In the rain and wind, and at high tide on Saturday morning a friend and I decided to tour March Point to look for interesting shorebirds or waterfowl.  We had seen a Long-billed curlew in the area earlier in the week and hoped that it might be back.  In that respect we were disappointed, but we found a group of three Black turnstones working in the eelgrass that had washed up on the shore.

We continued off of March Point to the Northern Lights area of the Swinomish Reservation and there, in a parking lot, found our lost Long-billed curlew!  We were ecstatic!  We watched the curlew wander around an asphalt parking area for about ten minutes before flushing when a group of gulls flew by.  We lost it for awhile but then were surprised to see it bathing in a fresh water pond almost beside us.  We called the leader of the morning’s Skagit Audubon filed trip and he brought the group over to the casino area and we were all able to view the bird for a considerable time.  I wasn’t nearly as close as when I took the photos earlier in the week on March Point, but the bird was much more active while bathing.  I took 97 photos of the curlew and saved 30… it was very difficult disposing of  the photos.

This is an almost unbelievablely beautiful bird, especially in some of its dynamic poses.  The curlew finally got spooked again and didn’t immediately return to the pond, so we called it quits for the morning.

Before I get back to the yard I want to mention a quick, raptor count at 55mph in drizzle and declining light.  Late (with regard to available light) Monday afternoon my wife and I were returning from Costco and we decided to count raptors on the way home.  We began with the one often perched above the I-5 overpass and were up to nine by the time we reached the Memorial Highway intersection.  By the Swinomish Bridge our tally stood at 13, all presumably Red-tailed hawks.  They’re back!

I’ve ignored the yard from a photography standpoint for the past couple of weeks in favor of expeditions to nearby areas, chiefly March Point.  On Monday, October 26, 2015, I decided to spend some time in the yard… some of the results appear below…

First up, a male Anna’s hummingbird that will presumably be spending the winter with us.  We also have at least one female around the yard.

This is the first Fox sparrow we’ve seen in the yard this season.  We usually only have one, so this is it.

This (apparently) female Ruby-crowned kinglet is a welcome winter visitor.  They were absent all summer but have now returned.  We usually have more Golden-crowned kinglets but I didn’t see a single one Tuesday.

We had quite a few American robins around the yard but little group use of the watercourse until after I had left the yard.

Here’s a handsome male House sparrow which would be a lot more welcome if they weren’t so gregarious.

As in…

And finally, a photo of the bird that perhaps photographs better than all the rest… a Dark-eyed junco of the Oregon race.  The feather detail is absolutely amazing!  For about the eighth or ninth year in a row we also have one of the Slate-colored race, and it made a brief appearance during the day.

I was on my way to Mount Vernon early on the afternoon of October 21, 2015, hoping to encounter an unusual bird or two.  I wasn’t disappointed.  As I drove along the shoreline I was startled to see a Long-billed curlew standing right on the shore, only 20-25 feet from my vehicle.  I stopped and took about a dozen photos (all virtually the same) while the bird eyed me.  I eventually grew tired of the same angle and drove up the road, then circled back to see if the bird might have moved and given me a different angle.  It hadn’t.  It didn’t seem to mind my presence, and I finally left after another set of photos.

I have never seen a Long-billed curlew anywhere near this area, although I seem to remember several years ago that there were reports of three moving around in the fields of the Skagit Flats.  I made several trips searching for them but never found them.  I remember many years ago seeing over a dozen in someone’s manicured yard in one of the south Texas towns, but I felt very fortunate to be able to obtain these photos here.

In composing this blog post I started having misgivings when I checked a reference guide and saw that the Whimbrel was a very similar bird.  So I sent an email to a couple of more knowledgeable friends who provide expert advice.  One of them confirmed that the bird is a Long-billed curlew.

I returned on Thursday, October 22 and again found the curlew about 100 yards (as the proverbial crow flies) from where it had been the previous day.  This brought on another round of photos.

