My recent posting regarding the arrival of the first Rufous hummingbird at our house brought a few stories and news of arrivals at other locations.  This sparked my memory of one of my favorite hummingbird stories dating back to the late 80’s when we lived in Austin.  I’m going to relate that story here.  

My wife and I lived in a unique house on a greenbelt, within walking distance of the downtown Austin area.  The greenbelt and a large vacant lot next to us attracted lots of birds and we were successful in attracting Eastern Screech owls and Wood ducks to nesting boxes we had erected.  It was a little bit of paradise in the middle of a large city.  

When we first acquired the house in 1987 I assumed that we could attract Black-chinned hummingbirds, the predominant hummingbird in the local area, to feeders we put out at the house.  Despite having what I considered PRIME habitat, we got no hummingbirds during the several months (spring and summer) that would have been their season for residing in the area.  I left the feeders out for a couple of seasons but when they didn’t generate any traffic, I got frustrated and quit putting them out.  

We had a second floor deck that overlooked Bouldin Creek and had a couple of baskets of begonias hanging from the third floor deck.  (I never saw a hummingbird access begonias… their flowers are apparently of no interest.)  But one fall I saw a hummingbird flying around the back deck and I quickly made some sugar-water, filled a feeder and hung it from the deck.  We attracted hummingbirds but only during the fall migration, a period of maybe three weeks.  

The following and all subsequent years I didn’t have feeders out for the migration, but I would notice a hummingbird hovering in the exact spot where I had a feeder out the prior year, slowly rotating, obviously looking for a feeder that had been there the prior fall!  This occurred whether or not we had plants hanging on the deck!  From that time on my signal for putting out feeders was to see a hummingbird looking for a feeder during fall migration.  

I must presume that one or more of these small hummingbirds, which apparently didn’t spend the breeding season in the area, was remembering our location and the feeder that it could use to further its migration!  This happened year after year.  I never put a feeder out until I saw a hummingbird looking for the feeder that had been there the previous year.   I have to presume that our feeder/location was remembered for a year, and our location was probably only one of several that the bird(s) remembered and used on their annual migration south.  

I just finished reading some interesting facts about hummingbirds.  You might want to Google  mentalfloss.com, 9 Adorable Facts About Hummingbirds by Kate Horowitz… which lends credence to my experience.  

And if you are curious about the Black-chinned hummingbird, which doesn’t frequent our area, this is a photo of a male I took in the Central Texas area.  (Unfortunately, the male Black-chinned hummingbird’s gorget is much more difficult to photograph than our Rufous’ or Anna’s.)    

Incidentally, we logged our first female Rufous hummingbird on May 5, one day after the first male appeared.

This afternoon, (3/4/2020), just after 5pm, i looked out our kitchen window and saw a male Rufous hummingbird sitting near our largest hummingbird feeder! This was our first Rufous hummingbird of the season. I had very little light but managed to sneak out of the house with my camera to obtain photos of our first spring migrant. This arrival betters our past earliest arrival by one day, with our latest arrival date being 3/27. I had been watching carefully so that I could be sure and log our first Rufous’ arrival.

On February 26, 2020, I launched a birding excursion south to Fir Island with a friend. I made stops at several of the Fish and Wildlife access points (Jenson and Hayton) with my final destination being the WDFW headquarters tract at Wiley Slough.

I have had some interesting sightings there over the past few weeks… the Black phoebe that has been there for a couple of years and a Northern shrike which has eluded my camera on at least two occasions. Lately I had heard the rumor of a Northern waterthrush there. Many years ago I had photographed a waterthrush on the tract, but it was in a small stream and mostly obscured by all sorts of undergrowth. The photo was so bad I had to have ‘expert’ help in identifying the portion of the bird visible in the photograph.

As I arrived I thought I might have seen the shrike but it quickly flew from view. Next came the phoebe, but I also got just a quick glance at it before it disappeared down the waterway. No matter… I have some very good photos of the bird which I posted to this blog at some time in the past. As I waited for the phoebe to reappear (it never did) I noticed a small, rather obscure bird moving across the mat of debris floating in the slough. It wasn’t the Song sparrow that I had been watching… it was a Northern waterthrush! It was out in the open with good light behind me… almost perfect photographic conditions!

Over the next thirty minutes or so I took over 100 photos of the bird as it reaped the bountiful harvest of insects in the debris mat. I saw it with worms, a beetle and various other insects too small to identify. Here are a few photos…

The waterthrush is apparently a member of the warbler family, so why is “thrush” part of its name? “Northern Water warbler” doesn’t roll off the tongue especially easily, despite the alliteration, but at least it would more closely align the bird with its famiiy name. .

February 13, 2020 began as a rainy day. By about noon I thought the rain was supposed to stop so I set out on a birding excursion. (I later learned from my wife that the rain did stop in Anacortes, but it rained on me all my way to Fir Island and back.) As I was driving along Young Road I encountered this Red-tailed hawk perched on a fence post holding a rodent it had just harvested from a farm field.

I could see a wing tag and leg band but at this point I was unable to read the wing tag due to wind blowing it up on the bird’s back.

After a minute or so the hawk flew to a nearby tree.

I was able to relocate the hawk and obtained more photos of the hawk in the tree messing with the rodent.

The hawk then flew again, but the wind was fairly strong and the hawk just soared in place just outside my car. This allowed me to get another series of photos of the hawk in the air.

This was the last photo I took, with the hawk looking down at me. I drove on, leaving the hawk to dine on its meal.

I’m guessing this hawk was probably trapped at SeaTac and relocated to the Skagit Flats. The wing tags are so the hawk can be easily identified if it returns to the airport. This isn’t the first hawk I’ve seen in that area with a wing tag.

I think I can safely say that the hawk is eating well!

Sorry, but I had such a good day on 2/2/2020 that I decided to share more photos taken in the yard. For the most part it was the same old birds (the story of my life for the past several weeks) but very good photos.

Here is what I had hoped to obtain the previous day…. a male Anna’s hummingbird with its gorget reflecting.

Here is a female Downy woodpecker… we also had a male in the yard.

And a Bewick’s wren giving me the eye! We’ve recently had two in the yard, but I usually only see one at a time. I’m not sure whether or not this is the same bird in both photos.

Note that I’ve sent out two posts within minutes of each other. Scroll down to see that you haven’t missed the previous post.