If you’ve been following this blog you learned that I finally received my birding lens (Nikon 200-400mm f4.0) back from Nikon’s LA repair facility in early September. I was without the lens for about EIGHT weeks while Nikon procured a needed part that had failed. During that time I resolved to purchase a new lens, chiefly for backup purposes. I got on a couple of waiting lists and after a little over a month I was able to purchase a Nikon 500mm f5.6 prime lens, a difficult to obtain lens due to apparent production shortages. (I have a friend who had been waiting for over a year for one of these lenses and, as fortune intervened, I was able to procure one for him at the same time as my own!) The new lens is very sharp and it will probably become my primary lens and I’ll use the old (repaired) lens as backup… but I’m still working through that strategy.

In the meantime I decided to change the way I documented bird sightings in the yard. After spending 12+ years of trying to document weekly sightings I’ve decided to discontinue that practice and just document special birds on an annual fall and spring migration list. This is stiil definitely a work in progress and I expect it to evolve more this fall. In the meantime the list will allow me to bring attention to interesting birds that I’ve photographed in the yard in the past month.

As most of you are probably aware, we had heavy smoke from wildfires in the area for many days and I wondered if that might have affected migration. We had what I considered a very muted migration this fall. There was also a very large die-off of migrants in New Mexico that was apparently due to early snow, but that shouldn’t have affected our southward migration here.

Getting to sightings, we had a single Cedar waxwing show up in the yard on September 5, but I didn’t get a photo. On several previous days a waxwing showed up by itself, a somewhat strange occurrence for such a gregarious bird.

On September 7 we had a single Varied thrush show up in the yard, our earliest Fall appearance by far. I managed a distant photo… the species hasn’t returned.

On September 8 a juvenile Hutton’s vireo (featured in my prior blog post) made it’s appearance and we also had a Black-headed grosbeak, a species that had been gone from the yard for over a month.

On September 11 the Hutton’s vireo again made its appearance as did our first Fox sparrow for the winter season.

September 14 was a banner day, with a Hermit or Swainson’s thrush, two visits from the Black-headed grosbeak, three visits from Orange-crowned warblers and a Pacific Slope flycatcher.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to obtain a photo of the thrush, which I assumed was a Hermit thrush due to the time of year and the fact that it had a reddish tail which contrasted with its back. However, we also had thrushes on the 18th and the 20th and I decided that we might have had one of each. (More about this in my next post.)

Temporarily leaving the migratory category, I took these photos of a White-crowned sparrow and a male Northern flicker in the yard on the same day.

Straying from the yard, on September 15 I drove by the Cap Sante Marina and saw two yellowlegs in the northwest corner. I returned with my camera and obtained photos. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think these are Greater yellowlegs as opposed to Lesser yellowlegs.

On September 18 I took my new lens on its maiden outing to Fir Island where I saw three Turkey vultures, a female Wood duck, several Yellow-rumped warblers, a Townsend’s warbler and a Common yellowthroat, but I obtained no photos worth posting.

We’ve had other significant visitors that I’ll cover in my next blog post.

I had been scheduled to teach a birding photography class at the Anacortes Senior College in May, 2019. That course, as so much else that has changed in our lives since last year, was cancelled due to the COVID virus. I’m going to take the opportunity this site provides to illuminate an important asset for birding photography in your yard and illustrate my point with photos of a juvenile Hutton’s vireo I took on September 11, 2020.

Perhaps the most important attraction feature you can provide in your yard is water. There are many species of birds that can’t be attracted by any food you provide. These are generally insect-eaters such as warblers, vireos, flycatchers and the like. However, almost all birds are attracted to water. Moving water is best… the moving water and sound helps attract birds’ attention. But a simple stationary bird bath will also attract birds.

I prefer that my photos not appear to have been taken without any man-made object in the photo. So when you view my photos, if you were’t privy to the environment I’ve created in our yard, you could imaginatively assume that the photo was taken in a purely natural setting. I work hard creating such an environment and chief among my tools are what I refer to as “staging objects”, sticks and rocks strategically placed around feeders and water sources not only to attract birds, but also to facilitate photographing them.

And just as importantly, these staging objects give you, as a photographer or observer, more opportunities (in both time and poses) to photograph or view a bird in a number of different settings. If you are a photographer, I believe it is important that you vary staging perches from time to time so that all your photos don’t appear to have been taken at the same exact location. To facilitate this you should use objects that are three dimensional… rotating the staging object changes its orientation and therefore the areas on the object where birds will land. I keep an inventory of staging sticks so that I can rotate them into a setting and keep the photographs fresh.

