We’ve already seen several spring migrant arrivals… Rufous hummingbirds, Turkey vultures and an American goldfinch but we are still waiting for our first warbler. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the yard, mainly attempting to obtain photos of Red crossbills and Rufous hummingbirds. After logging our earliest-ever arrival of Rufous hummingbirds in early March the male and female apparently moved on, and it wasn’t until March 19 (about two weeks later) that a male again appeared in the yard. But I digress…

The following photos were all taken on March 16, 2021. Our day started with a female Varied thrush visiting our stone birdbath. We usually have a few Varied thrushes around the yard all winter, but this winter they have, for whatever reason, been very rare despite record snows in the Cascades. The snow usually drives the thrushes down to lower elevations but we just haven’t benefitted from the snow in that regard. I felt fortunate to be able to obtain a couple of photos before the thrush left.

For the past couple of weeks or more we have had Red Crossbills, extremely rare visitors to the yard, make almost daily visits to our bird baths. My suspicion is that our visitors constitute a single family, but I have no way of confirming that. But crossbills seem to be extremely family-oriented, so despite the number of visitors varying (1-7) I believe they constitute a single family group. We’ve seen as many as two mature males at one time and two mature females at one time but they are usually accompanied by some birds that are apparently first-year birds whose sex is more difficult to determine.

We have another interesting phenomenon in the yard this spring. For the past couple of years we have hosted a male Downy woodpecker that is apparently blind in one eye. When I first noticed its handicap I figured that it wouldn’t be long for this world. It seems like it would be an easy target for one of the Cooper’s hawks that are occasionally in the neighborhood, but it has somehow survived. The bird seems to have no difficulty with flying or landing and it’s obviously been eating, so I consider it an unusual success story!

We currently have seven species of sparrows in the yard… Spotted towhees (2-4), Dark-eyed juncos (Oregon race (15-20) including a leucistic), House sparrows (8-12), Golden-crowned sparrows (8-12), Song sparrows (2), Fox sparrow (1), and White-crowned sparrow (1). Here are photos of some of the less common sparrows we have…

And just for good measure, I’ll include a Golden-crowned sparrow since they’ll be leaving before too long…