Thursday's Birds

There were a couple of times on Thursday when the yard was flooded with birds.  I first took my camera out a little after noon, one of the few times now that sunlight falls directly on the watercourse.  Due to the sun passing lower and lower in the sky each day these times are growing significantly shorter, and it probably won't be long before I won't have any direct sun on the watercourse.  While in some ways this is a setback for my photography, it also means that I won't have to dispose of so many photos due to shadows.  It's difficult to believe how many compromises there are in photography, and most seem to work against the photographer.  But that's another topic. 

I hadn't been in the yard but a couple of minutes before a Golden-crowned kinglet flew to the watercourse and I started taking photos.  This bird will probably be with us all winter, but up until this time it has been rather elusive and reluctant to actually land in the watercourse.  Yesterday two of them were involved with chasing each other around the yard and beyond.  But at any rate I managed to photograph one of them taking a bath, and this provided the opportunity to capture the bird's ruby crown which often is difficult to see in the field.

Another noteworthy bird in the yard, and one which up until this year has been quite rare, is the Red crossbill.  As I think I mentioned in a previous blog, these birds are quite shy and are experts at entering the watercourse undetected.  Yesterday they were visiting in small flocks and there would be times when at least five or six would be in the watercourse area at the same time.  In previous visits they would usually integrate their trips to the water with a lot of House sparrows or Pine siskins, but yesterday they were visiting singly and in small flocks.

I'm even having difficulty identifying the birds.  Earlier in the season the adult males and females were quite distinctive, but as they have raised young I'm getting birds of many diffierent hues and colors.  I think this bird might be an older juvenile since I've seen females with much more color during the past couple of months, but I'm just not sure.  It could also be a male juvenile changing into adult plumage. 

Here's an adult male, one of the rarest and shyest of the species to visit the yard...

And Thursday, for the first time, I observed that the crossed beak on what must be really young Red crossbills is hardly noticeable!  This bird, when its feathers aren't fluffed up from bathing, could easily be mistaken for a Pine siskin or a female House finch. 

 

And we're getting ever more Pine siskins and Dark-eyed juncos in the yard.  At one point I counted six siskins on one of the bird baths at one time, but birds would leave in one direction and be replaced by birds coming from another direction.  There must have been at least a dozen in the lower areas of the yard and I noticed on several occasions that groups were also eating from fir cones in the upper crowns of the fir trees.  

So we're getting a lot of visitors but it's mainly the same (winter) birds.  We now have a single Song sparrow which can generally be found in the yard and should be with us all winter.  Late in the afternoon we saw a Bewick's wren traversing a bench in the yard.