If you didn’t see my last post concerning unusual visitors to the yard, all on the same day, scroll down past this post and enjoy!

The number of unusual visitors to the yard has slowed considerably since my last post.  Indeed, while I spent considerable time out monitoring the yard on 8/3/2014 I didn’t have much of anything unusual to show for it.  But just to get a photo up, here’s one of a Red-breasted nuthatch stretching a wing.

Thanks to a helpful comment from a viewer I had changed my “staging sticks” around the watercourse to provided a different setting for the birds.  I positioned the new staging stick to where it seemed stable, and it was for most of the afternoon.  However at one point it got loaded with a menagerie of American goldfinches, House sparrows and probably a couple of other birds.  As I watched the entire stick flopped over into a new position, sending not only ‘perchers’ but bathers into the air.

The previous day (8/2/2014) I also spent time in the yard.  My prime photos from that afternoon were of a (my guess is a juvenile male) Black-headed grosbeak that, like all his kin, like to sneak into the yard and look around without being seen.  I was very patient and still and the bird finally flew down to one of the staging sticks about a foot over the watercourse and stayed for a relatively long time.  (That translates into about 20 photos!)

I find it unusual in that of all the grosbeaks I’ve ever had visit the yard, I’ve NEVER seen a single one actually drink from or bathe in ANY of the water sources around the yard!

During the course of the afternoon on 8/4/2014 I noticed a number of gulls, white with black wingtips, soaring high overhead.  I’ve seen them before and guessed that they were Mew gulls, but on this afternoon I was able to photograph some and confirm their identity.  The first of these photos is presumably of a juvenile.

And as for the rest of 8/4/2014, I was just about ready to give it up after several hours when I noticed a Black-capped chickadee hanging upside down from a cluster of red currant berries, apparently picking out some of the seeds.  Chickadees spend a significant amount of time upside down but I rarely get a chance to photograph them in that position because they are almost always high in the trees when demonstrating that skill.  The situation lasted long enough for me to record the action with about a dozen photographs.