These photos were all taken in Central Texas on May 6, 2015.

This first bird is a Gray catbird which unfortunately didn’t stick around long enough for me to obtain a good photo.  This is only the second one I ever remember seeing.  

This is apparently a female Common yellowthroat, a difficult identification that my sister made after looking through Sibley at all the female warblers.  Although there is no major body of water nearby, this bird was foraging through a young yaupon thicket just above the ground… much as it would be doing on the edge of a marsh.

While I’m on the subject of warblers, here’s another photo of a male Black-throated Green warbler approaching a bird bath.

These next two birds are some of the chief alerters for the presence of an owl or snake.

This Black-crested titmouse is the more numerous of the titmouse species occurring on my sister’s property.  The other species is the Tufted titmouse and the two species sometimes hybridize.  I never saw a Tufted titmouse during my visit.

This next bird is a Carolina chickadee, very similar to our Black-capped chickadee.  The easiest way to tell the two birds apart?  Their ranges don’t overlap!

This photo is of a male Ladder-backed woodpecker, although it doesn’t show the feature for which the bird is named.

And finally, perhaps saving the best for last, a male Summer tanager in full breeding plumage.  A  first-year male, which has very interesting coloration, was shown in a prior post.

All of the following photographs were taken on May 5,2015, just outside Austin, Texas.

This is another photo of a first-year male Summer tanager…

A photo of a male Black-chinned hummingbird.  The gorget of this bird reflects a bright blue color but I saw no reflections the entire time (eight observation days) that I spent in the area.  This is the predominant species of hummingbird in the area although there are occasionally Ruby-throated hummingbirds.

This next bird is a White-winged dove.  These birds were practically unknown in the Austin area when I was growing up but they are now moving north and displacing the Mourning doves as the predominant dove.

This is an Ash-throated flycatcher.  My sister had a pair raising a family in a nest box and although this bird was photographed a hundred yards or so from the nest box, it was probably one of the parents.

This is a male Lesser goldfinch, the goldfinch that resides in Central Texas year-round.  They also host American goldfinches, but only for the winter.  The American goldfinches have now made their way to the Pacific Northwest where we will have larger numbers all summer, but some will stay and spend the winter with us.

And now on to the warblers.  This first one is a male Blackburnian warbler, the first one I have ever photographed.

And finally, a male Chestnut-sided warbler… only the second ones I’ve ever seen and the first I have ever photographed.  (I figure that it is deserving of at least two photographs!)

As those of you who frequent my blog know, I’ve been somewhat remiss for the past couple of weeks about postings.  In early May I traveled to Texas to spend some time with my sister and her family and photograph some of the birds that migrated through her “migrant trap”.  (A migrant trip is a location with very desirable habitat that attracts birds on their migration by offering food and water.)  So what you will see and hear about in the next few posts concern some of the birds of Central Texas (greater Austin area), some migrants and some summer residents.

suffered my share of woes earlier this month.  Unfortunately I found after a couple of days of photography in Texas that the ‘quality’ setting on my camera had somehow been changed so that I was recording photos in high-end JPG instead of RAW, so I have a lot of great shots of birds but some are at a somewhat lower quality.  And upon returning home I found that my internet service had been interrupted and it has taken me several calls over several days to get my service restored.  And if that weren’t enough, I picked up a cold as soon as I returned home.  But let’s get to a more positive assessment of things.

Here’s MY assessment of what I experienced but it’s not necessarily shared by my sister, who is after all, the Central Texas resident.  I normally consider the height of the Central Texas migration to be sometime in late April and that is when I have targeted my visits in the past, but circumstances this year dictated that I visit beginning in early May.  My sister and her family have set their species count for Cinco de Mayo (May 5), a date easy to remember and even easier to celebrate!  Last year I visited in late April and had subsequent phone reports listing all the birds which had shown up in early May… after I left.  For this same period last year (2014) the number of SPECIES seen on their count was about the same, but the NUMBER OF BIRDS seemed down from what I had observed earlier in past years.  And many of the species seemed to have shifted… in the earlier period in past years the area was overrun with Nashville warblers (I have scores of photos of them) but this year, in the later period we saw only a single bird.  However this year the warbler du jour was definitely the Black-throated Green warbler, with a surprising number of American redstarts thrown in.

For the record, I took 1037 photographs and after processing I retained 618.  This pretty much tracks my habits of retaining about 60% of the photos I take.  If I were selling my photographs I would probably retain a lot fewer, but I don’t sell my work and I am burdened by being a birder, so in my mind photos of birds on different perches and with different orientations each tell a story and have something different to offer.  But enough of the discourse… on to the photos!

One of the predominant birds in the Central Texas landscape is the Northern cardinal, a year-round resident.  Here we have the male and female of the species:

Next up, a bird that migrates to Central Texas and breeds there… the Painted bunting.  The colorful male is in the top photo and the more subdued female in the lower photo.  The buntings are abundant in my sister’s habitat.

This next photo is of a first-year male Summer tanager.  It’s in the process of acquiring its red plumage which eventually will make it a bird that’s very hard to miss.  You’ll see a photo of a male in full breeding plumage in a future post.

This is a male Wilson’s warbler, the warbler species that I consider the most frequent visitor to our yard in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s not beyond reason that this very bird could show up in our watercourse this spring/summer!

