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.
In this blog during 2022, I believe I’ve mentioned several times that we’ve managed to attract eight different species of sparrows to our yard. I was wrong! As I was writing this and listing the sparrows I realized we have had NINE! This seems like a remarkable achievement, not so much on our part for just providing a hospitable environment but the happenstance of a couple of relatively rare sparrows visiting and our happening to observe them. In observance of this achievement I’m going to list the species and post photographs, all of which were taken in 2022 and in our yard. I’m listing the species, in my estimation, from most common to rarest. (The date in parentheses after the species is the date the photograph was taken.)
I consider these sparrows’ appearance (plumage) as distinctive with the possible exception of the Song and Fox sparrows and White-crowned and White-throated. But things can get a bit dicier in spring and early summer when juveniles are added to the mix. As always, I want to emphasize the importance of observing behavior as a factor in identification. Some of these birds would have gone unnoticed in a yard full of sparrows and other birds if not for their behavior.
House sparrow (male:1/7/2022; female: 4/16/22)
We were overrun with House sparrows this year as newly installed nest boxes in the neighborhood failed to be designed to exclude sparrows. These sparrows have discovered that we are feeding superior food (sunflower seed and peanut pieces) and have therefore migrated to our yard for their food supply.
Since there are significant differences in plumages between the sexes I included a photo of each sex.
This is mainly a winter visitor. The birds leave in the spring to breed at higher elevations. Until the explosion of House sparrows this year the juncos were formerly the most numerous sparrow in the yard. For the past few years we have had one pair remain in the area and breed but the species is heavily predated by Brown-headed cowbirds.
On November 20, 2022, we had a Slate-colored Dark-eyed junco show up ion the yard. At this time this is not considered a separate species but a different ‘race’.
I have included a photo of a leucistic Dark-eyed junco of the Oregon race, a one-of-a kind bird due to a genetic aberration. This bird was with with us the past two winters and into the spring but did not shown up this winter.
Spotted towhee (male: 3/12/2022)
We usually have 1-3 pairs in the yard year-round. This is another species heavily predated by Brown-headed cowbirds.
Song sparrow (4/14/2022)
One or two birds of this species are in the yard mainly in the winter.
Golden-crowned sparrow (3/16/2022)
This is strictly a winter bird in our yard, but we can have as many as ten or so. This species leaves to breed to the north and east of us in the spring and doesn’t return until the fall.
Fox sparrow (4/14/2022)
This bird is in the yard only in the winter. We usually have only one or two.
White-crowned sparrow (4/24/2022)
Although found in the greater area year-round, in our yard this sparrow is usually only a spring and summer visitor. Sadly, it too is also predated by Brown-headed cowbirds.
White-throated sparrow (5/6/2022)
This is one of the rarest visitors to the yard, this year only staying for one or two days in the spring. A couple of years ago we had one that settled in for several weeks a block from us and I photographed it extensively.
Chipping sparrow (5/13/2022)
Our rarest sparrow, it was here for only a single day.
There are at least three other sparrow species I have observed in the county that we have not observed in our yard… the Lincoln sparrow, the Savannah sparrow and the American Tree sparrow.
