It’s been at least six weeks since I last posted to my birding website and I’ve had two friends who have recently brought my lack of posting to my attention. So I’m providing an explanation and trying to get motivated to resume my posting activities. 

This spring I became motivated to try to analyze/record our spring migration with regard to what I observed in our yard. (All references you see here will apply only to our yard and not the greater area of the Cap Sante Neighborhood, Anacortes or Fidalgo Island.)  May has traditionally been our greatest month for migration so I designed a form for daily recording purposes, forms design having been one of the skills I cultivated and used in my employment as a payroll manager some 20+ years ago. 

Despite my experience in both birding and forms design, my initial form failed to survive the first week of observations and I hurriedly resorted to trying to keep records with my cell phone.  I think my efforts were successful… I’m still trying to convert/incorporate early May observations to the final format of the log upon which I decided. 

To give you a little appreciation of my activities, I would try to spend some amount of time in the yard each day, generally mostly in the afternoons since that is when most of the bird activity seemed to occur. (This has always seemed strange to me because in Texas most of the activity occurred during morning hours.)  My time in the yard was spent: 

• Trying to identify migrants in the mix of all the other birds moving around the yard.
• Trying to photograph migrants for as long as they remained in the yard. 
• Trying to record migrant species, numbers and arrival times and without recording the arrival of the same bird twice. (Obviously, as bird watchers will appreciate, this is a highly subjective task!)  

Some observations occurred outside my “yard time” due to sighting a migrant from inside the house… which in some cases would initiate “yard time”. 

At the end of the day I would: 

• Attempt to edit my notes, in some cases reconciling them with photographs and time stamps. 
• Process photographs, which included deleting “non-keepers”, cropping, adjusting exposure-related issues, assigning a sex code when I could discern the difference, adding a quality rating code and renaming each photo to the species of the bird pictured.  
• To save time, in some cases I would send photos of special birds to family and a few friends in lieu of creating a blog post. 

It was not unusual, on a good May migration day, for me to take well over 200 photos!  So that, in somewhat more than the proverbial nutshell, is the tale of why there haven’t been any recent blog posts!   

I’ll try to post some recent photos soon. In the meantime, if any readers are interested in habitat (as in yard) improvement to attract birds, staging your yard for birding photography, birding photography techniques or use of Adobe Lightroom, feel free to contact me. These activities are a daily happening here!  

I want to thank two friends, Mark and Phil, for prodding me to resume posting. It’s still going to be slow going for a while because birding-related projects aren’t the only ones on my plate!   

For the last couple of weeks in April, 2023, I had been worrying that there hadn’t been the number of warblers coming to the yard that I expected. For the last week or so in late April I had been monitoring the yard fairly closely, especially in the afternoons.  I spent some of my time developing a form I could use to document daily migrant arrivals during the month of May, our heaviest time for migrant influx. 

To recap, I observed my first seasonal arrival (s) on April 16 and 17, 2023.  Both observations were of a single Orange-crowned warbler, and of course I have no way of determining whether or not it was the same bird. On April 24 things took a dramatic turn when a Townsend’s warbler showed up, explored the yard and took a bath. I was able to obtain over 70 photos of the bird!  I was encouraged that this was the exciting beginning of our migration arrivals. But I had yet longer to wait. 

On April 25 I discovered a dead Orange-crowned warbler, apparently the result of a window kill… but still no large influx. 

Following two warm, sunny days with no sign of migrants, April 30 dawned much cooler with cloud cover and some early very minor precipitation.  My unfounded optimism at this point was that the birds had had two wonderful days for migration and that they might now be ready for rest, food… and a bath!  

I began my yard monitoring on April 30 at 1:20pm. At 1:30pm I had my first migratory visitor of the day… an Orange-crowned warbler (OCWA). These are actually year-round residents, but our number of sightings rise significantly in the spring and summer. 

I’ve set out my observations for the afternoon below. My documentation is based on VISITS since in most cases I have no way of distinguishing one bird from another… even using photographs. This is especially true with OCWAs. I did manage to determine from photos that the Audubon’s warblers (AUWAs) were different birds. 

To speed my documentation I’ve been trying to learn and use established abbreviations for species. Here are the abbreviations for the species listed below: OCWA – Orange-crowned warbler;  WIWA – Wilson’s warbler; AUWA – Audubon”s warbler.

