Bonanza of Spring Migrants

With the improved weather I’ve been spending more time outdoors watching and photographing birds. Thus far I have been somewhat disappointed in the number of spring migrants, both in the yard and on the North American Migration Count in which I participated last weekend. However as they say, “Hope springs eternal” and today (Saturday, 5/15/2010) that little saying was brought to fruition.
For the past several days we’ve had a Black-headed grosbeak singing constantly in the vicinity and about two days ago I was finally able to confirm that it was a grosbeak and not the ‘sound-alike’ American robin. Mid-morning I hung my platform feeder for it but was disappointed that I didn’t see it on the feeder… until about 6:30pm when it spent several minutes on the feeder. It will be back and I’ll be around to photograph it, but it wasn’t going to happen today.

I spent the major part of the afternoon in the yard. After having relatively little success at my brush pile location I moved across to the other side of the watercourse in hopes of getting photos of the female Rufous hummingbird bathing. Although she approached her preferred bathing spot several times, and once even perched within about three feet of me, she never landed in the water course. For whatever reason I didn’t see a male Rufous hummingbird the entire afternoon.
The afternoon was beginning to wear on me when I had a couple of visits by a male Wilson’s warbler. On its second visit by some miracle I managed to pick it out of the blooming Golden Chain tree (laburnum) and a tree full of male American goldfinches. (I’m still patting myself on the back for that accomplishment!) For the second year in a row I had the opportunity to photograph a male Wilson’s warbler in the Golden Chain tree but wasn’t able to do so. However the bird did approach the watercourse but I just managed to miss getting a photo. However on its third foray into the yard I managed to get two nice photos of it sitting on a metal sculpture of a Belted kingfisher.

A short time later a female Wilson’s warbler entered the yard and I was attempting to try for a photograph all the way across the yard when the bird flew. I lost it and was just in the process of lowering my camera when I realized that a male Western tanager was sitting in the water course directly in front of me! It was just unbelievable… and I hadn’t even seen it fly into the yard! I took about 6-7 photos of it at close range before it flew, but then it re-entered the yard a few minutes later and I took more photos of it across the yard. It hung around the second time for several minutes, first exploring the brush pile and later the fir tree canopy.

After not seeing a single California quail last year they are back. We also have at least one Dark-eyed junco (Oregon Race) and a pair of Golden-crowned sparrows left over from winter. Red-winged blackbirds are using the feeders… the only time of year they come to the yard. We have one or more pairs of House finches who have fledged young and are feeding them.