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!  

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!)  

I had an interesting day birding on Monday, December 23, 2024, which I’ll relate below, but on the previous day I had a somewhat unusual visitor… a Yellow-rumped warbler, a female or juvenile. It spent several minutes in the yard and I was able to get several good photos. 

I spent at least a couple of pleasant hours in the yard Monday afternoon (overcast with no wind and 51 degrees) and had many avian visitors. None were unusual but some of the diets I witnessed were. Much of my time was spent watching an Orange-crowned warbler feed in a denuded Golden Chain tree. One might assume that it was plucking insects from the dried seed pods, but the warbler also visited the suet feeder and the platform feeder with hulled sunflower seeds, so I don’t know that it wasn’t eating the seeds in the Golden Chain tree. I clearly saw it consuming a sunflower seed!  It might be transitioning from an insectivore to an omnivore… evolution right before my very eyes!  

I also had at least three visits from a Bewick’s wren (while it was waiting for a name change… a little birding humor!). It was in the yard to scrounge suet fallen from the suet feeder, but wasn’t beneath accessing the source. 

I had an uncharacteristically brief visit from a Brown creeper, usually a regular visitor but one I hadn’t seen recently. 

I had visits from both species of kinglets, the Ruby-crowned kinglet and the Golden-crowned kinglet. Oddly enough, on this day the Ruby-crowned kinglet was the more frequent and photogenic visitor. 

I had several visits from bands of Bushtits and both male and female Anna’s hummingbirds. 

Here are a couple of photos of Golden-crowned sparrows, winter mainstays in the yard. 

Merry Christmas and a safe, prosperous and happy new year!

On the afternoon of December 4, 2024, I spent an hour or so in the yard observing and photographing birds. Perhaps the most interesting of my observations involved the Orange-crowned warbler that has been visiting the yard for several days, feeding from both the suet and peanut feeders and this day even visiting the platform feeder holding sunflower seed. 

I had six species of sparrows: Spotted towhees, Dark-eyed. (Oregon) juncos and House, Golden-crowned, a Song and a Fox sparrows. The juncos were by far the most numerous birds in the yard.  With the inclusion of White-crowned sparrows and White-throated sparrows seen earlier in the year, that brings the total number of sparrows seen in the yard for the year to eight.  

I had both species of kinglets, Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned. Until recently the latter has been a rare visitor but this day I had two visits and I think one of the visits was by a pair. 

I had originally identified and published the following bird as another kinglet, but a keen-eyed friend of mine contacted me in February, 2025, and suggested that it was a Hutton’s vireo, a bird very similar in appearance to the Ruby-crowned kinglet as you can see from the two photos. He is right! Thanks so much, Jim, for the correction!

Two species of wrens, Bewick’s and Pacific, very briefly visited the yard but I was unable to get photos of either. 

At least two male Anna’s hummingbirds are visiting the yard. I have no way of determining if these two photos are of the same hummingbird,

I had multiple visits from one or more flocks of Bushtits. This one is a female but for what is probably a first in my Bushtit photography, I was able to photograph a male and female together.

Very late in the afternoon of the previous day (12/3/20214) I had a male Varied thrush feeding in the yard but there was no sign of the bird today. I thought the snow in the mountains would bring more of the thrushes down to the yard, but it hasn’t happened yet. 

On November 7, 2024, I managed to eke out a little time for birding, something I hadn’t had time to do for almost a week due to other activities and weather. 

My afternoon began rather slowly with much the same birds in the yard although things seemed a little slower than normal. I had visits from both male and female Anna’s hummingbirds who will apparently remain with us for the winter. I didn’t have to wait too long for a visit from a Golden-crowned kinglet, and there was a very brief visit from a Brown creeper.  Golden-crowned sparrows seem to come and go but don’t seem to be in open areas as much, perhaps for good reason!  

After a while a Pacific wren emerged from behind my stone birdbath. This is a very small active bird that frequents low areas with brush and ferns and is very difficult to photograph. The wren disappeared for a minute or two and then reappeared at a much nearer birdbath and gave me the opportunity for many photographs. Unfortunately, the location in the birdbath where it chose to bathe was exactly behind a single fir needle sticking up at the edge of the bird bath, which ruined many of my photos. However, I was afforded many photographs of the bird and may have gotten some of my best photos of this species. 

As I saw watching the birds in the yard, I was aware of the sudden appearance of an adult accipiter (probably a Cooper’s hawk) on the top of my garden fence.  I watched as it made its way through fir trees to a large patch of Snowberry bushes. I was hoping to get a good view of the bird for a photo when it popped out onto a perch directly above my stone birdbath. At that point, I was able to take a good many photographs of the bird and noted that it was banded. 

I have the name of a person in Seattle who bands raptors and I plan to contact him to see if he can give me any information on the bird.  Many years previously I was able to obtain rather extensive information on a young Cooper’s Hawk that had been banded in the nest in Seattle, fledged and showed up at SeaTac airport, was trapped and removed and was relocated to the Samish Flats area before making its way to my yard! 

Just to fill things out, here are a couple of Song sparrow images…