I spent over four hours in the yard ready to photograph birds on Memorial Day. I took some nice photos of some of the usual yard birds.

I began the day photographing a female Bushtit which, uncharacteristically, made several efforts to take a bath in the watercourse. It kept being deterred by other larger birds, and while waiting it decided to take a “leaf bath” in an evergreen huckleberry that I had sprayed. This gave me lots of opportunities for photos of a bird that can be difficult to photograph. I use the term ‘uncharacteristically’ because only in the last week have either of our pair of Bushtits shown ANY interest in water, either for drinking or bathing.

My next interest was a juvenile White-crowned sparrow. It took two or three baths, again giving me ample opportunity for photos.

By this time I had spent about three and a half hours in the yard with not much to show for my time or efforts. That all changed just before 3:30pm when a Wilson’s warbler entered the yard. This has probably been our most common warbler during the spring migration but lately we have only been averaging about one warbler per day, so this was a welcome visitor.

The warbler had barely left the yard when I spotted an orange head in our Golden Chain tree (now no longer blooming) and I quickly prepared for the possible entry of a male Western tanager. I wasn’t disappointed. The bird first flew to a small Japanese maple and landed only about six feet from me! It then few back to a staging stick by the watercourse and I began trying to photograph it. I would lose track of the bird when switching between my viewfinder and looking over the top of the camera and kept being puzzled by the bird’s location. I then realized that there were TWO males around the watercourse!

While trying to photograph the males a female appeared at the head of the watercourse, and then I had a real delimma! I wanted photos of both sexes, so I then began to concentrate on the female.

The tanagers had barely left the yard when I noticed a Black-headed grosbeak sneaking a drink from a small hanging bird bath among some leaves. I began taking photos of it when I realized that there was a second male grosbeak in our hanging platform feeder!

Immediately after the grosbeaks left either another Wilson’s warbler entered the yard or the previous one returned. All of the action with the Wilson’s warbler(s), the tanagers and the grosbeaks happened in a 15-minute periods but it cost me over four hours of my time… and that doesn’t include processing and writing this blog!