Preening…

“Yawning”…

And while I was photographing the curlew I noticed a small group of about five Black turnstones working the beach…

On Monday, October 19, 2015, I received a call from Linda Fleming at the Skagit Wild Bird Supply (located on Memorial Highway) that they had a leucistic American goldfinch at their feeders.  I dropped what I was doing, grabbed my camera and drove to the store to try to obtain photos.  The bird had left by the time I arrived, but it made three more appearances over the next 2-3 hours and I managed some good photos on one of those visits.

I checked in the next morning (Tuesday) and was told the bird was there again, so I went back over but two hours of observation were fruitless.  The bird has not been seen since mid-morning on Tuesday.

I enjoy some of the special birds that visit the yard from time to time and they are the ones that most often end up on my posts.  But I fill in between those special visits with the birds that are here day in and day out.  They don’t get as much press as our special visitors but they account for the majority of my photos and help fill in between special visitors.  So in this post, in part because I had few special visitors yesterday, I’m going to showcase some of our more common visitors which I photographed on Sunday, October 11, 2015.  It will be a long list, so fasten your seat belt!

Despite the chickadees’ abundance in the yard, I usually have a difficult time photographing them.  Part of this is that they are extremely active and, except when taking food from a feeder to consume while on a limb, offer precious little time for photographs.  Another problem is that, despite their numbers, they often fly back and forth between the feeders and some obscure perch in the woods where they hammer a seed to manageable pieces.  (It’s a mystery to me why these birds can’t consume even part of a hulled sunflower seed in one swallow!)  I was quite happy with obtaining several photos of this Chestnut-backed chickadee that descended to the watercourse for a bath.

While I’m mentioning volume, here are photos of a couple of Dark-eyed juncos of the Oregon race.  In another month or so we will have as many as thirty or so in the yard, and unless we have a major influx of Pine siskins, the juncos will be our most numerous yard birds for the duration of the winter.  In the spring most of them will leave for the higher elevations where they will breed.

Another common yard bird is the House sparrow, of which we probably have a dozen or more.  I would rather we didn’t have them (in part due to their gregariousness) but we have to put up with them.  However they can make a good subject for portraits.  This first bird is a male preparing to take a bath.

I was lucky to be able to photograph this female House sparrow eating a single coral berry less than ten feet from me.  The sparrow worked her way up in the bush until she could reach the berry, and it was that movement that caught my attention.  The berry clung to the bush so the sparrow ate a little of it at a time.

I occasionally take, but usually don’t post, photos of birds at some of the bird feeders.  On this day I had male (which appears first) and female Anna’s hummingbirds which came to the smaller feeder we use in the winter.  The background, only several inches from the feeder, is a window… which appears black in the photo.  I thought the effect was interesting and so included the photos here.

Other common visitors are the House finches, in this case a female.

We have a variety of sparrows.  In addition to the House sparrows pictured above, we will have a few Song sparrows (pictured first) and Golden-crowned sparrows (pictured second) that will over-winter in the yard.  In addition to these sparrows, I observed an adult White-crowned sparrow yesterday… somewhat of a yard rarity at this time of year.

We had two or three coveys of California quail in the neighborhood this year, after neither hearing or seeing any last spring or summer.  This is a sad progression… the coveys start out with a pair of adults with 10-12 chicks and the chicks get whittled down on an almost daily basis.   If a pair raises two to three chicks to adulthood it must be considered a successful breeding season.  Strangely the quail seem to disappear for the entire winter… every year.

And after grousing (I believe in my last post) about how difficult it was to photograph the Brown creepers, I had one come to the bird bath and wait patiently on a stump while another bird bathed.  It was a rare opportunity to obtain good photos of one and I took full advantage of the situation.  If you look closely you can see the fine detail in the feathers, but looking at the bird’s back in general makes my eyes blur!

And since we consider our yard a wildlife sanctuary, I don’t want to slight one of our non-avian friends… a Townsend’s chipmunk.  It’s been hanging around the yard now for several months and on rare occasions even brings a friend.  It seems to have changed its living quarters several times but keeps making trips back to the yard for food.  Does it appear that it has any food in this photo?