By early September the number of fall migrants arriving in the yard have slowed to a trickle… or even less. I am now spending as much as a couple of hours a day sitting in the yard with no sightings at all. I’ve at least temporarily solved my House sparrow problem. I’ve greatly reduced the number of feeders and the kinds of food I am putting out. This has discouraged sparrows but it has also resulted in other birds departing. The lack of food should not affect migrants because they don’t expect food and generally wouldn’t be attracted to the food (sunflower seed, peanuts and suet) that i have in my feeders. But… they might skip the yard because of the lack of bird activity. However they might also be put off by the 20-30 House sparrows that were almost continuously in the yard a week or so ago.

On September 6, 2021, I logged a single migrant… a female Wilson’s warbler. She was very accommodating, flitting around the watercourse for maybe about ten minutes. I have a variety of staging objects (bushes, sticks and rocks) located around the watercourse which gives birds inviting places to explore and perch. It gave me the opportunity to take 87 photos, and I’m almost (but not quite) embarrassed to say that I retained 27 after processing. Here’s my case as to why…

These first two photos are from several that I consider the best.

These next two photos are ones that I decided to retain even though I rated them among the lowest of those I retained.

By way of explanation regarding photo quality, I export all of these photos from Adobe Lightroom at 4MP, so what gets posted on this website doesn’t truly reflect the quality of the original photos. ALL of these photos are of a considerably reduced quality from those on my computer.

By August 31, 2021, our juvenile Western tanagers and Black-headed grosbeaks had apparently left the area and left me with an overwhelming population of House sparrows. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve temporarily stopped feeding birds and hope they return to whoever facilitated their propagation!

I went out in the yard late in the afternoon, with only about an hour of light left for photography. We hadn’t had any warblers in several days so I wasn’t optimistic that I would see any this afternoon. However, shortly after settling down I spied a female Wilson’s warbler in the yard but it never got in a position where I could get any good photos of it.

Over the next hour I had two Orange-crowned warbler visits, but neither provided an opportunity for any photographs. Finally, just before I had to give up due too lack of light, I had a final Orange-crowned warbler visit. This time the warbler came down to the area of the watercourse and I was able to obtain a couple of good photos.

On August 28, 2021, I had just begun my monitoring of the yard for interesting birds. I was suddenly aware of activity near our weather monitoring station and at the same time there was a mass exodus of birds from the yard. I couldn’t see the weather station very well and had to lean back and forth for a better view. What I saw was an accipiter sitting on top of our anemometer!

The accipiter was probably about 40 feet away and I didn’t have a clear view, so I watched without moving. The accipiter then flew to the brush pile we have in the yard. It could hear birds within the brush pile but there was no way it could get in… the brush pile’s basis is a cage constructed of 4″x4 welded wire and filled with branches… just for the purpose of creating a safe harbor for birds under such circumstances!

The accipiter worked its way across the top of the brush pile peering down where it could hear birds beneath it. As it moved to the north side of the brush pile about 15-20 birds took the opportunity to flee from the south side! I kept hoping for the opportunity for a clear photo while it was on one of my staging sticks, but it never came that close. I probably watched the accipiter for about 20 minutes, much, much longer than they usually spend in one location. I finally saw it fly out of sight but couldn’t be sure that it left the yard so I waited for another 15 minutes or so before giving up.

I’m assuming that this accipiter is a Cooper’s hawk but I’m far from an expert in identifying accipiters.

I’m having a great beginning to the fall migration! August 22 was a great day in the yard for both bird watching and photography. I had fall migrants passing through the yard almost all day and on several occasions had more than one species in the yard at a time. The day was made even better by an overcast that provided ideal photo conditions for the entire day.

My first visitor was a juvenile Western tanager, the first of several throughout the day.

Next up was a juvenile Northern flicker, hardly a migrant. We had a successful breeding season for the species and have had four or more in the yard at one time.

We next had an Orange-crowned warbler visit the yard. This is probably our most common warbler winter visitor, so there is some population that apparently remains in the area for the winter.

