April 24, 2020, proved to be another productive yard birding day.  I was in the yard from about 1pm until about 4:30pm and then again for a short time around 6pm.  During that time I observed about 10 Orange-crowned warbler visits and two Yellow-rumped warbler visits plus four visits from one or more Steller’s jays.  

I’ve been spending a lot of thought lately as to how I could better document visits from spring migrants and other rarer birds that arrive in the yard.  In past years I have recored a weekly tally of all visitors, with the number being the highest number I saw at any one time.  In cases which I could make a clear distinction between/among birds I would add them to the total.  The problem with this method is that I might record a count of two for a species seen during the week, but I might have actually had multiple single visits in a day or even every day for a week, so the count didn’t actually reflect my (or the birds’) activity.  So now I’m trying to think of a way to move towards number of sightings per day for each of the rarer and spring migrant species.  This would better reflect the flow of visitors through the yard and give me a better picture of the migration that I could use in the future… although each year is going to be different.  And this year is somewhat unique in that I didn’t make my annual trip to Texas and the COVID-19 virus has given us all some extra time for such activities.  (Wait, don’t tell me… too much information!)    

First, a little good news.  I was gratified to see that the male Downy woodpecker that is apparently blind in one eye survived the winter and apparently has a mate.  I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to fly (and land) without vision in one eye since two eyes are required for depth perception.  

And the Black-capped chickadee with a severely crippled leg also survived the winter and seems to be doing fine.  I photographed it hanging from the inverted suet feeder with no apparent problems.  

But to add to this inventory, I observed and photographed a White-crowned sparrow (one of three we have in the yard) favoring one leg.  I saw and photographed the bird on several occasions standing on one leg but then I also saw it use the leg on a couple of occasions.  So I assume that the leg must be injured but usable to some extent.  

So let’s get on to a few of the other 277 photos I took on this day… 

The most newsworthy appearance for the day was the return of a Steller’s jay, a rare visitor to the neighborhood. I topped off my inventory with 47 ‘keeper’ photographs taken during this species’ four visits to the yard.

I counted at least ten visits by Orange-crowned warblers to the yard, and two of the visits involved pairs.

The Yellow-rumped warblers (all Audubon’s) and all or most males, have been difficult to photograph so far this year. On this day I had two visits but only managed about two photographs that were keepers.

Our hummingbird visitors have dropped significantly over the past couple of weeks… other friends have voiced the same concern. This female Anna’s hummingbird is accessing the blooms on a native Red currant.

Strange bath-fellows… this White-crowned sparrow bathing with a male House sparrow. Thankfully these species don’t hybridize!

And finally, late in the day, a pair of California quail. For the first time ever we carried a covey of about 13 through the winter. In past years we wouldn’t see ANY quail, and it was always a mystery where they went.