In my last posting I mentioned that we had seen a White-throated sparrow in the yard in the morning. I wasn't able to see the bird the rest of the day. However we did note a couple of other interesting birds in the yard. We had at least two Varied thrushes in the yard for awhile on 1/15. The snow always seems to bring them to the yard, and I theorize that the snow drives them from the higher elevations down to areas with less snow where they have a better chance of finding food. The Varied thrushes eat mainly berries and insects but in past years they have dined on the hull-less sunflower seeds when we actually have snow on the ground.
But the most interesting sighting was one my wife made... a Bewick's wren eating from our inverted suet feeder. For a few weeks I've suspected that we might have a wren around the yard, but the wren is difficult to pick out of all the other bird activity. Yesterday my wife saw the bird hanging upside down on the suet feeder, and it made repeated trips to the suet for food. (As a matter of fact, it's again on the feeder as I write!) In the past we've had an Orange-crowned warbler visit our feeder on a regular basis as well as one of the kinglets. As the saying goes, when the going gets tough the tough get resourceful!
These are two different views of our watercourse as of just after 9am. The first view is towards the south. The main basin is the dark area just behind the rock in the lower left of the photo.
This is the view to the east. The water is pumped from the basin in the lower right of the photo up to the top of the rock mound where it cascades down the dark watercourse to the right of center of the photo. The water then runs from right to left behind the step in the lower part of the photograph back to the basin on the left.
The water is a popular feature when the temperature is below freezing, and the Varied thrushes are some of the heaviest users.
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