Last year (2023) we experienced our largest spring migration in the month of May, so by the end of April of this year I was on high alert for spring migrants. I had begun having one or two sightings of Orange-crowned warblers a day by about mid-April and just a handful of Yellow-rumped warblers.  I spent considerable time in the yard with not much to show for it. 

April 24, 2024, dawned overcast with intermittent drizzle, what I consider perfect weather for photography. I was in the yard by 10am and by 11am, an hour later, I had lost count of the number of Orange-crowned warblers that had I had seen in the yard. (My estimate was somewhere in excess of 10.)  I also had a single male Yellow-rumped warbler during the same time period. 

I saw no warblers from 11am to noon and took a break, returning to the yard about 1pm. Between 1pm and 2pm I saw about four male Yellow-rumped warblers and many more Orange-crowned warblers.  

I took a long afternoon break but returned to the yard again just after 5pm after seeing another Orange-crowned warbler at one of our water features. At that point the onslaught began!  Over the next hour or so I don’t think there was ever a time without a warbler in the yard, and at times I could count as many as four of each of the two species I’ve mentioned (OCWA & YRWA) in the yard at the same time!  (Most if not all of the Yellow-rumped warblers were males and most were Audubon’s, although there were some Myrtle’s warblers as well.)  It became absolutely impossible to even estimate the number of sightings. I was continuously occupied with photographing warblers at our various water and staging features. 

There was a lull about 4:30pm and I retreated to my office to download photos from my camera (Nikon D850 with Nikon 500mm lens)  to my computer.  As I began the download in my office I glanced out the widow and saw a female Black-throated Gray warbler (BTGW) in the watercourse below me!  This is one of the rarest warblers for our yard… I never saw a single one last year!  

I ran down the stairs, grabbed my camera and tried to sneak back into the yard. I managed one really good photo of the female BTGW and several of lesser quality. While I was in the yard the onslaught continued and I managed 240 photos until I judged the light was of such quality that further photos were of no use (about 5:40pm). My take of yard photos for the day… 674, a personal record for our yard and the preponderance of which were of warblers!  

I do much of my photo processing and writing in the wee hours of the morning so as to preserve the daylight hours for bird photography. I’ll be processing the day’s photos for a long time!  

I expect that there will be another influx of warblers since I didn’t see a single Wilson’s warbler (WIWA), the warbler I consider the most common for our yard. My problem now will be how to balance processing time for my photos with time spent looking for and photographing new migrants. 

Not to be ignored, a male Rufous hummingbird…

and what is probably a male first-year Anna’s hummingbird.

Before I get to photos, we have had a couple of noteworthy events, neither of which I was able to document in photos.  The first event was the annual arrival of Turkey vultures.  We saw two sail below our house on the very windy morning of March 11, 2024, as we were eating breakfast.  

The next day (March 12) we saw our first Rufous hummingbird, a female.  This arrival is right on time as the Red currents are just beginning to bloom.  

Another significant arrival, from hibernation, occurred March 10 when I saw one of our Townsend’s chipmunks scurry across the rocks in our watercourse.  It took full advantage of me and had a nice meal of peanuts.  Last year we had as many as four in the yard at one time and when the birding was slow they provided a little diversion for my photography.  

In other birding news, I was confused about this first-year White-crowned sparrow‘s identity (photographed March 10) until another arrived the following day.  I first thought I had a leucistic bird but later thought the bird was some sort of hybrid, but when another showed up the following day I realized that the sparrows’ crowns apparently don’t morph into adult plumage as I might expect.  

This finch had so much red on it I thought it might be a Purple finch instead of the more common House finch, but I’m probably not going to be able to make a determination from the photos I obtained.  If you want to weigh in on it let me know!  

And a few other recent visitors… 

A female Anna’s hummingbird taking what had to be a very cold bath on March 11, 2024…

A Red-breasted nuthatch sampling the cold water on the same day… 

And one of our recently arrived Pine siskins…

On March 11, 2024, I went for my morning walk in Washington Park. I encountered the same leucistic Song sparrow that I had first seen in the park a year or two previously. The bird has a prominent white patch on its forehead which appears much like a headlight. 

