Friday the 13th (of March, 2015) developed into a good day for bird watching and photographing.  I spent significant time in the yard (with the aforementioned Pine siskins).  As I saw I became aware of a subtle song, the issuer of which seemed to be approaching the yard.  I had a difficult time picking the bird out of all the other bird activity, but finally managed to isolate a male Yellow-rumped warbler of the Audubon race… in almost full breeding plumage!  This was my first warbler (in the yard) for the year!  The bird traveled from a small madrone tree to the watercourse and I managed probably about 20 photographs of the bird.  Yellow-rumped warblers can be found here year-round, but in the winter they are here in much smaller numbers and are not in breeding plumage.  This bird approached the watercourse but never entered it, and after about five minutes in the yard left.

This same day I had several other welcome visitors.  Here are a couple of Red crossbills accessing a hanging water feature, but the birds don’t seem to have a preference among hanging features, static ground features or moving water features.  The bird at the back of the water feature is a Pine siskin.   

These are close-up photos of a male Red crossbill in the watercourse.

next bird is always a welcome visitor in that it gives me more opportunities to obtain photos of a bird that I find very difficult to photograph… the Brown creeper.  This creeper always works its way UP a tree, only pausing its frenetic activity if it manages to find a good-sized bug wedged in the cracks in the bark.  (Note the long, curved bill for performing the extractions.)

And finally, a couple of other species that are finally returning to the yard.  We have a pair of Northern flickers...

and also a pair of Downy woodpeckers (this one the male).

The bird that started my spring yard activities was a late afternoon, March 12, (2015) sighting of a male Varied thrush in the yard…

I was very excited when this bird showed up and migrated to our watercourse.  My wife alerted me to the bird and after verifying that it was still in the watercourse I tried to sneak out the front door, which in the last month has developed a squeaky hinge!  The thrushes can be quite in tune with human activity.  We had two frequent the construction site daily during the building of our house in the winter of 2007, but I can tell you that the birds don’t like being sneaked up on!  I managed about three photos of this bird before it left the yard and to my knowledge it hasn’t been back since.  I’ve seen and heard one or two birds in Washington Park on my walks but expect that what few we seem to have in the lowlands will be returning to their mountain retreat before long.

The Varied thrushes are beautiful birds.  We usually have at least a few around the yard in the winter, but this past winter we initially had two and then they quickly disappeared.  My theory is that they have been gone due to the accipiter that we had around for at least a couple of months as well as the fact that we have had a relatively mild winter and the cold and snow haven’t been enough to drive the birds down from the mountains.

Another species of bird that has been largely absent this past winter has been the Red crossbill.  During this same period they have begun returning to the watercourse, and on several occasions I’ve been able to see a group of up to three females and two males access one of the water features at one time.  This is a female in the watercourse…

A species that has been conspicuously absent is the House finch.  We usually have a plentiful supply of them at all times of the year, but they have been absent for the last couple of months until just recently.  I attribute their absence to the accipiter.

By mid-March we began having some spring-like weather.  There hadn’t been many unusual species of birds in the yard but with the better weather I began to spend more time in the yard.  We were over-run with Dark-eyed juncos and Pine siskins but relatively few other species.

On one of my first days I spent in the yard we had Pine siskins flying everywhere.  I surmised, it turns out correctly, that they would probably attract some other species.  I’ll deal with those in a subsequent blog post.  But as I sat in the yard the siskins were flying back and forth all around me.  On two occasions the siskins almost lit on my head.  After a while I had one light on the end of my lens as I had my face near my camera!  About three minutes later one lit on the camera itself.  My face was up against the back of the camera and my first thought was that the bird might peck me in the eye (it was probably less than two inches away), but then I realized that I was wearing the new eyeglasses that I had obtained less than two months previously.  After a few seconds the Pine siskin flew, but a while later another one landed on the end of my lens.  What I wouldn’t have given for a photograph!

The Pine siskins are extremely gregarious but also extremely aggressive among not only other species, but also their own.  They seem to enjoy being together, but if they get too close to one another it almost always evokes an aggressive response.  Pictured below is the bird’s warning posture… it leans forward, opens its beak and occasionally spreads its wings.  In this case this bird was bathing and it’s warning another bird on a rock above it not to come so close!

Here are a couple of more photos of siskins.  I’m guessing that this one is probably a male due to the bright colors on the bird.

This bird is probably either a female or a first-year juvenile.  Note the formidable sharp beak the bird has.

In my next post I’ll show some of the birds attracted by the spring weather and the presence of all the other birds in the yard.

For the past 8-9 years we’ve had a Slate-colored, Dark-eyed junco spend the winter with us.  I seriously doubt that it has been the same bird, but it seems curious that we keep having a single bird.  On some occasions I’ve thought that I might have seen two, but for the most part it’s been a single bird.

A few blog posts ago I showed our Slate-colored junco and I’m quite sure about that identification.  Not only is its appearance substantially different from the other Oregon juncos, but its behavior is different also.  And it doesn’t mix well with the other juncos… it feeds apart and doesn’t stay in the yard as long.  For reference purposes I’m showing the Slate-colored junco below which was featured in my blog some time ago.

There is a wide variety of difference in plumage coloring for the Oregon race of Dark-eyed juncos.  The birds with the darker (black) heads and cowls are probably males and the lighter colored juncos are probably females and first year birds, but there is an entire continuum with regard to the plumage.  The photo below is what I might consider is an average male.  Note all the brown plumage, both on the bird’s sides and back.

This bird below (it’s the same bird in both photos) neither fits neatly into the Slate-colored nor the Oregon race of juncos.  Earlier this winter I thought that it might be a female Slate-colored junco, but I’m just not sure.  It definitely stands out from all the other Oregon juncos.

I made a driving excursion on Tuesday, March 10 with very disappointing results.  About the best that can be said of my outing is that the Snow geese have realized that hunting season is over and are now congregating immediately beside some roads.

On Wednesday, March 11 I spent a couple of hours in the yard with better than expected results.  We are overrun with Dark-eyed juncos and Pine siskins… they probably constitute >90% of the birds in the yard by numbers.  However we had some rather rare and noteworthy visitors this morning, so I’ll get right with it.

I was in the house when I looked out and saw a Cedar waxwing land on the side of the watercourse.  I can hope for about 2-3 such sightings in a year.  Even though the bird had flown, I grabbed my camera and set up outside in the hope that the bird might return, especially since it hadn’t actually entered the watercourse.  Hope springs eternal, but not the Cedar waxwing.  I saw nothing of it for the two hours or so that I spent in the yard.

I then saw both a Fox sparrow, usually a fairly common winter visitor but absent for the last several weeks and a Song sparrow, a bird of similar visiting frequency.

Next up, our first Rufous hummingbird of the season (in this case a male).  It now joins at least one male and one female Anna’s hummingbird in preparation for the upcoming hummingbird feeder wars.  (The flying hummingbird is a male Anna’s.)

I then noticed a bird other than a siskin fly into the watercourse.  It was a female Red crossbill.  The crossbills are irregular visitors to the yard and watercourse, but we haven’t seen all that many this past winter.  It’s a welcome visitor and we’re hopeful it will bring friends and family to the watercourse this summer.

I was just about to turn it in for the morning when I peered through my camera lens at another hummingbird on the feeder that had been visited by the male Rufous earlier and discovered that we now have a female Rufous hummingbird, both arrivals on the same day.

I usually don’t take or post photos of hummingbirds on feeders, but since in this case I had photos of the actual first visitors I decided to make an exception.

And here is a final photo of one of two rather unwelcome visitors to the yard… an Eastern Gray squirrel.