I’ve spent considerable time in the yard lately watching for spring migrants, mainly warblers.  So far I’ve had a lot of visits from Orange-crowned warblers and only two visits from one or more male Yellow-rumped warblers (Audubon’s).  Unfortunately, for the next photo, I didn’t realize that I had my 200-400mm zoom lens adjusted to the low end of the telescopic scale when I took this (and other) photos, and it cost me dearly in at least two ways that I won’t take the time to explain here.

This next photo is of a male Anna’s hummingbird (presumably the one who spent the entire winter with us!) bathing in our watercourse.  Unfortunately both species of hummingbirds have thus far shown a proclivity for bathing either early in the morning or in the evening when I must make compromises with shutter speed,and ISO.

We have a pair of crows building a nest in one of the tops of the fir trees in our front yard.  It’s located very high in the top of the tree where I fear it could be at risk from ravens… and it’s so high there is probably nothing I can do if the ravens find it.  Building progress went from sticks…

to moss gleaned from surrounding rock and some old bark mulch in the yard.  This isn’t a very good photo, but it shows one of the crows on the way to the nest with a ball of the moss.

This Rock pigeon, affectionately known as ‘Whitey) has returned for the second year.  It eats a lot of food and before the season is over it will probably be inviting a few friends, who are unwelcome because they eat a LOT of food meant for the other birds.

Finally, here is our latest visitor.  So far it has limited itself to the outer regions of the yard which is mostly natural habitat, but if it moves much closer to the house we’re going to have a Mrs. MacGregor situation here.  And if that isn’t bad enough, this morning it showed up with a friend.  And where there are two rabbits there are bound to soon be more.  Since the rabbits are relatively rare here, it probably signals a lack of coyotes.

I was rather shocked in late March to discover an almost complete Bushtit nest on one of my regular neighborhood driving routes.  The nest resembles a sock hanging from a limb, so the eggs and incubating adult(s) are hidden from other birds that might disturb the nest.  My first thought was that it was left over from last year, but I reasoned that it was so obvious that there was no way I could have missed it.  A little observation revealed it was built in very short order for this year’s breeding season.  (The Bushtits do no reuse their nests.)

I watched over a multi-day period and although the exterior of the nest was apparently finished, the birds continued to pad the inside during the time of my observations.  I was concerned when we had a heavy rain a week or so ago that the nest might get water-soaked and fail, but though it has sagged rather significantly it is still holding up.

The Bushtits are very small birds, roughly the size of kinglets but with a longer tail.  Interestingly, the sexes of the birds can be told apart by their eye color.  The male has a dark eye while the female has a mustard-yellow ring around a dark center.  (Sorry, but although I have recently successfully completed cataract surgery, I’m not an anatomist and  can’t scientifically identify the parts of the eye… especially those of birds!)

So here are a few photos of the birds, in some cases bringing nesting materials back to the nest…

For at least the past two weeks or so we’ve had an accipiter visiting the yard.  An accipiter is a raptor that generally makes its living feeding off of other birds, and yards with good habitat (which attracts birds) are good hunting grounds for the accipiters.  The two most common accipiters in this area are the Sharp-shinned hawk and the Cooper’s hawk, and their appearances, put mildly, are quite similar.

Several years ago I took some excellent photos of an accipiter on the same fence as the one pictured in the last photo below and sent them to several birders, all more skilled than I, for identification.  Four came down for the Sharp-shinned and four came down for the Cooper’s… the “final” identification was finally successfully defended by one of the birders who was a wildlife biologist.

So here are some photos of our visitor and the dates it was photographed…

March 26, 2016, visit.  This was my first photo (but not sighting) of the accipiter this year.  These birds will actually wade into brush piles to try to flush prey.

My next photos, of presumably the same bird, occurred on March 30, 2016.  (The photos are getting better!)

My most recent sighting of the accipiter was on April 3, 2016.  Ironically, the bird is standing on the same fence I mentioned in my prior comments.

These, as you can see, are beautiful birds but their arrival will totally flush your yard of other species of birds for a considerable length of time.  They never stay for long but make the rounds of yards in the neighborhood where feeders attract other birds.

On a hopefully unrelated note, I have yet to log my first warbler in the yard.  It’s still early and I’m not behind with regard to prior years, but I’m ready to start photographing warblers!

On March 26,2016, I was invited by a birding friend for an excursion on his boat.  We left the Twin Bridges Marina early in the afternoon in full sun.  The first bird we encountered was a Great Blue Heron sunning its wings.  At the time my mental thought was that the heron was drying its wings, but on further reflection I realized that there’s very little reason for a heron to get its wings wet, so I think we can just assume that it was enjoying the warmth from the sunshine.  Although I couldn’t hear it for the boat noise, I could tell by its throat that it was apparently vocalizing, and it appeared to do it even more as we left the marina area.

Our next major find was a group of Brandt’s cormorants on a buoy in Fidalgo Bay.,  This was my first sighting with identification of the species.

We later observed a group of 15-20 congregating in the water, something I’ve never observed with either the Double-creasted cormorant or the Pelagic cormorant.  The birds first formed a very tight-knit group, then moved off in a strung-out file.

Along our way we also observed several Long-tailed ducks, the two pictured below both being female.