Yet another afternoon of yard birding. I began my day photographing this Ruby-crowned kinglet which came to our watercourse.

We have an almost continuous presence of kinglets in the yard, but most are Golden-crowned kinglets.

These photos offer a good opportunity for contrast between the two species. It’s very difficult differentiating the males from the females i both species as the males are so adept at concealing their red crests. My attention was drawn to this male when it became upset with another bird in the watercourse and raised its red crest. I try to label my photographs as to sex, but I’ve decided if I can’t see any red that I can’t assume the bird is a female, so I just leave off the sex label. If you look closely at the (RCKI) kinglet above you can see that it is a male.

We have two Song sparrows that frequent the yard but this season we are still waiting for our first Fox sparrow, which closely resembles the Song sparrow.

This is a male House finch, a species that is usually here almost constantly but disappeared for a few brief periods in the last couple of months. The color intensity on the males varies considerably… this one is relatively pale.

We had 2-3 American goldfinches visit the yard on this day, a relatively rare bird in our yard during the winter season. Judging by the color of the wing bars, I’m guessing that this is a first year female.

I’ve counted as many as three Golden-crowned sparrows in the yard so far this season but I suspect there are probably several more on the fringes.

We had our first Varied thrush in our yard on or about October 3, but try as I might I was unable to obtain a photo that day despite 3-4 visits. It took me almost a week to obtain this photo of a male taken on October 8, 2023. We now have both a male and female visiting the yard several times a day, but I have been unable to photograph the female. These birds can be extremely wary when they first arrive but things usually settle down after they’ve been here awhile.