating madrone berries.

For the past couple of weeks or so we have had at least one female Varied thrush visiting the water features in the yard. The bird proved extremely cautious and despite my best efforts, I had not been able to get a photo. Upon arriving back at the house today I finally obtained a photo of a female Varied thrush… at first entering the yard…

and after a few minutes entering our watercourse.

About the same time a couple of Yellow-rumped warblers (Audubon’s race) accessed the watercourse.

Back on the road again I obtained this photo of a male House sparrow…

and this male Spotted towhee.

I saw the Barred owl, featured in my last post, on October 11, 2019. But it wasn’t the first, or what I considered the most interesting bird I saw that day. As I believe I mentioned, my prime consideration for the location I was monitoring was to try to photograph American robins eating madrone berries, and I succeeded to some extent. However the robins would come and go and even when they were present they weren’t always where they could be photographed.

I spent considerable ‘down time’ watching (and photographing) several species of sparrows come and go from the bushes beside me. This included Golden-crowned sparrows,

House sparrows,

Song sparrows,

a Fox sparrow,

Dark-eyed juncos, Spotted towhees, White-crowned sparrows

(seven sparrow species)… and one other very significant sparrow species.

I was only casually watching the White-crowned sparrows… all appeared to be juveniles (I seldom see the tan morph in this area) when I saw a sparrow that looked different. A closer examination revealed it was a White-throated sparrow (an eighth sparrow species, all in a rather small area, although not all at the same time!). I’ve only seen a White-throated sparrow 5-6 times in my life, and I haven’t any idea how I would find one if I tried! So here is the White-throated sparrow… seen over a three-day period and at a cost of some 6-8 hours thus far.

And I don’t want to leave out one other visitor to the same location… a Bewick’s wren that responded to ‘pishing’.

For the last several days I’ve been trying to photograph American robins eating madrone berries in the Cap Sante neighborhood. We have a couple of madrone trees that are loaded with berries. It’s not as easy as it might seem, and I’ve spent MANY hours at it with some fairly good results but at a cost of a sore neck and at least one other anatomical area that will remain undisclosed!

When things get slow with the berry-eaters I take a tour of the neighborhood looking for other interesting birds/photographic opportunities and visiting with any neighbors I find in yards or walking the neighborhood. I was on my second or third tour of the neighborhood when I spied a gray blob about eye level in our neighborhood’s wetland. I paused, backed the car for a better view, and found I was looking at a Barred owl sitting on a limb… in the open! I immediately began taking photos and managed 125 before I finally left the owl almost two hours later. I was able to notify many neighbors who were able to see the owl.

By the time I had left the wetland the owl had flown from its initial perch to one higher up in a tree, but it was still in the wetland. So here are some of the photos I took…

Before finding the owl I had another unusual encounter with a bird I’ve seen only five or six times in my life, but I’m saving those photos until I have a little more time to organize those photos. Stay tuned!

I won’t say our fall migration has made up for the lack of birds we should have had this past summer, but at least it’s trying! However, we have had an obstacle to the number of birds in the yard for the past several weeks, and here it is…

These birds (accipiters) mainly feed on other birds and are especially fond of visiting areas where large populations of birds congregate… in other words, the yards containing bird feeders. I sent a photo to a raptor contact in Seattle, grousing about this visitor. His response: “When you feed birds, you feed ALL the birds!”

Moving on, here is a male Anna’s hummingbird who is apparently signing on for the winter. We have at least three Anna’s hummingbirds in the yard, and I think the other two are females but can’t rule out juvenile males. The first photo below was taken at some distance and doesn’t have the quality that closer photos might, but it shows the bird’s gorget reflecting which I think is interesting. On this occasion this bird spent considerable time hovering around the yard so I obtained a photo not involving flowers.

Again I had visits from at least two Yellow-rumped warblers. I’m still trying to figure out why they named these Yellow-rumped warblers! (As you can see, the yellow rump is not always visible.)

I logged another interesting day in the yard on Sunday, September 29, 2019.  At mid-morning we had birds all over the yard, but most noticeably high in our large fir trees.  I was hoping for some photos but the birds were too far away (high).  I could see lots of chickadees, juncos and perhaps kinglets and warblers but the angle was too high for my heavy telephoto lens and I didn’t have binoculars with me.  

We left to run errands and I watched the first half of the Seahawks game… until I judged the win safe and then went back to the yard.  It was an interesting afternoon.  

My first interesting guest was a Golden-crowned kinglet that landed on a bird bath beside me several times… too close to photograph!  It finally flew to the watercourse and I was able to obtain a single photograph of it.  

The next interesting birds that appeared where male and female finches.  The male looked substantially different from the many other House finches we have around and then I saw a female in the watercourse and that was what raised my suspicions about the possibility of having a couple of Purple finches in the yard.  I confess to being unable to differentiate the male House finch from the male Purple finch, but the females of the species are easier to identify.  (I’ve known many people that misidentified male House finches only on the basis of color, but the males have a very wide color variation and I’ve never known color to be a safe means of identifying the males of the two species.)  The female Purple finches have a broad, light but subtle stripe over the eye and the female in our watercourse seemed to fit that criteria. I never actually saw the pair together but they were in the yard at the same time and apparently left at the same time.  The female returned late in the afternoon but I didn’t get better photos.  

I hesitated posting these photos and calling them Purple finches, but I ran the photos by a friend who is a more experienced birder than I and this friend identified the birds as Purple finches.  So you can make up your own mind!  

My next interesting guest was a Townsend’s warbler which I managed to photograph extensively.  I suspect that this is a first-winter male but you shouldn’t consider that a positive identification.  (You might remember from my last post that I saw three Townsend’s warblers in the yard at one time on 9/27.) 

My next unusual visitor, and a very rare one indeed, was a Cap Sante Collared junco!  

Just kidding folks!  But I did have this leucistic Dark-eyed junco of the Oregon race.  Note the white collar on this male.  It doesn’t completely encircle the bird’s neck but it clearly delineates the feathers between the bird’s hood and back.  I’m not sure how much of a bird’s plumage needs to be white in order for the bird to be considered leucistic, but I’m using the term to describe this bird!  

The last uplifting visitors to the yard on this day were at least three Yellow-rumped warblers, at least one of which was an Audubon’s race and probably a male.  There were several juvenile Yellow-rumped warblers for which I couldn’t identify either race or sex.  

I’m sorry to end on a down note, but I had a male House finch that had the facial tumor disease and it was in sad, but apparently functional, shape.  I haven’t seen many diseased House finches the past several months, but I had an American goldfinch a couple of weeks ago the apparently suffered from the disease.  It’s the first time I’ve seen the disease in birds other than House finches.  

While I’m on the subject, I seem to have had an abnormal number of avian visitors with injuries this year.   A male Downy woodpecker that was blind in one eye, a Black-capped chickadee with a let protruding backwards and several birds with deformed feet or which were reluctant to put weight on one of their feet.