It’s been an exciting spring for photography.  I’ve traveled to AZ, TX and Winthrop (WA) on birding expeditions and have been hampered in my photo processing by wanting to record visitors to our own yard in Anacortes.  The diverse flow of migrants to our yard has slowed and I’m hoping that I will now have more time to devote to processing what is a very large backlog of photos from my trips.  The photos appearing in this blog post were taken in Arizona on April 10 and 11.

We were staying at a B&B just outside of Sierra Vista and this seemed to be the predominant hummingbird on the premises.  I’m very much outside my range of bird identification knowledge in AZ but I believe that this is a male Broad-billed hummingbird.

There were many female hummingbirds in the yard and I didn’t even try to sort them out.  Here is one of the females of an unknown species.

The B&B featured a wetland area and I photographed what I hope is a Marsh wren adjacent to the pond.

This Vesper sparrow was also beside the pond…

A Western Scrub-Jay also visited the property…

Moving on towards Portal, AZ, we saw this Horned lark on a fence beside the road.  Not a great photo, but those of us living in western Washington don’t get to see this bird and you have to admit, it is interesting-looking!

Our accommodations at Portal were inundated with Acorn woodpeckers.  This is a male and a very cute bird that’s fascinating to observe.  All of the ones we saw were paired and already in nest holes… you’ll probably see more photos in my next post.

Some fellow guests at our accommodation site alerted us that a full moon would rise behind the surrounding cliffs.  I couldn’t resist including this photo of the moon rising.