It’s been a few weeks since I last posted, but it’s not because I haven’t been taking bird photos. The May influx of migrants has definitely slowed… I don’t believe I’ve seen a warbler since very early June. I’ve mainly had to content myself with photos of juveniles visiting the yard.

I spent the afternoon of July 15, 2022, in the yard. We had a small flock of Bushtits arrive, the first I have seen in a couple of months. Bushtits usually visit the yard several times a day, but at the beginning of breeding season the birds paired up and we were left with one pair visiting the yard. But the pair eventually disappeared and we have seen none until this day.

We’ve had several families of chickadees visiting the yard, apparently indicating a successful breeding season in the area. We have both Black-capped chickadees and Chestnut-sided chickadees, and this photo is one of the former.

This is a photo of one of our Chestnut-sided chickadees.

This is a bright male House finch. There’s a large range in color on the males, and this is one of the brighter ones. We’ve also had a few that ranged to a faded orange which are less common.

This is a juvenile White-crowned sparrow, a species that has nested near our property but been paraticized by Brown-headed cowbirds in past years. This year the species has managed to raise a single chick which visits our yard on a regular basis. (Unfortunately since this date I’ve seen juvenile cowbirds being fed by both Dark-eyed (Oregon) juncos and a White-crowned sparrow.)

At the end of the winter we had about 17 adult California quail visiting the yard. They paired up during the breeding season and all but about two pair disappeared. Some of them are now returning with chicks, one pair with eight juveniles and one pair with about a dozen juveniles. 

And finally, my featured visitor of the day, a juvenile Black-headed grosbeak! We’ve had occasional visits from adult grosbeaks this summer, but not the stream of grosbeaks we’ve had in past years.