Another afternoon of sitting in the yard watching birds and making some new discoveries.  I hadn't originally planned to spend time photographing birds in the yard in the afternoon, but the baby California quail which just arrived this week sparked my interest and I decided to try to obtain some photos.  The parents have at least a dozen but with their activity and strategy to stay near or under cover they are impossible to count.  Suffice it to say that by the time they are half grown the parents will be lucky to have a third of them left.  

While I was maneuvering for a better photographic angle I looked up in the Golden Chain tree and saw a Cedar Waxwing in full sunlight less that 20' in front of me.  I hadn't seen the waxwing fly into the yard and this partially makes up for the visit I had from one a couple of weeks ago that left without me being able to get a decent photo.  I'm still not entirely happy with this photo but at least things are moving in the right direction!  

 

We have been plagued by juvenile European starlings for about the past week.  They generally come into the yard as a group of about 12-15 and stay until I run them out.  They were in the yard at the same time as the young quail, and I was amazed that the adult quail were mostly content to allow the starlings among their chicks.  (I did see one instance of a starling getting the beak from the female quail!) 

My attention was now directed at the starlings since I had an opportunity to obtain photos of the juveniles.  I kept noticing one starling that was substantially smaller than all the other starlings, and after a little study I came to the conclusion that mixed in with the starlings was a juvenile Brown-headed cowbird!  Poetic justice... I hope the cowbird pushed a few starling eggs out of the nest before they hatched!  This cowbird looks so innocent in this photo, but it will eventually be bad news for other birds.

So while all this was going on some goldfinches were encouraged to fly down to the water feature.  I was idly watching the goldfinches when I realized that one had no markings on its wings.  An orange-crowned warbler, seeing all the other activity around the water, had decided to fly down and investigate! 

I took about three photos of the warbler and upon close examination, I believe I can see the faint color of the orange crown in all three photographs.  This isn't the best of the photographs, but if you enlarge it by double clicking on it I think you will be able to see the faint orange streak at the rear of the bird's crown.  I'm not sure I've ever been successful in seeing the Orange-crowned warbler's crown before.  You have to either be very lucky, very observant, or view it the way John James Audubon viewed them.  (OK... no more sick jokes!)