Late (too late for photos) we had a Hermit’s thrush visit out yard with at least six of its cousins, American robins.  If memory serves me correctly that’s only about the second one we’ve seen in the five years we’ve lived at this location!

And just when I feel the obligation for a post, yet don’t have any fresh photos, fortune seems to shine my way.  On the way back from breakfast on 9/21 I noted that a regular visitor, a Pied -billed grebe, had returned from wherever it has been for the summer.  I needed to run an errand and a while later loaded my camera and monopod in the car and headed back down to the marina.  By this time the grebe had gone but there was a Harbor seal in the area so I decided to see if it would pass my way.  It didn’t, but I kept noticing a slight disturbance by the edge of the water… too shallow for a seal.  After watching for awhile I spied a mink.  Sometime in the past year a group of women rowers (all friends) were kind enough to take me on an excursion to photograph the mink, but we didn’t see any on the morning I was in the boat.  However I had gotten a recent report that one had been seen just outside the marina and now I had found one that had migrated deep into the marina.  I probably took about 80 photos… here are a few of the best.

While I was stalking the mink I noticed about five Killdeer along the shore and took some photos of them.

Killdeer

I thought we were supposed to have rain, but since we didn’t and it was partly cloudy I decided to spend some time in the yard since it’s been a good week for birds in the yard.  It wasn’t long before a Yellow-rumped warbler visited the watercourse… it had very pale colors and was probably either a female or a juvenile.

Yellow-rumped warbler

Next up was a Golden-crowned kinglet that made several trips to the watercourse and ended its visit by taking a bath.  I obtained some better photos of the kinglet but I’m posting this one so that you can see that in addition to the golden crown, this bird, like its cousin the Ruby-crowned kinglet, has a bright orange crown that it can selectively show.  The orange is usually covered by the yellow crown, but in this photo you can see a hint of the orange.  I think that the light coloration at the base of the bird’s beak indicates that it’s the product of this year’s breeding.

Golden-crowned kinglet with usually hidden orange crown showing

I promised some surprise photographs in my last post and we’ll be into them shortly.  Yesterday I was driving my wife through the neighborhood on our way to the store when some movement in a neighbor’s cedar tree got my attention.  I focused just in time to see a large wing protrude from behind a branch.  I backed my car around the corner (technically illegal in most jurisdictions!), parked in front of the neighbors house and got out of my car to investigate.  Fortunately I didn’t have to ask permission to trespass as the neighbor had seen me and come out of the house to see what I was doing.  A little moving around garnered us an angle where we could see a Barred owl in her tree.

For at least a year we’ve heard owls calling in the Cap Sante neighborhood.  I had other neighbors call me once when an owl was adjacent to their house, but it flushed as I crept around the house for a photo.  But this experience would be different and allow me to finally obtain some good photographs of the owl.

I rushed home and obtained my camera and returned and took over forty photos of the bird.  When I returned from the store it was still there but flew shortly after I arrived.  However my wife passed the location a couple of hours later and she said it was back.  I was hopeful that it might lay up there every day, but there was no sign of it this morning.  So without further tale, I give you one of our neighborhood Barred owls…

It was a great day for photography and the photography part of my day ended with the Barred owl.  But… the birding part of my day hadn’t ended.  At home in my office later in the afternoon my wife called to me that there was a warbler in the front yard.  Sightings had been meager over the past several weeks, but I looked out my office window and spied a Golden-crowned kinglet… and a lot of other bird activity.  I stepped out on my balcony and almost immediately saw a Brown creeper making its way up a dead tree in the yard and then soon after that I saw what was very clearly an Orange-crowned warbler.  Sorry, no photos of these birds but their presence may mean I’m back in the yard photography ‘business’.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted photos.  It’s not that I’m out of photos, but various circumstances have interrupted my photography.  Until yesterday (more about that in my next post) things had been rather slow around the yard.  I worked for several days on some small homemade feeders that would exclude non-clinging birds such as European starlings and House sparrows.  Then I went on a multi-day trip to Oregon in a futile search for migrating shorebird photographic opportunities.  So this post will be mostly catchup, but stay tuned for some exciting photographs from the neighborhood!

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A couple of weeks ago we had a few days of nice weather and I managed to find a few terns (presumably Caspian) fishing in Fidalgo Bay.  Shooting flying fowl is always challenging and can be fun, and I had a great time photographing the migrating terns as they searched for food.

Capian Tern with part of a meal!

Caspian Tern with usual head-down posture

On the trip to Oregon my bird photography was disappointingly limited, and I managed only one fairly good photo of a male Wilson’s warbler and several photos of one or more juvenile White-crowned sparrows.  I did get a few other photos but most of them were disposable!

Male Wilson’s Warbler

Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow