The weather has been good so I’ve been spending time photographing instead of posting to my blog.  But I have several little stories to tell in connection with recent photos so I’ll get to it!

It’s not unusual for us to get kinglets in the yard, but they are much more a winter bird than a spring or summer bird here.  I was surprised a couple of weeks ago to log a Golden-crowned kinglet in our yard.  A week or so later I had a visit from two Golden-crowned kinglets.  I thought they looked a little rough at the time but I ascribed it to perhaps seeing them after they had a bath in the watercourse.  I managed a couple of photos and in processing the photos I realized that I had taken photos of a couple of juveniles, probably not too long from the nest but they could fly well.  Here are a couple of the photos…

I’ve had at least one male Black-headed grosbeak visit the yard for the past several weeks.  I have on much rarer occasions seen a female Black-headed grosbeak, but she has been a lot more cautious about entering the yard and has flown at any movement or attention on my part.  A couple of days ago, in the middle of the afternoon, I was just getting ready to abandon my observation post in the yard when a female flew into full view and landed beside the watercourse.  The sun was out and I was able to take maybe 20-30 photos under ideal conditions!  I no longer have to worry about having some good female Black-headed grosbeaks in my inventory.

I’ve been having many daily visits from Wilson’s warblers for the past several weeks.  I consider it the most prolific warbler visitor to our yard.  My inventory of Wilson warbler photos continues to grow, but I noticed a strange coincidence when processing photos a couple of days ago.

We have a Golden-chain tree in the front yard.  It’s not native and we aren’t proud of it but it offers one of the best natural perches for birds around the yard and many of them use it to stage before coming down to the watercourse or one of the feeders.  On this particular day I had photographed several Wilson warbler visits, but as I was cropping my photos (almost all have to be cropped!) I noticed a similar leaf pattern on two different series of photos taken some time apart.  I went back and checked the photos and found that I had photos of both a male and female Wilson’s warbler, both sitting on the same small twig at different times.

See for yourself!  The first photo shows a male Wilson’s warbler facing to the left and the second photo shows a female facing to the right, but they are both on the same twig.  The sexes can be distinguished by the intensity of the bird’s crown, dark-black in the male and a lighter-colored crown in the female.