We had a storm blow through on the night of November 8-9 with heavy rains and high winds. When I woke for the second time and checked the radar I realized that a front had just blown through and there was no rain immediately behind it, so I could go for a walk in Washington Park without risking getting wet. I quickly dressed, drove to the park and set out on my morning walk. I was so taken with my weather radar acumen for having missed the rain that I failed to consider the wind. By the time I realized that I normally wouldn’t have entered the woods under such circumstances, I was almost halfway through my walk! The loud cracking of a tree limb in the woods near me reminded me of why I wouldn’t usually walk under such conditions.

Upon arriving back home I peered out the kitchen window and spied both a Yellow-rumped warbler and a Golden-crowned kinglet in the front yard at the same time (neither of which I was able to photograph) so despite less than ideal conditions I set up in the yard for a little photography. I ended up taking 46 photos and discarded about half of those. Here are a few of the ones I kept…

I just never get tired of photographing ‘our’ leucistic Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco, with us for the second winter!

And the star of the day, actually one of the first birds I photographed, was this male Ruby-crowned kinglet, pausing while in the middle of a bath! It’s unusual to be able to see the ruby crown in the field, but I sometimes have the opportunity to observe and photograph it when the bird is bathing. This photo shows just how bright the crown can be!

On Friday, November 5th, 2021, I went out in the yard for a little birding after a morning of rain and recovery from my Moderna booster that I had gotten two days before. There were a lot of birds in the yard but mostly chickadees (Chestnut-backed and Black-capped), House sparrows and our most numerous winter species, Dark-eyed (Oregon) juncos. Our leucistic Dark-eyed junco did visit the yard later. 

I spied (and managed to photograph) a Yellow-rumped warbler flitting around the yard but it never made it down to the watercourse. 

I noticed what seemed like a first year White-crowned sparrow in the yard to the side of me, but it seemed to have unusually bold facial markings. I wanted to photograph it but it was moving away from me and was on the far side of a wire fence we use to protect a Japanese maple from the neighborhood’s deer population. I watched it for a minute or so but it moved off out of sight. 

About fifteen minutes later the same bird popped out from an evergreen huckleberry beside the watercourse and I quickly focused on it for a photo. As I did so I could clearly see the yellow lores which identified it as a White-throated sparrow, a VERY rare visitor to the yard. I managed a quick photo before the bird disappeared behind the huckleberry bush. 

About two years ago we had a White-throated sparrow living under a bush about a block up the street (V Avenue) from us and I took photos of that bird on numerous occasions.  I believe that it was that bird that came to the yard once or twice, but as far as I can remember those were our only visits until this day. 

This was a SEVEN sparrow species day. Unfortunately our Fox sparrow, which usually frequents our yard, didn’t show while I was observing. (The Fox sparrow was here the following day but the White-throated and White-crowned sparrows were not.)

Here are some of the photos of the sparrows I took…

Another bird of note, a young Brown creeper which visited three different  bird baths.