I had a great day for yard photography on Sunday, October 25, 2020.  It began, as many of my days do, with a morning nap!  When I woke my wife gave me a list of birds she had seen in the yard while I had been napping.  It included Red crossbills and a Townsend’s warbler.  This was motivation enough for me to bundle up (the temperature was in the mid-30s) and head outside with my photography gear.  While I reasoned that the warbler was a late migrant and wouldn’t be back, there was at least a slight chance it might still be in the area and there was also the possibility that it might be part of a late wave of migrants motivated by the unseasonably cold weather.  

I no sooner positioned myself outside when I saw the leucistic male Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco that had been in the yard a couple of times in the past few days, and for which I was desperate for a photo.  These markings would have made this bird the only one in existence with these specific markings.  The bird initially remained in the trees in the outer reaches of the yard, but I finally got a halfway decent photo of the bird exposed on a madrone limb.  A while later the bird fully revealed itself and I obtained over 20 good photos.  

The next interesting bird was a male Varied thrush which entered the yard to access a stone bird bath.  Later in the day I would photograph a female that entered the yard for the same purpose.  (I rarely, if ever, see them bathe, unlike their American robin cousins who are capable of taking some of the most active baths in the business.)  During my two sessions in the yard, with a ‘warm the fingers interlude’, I had several visits by one or more of the male thrushes.  

Next up was a family of Red crossbills, a male and at least two females/juveniles.  

We’ve had a lot of Golden-crowned sparrows in the yard, perhaps more than I’ve seen in past years, and I enjoyed seeing and photographing a couple of the birds reaping the harvest from our evergreen huckleberry bush beside the watercourse.  

Next up was yet another rare visitor, although not its first appearance in the yard this season… a Hermit thrush!  This visitor was clearly attracted to the evergreen huckleberry bush so I guess it wasn’t the bird’s first trip into the yard.  After it left the watercourse area I later saw it plucking madrone berries from clusters.  

All of the birds mentioned above made multiple forays into the yard, giving me multiple opportunities for photographs.  

The only rarity (for our yard) I saw but was unable to photograph was a male Hairy woodpecker that made a couple of trips to the peanut and suet feeders.  We had a male Hairy woodpecker with us for most of the last winter but it left for the breeding season and we only recently had one begin to visit again. 

With the exception of the cold weather, I couldn’t have asked for a better day for birding photography in the yard!