On October 1, my wife and I drove to the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood to visit the Apple Store.  Upon leaving the store my wife wanted to do some shopping and I decided to wait near one of the main intersections of the mall walkways located outdoors but very surrounded by buildings.  This particular area featured a fountain that, at irregular intervals, briefly ejected streams of water out of three tubes that rose into the air and then fell back on river rocks below.  The fountain feature was round and approximately 10-12 feet in diameter.  There were about four surrounding beds with the usual landscaping-fare plantings… hardly an environment that would attract any interesting birds!

I passed some of my time breaking off small pieces of a dog treat and feeding them to a male Brewer’s blackbird (with only one functional leg) and its mate.  When my wife returned from shopping I pointed out the blackbird and as we stood to leave she spied a small sparrow in one of the flower beds directly behind us.  It was standing rather quietly among some of the plantings no further than 3-4 feet away… in other words, I was virtually towering over it.  She noted it wasn’t the expected House sparrow and I took a closer look.  It was a Lincoln’s sparrow!

I can’t imagine what a Lincoln’s sparrow was doing in that environment.  In fact, until just a few years ago, I wouldn’t have been sure that I could have mounted a successful expedition to find one!  Sibley notes that it is found in “grassy, weedy, and brushy areas, often near water”… which is exactly where I now know to look for the species.  But the only part of that habitat description that applied in this instance was the water of the fountain… which didn’t even include a standing pool of water.  And since the fountain and associated planting beds were at a main intersection within the mall, people, including small active children, were walking all around the sparrow’s little island of refuge.

Last things first…

The birding has been very good lately… in fact, it only slacked off for a week or so in early September.  But things have been so good lately that on September 30 (2014) I logged a new yard bird… a Hutton’s vireo!  At the time I was photographing the bird I was under the impression that I was photographing our first fall Ruby-crowned kinglet.  But in processing the photos I realized that the bird wasn’t a kinglet and in all probability was a Hutton’s vireo… the two birds closely resemble each other.  One of my “better birder” friends confirmed my identification.

In vireo fashion, which I’ve only come to realize this year, this vireo flew to the water and bathed “on the fly”.  I’ve observed this with the White-eyed vireo in Texas in May and the Warbling vireo in our yard earlier this summer.

I was fortunate in being able to get a couple of decent photos before the bird began hitting the water… once it was wet, it became much more difficult to identify.

We continue to have many Yellow-rumped warblers visiting the yard every day… more than I’ve ever seen in the yard previously.  Most appear to be of the Audubon’s race, but many are so pale as to defy my species identification.  (Last spring I was fortunate to be able to get both races in the same photograph!)  I believe that the bird pictured below is a male of the Audubon’s race.

We’re up to about 3-4 Dark-eyed juncos of the Oregon race in the yard.  In most past years the birds have left for higher elevations for their breeding season, but this year we had a pair that remained around the property.  Unfortunately the product of their breeding season was a Brown-headed cowbird, which I think I documented in a previous blog post.  By winter this will be our most numerous yard bird unless the Pine siskins, which I haven’t seen in well over a year, return in previous numbers.  In this photo you can clearly see the outer white tail feathers, a real clue for identifying a junco in flight.

And the final photos are of House finches, usually regular visitors although they did disappear from the yard for several weeks during the breeding season.

I was at the Post Office yesterday and noticed that they have a ‘forever’ stamp series based on songbirds. So those of you who consider yourself birders and enjoy advocating for them can now use forever stamps with pictures of songbirds. And since the stamps are good for first-class postage forever, you should avail yourself of several sheets (20/sheet).

About 3pm on September 26, 2014 I had an amazing experience… maybe my best of what has been a very nice, extended summer of birding in the yard. Since my morning walk in Washington Park had been rained out, I was considering taking a makeup walk in the middle of the afternoon. As I was tidying up the kitchen in preparation for leaving, I glanced out the window towards the watercourse and was surprised to see American robins all over the yard and the water features. I estimate that there were at least a dozen in the yard, but the actual number could easily have been twice that. I realized that there might be a Varied thrush among them and so started watching a little more intently. It was difficult observation… the robins and many other species of birds were moving all around the yard, trees and water features. There was no Varied thrush among them but I saw something even better… a Swainson’s thrush. How can it be ‘better’? If the past is any indication, the Varied thrushes will eventually be coming down from the mountains and will visit our yard daily for several months this winter. The Swainson’s thrush is a much rarer visitor to our yard and will migrate south for the winter so we won’t have even a possibility of another sighting until spring.

The activity in the yard was like a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds. In the space of about 15 minutes I saw:
• 2 Brown creepers
• 2 Yellow-rumped warblers (Make that three Yellow-rumped warblers. In addition to the two pale (probably first-year females I observed in the yard, while I was writing this I just spotted a male Audubon’s Yellow-rumped warbler still in breeding plumage!)
• A pale female Western tanager (which I thought was long-gone!)
• At least one Spotted towhee
• Our first Golden-crowned sparrow returning for the winter season
• A Song sparrow, an as of late very rare visitor since our previous winter resident(s) left in the spring
• And the usual cast of Chestnut-backed and Black-capped chickadees, House sparrows, and House finches.