When I have the time I like to eliminate the visual aspect of a saw cut on the end of a staging stick, which indicates what might not be a natural setting. The best technique I have found for this is to burn the end of the stick using a torch, then rub the burned end in dirt to eliminate the burned area!

With regard to rocks, you may have a couple of large prominent rocks and it may be tempting to upend a pointed end. By placing such a rock with a FLAT side at the top you can cap it with another rock and then rotate the top rock to keep things fresh. While rotating staging objects may not be important for an observer, it will eventually become important for a photographer! It’s not unusual for me to take over 300 photos of yard birds in a single day, so rotating perches is important!

To get on with this lesson, as I previously noted I’m posting photos of a single juvenile Hutton’s vireo (an unusual visitor) on a single visit to the yard. I took a total of 41 photos of this bird on five different perches. I retained a total of 15 photos. Why did I retain so many? Most were quality photos (this bird is apparently a juvenile and looks a little rough) and depicted the bird in multiple poses… oriented to the left, right, looking over its shoulder, leaning off a perch, etc. Here are some of the photos…

You can probably pick a favorite, as can I, but I just couldn’t delete good photos of a relatively rare bird!

So I hope I have made my point concerning the value of staging objects in your yard.

PS: Donations of staging sticks are gratefully accepted. One of my best staging sticks was donated by an architect friend who understood the value of three dimensional objects!

Thursday, September 3, 2020, was a very welcome day. In the early afternoon I received my Nikon 200-500mm f4.0 lens back from the Nikon repair facility in LA… about EIGHT WEEKS to the day that they received it! I was worried that I wouldn’t receive it in time for the fall migration that has just started here. (I had our first migrant, an Orange-crowned warbler, visit on August 31 and missed getting photos of it.) I didn’t get a chance to use the lens due to other activities in progress, but I did get out the next day.

On September 4, 2020, I resolved to scout birding opportunities towards Fir Island. March Point turned up nothing so I continued to the Pleasant Ridge area. There I photographed a dragonfly for entomologist friends. (If you were short on your natural science education it’s perfectly acceptable, as is my practice, to use the term “buggologist”.)

This next dragonfly was in flight and I managed about 20 photos… not an easy task!

This was not a good birding day. I was out during the middle of the day, the sun was shining brightly and it was quite warm (for the PacNW). As the day progressed I found myself having to use my car’s air conditioning.

My first birding sighting was a pair of Red-breasted nuthatches stashing food in the bark of a large cedar tree. These photos, once I arrived back home and processed them, left me assured that my lens had been correctly repaired.

I was surprised to see three Turkey vultures (accompanied by a raptor) soaring over Wylie Road on Fir Island… I’d thought ours around Cap Sante had been gone (migrated south) several weeks ago. On Channel Drive I was surprised to encounter the following bird (and at least two companions) wandering around in someone’s gravel “yard”. My first thought was that it was some exotic bird that someone was keeping, but on further reflection I decided that it was probably a juvenile Ring-necked pheasant… although you shouldn’t consider this a positive identification. There were farm fields directly across the street so that could have been suitable habitat for the birds.

I have to include this wildlife in my blog… seemingly friendly but aloof and patrolling the neighborhood.

Back in our yard again late in the afternoon, I photographed these Chestnut-backed chickadees which gave me something of a feeling of return to normalcy. I take these birds for granted, but we occasionally get birders from the central and eastern US who consider this a ‘target bird’… check the birds’ range map and you’ll see why!

The predominant birds in our yard now are Pine siskins and American goldfinches. We’re still seeing lots of recently fledged young of both species. The juvenile birds’ best skills at this point in their development isn’t flying… it’s following parents around and begging food.

So you might think this might be the end to my day… but it wasn’t. In early evening, just before retiring to the west patio for dinner, I took a quick look out the kitchen window. There was a small bird enjoying an energetic bath in a very small saucer of water we use as a water feature. At first I dismissed the bird as just another American goldfinch, but it was too energetic and goldfinches usually don’t use this particular water feature. I used my binoculars to examine the bird more closely and saw that it was a flycatcher. This was our second observed fall migrant! I was lucky to get a photo after implementing what has become a normal routine… racing for my camera, sneaking out the front door and photographing the bird from some 30+ feet away. (A friend with better skills than my own later identified it as a Pacific Slope flycatcher, another find for you birders located to the east oof us!

So… since my birding lens is now back in my hands, photographic activities here should be returning to some degree of normalcy. I look forward to spending more time in the yard and documenting some of our fall migration activity.