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.