Next was a Black-headed grosbeak. The grosbeaks were rather scarce upon their arrival and during breeding activity but for the past month or so they have been visiting the yard on a daily basis… sometimes two at a time.

A non-migrant showed up in the yard next… a juvenile Red-winged blackbird. We normally have blackbirds only during the breeding season when the birds are nesting below us in the wastewater treatment pond marsh. They make quick trips up the hill to acquire a quick, dependable supply of food without having to leave their young unattended.

This male Downy woodpecker, also not a migrant, was waiting for an opportunity to access a suet block hanging above.

We are overrun with chickadees this summer. They apparently had a very successful breeding season in the area. This photo is of a Black-capped chickadee, but we also have a large number of Chestnut-backed chickadees.

We had both male and female Wilson’s warblers visit the yard. The following two photos are both of a male as told by the black cap on top of its head.

We are seeing fewer Rufous hummingbirds in the yard. The males are long gone and only a few females remain. This is a juvenile male Anna’s hummingbird that may spend the entire winter with us.

Our last migrant for the day was this female and/or juvenile Wilson’s warbler. Contrast it’s cap with the male pictured above.

I regret missing one other bird. In the top of one of our madrone trees was a small, active bird with a prominent white eye stripe. I suspect that it was some kind of vireo but very disappointingly, I was unable to obtain a photograph of it.

Birding in the yard has been an almost all-consuming hobby over the past few weeks, leaving me little time for posting to my blog.  After a rather disappointing late June and July visits to the yard by migrants have finally picked up and I am seeing the first indications of a fall migration.  We’ve logged three new species in the yard this year (Chipping sparrow, Lazuli bunting and a Bob White quail) but I have to day that August 6, 2021, was perhaps my best birding day of the year.  

On this particular day my birding was overlapping with hosting visiting family members and with the Anacortes Arts Festival. We began our day with an early morning walk through Washington Park followed by breakfast at home.  I opted for a nap instead of accompanying the crowd downtown, but since we were having one of our recently rare cloudy days, which offered enhanced birding photography opportunities, I decided to give yard birding a brief try.  It was an auspicious decision!  

One of our (meaning our yard’s) rarest migrants, a MacGillivray’s warbler, appeared in the yard in midmorning.  It had been years since we had seen one and I had no good photographs of one. This bird visited two of our water features and took a short time exploring the yard. I obtained what I consider some excellent photos. 

I believe this MacGillivray’s to be an adult female, but here I offer a caveat.   You should take ALL of my sex/age identifications as only guesses, especially at this time of the year.  Identifications are now being complicated by several factors:  the breeding plumage of some adults is beginning to fade, first-year juveniles are now being added to the mix and migration is beginning to take place, adding birds we don’t normally see.  All of these factors add confusion to some identifications.  You should view any age/sex identifications I offer with some degree of skepticism. 

But back to August 6: the usual birds were out and about the yard but we had at least two juvenile Brown-headed cowbirds… one being fed by a Dark-eyed (Oregon) junco and the other by a pair of Spotted towhees, both species that in past years have been consistently parasitized by cowbirds.  Interestingly enough, one of the juvenile cowbirds was being fed by one of the aforementioned species and also a couple of White-crowned sparrows!  (The following day (8/7/2021) we watched one of the cowbirds being fed by both a junco and White-crowned sparrow!  I have no explanation for this and it goes against my understanding of the raising of cowbird chicks.)  

A male Wilson’s warbler very briefly entered the yard and I was able to photograph it.

I took a break from birding at midday and resumed my activity later in the afternoon with a photographer/friend. We contented ourselves photographing some of our regular birds, having to sort through a large population of House sparrows who have been born on neighbors’ property but come to our yard for food and water.  It’s discouraging but it’s something we just have to endure.  

My friend left later that afternoon and within five minutes of his leaving a male Townsend’s warbler visited the yard.  We usually get about one visit a year from this species and it’s almost always in the fall. I was able to obtain some excellent photos of the bird. 

So I had observed and photographed three warbler species in our yard, two of them quite rare.  I think I can declare the fall migration officially ‘on’!  I now have 304 photos to process from this one day’s activities (in addition to a backlog of several weeks)!