1:30 – OCWA 

1:40pm – OCWA 

1:55pm – OCWA (2) 

2:05pm: AUWA (m), OCWA (2) 

2:20pm – WIWA (m) 

2:40pm – OCWA 

2:50pm- OCWA 

3:00pm – AUWA (m) 

3:10pm – OCWA, WIWA (m) 

3:15pm – OCWA, WIWA (m) 

3:25pm – OCWA 

I left the yard at 4:20pm, after three hours of observation. But wait… there’s more!  (Where have we heard that before?). My new office remodel gives me a good view of a couple of our water features, including our watercourse. While processing the afternoons photos in my office I had the following observations: 

4:55pm – OCWA 

5:50pm – OCWA 

6:05pm – OCWA 

Tallying the day’s observations, I had two male AUWA visits, three male WIWA visits, and at least 12 OCWA visits. I didn’t keep tabs on how many photographs I took, but I obtained good photos of all three species of warblers that visited. Some of those photos appear below… 

For at least the last week I’ve been anticipating early spring migrants arriving in the yard and have therefore spent significant time in our yard most afternoons with little to show for my efforts. My photos have mostly been of the Golden-crowned sparrows (which will soon be migrating themselves), our White-crowned sparrow(s) (which will also probably soon be on its way) and my faithful companion, the Townsend’s chipmunk which between eating sunflower seeds, seems to be building a nest. (I have yet to locate it but I’ve narrowed the probable location.)  

During the day my sister in Austin was texting her observations of many species often and and then then we pmigrating birds she was seeing at the same time I was photographing our leftover winter visitors.  

I returned to the yard about 4pm and before I even got seated I became aware there was a Townsend’s warbler exploring our water features! It ultimately decided on two baths in our watercourse… 70+ photos later I was welcoming the migration!  This is a beautiful (handsome?) male, a rarity here in the yard and a species we usually only see once or twice a year. 

So without further rambling, here are some selected photos of our Townsend’s warbler…

On April 17, 2023, the day after my last post, I spent a cold 2-3 hours in the yard waiting for another warbler sighting. It was not only cool but there was also a wind blowing, so it was somewhat of an ordeal. The birds weren’t cooperating and unlike the previous day Ii only had about one good influx of the usual visitors.

Towards the end of my ordeal I saw another Orange-crowned warbler, and this one hung around enough for me to obtain some good photos. I have no idea if this was the one I saw the previous day or a new visitor.

Immediately after the warbler left the yard this White-crowned sparrow posed for a nice photo…

After a day’s absence our White-throated sparrow showed up for a brief visit. It appeared to be going through the molt as have many of our Golden-crowned sparrows in the last couple of weeks.

I mentioned in my last post that we have a pair pf crows building a nest nearby. Here is one of the pair with a beakful of nesting material!

When the birding slows I have a Townsend’s chipmunk that keeps me company. It’s a big fan of peanuts! It consumed this peanut like we might eat a banana!

We finally logged our first warbler of the year in the yard on April 16, 2023.  I had driven around the neighborhood photographing birds but returned home mid afternoon.  About 3:20pm I noticed a bird in the upper portion of our Golden Chain tree but it was backlit and I didn’t have a good view of it.  Its activity was ‘warbler-like” and as it moved into better view I saw its yellow/green color and was able to quickly identify it as an Orange-crowned warbler!  This was our first highly anticipated warbler visitor of the year!  I was able to quickly obtain a few mediocre photos.  The bird was interested in water features and flew down to our new bird bath.  Unfortunately there were many Golden-crowned sparrows in that immediate area and through their activity discouraged the warbler from loitering where I could get better photos.  

We have a pair of crows that are building a nest within sight of my photography perch in the yard.  I watch them harvesting sticks from surrounding trees and flying to a fir limb with particularly dense foliage.  The crows built a partial nest in the same place last year but unfortunately it fell to the side of the road before it was completed.  

I counted eight Golden-crowned sparrows in the yard today, but there were others in the surrounding bushes.  This is probably our most prolific year for that species.   These photos are of Golden-crowned sparrows among the Oregon grape bushes at the Cap Sante Overlook.  

In this next photo the sparrow is actually eating one of the blossoms of the Oregon grape!

As of yesterday we still had at least one White-throated sparrow visiting the yard.