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.
