On the morning of March 20, while running an errand into town, I made it a point to drive by the Cap Sante Marina to see what might be in the yacht basin. I spied a Common loon drifting around and so hurried home for my camera. The loon was still there when I returned and I obtained some good photos.

This loon appears to still be transitioning to breeding plumage, but it appears there’s not a lot more to be done. In the past many of the loons in the marina have been rather shy but this one actually moved closer to me as it headed east along the passageway adjacent to the marina office.

I photographwedi this Song sparrow going through some of the debris along the shoreline.

A pair of Mallards were working along the shoreline…

And finally, as a kind of added bonus, a Killdeer was browsing along the shoreline…

All of these photos were taken with my new Nikon D850 camera mounted with my old Nikor 500mm f5.6 lens. I’m finding that I can shoot at much higher ISOs in lower light with the new camera and it seems to be much better at focusing on distant subjects.

If you haven’t read my previous blog post you should read it before viewing this post. On Saturday, February 18, I trashed my Nikon D500 camera and the following photos were taken to determine whether or not my attached 500mm lens was also damaged in the accident.

I’ve had a difficult time photographing Red-breasted nuthatches this winter because what few birds visit our yard. they almost never visit the watercourse. But on this day (2/25) one visited the watercourse twice.

A male Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco…

We seem to have had the same female Varied thrush all winter. We usually have only one thrush in the yard at a time and it’s almost always a female.

We have a few Spotted towhees in the yard, this one a beautiful male.

And finally, one of the rare White-throated sparrows that has been visiting our yard for several weeks now.

Bottom line… I can’t see the there is a problem with the Nikon 500mm lens!

It’s a sad tale I have to relate in this blog post!

On Saturday, February 18, 2023, I spied both our female Varied thrush and a White-throated sparrow in the yard at the same time.  I threw out some sunflower seed, grabbed my camera (a Nikon D500) and positioned myself in the yard for photos. The birds quickly ate the seeds and dissipated into the surrounding bushes leaving me with no photo opportunities. I leaned my camera (affixed to a monopod) against the side of the house, braced against the rain gutter downspout, as I have done over 1000 times before.  I reached for the seed and heard a horrible “clunk”.  The camera had slid down the side of the house and landed on our concrete walkway!    A quick examination of the camera revealed it was history!  

The Nikon D500… 

The last photo taken with the D500, a beautiful female Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco… 

Thus began a week of consulting with three photographer/friends, to whom I am indebted for their help and advice. I first ran some informal tests with my Nikon 500mm f5.6 lens that had been attached to the camera when it fell. It seemed OK.  (My next post displays some of the photos taken with the 500mm lens on a Nikon 7100 backup camera.).   

I initially decided to purchase one of the new Nikon mirrorless cameras (Z-series) which, with an adapter, would accommodate my existing lenses.  However, after examining a friend’s Z-series camera I recognized a design feature (actually lack of a design feature) that would make the Z-series camera, in my opinion, unsuitable for birding photography. 

One of my friends then suggested a Nikon D850 which offered a full frame sensor and 44mp  (megapixels), more than twice what my D500 had.  This camera will be fully compatible with my existing lenses… no adapter needed, and the controls will be familiar.  At this point I expect to have a new Nikon D850 by the first week in March. 

The afternoon of February 6, 2023, offered broken overcast skies and enough light to make photography worthwhile. I had some choices about how to spend my time around mid afternoon and I decided, on seeing a female Varied thrush in the yard, to spend a little time with photography.

I first photographed a male Anna’s hummingbird in the yard, occasionally mixing it up with another hummingbird. In this photo he’s watching “his” feeder.

Next up was the aforementioned female Varied thrush I had seen earlier. The thrushes have been regular visitors to the yard for the past couple of months, with one or more females being much more frequent visitors than males. They will probably soon return to the mountains for the spring/summer season.

We have one or more flocks of Bushtits visiting the yard several times a day with 10-12 hanging off an inverted suet feeder at one time. This female was part of the group.

But hidden in the mayhem of House sparrows, Golden-crowned sparrows and Dark-eyed juncos was a special visitor that I was lucky to be able to pick out of the crowd… a White-throated sparrow! This is a VERY rare visitor to our yard, having ben seen on only one previous occasion. (See my prior 2022 Yard Sparrows blog posted January 3, 2023.)

ADDENDUM: I saw and photographed two separate visits to the yard of a White-throated sparrow. At the time I was photographing the second visit it seemed to me that the bird’s bib wasn’t as bright, but since the species was such a rare visitor I assumed that the same bird had visited twice. I took many photos of the visitor and in processing the photos the images are displayed in sequential order, not facilitating comparison unless I take special steps to do so.

This evening I was reviewing my post and I had included a photo from each visit. In my post the photos appeared next to each other and I realized that indeed, I had photographed two different White-throated sparrows!!! See for yourself… carefully compare the two photos!

On January 23, 2023, I was sitting in the yard photographing birds when this accipiter (a juvenile Cooper’s hawk) flew in, scattering all of the other birds in the yard. I managed a few photos before it left.

Here it’s peering down into our brush pile to where many of the birds flee when the accipiter arrives.

I have a raptor expert in Seattle who has been very helpful in identifying accipiters for me. In this case, when processing photos, I noticed that I could get a partial reading of the band on the bird’s leg, ie “257”.

I contacted my expert in Seattle (who is himself a raptor bander) and he contacted the biologist who runs the raptor trapping program at SeaTac Airport who provided the following information.

“(The biologist) released two relocated juvenile Coops this winter in the Skagit area, one was 1204-25785, released March’s Point and the other 1204-25784 released along Bayview-Edison Rd.  Either one could have made its way to your yard.  Good luck getting the other numbers!”

This spurred me into re-examining my photos and in doing so I was able to discern two additional numbers… “85”. So this was a bird trapped at SeaTac Airport (to prevent collision strikes with planes) and released on March Point. The release location is a relatively short hop across or around Fidalgo Bay to our Cap Sante neighborhood.

This is the second banded juvenile Cooper’s hawk that has made an appearance in our yard and whose origin I was able to trace thanks to my Seattle contact.