On the evening of April 1, 2013, at 6:50pm (still good light) I was sitting at the dining room table when movement in the yard to the south of us caught my attention.  I looked up and saw a large, hairy, gray animal in the yard.  Several things raced through my mind… a reflection of something in the glass, the neighbors’ dog (which is not allowed to run unattended) but I suddenly realized that I was looking at a very healthy-looking coyote.  It was sniffing something on the ground inside our partially-fenced yard and only about 25 feet from the house.

One of our cats is an inside/outside cat (who has started spending more time outside with the nicer weather) and, not knowing where she was, I jumped up and rushed outside.  It was probably a good thing I did… our thirteen-year old diabetic (two insulin shots per day) cat was frozen in her chair out on the patio.  I chased the coyote off (it ran into the woods to the southwest of us) and the cat sprinted for the door, probably averting disaster!

We’ve lived in the neighborhood about twelve years and seen coyotes a handful of times over the years, but this is absolutely the closest one to the house we’ve seen.  But I suspect they probably come through the yard later at night from time to time.

This last week we had a rabbit adjacent to our brush pile in the front ’yard’.  That’s also a rather rare sighting and the closest we’ve seen a rabbit to the house since we lived in this location.

You’re probably thinking this web site is supposed to be about birding, and you’re right… so let’s get to them!  One of our neighbors last week found one of the Great Horned owls that’s been frequenting our neighborhood for at least the past couple of months, high in a tree in the forest behind the amphitheater.  We both obtained photographs, but due to the distance, the lack of light and some back-lighting, my photos came out very grainy.  I hear a pair of the owls calling early almost every morning and evening.  And a couple of weeks ago neighbors who live down by the wetland discovered one only about 20’ outside their door.  I narrowly missed getting photos of it.

I’ve been spending considerable time photographing birds in the yard lately, in part due to the very good weather we’ve had over the past several days.  We’re overrun with Pine siskins but have a sprinkling of other birds.  We saw our first Turkey vulture on March 31.  I didn’t record our first sighting in 2012 but in 2011 we saw our first Turkey vulture on exactly the same day!

Pine Siskin

We welcomed back a single male California quail on about March 30 and it has become a daily visitor.  I’m still trying to figure out where the quail are in the winter… I’m fairly sure they don’t migrate and almost certainly don’t hibernate (!), but we don’t we have never seen any during winter months.  I’m concerned this year because we usually have a small covey to start with and they raise a goodly number of young… which slowly are reduced in number over the summer.  The fact that we are starting with only a single male may mean that we won’t be watching any chicks this summer.

We still have at least one male and one female Anna’s hummingbird.  The male is a holdover from this past winter.  Both male and female Rufous hummingbirds have arrived for the spring and summer.  For the first time I’m beginning to observe some behavioral differences between the two species when at the feeder.  Just a couple of days ago we had a quick visit by an accipiter while I was sitting in the yard with my camera, but it was unsuccessful in snagging any of the birds in the yard and quickly left, probably after spying me sitting almost directly below it.  I counted at least five Golden-crowned sparrows in the yard yesterday and they all appeared to be acquiring their breeding plumage.  They’ll disappear soon for their breeding grounds further north.

Female Rufous Hummingbird

Male Rufous Hummingbird

We’ve also experiencing our share of woodpeckers… Downy, Hairy and Northern flickers.  The birds are fairly easy to photograph but my preferred photography location isn’t conducive to photographing the birds at their usual location… a dead tree in the yard.  If I want to photograph the woodpeckers I usually have to change my location which gives me a less than ideal opportunity to photograph the smaller, more numerous birds in the yard.

Male Northern Flicker

(All of the Red crossbills that were so plentiful and such frequent visitors into the early winter have abandoned us, but because there were so many last year and they liked our watercourse so much I’m hopeful for an early return.)

Update:

I wrote the preceding paragraph early this morning.  When I returned from lunch, ready for a nap, my wife informed me that there had been a very red bird on one of the bird baths but that she was unable to get to a pair of binoculars fast enough to identify it before it left the yard.  I wearily trudged out to the yard with my camera, vowing to take some time to try and see what she had seen.  Within about ten minutes I took the following photos.  Life is good!

Male Red Crossbill

Female Red Crossbill