I had an interesting birding afternoon on January 29, 2025. A birding friend dropped by (a relatively rare occurrence) shortly after noon just to see what was in the yard. There were quite a few of the usual birds (nothing particularly interesting) in the yard and we had a nice visit, commenting on what we observed.
After the friend left I decided to get my camera and see what might show up. By the time I got back outside with my camera (and new heating pad for the 40 degree weather!) the birds had largely disappeared. This kind of birding/photography activity requires a lot of patience, but that’s an asset with which I am blessed.
After a good while sitting in the cold weather a Bewick’s wren (designated for future renaming!) appeared and accessed the suet feeder, and a I obtained one good photograph.
A while later, while watching what is usually a crowd of Dark-eyed (Oregon) juncos, I spotted an apparent female with minor leucistic features. Note the small white patches of feathers on the bird’s mantle. As a result of my photography I can note very small white spots on several male juncos and can use them to identify individual birds from day to day.
I was just getting ready to hang it up for the afternoon when a male Ruby-crowned kinglet flew down to the watercourse. This occurrence and resulting photographs demonstrate why it’s so difficult to differentiate the sexes of both the kinglet species.
These two photographs are both of a male Ruby-crowned kinglet, but although the first photo shows a clear view of the top of the bird’s head, there’s absolutely no evidence of a ruby crown. In the second photo, you can clearly see the bird’s exposed ruby crown. Consequently, although I label my bird photographs by sex, I usually refrain from labeling any kinglet as ‘female’ because the males are so adept at hiding their ruby crowns. And the same goes for the Golden-crowned kinglet.
Here is yet another photo of a Ruby-crowned kinglet. This one is obviously (to me at least) lighter than the kinglet photographed above, and I suspect that it might be a female… but I’m not going out on a limb regarding it’s sexual identity! (Sorry!)
Speaking of which, next up in the watercourse was a male Golden-crowned kinglet! This kinglet was a male but you can’t make a determination of sex based on just one good photograph. It would have been easy to assume that this bird was a female but as you can see from a subsequent photo, the bird is clearly a male.
And as something of a bonus, a male Anna’s hummingbird that had been hanging around the yard (on an evergreen huckleberry in particular) decided to take a bath in the watercourse (in the ~40 degree weather)! I didn’t get a very good photo but I’m throwing it in just for documentation purposes.
One more bonus… I took a photo of a male House sparrow on January 26 that I especially liked.
A final note: I’m very concerned about the number of rarer birds I’ve been seeing both in the yard and in the greater area for the past couple of years! There seems to have been a noticeable decline in both numbers of birds and in number of species. I’m eagerly awaiting spring migration and hoping not to experience a further decline.
And just as I was writing this I looked out my office window and spied a male Varied thrush at one of my birdbaths… and about 15-20 Pine siskins at the watercourse!!! The thrush is a bird that should have been in the yard at least several times a week if not every day since about November, yet I’ve only had about three sightings this fall/winter. It usually appears when snow in the mountains obscures its food sources. Welcome back! (Sorry, no photo… yet!)