It’s been quite a while since I posted to my blog and I’ll share the reasons. 

First of all, on the negative side, I’ve been dealing with issues regarding my watercourse since April 4, 2022. (As you read this you might want to keep in mind this is the abbreviated version of my experience with getting the watercourse finished!)  In late March our watercourse was losing too much water so I contracted with the company which had originally constructed the watercourse (and made two major modifications since) to effect repairs, which they surmised required a new liner. The company installed a new liner on April 4 but the watercourse then lost water at a rate greater than before, so I turned off the pump which resulted in the loss of my greatest migratory bird attractant.  I was able to restart the pump after more work was done on April 30, but the work on the watercourse is still not finished some 8+ weeks after the initial liner replacement. 

Despite the loss of the watercourse, we’ve had a stellar migration this year!  There have been several days I’ve taken over 300 photos of birds in the yard in one day, and one day of over 400 photos!  All of these photos require not only time in the yard but a considerable amount of processing time. 

This year, for the first time, I decided to try to document daily sightings of migrants in some detail so that I would have an idea in future years of just when the peak migration might occur and how spread out it might be. I’m aware there are many factors that affect migration but some research and knowledge is better than none. This aspect of recording required me to develop a format and methodology for my observations and to make modifications to fit my data. I also took the time to learn relevant four-letter bird designations to help with my record-keeping.  This all required a considerable another considerable chunk of time. 

Finally, toward the end of May we embarked on a major repair and remodeling project with our house, and that has also cost me some birding interruptions and time. 

So for the reasons I’ve listed, my blog project slipped. My original goal was to publish photos on the blog in a timely, sequential manner, but spending several hours in the yard each day, documenting my sightings and then spending more hours processing the photos just ate all of my available time.  By late May I had decided that the most exciting part of the migration was behind us. I was wrong!  On May 27, we had three special visitors to the yard which persuaded me to post that experience and to try to return to previous sightings/photos later.  In this post I’ll also include a few photos of some of our more frequent visitors on May 27.  

The first of our unusual visitors was a Swainson’s thrush which graciously posed on several staging objects while giving the yard a brief tour.  This is a spring migrant with beautiful vocalizations (one of which I can closely imitate!) that returns for breeding in the spring.  

Shortly after the Swainson’s thrush departed I looked up and perched about six feet away (too close for a photo!) was what I believe to be a Pacific Slope flycatcher.  Fortunately it made the rounds in the yard and I was able to obtain a few photos.  

My third unusual visitor, and the rarest for our yard, was a Chipping sparrow.  I believe I have seen only one other in the yard and it was here last year.  It took a ground tour of the yard before disappearing.  While this bird has a very wide-spread distribution and is quite common, it has been an extremely rare visitor to our yard and I have not personally seen others in the county.  It’s the winter bane of my Texas sister’s existence who becomes overrun with these birds in the winter!  

And now, a few of our more common visitors… 

A Pine siskin has one of the sharpest weeks of all our yard visitors. Ever wonder if birds have tongues? This photo should answer the question!

A male Northern flicker, king of the suet feeder!

A male House finch. The yellow background in the photo is composed of blooms of our Golden Chain tree.

A małe Downy woodpecker, a very frequent visitor to our suet feeder.

A male Wilson’s warbler, the most common of our warbler visitors…

A male California quail, a year-round resident. This past winter we had as many as 17 in the yard at one time. The quail have paired but there is no sign yet of young.

A male Black-headed grosbeak. We’ve had both males and females in the yard and on one occasion we had two males in the yard at the same time.

I recorded our yard migration in some detail and if you are interested in a copy and are a local resident, let me know. I’m already mulling improvements in my documentation for next year!

May 6, 2022, began with a beautiful male Wilson’s warbler appearing next to the watercourse (which has now been repaired and almost completed, just in time for the migration!). Unfortunately the bird left before I was able to obtain any photos of it. A morning session in the yard provided no new migrants, but as has too often happened in the past I observed two birds with significant leg problems.

A Golden-crowned sparrow seemed to be coping with its handicap rather well, moving across the ground with little impediment. However a male American goldfinch was having difficulty landing and hanging onto a perch. I’m at a loss to understand how these leg injuries seem to be so prevalent in bird populations. While I obtained photos of these birds the photos failed to reveal the extent of their injuries.

