On Monday, October 5, 2015, I spent a couple of hours in the yard.  We’ve had a lot of American robins and a few European starlings using the watercourse quite frequently over the past few days, and no one loves a bath more than those two species.  While I was in the yard I also observed almost continuous visits from one or more Golden-crowned kinglets, and one finally took the bait and entered the watercourse for a bath.  I probably took in excess of 40 photos… it’s such a cute bird to photograph!  In this case this is a male, which isn’t obvious from the following three photos.

So how do I know the bird is a male?  In this photo the bird is showing its orange crest, a feature it has difficulty hiding if it takes a thorough bath!

And I believe I’ve mentioned in prior posts that we’ve had a male Varied thrush in the yard for a couple of weeks now, and this past weekend it was joined by a female.  They too are attracted by the water and I finally managed some photos of the male.  I hope to obtain better photos as the season progresses.

Friday, October 2, 2015, provided a change of weather from what we had been experiencing earlier in the week.  The day was overcast and much cooler.  My wife called me on the phone shortly after I finished my walk and coffee and told me that the yard was full of American robins.  I was home a few minutes later and they were still around, remaining until after I had taken a mid-morning nap.  I decided that there were probably some good photos to be had and that there was a good chance that our recent Varied thrush visitor might be among them.  I retrieved my camera and took to the yard.  There was no Varied thrush (either by sight or sound) but the birds just kept coming… especially the American robins.

Here are some of the more innocent photos of the robins staging around the watercourse…

There were so many robins trying to use the birdbath that conflicts inevitably arose.  Here are just a few of the incidents of threatening posture that I recorded…

I was hoping that all the activity would bring in a few rarer visitors, but aside from an absolutely featureless Yellow-rumped warbler and a flock of about 40 Snow geese headed south, it was pretty much the same old crowd.

Here’s one of the many European starlings that came down from the treetops for a bath…

and one of our first Golden-crowned sparrows which will presumably be with us for the rest of the winter…

There have been no recent unusual discoveries in the yard, lately.  We continue to have daily visits from a male Varied thrush but it’s very shy and continues to elude me.

However we are having fairly frequent visits from one or more Golden-crowned kinglets which, after breeding at the higher elevations, will be spending the winter with us.  Earlier this week I obtained some nice photos of a male kinglet, which are posted below.  We know this is a male from the orange ‘crown’ in the middle of the yellow crown, as can be seen very faintly in the second photo.

For whatever reason, I find it difficult to get really good photos of chickadees, both in exposure and especially with regard to focus.  I can usually fix the exposure in processing (as I do with most of my photos) but the photos which are not in sharp focus get discarded.  This photo of a Black-capped chickadee looks a little under-exposed but I think it looks better that way.

I had friends today who asked me what the difference was between the Black-capped chickadee and the Chestnut-backed chickadee, so I’m going to take this opportunity to show a couple of photos of the latter.

Here’s a photo of a male Anna’s hummingbird which I trust will be spending the winter with us.

And finally (it seems there’s always a “finally”), a photo of what I am referring to as a leucistic female House sparrow.  This may be pushing the term a little in this case, but I’m on a roll this year!

On September 16, 2015, I had at least seven juvenile Cedar waxwings visit our watercourse for baths. I saw no adults with them and I can’t remember ever seeing more than a pair of adults in our yard, although in Texas the waxwings often hang out in flocks of twenty or more.

On September 17, 2015 I observed a leucistic Dark-eyed junco in the yard. The term ‘leucistic’ refers to a lack of color in a species’ normal plumage colors, manifested as white feathers.  In the past I’ve photographed a leucistic American robin, Spotted towhee and Varied thrush.  I noticed that on one or two occasions this bird did not integrate well with the rest of the juncos and I have not seen it again since my original sighting, despite increasing numbers of juncos in the yard.  .