After about fifteen minutes there was some abatement of the activity, but unfortunately one of the Yellow-rumped warblers flew into the window right in front of me and spiraled to the ground below. I knew my presence in the yard would result in the birds leaving, but I wanted to do what I could for the warbler. It was conscious and I reached down and lifted it off the ground, at which time it made a rapid recovery and flew 30-40’ across the yard. It wasn’t a great flight but at that point I felt that it would survive.

So for the past couple of weeks I had thought that my photographic activities in the yard were winding down, but if it doesn’t rain tomorrow I think I’m going to have to be back out in the yard for a while!

Sorry… no photos. And this is my first posting in a couple of weeks. I’ve apparently successfully copied my photos from the 1T internal hard drive on my laptop to a new external 2T drive. I have a few photos from the yard, from an excursion out into the county and I also took a four-day trip to Winthrop which generated a considerable number of photos. Due to the overhead associated with the image transfer I didn’t process images for a few days, and by the time I got up the courage to download to the external hard drive I had accumulated over 470 images that I’m still trying to process! So I do have some new photos and I’ll try to post some photos before too long.

DON’T FORGET THE SONGBIRD STAMPS available at the US Postal Service!

I’ve borrowed the title of one of my favorite Bob Dylan’s songs for the title of this blog. There are changes in the air and I’m getting ready to place them before you.

The first change is that we are probably experiencing our last few days of summer-like weather and it’s changing the conditions under which I take photographs in the yard. The best light for photography is changing almost daily.  Just a few short weeks ago there were just a couple of periods in the day when I did NOT have good light on the yard and watercourse.  The conditions have now reversed and there are just a few times a day when I DO have good lighting conditions.  The sun is quickly sinking lower in the sky, and as it falls along the ridge of the large fir trees to our south the yard becomes a patchwork of light and dark which changes from minute to minute and, with the clear skies we have been having lately, adds a high propensity for backlit subjects.

So it has become time for me, for the first time in several months, to switch my base of operations from the yard to the greater county.  My first fall excursion occurred on Wednesday (9/10/2014).  My first good photographic find occurred just north of Fir Island when, with the help of a little pishing, I discovered a Black-capped chickadee and at least FOUR Bewick’s wrens… and those birds are the ones pictured in this blog.

Of note was a Spotted sandpiper at the boat launch on the HQ tract on Fir Island and a large number of Lark sparrows along a ditch in the vicinity of Dodge Valley Road.  While I did obtain photographs, they were not good enough to post here.

The second change you should see is new banners at the top of some of my pages.  I’ve been remiss in not changing those for several months and since I was out on a mini expedition I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the local flora.

The final change that’s occurring is a technical one in which most of you won’t be interested, but since it’s occupying a considerable amount of my time and attention and is of considerable importance to this blog, I’m laying it out anyway.  I’ve just about reached the capacity (1T) of my internal hard drive.  Up until now I have been able to store ALL of  my photos on my laptop’s internal hard drive, but that is coming to an end.  I could have purchased a 2T internal hard drive but for various reasons too technical to get bogged down in here I’ve decided to move ALL my photographs to a 2T external hard drive.  I’ve successfully copied all my photographs (64,627 images @ 575GB!) to a new external hard drive and now I need to figure how to link Adobe Lightroom’s catalog to the photographs in the new location.  That last step is still pending!

As fall progresses I’ll be switching more of my photography to vehicle excursions and I probably won’t get as many really good photographs as I manage in the more controlled/favorable conditions in my yard.  In addition to the photos I’ve displayed in this blog, I’ve already added more to the hopper but first want to wait for all the technical matters to be resolved before I process any more photos.  But I think you’ll enjoy what you see in my next blog.

With regard to the seasonal changes mentioned in this blog I would like to draw your attention to some appropriate music for the occasion.  Two of my favorite folk songs address the changes of the seasons that we’re experiencing… the song, Changes, sung by Gordon Lightfoot/Phil Ochs (not together) and Simon and Garfunkle’s song, Leaves that are Green.  Happy autumn!

The good weather continues as do my bird sightings in the yard.  I spent the major part of Sunday afternoon in the yard and was rewarded with multiple sightings of three different species of warblers (Townsend’s, Yellow-rumped and Orange-crowned) as well as multiple visits from Red crossbills.

One or more Townsend’s warblers made two extended, widely separated visits to the yard.  One occurred just after I began observing shortly after noon and the other in the middle of the afternoon shortly after returning to the yard from my second nap of the day!  I was able to take many, many good photos of the warbler(s).  These sightings bring the number to three for the year, and that’s three times the number of sightings we’ve had in any other year.

We also had visits from one or more Orange-crowned warblers…

and visits from at least two Yellow-rumped warblers.

The Red crossbills were also active with visits from one or more males and one or more juveniles.