In previous blog posts I believe I listed the number of sparrow species we had in the yard over the winter. However, in the light of a special visitor this day (May 6), I’m going to relist the species and give their current apparent status.

Spotted towhee (1-2 pair)

Dark-eyed Oregon junco (one pair)

Fox sparrow (gone)

Song sparrow (gone)

White-crowned sparrow (1-2 pair)

Golden-crowned sparrow (4-5, soon to leave)

House sparrow (too many!)

That makes SEVEN species we’ve had this year, but wait… there’s more! On May 5 I kept thinking I was getting a glimpse of a tan morph White-crowned sparrow, but every time I would see the bird it would quickly disappear back into the bushes. On May 6 I finally was able to train a pair of binoculars on the bird and saw the diagnostic (but subtle) yellow lores on the bird. This meant that it was either a White-crowned sparrow or a Savannah sparrow. Due to our habitat the odds were overwhelmingly for the former but I wanted a photograph just to be sure that a Savannah sparrow, which is a spring/summer migrant to the greater area, hadn’t just dropped out of the sky! It took me considerable time to obtain a photograph because the bird wasn’t fond of coming out into the open. However, I was determined to document the visitor and my patience and persistence finally paid off. So without further wordiness, here are photos of our EIGHTH sparrow species for the yard this year… a White-throated sparrow!

On May 3, 2022, I had several warbler visits during the day, but most occurred during the afternoon.  My observations led me to hope that I might have more migrants through the yard so I resolved the next day to spend significant time there.  I wasn’t disappointed! 

My first migratory visitors were a pair of Yellow-rumped (Audubon) warblers.  They didn’t stay very long and I was somewhat disappointed that I didn’t get photos of the female. 

It wasn’t long before I began to lose track of the numbers of sightings, but over the course of the afternoon I estimated that I had at least three visits from Orange-crowned warblers,

at least three visits from male Wilson’s warblers

and a possible visit from a Nashville warbler, which had I confirmed it, would have been my first sighting of one in the yard.  I only got a brief glimpse of the bird but noted that it had a light gray hood which contrasted with the rest of the bird. At any rate, it wasn’t one of the other warblers that I had seen that day.  This brought the total number of warbler species for the day to four!  The migration is on!  

With an overcast it was a good day for photography and I also managed to obtain good photographs of several other birds in the yard.  

In addition I heard what might have been Black-headed grosbeaks in the surrounding area.  In past years I logged initial sightings between 4/30 and 5/17 with more recent years skewing towards earlier dates. But those dates would have been past the dates I first heard them in the neighborhood. 

I was interested in continuing this observation streak the next day (Thursday, May 5), but unfortunately it rained to some extent for most of the day, ruling out photography and perhaps affecting the migration. At any rate it affected my opportunities for yard observations even though I attempted to monitor things from the windows from time to time. 

Weatherwise, Spring seems to be making a rather late arrival this year! Cooler, wetter temperatures haven’t done my yard birding any good. My watercourse has been more or less out of commission since April 8 when I had my liner replaced. It leaked and I am only now (early May) seemingly getting close to having it up and running again.

My past records would indicate that May is when I have the greatest and most diverse influx of warblers and other spring migrants, so I’m hopeful that I’ll be seeing more diversity as the month progresses.

In the meantime I’ve been occupying some of my time photographing Ospreys in the Port area. It requires a lot of patience at this point as there are long lulls of inactivity.

While observing the Ospreys a couple of days ago a small flock of Yellow-rumped (Audubon) warblers arrived and were flitting through conifers across the parking lot from me, affording fleeting opportunities for photographs. My attention was temporarily diverted from the Ospreys to the warblers and I missed some of the Osprey action.

Meanwhile, back at the yard I’m up to at least three male American goldfinches in the yard at one time. They’ll become much more difficult to count as more arrive and our Golden Chain tree comes into full bloom.

Female goldfinches have been rather scarce thus far.

And hopefully as a sign of things to come, on April 29 I had an Orange-crowned warbler briefly visit the yard.