I logged another interesting day in the yard on Sunday, September 29, 2019.  At mid-morning we had birds all over the yard, but most noticeably high in our large fir trees.  I was hoping for some photos but the birds were too far away (high).  I could see lots of chickadees, juncos and perhaps kinglets and warblers but the angle was too high for my heavy telephoto lens and I didn’t have binoculars with me.  

We left to run errands and I watched the first half of the Seahawks game… until I judged the win safe and then went back to the yard.  It was an interesting afternoon.  

My first interesting guest was a Golden-crowned kinglet that landed on a bird bath beside me several times… too close to photograph!  It finally flew to the watercourse and I was able to obtain a single photograph of it.  

The next interesting birds that appeared where male and female finches.  The male looked substantially different from the many other House finches we have around and then I saw a female in the watercourse and that was what raised my suspicions about the possibility of having a couple of Purple finches in the yard.  I confess to being unable to differentiate the male House finch from the male Purple finch, but the females of the species are easier to identify.  (I’ve known many people that misidentified male House finches only on the basis of color, but the males have a very wide color variation and I’ve never known color to be a safe means of identifying the males of the two species.)  The female Purple finches have a broad, light but subtle stripe over the eye and the female in our watercourse seemed to fit that criteria. I never actually saw the pair together but they were in the yard at the same time and apparently left at the same time.  The female returned late in the afternoon but I didn’t get better photos.  

I hesitated posting these photos and calling them Purple finches, but I ran the photos by a friend who is a more experienced birder than I and this friend identified the birds as Purple finches.  So you can make up your own mind!  

My next interesting guest was a Townsend’s warbler which I managed to photograph extensively.  I suspect that this is a first-winter male but you shouldn’t consider that a positive identification.  (You might remember from my last post that I saw three Townsend’s warblers in the yard at one time on 9/27.) 

My next unusual visitor, and a very rare one indeed, was a Cap Sante Collared junco!  

Just kidding folks!  But I did have this leucistic Dark-eyed junco of the Oregon race.  Note the white collar on this male.  It doesn’t completely encircle the bird’s neck but it clearly delineates the feathers between the bird’s hood and back.  I’m not sure how much of a bird’s plumage needs to be white in order for the bird to be considered leucistic, but I’m using the term to describe this bird!  

The last uplifting visitors to the yard on this day were at least three Yellow-rumped warblers, at least one of which was an Audubon’s race and probably a male.  There were several juvenile Yellow-rumped warblers for which I couldn’t identify either race or sex.  

I’m sorry to end on a down note, but I had a male House finch that had the facial tumor disease and it was in sad, but apparently functional, shape.  I haven’t seen many diseased House finches the past several months, but I had an American goldfinch a couple of weeks ago the apparently suffered from the disease.  It’s the first time I’ve seen the disease in birds other than House finches.  

While I’m on the subject, I seem to have had an abnormal number of avian visitors with injuries this year.   A male Downy woodpecker that was blind in one eye, a Black-capped chickadee with a let protruding backwards and several birds with deformed feet or which were reluctant to put weight on one of their feet.    

After a few heavy showers in the morning I glanced outside and saw the yard was filled with birds, so I took my binoculars outside to do a little bird watching.  I immediately spied a male Varied thrush, our first of the season, sitting in a fir tree at the far edge of the yard.  I retreated inside to get my camera and when I again emerged a female Varied thrush flew into the woods.  I was now determined to wait long enough for them to return to the yard.  That wouldn’t happen, but while I was outside there were plenty of other photographic subjects.  

Next up was a Brown creeper heading for the watercourse.  I managed a couple of photos of a very active bird which spent considerable time bathing.  I spent the next 1.5 hours outside photographing birds and finally, when there was a little letup in the activity I went inside to process photos.  I hadn’t even begun to download photos when I looked outside from my second-story office and saw a Townsend’s warbler in the front yard.  I raced back down and began taking more photos.  We see only one or two Townsend’s warblers a year and I found myself watching THREE that were in the yard at the same time!  

At some point in my observations a rare (for the yard) Hermit thrush accessed one of our water features, and although wary, offered me the opportunity for a lot of photographs.  