This is a photo of the male Golden-cheeked warbler, an endangered species found only in the Central Texas area.  The bird is threatened by parasitizing of nests by Brown-headed cowbirds and by habitat loss relating to nesting materials.  The bird will only build its nests using juniper bark and the bark can only be stripped from mature junipers.  In addition many developers are motivated to clear junipers from their land to ensure that the presence of endangered birds will not threaten development.

I’m jumping ahead a couple of days to borrow this photo of a male Black-throated Green warbler, which from rapid or casual observation can be confused with the Golden-cheeked warbler.

One of my personal favorites from spring in Central Texas is this White-eyed vireo which always seems to display an expression.  It bathes by flitting into and out of the water from a low perch.  These birds were in rather short supply this year.  In past years I have been frustrated at not obtaining a photo of the bird in flight, hitting the water.

And finally for this post, a bird I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before and certainly have not photographed, a Blue-headed vireo.  This bird closely resembles another endangered Central Texas bird, the Black-capped vireo.

All of these birds, with the exception of the Black-throated Green (as noted), were photographed on May 4.  I retained 115 photos from the day’s observations!

I’ve developed a new axiom regarding my bird photography…

It doesn’t often happen but from time to time an interesting bird won’t spend enough time in or near one of the water features for me to photograph it.  As you can imagine, this can be quite frustrating, especially if the bird is a rather rare visitor to my yard OR one which is difficult to photograph.

On April 30, 2015, I had at least three observed visits from one or more Orange-crowned warblers.  A few weeks previously I was ecstatic over the warbler’s visits, but they now occur often enough that I have pretty much developed a “ho-hum” attitude.  Even though I probably have over a hundred decent photos of this warbler, I still haven’t lost interest in photographing the species… or almost any other species, for that matter.

So as I sat in the yard observing the bird traffic on this particular day I had yet another Orange-crowned warbler visit one of my (static) water features.  I set to work documenting its visit.  As I took photograph after photograph of the bird I was suddenly startled to see, in the viewfinder of my camera, a different bird wanting to get into the small bird bath.  It was a female (as told by the yellow eye) Bushtit, a not uncommon bird but a rare visitor to the yard and a bird difficult to photograph due to its constant, frenetic feeding activity.  I immediately switched my attention to the Bushtit and took several photos of it as it impatiently waited for an opportunity to use the bird bath.

As I watched and photographed I developed my axiom, which I realized I recognized for several years…

When two different species of birds, who don’t share the same ecological niche, gather at the same bird bath at the same time… the photographer wins!

While both of the aforementioned birds might be found in generally the same habitat, the warbler makes its living working through the canopy looking for insects.  The Bushtit, on the other hand, is generally found in shrubs and bushes looking for seeds and insects.  They would usually not be found in close proximity, so they might be somewhat nervous about sharing space in a restricted area.  (Contrast this situation with Pine siskins and American goldfinches, or House sparrows and House finches.)  So in this case, the new arrival’s desire to access the water, but hesitation to do so, provides additional opportunities for the photographer to obtain photos.  And that’s exactly what happened in my documentation of this encounter!

On April 28, 2015, I spent time in the yard birding. During the prior several weeks I had been spending more time in the yard due to generally better weather and with more spring visitors. I began my monitoring on this day when I noticed a bird fluttering under the eaves of the house, a technique that some warblers and flycatchers use to glean bugs that spend the night (and subsequent day) on the sides of the house. I finally got some rather poor photos of the bird, and in processing them I identified the bird as a female Yellow-rumped warbler of the Audubon race. As those of you who monitor my blog know, I have already seen (and photographed) male Yellow-rumped warblers of the Audubon race in the yard this spring, but this was the first female I have observed.

I next had a pair of Brown-headed cowbirds visit the yard… bad news for the other birds but good news for the photography. While the male characteristically hid in the foliage, the female flew to the watercourse and I obtained several photos of her. Last season we had a pair of Dark-eyed juncos (Oregon race) raise a cowbird, and a pair of Spotted towhees did likewise. I wasn’t happy that both of these species lost a breeding season and that it basically occurred in our yard.

I needed to run a couple of errands in the afternoon and I returned to the house about 4pm. My first task was to check the watercourse from the view in the kitchen. Sitting on one of the staging sticks beside the watercourse was a(nother?) female Yellow-rumped warbler of the Audubon race. As I watched it flew out of my view but was almost immediately replaced by the first Wilson’s warbler of the season, a male. At this point I raced for my camera, stopping at the door only long enough to grab my observation chair and position it in the yard. By the time I was set up the Wilson’s warbler had decided to take a tour of the yard, and even though it stayed around the yard for several minutes, it never landed where I could take a photo. But as I got set up an Orange-crowned warbler made it’s way to the watercourse, the third visit for the species this day. Since I had photographed two prior visits by an Orange-crowned warbler earlier in the day I wasn’t that interested in more photos, but a warbler is a warbler and photos of them down’t grow on trees!

So by this point I had tallied six warbler visits and three warbler species for the day, all in my yard!

But there were a couple more notable sightings of the day, neither of which provided the opportunity for photographs. A group of Red crossbills consisting of at least two pairs of birds visited one of the static bird baths. After multiple daily visits last summer and fall their visits have grown very sporadic and I can’t count on seeing them even over a several day period.

And last, but not least, I saw movement in a small evergreen conifer bush located about six feet from me. I couldn’t make out a bird but knew that one had to be in the bush and I readied my camera just in case it popped out. It did pop out, but too close to me for a photo. It was a Bewick’s wren, a species we seldom see in the yard.

Postscript: On May 18th and 19th had other three-warbler species days.