I quickly reviewed my website before posting this and found I’ve been mostly posting photos of the same birds. It can’t be helped when they’re the only ones that show up!  Hopefully the photos are a little different in terms of poses or perches. To keep my photos looking different, from time to time I vary my staging sticks. Sometimes it’s psychology difficult to do so. When you create a good staging stick and the birds make good use of it, it’s hard to give it up!  

I’ve been able to spend a little more time in the yard lately. Fall is another major period of avian transition, with spring//summer birds leaving and fall/winter birds arriving. I’ve had a few sightings of birds I usually think of as migrants, but some of them are here year-round, just in fewer numbers than in the spring migration. 

One example is the Orange-crowned warbler, a fairly common spring visitor but much rarer in the fall and winter. The species visited the yard twice this week and gave me uncommon opportunities for photos. 

Another species that appeared in the yard for several days is the Yellow-rumped warbler, almost always apparently a female or juvenile. 

I’ve had a Brown creeper almost every day and was able to obtain better than average photos of one in more recent days. Creepers are very active and I get my best opportunities for photographs when the creeper’s favorite bird bath is occupied by another species. It doesn’t like communal bathing and so slows somewhat and lingers on the side of a madrone, waiting for other birds to leave. 

I get daily visits from Golden-crowned kinglets but often don’t get an opportunity for photos because they like to use a pedestal bird bath immediately adjacent to me. This one is a male, one of a flock of five kinglets that visited the yard on October 5, 2024.

I still have at least two White-crowned sparrows that visit the yard, one an adult and the other either a juvenile or a tan-morph subspecies. 

Dark-eyed (Oregon) juncos are beginning to return for the winter. In some years they edge out Pine siskins and House sparrows for the most numerous species in the yard, but this year I think the House sparrows may win out thanks to neighbors’ nest boxes with over-sized holes. The sparrows are hatched elsewhere but are attracted to my yard because of more nutritious food offerings. 

I’ve mustered as many as about six Golden-crowned sparrows in the yard at one time but they seem to come and go at this point. I should have a more permanent population of around ten for the winter.