I had originally seen the bird on the loop road in the park but after not having seen the bird for several months I discovered this past month that the bird had moved several hundred yards from a heavily forested environment to a more open, and for me, accessible, environment. On this morning the sparrow readily came to a small amount of sunflower seed I put out and I was able to photograph the bird with my iPhone. 

I had made considerable efforts in the past to obtain quality photos of the bird, but it had consistently avoided me with its change of location and shyness. But on this day the bird’s location and behavior gave me renewed hope that I might be able to obtain some quality photographs. 

I retuned to the park in the early afternoon and with a little “pishing” and some ‘habitat enhancer’ I managed to reacquire the bird, although it was much more elusive than it had been early that morning. After a little frustration with the bird’s initial behavior I finally got the opportunity for some quality photos with my Nikon D850 and Nikkor 500mm f5.6 lens. 

I spend a lot of time watching and photographing birds and, since most birds aren’t readily identifiable as individuals, I seldom have the opportunity to track them from one year to the next. This bird, by virtue of its leucitism, is different. I get a lot of satisfaction in knowing that this bird has survived (this factor alone can be difficult for leucistic birds) and that I have been able to ascertain its location from year to year. 

March 6, 2024… another cold afternoon in the yard but another rewarding day for bird photography. The sun was out but the temperature was in the low 40’s. My hands get really cold but it’s difficult to protect them since they need to be available for photography on short notice. 

There were no new visitors on this day but plenty of opportunities for a photographer, including some of our rarer visitors. 

A pair of recently arrived Pine siskins spied some sunflower seed I had placed on a rock within about three feet of me and flew down to eat… twice!  This was far too close for my 500mm lens so I filmed them with my iPhone!  (The photo below is not an iPhone photo.)

I had the usual heavy traffic of chickadees, Dark-eyed Oregon juncos and Golden-crowned sparrows, plus other usual visitors. 

Our Bewick’s wren, a fairly rare visitor until it discovered the suet feeder a few weeks ago, entered the yard a couple of times to access our inverted suet feeder and I obtained several good photos. 

What got me into the yard in the first place, and kept me there in the cold, was a male Varied thrush that I kept seeing around the periphery of the yard. After well over an hour of waiting, my time in the cold was rewarded when the thrush approached and entered the nearest photographable water feature. I was able to take a multitude of photos of the bird at ‘point-blank’ range.  These birds will soon be heading back up to the mountains for the breeding season.

We’re still waiting for our first Rufous hummingbird to arrive. 

We’ll be winding down with our winter visitors in the next couple of months and looking forward to greeting our spring visitors.  Rufous hummingbirds should be arriving in the yard in the next couple of weeks.  In the first few days of March I’ve seen a Bald eagle and pair of Common ravens transporting nesting materials in the neighborhood.  

After several months of absence from the yard, we had at least two Pine siskins visit the yard on February 24, 2024.  I’ve observed them off and on since.  In some past years the siskins have been our most numerous visitors at times, but that hasn’t happened for several years now.  The siskins seem to come and go, sometimes with absences of several months at a time.  

We had two White-crowned sparrows visit the yard for one day (February 27, 2024).  One was an adult and the other apparently a first winter bird.  They had no apparent interaction.  This species is usually in the greater area year-round but we generally see a pair in the yard only during the mating season, and the pair that usually frequents our yard in the spring and summer quite often have their breeding efforts parasitized by Brown-headed cowbirds.    

We have had only infrequent visits recently by a single male Varied thrush, but on one occasion late in February we briefly had two in the yard.  

Also in mid-to-late February we had a Bewick’s wren visiting both our inverted suet feeder and a peanut feeder, an unusual occurrence for a bird that is primarily an insect easter.  

In early March I looked out our kitchen window to see three Anna’s hummingbirds briefly sitting on one of our hummingbird feeders at the same time!  

I’m always saddened and surprised by the handicaps I observe in some of our visitors.  On the injured reserve list… 

In late February we are still hosting the male Spotted towhee with the deformed (crossed) beak that I believe was the product of last year’s mating season.  

We have a male Dark-eyed Oregon junco with a lame right leg, and I recently spotted a female bird of the same species with a lame left leg. 

And I recently observed a Bushtit with a single leg hanging from our inverted suet feeder.