Thursday, April 30, 2020 

I began this day thinking that nothing could eclipse the previous day’s birding/photography, but I was wrong. Here’s an overview of the day’s sightings and photography:

In the yard from about 12noon until 5pm, then again briefly from about 6:00-6:30pm.

Photos:630  

Warblers:

• Orange-crowned 
• Wilson’s (male) 
• Yellow-rumped Audubon (both males) 
• Black-throated Gray (first of season) 
• Townsend’s (first of season) 

I’ll begin with the Orange-crowned warbler, since it mustered the most visits. I estimate the species made at least 20 visits to the yard and there were at least a couple of visits when multiple representatives of the species were in the yard at the same time.

While this visitor is not a migrant, I always enjoy getting photos because it’s not a frequent visitor to the watercourse and I don’t like to photograph birds on feeders. It’s a Red-breasted nuthatch. This one is a little on the pale side.

Another frequent visitor was the Wilson’s warbler, all of which were male.

We has visits from two male Yellow-rumped warblers but I was unable to get anything but a record shot of one of them. I noticed this one high in a fir tree overhead.

We had a single visit from a Townsend’s warbler, a female.

Our next special visitor was a male Black-headed grosbeak, our first of the season.

Next up, a Ruby-crowned kinglet. This bird, and its cousin the Golden-crowned kinglet (not pictured), are normally fairly common in the yard during the winter months. This past winter however, they were conspicuously absent.

Our next special visitor, and a rare migrant to our yard, was a female Black-throated Gray warbler. This was the first of the season for this visitor and I only managed one photo, which due to quality I refer to as a “record shot”. It’s not a good photo but it’s a record the the bird was in the yard.

I’ll feature a couple of Rufous hummingbirds next. First the female feeding on the blossoms of an evergreen huckleberry.

A male Rufous hummingbird hovering above the watercourse. I never get tired of photographing these situations due to the challenge of the moving bird and the fine details of the bird’s feathers. And due to the birds’ rapid wingbeats the result you obtain is serendipity.

This is a Pacific Slope flycatcher. Since this bird is extremely rare in the yard, I suspect that it is the same one that visited the previous day.

Finally, a very unexpected visitor to the yard. I looked up from whatever I was doing to see a male Western tanager land in a madrone tree directly in front of me. Unfortunately the bird was backlit to some extent but I managed over a dozen photos before it decided to move on.