It’s been a while since I’ve posted to my blog.  In October my wife and I made a trip to north Texas to visit relatives.  Thankfully I didn’t drag my photographic gear along for the ride.  We left sterling weather here in Anacortes for days of heavy rain in Texas.

Added to my gap in posting has been our weather here since we returned.  There’s a lot less light, shorter days and less to photograph.  Here’s a “catch-up” posting of what I have been able to glean over the past month.

Kinglets of both species (this a Golden-crowned) continue to utilize the watercourse and bird baths.  

If I haven’t mentioned it before, there’s ben a return of one or more Dark-eyed juncos of the Slate-colored race, but if there is more than one they are never in the yard at the same time.  I took this photo of an apparent female on 10/6/2018.

For comparison, here’s a photo of a male I took on 10/30/2018 and it’s obviously not the same bird, so I guess we have had at least two here this fall.

This was about our last White-crowned sparrow we had in the yard… they’ve been gone for a couple of weeks now.  We had at least two pair that nested in the area this past summer, but one pair raised a Brown-headed cowbird.

This rare visitor (a Mourning dove) to the yard appeared 10/8/2018, our first visit from one in several years.  At the end of the summer we had several Eurasian Collared doves visiting the yard but the slate was apparently wiped clean by a Peregrine falcon that visited the neighborhood.

This Cooper’s hawk continues to visit the yard.  I took this photo on 10/21 and I was alerted by a neighbor that (presumaby the same hawk) was perched in a madrone tree in our yard as recently as yesterday (11/1/2018).  I was able to view it but it was late in the afternoon, raining and not in a location where it could be successfully photographed.

A little warning here!  If you believe in reincarnation, you don’t want to return as a crab and risk the possibility of being snagged by a gull!  It’s a gruesome way to die!

This crow is lobbying to be cut in for a snack, and it finally succeeded in snatching a leg and taking it to a boat for a meal.

Belted kingfishers are difficult to photograph as they are extremely alert and wary.  But I managed this photo of a male down at the Cap Sante Marina on the same day I photographed the gull and the crow.

And that, friends, more or less brings you up to date with my photography!