So here is a list of the significant birds I observed in the yard this day… 

Six SPARROW species : 

• Golden-crowned (3) 
• White-crowned 
• Song 
• Towhee, Spotted (2) 
• Junco, Dark-eyed — Oregon (>4) 
• House 

Three THRUSH species: 

• Varied (m&f) 
• Hermit 
• Robin, American 

Two WARBLER species: 

• Yellow-rumped (many) 
• Townsend’s (3) 

Two WOODPECKER species:  

• Downy (m)
• Flicker, Northern (m&f) 

Two FINCH species: 

• House 
• Goldfinch, American 

Creeper, Brown 

Kinglet, Golden-crowned 

Chickadee, Black-capped 

Chickadee, Chestnut-backed 

Nuthatch, Red-breasted 

(Species in italics were photographed.)  

And now for some photos:

On the afternoon of September 18, 2019, I was sitting in the yard when a White-crowned sparrow entered the watercourse for a bath. It came and went from the watercourse 15-20 times over a less than ten-minute period (as measured by the meta-data that is attached to my photos). All of the following photos are of the same bird and were taken within about a foot of the same location…and they are only some of the photos I took. It demonstrates just how I can take so many photos in the yard in a single day. Since the bird was moist and preening in some of the photos, its feathers appear rather fluffy.

On September 19, 2019, I noticed a Pied-billed grebe in the Cap Sante Mariana Basin. Over a period of several years we have had a grebe come and go from the basin and I have obtained some very good photos of the bird(s).

The next morning I again saw waterfowl and returned to the basin with my camera. I found two Hooded mergansers and the birds were very accommodating with regard to letting me approach, observe and photograph them. The birds were fishing and I was able obtain a lot of good photos of the birds with fish in their mouths. I had to depend on amore knowledgable birder for sex identification wince the male merganser ws not in breeding plumage, which would have made the sex identification infinitely easier! So take my sex labels with the proverbial grain of salt!

In the process of photographing their fishing activities I managed to obtain photos of the female preening.

Finally, just as I was leaving, a pair of Killdeer flushed and, more due to luck than skill, I managed to photograph one of them while it was in flight and obtain pretty good focus against a difficult background. You can see a Great Blue heron in the background.

About 5pm on September 16, 2019, I had been settled into my yard post after running errands for about twenty minutes with little activity in the yard. Suddenly things took a dramatic turn. I first saw an Orange-crowned warbler which was quickly followed by a second. Then a female Black-throated Gray warbler showed up in the same area. It was followed by a third Orange-crowned warbler! Then a Hutton’s vireo suddenly showed up in the middle of the mix and began trying to dive-bathe in what had become a decidedly crowded water feature. I then noticed a fourth Orange-crowned warbler in the yard, and glancing back at the water feature, saw a male Wilson’s warbler flitting low over the ground near the water feature.

One other sighting I want to mention that didn’t appear in my original post… during all the activity in the yard I saw some movement in our Golden Chain tree and saw, for the second time in the last week or two, a female Western tanager hiding in the leaves. I was able to get two quick record shots but nothing I want to post.

I think I mentioned in a prior post that migrants often travel in mixed-species waves, and I was right in the middle of one!

Almost all of the activity took place in a smaller stone bird bath across the yard… not my primary/optimal photography area. So the photos I obtained were not optimal, but I’m going to post a couple anyway. The show ended with the appearance of an accipiter, probably the same one which had ruined photographic possibilities for an Orange-crowned warbler earlier in the day.

The bad photo I obtained in the afternoon (the one above is one I took in the morning) included a band on the accipiter’s right leg that I can at least partly read. Almost exactly two years ago I photographed one in the yard and was able to locate the bander in Seattle! I’m trying again with this one!

While I’m at it I want to mention that yesterday (9/15/2019) I had a visit by a flycatcher which gave me several opportunities for excellent photos. This was a VERY rare visitor for our yard! This bird was a terror around the yard, chasing other birds. I’m guessing that this was probably a Pacific Slope flycatcher, but flycatchers are even more difficult to identify than fall warblers and you shouldn’t take my word for the identification!