On the afternoon of February 1, 2025, I decided to spend a little time in the yard watching and photographing birds. I relocated to my usual chair at the southeast corner of the house with my camera,, a supply of “habitat enhancer” and my new electric heating pad to combat the ~40-degree temperature. I had no sooner set up than a very slight amount of precipitation began to fall. The moisture was moving in from the south and despite a generous roof overhang I, and my equipment, were getting unacceptably moist. I moved my chair around the corner to the east side of the house and that location provided protection from moisture. This new and generally unused location placed me a little closer to my suet feeder and an associated staging branch that I had added to the madrone tree from which the feeder is hung.
I have one or more flocks (which I often refer to as ‘bands’ or ‘tribes’) of Bushtits that visit the yard on a daily basis. I have no way of distinguishing how many bands there are, but the bands seem to be composed of 10-20 very gregarious members. This fall and winter I have suspected that there might be two bands of visitors since some groups seem to differ slightly in terms of numbers.
The behavior of the birds is always the same. Mob the inverted suet feeder (as many as a dozen birds) with those that won’t fit going to a shelled peanut feeder. After a few seconds of feeding all the flock panics and disburses into nearby cover. Then shortly after, they reemerge and flock to the feeder. This behavior is repeated multiple times. Within about five minutes of their arrival the entire flock is usually gone!
But back to the conditions at hand. As I previously stated, this new position placed me closer to the suet feeder and nearby branches. It also provided a slightly better angle for photographing the birds as some backlighting was eliminated. I therefore had more opportunities for better photographs. So here are a few of the better photographs I took of Bushtits that day…
As long as I’m discussing Bushtits, I’m going to mention one oddity. In my 29+ years of birding, I’ve only observed Bushtits drinking or bathing in a water feature two or three times, and even as gregarious as these birds are, it’s always been a single bird that has detached itself from the feeding frenzy. It’s a mystery to me how they get their water!
And a bonus photo from the same day… the Orange-crowned warbler that has been frequenting our feeders (suet, peanut and sunflower! for at least a couple of months!
And this just in… on February 4, when I opened the blinds after a nightly snowfall, a Varied thrush flushed up into the trees!