Tis the Season...

The unfortunate news here is that last week, on one occasion, I counted thirteen juvenile European starlings in the yard at one time... and I'm fairly certain that due to their activity what I obtained was a substantial under-count!  Even though I utilize inverted suet feeders that discriminate against non-clinging birds, the starlings have learned to briefly hang upside down while stabbing at the suet.  Some of the suet falls from the cake and the starlings then land on the ground and eat the suet that has fallen.  I would leave the feeders empty but we have Downy woodpeckers, Northern flickers, Red-breasted nuthatches and chickadees that are regular feeders.  The birds, young and old, are very tenacious and refuse to be shooed away with hand-waving and thrown rocks. 

The best that can be said about the situation is that it afforded me the opportunity for photographs of the species...

This was a relatively rare visitor to the yard even though it's not an uncommon bird in these parts.  This Bushtit made several trips to the water features to bathe...

 

I was attempting to photograph hummingbirds adjacent to the feeder when these two female Rufous hummingbirds got into a little squabble next to the feeder.  It would have been an excellent photo but I didn't have enough light to really make things good.  

And finally, a female Rufous hummingbird in better light.   We have these native irises in the yard and they must not produce nectar because they generally aren't visited by either bees or hummingbirds.  However every once in awhile a hummingbird gets curious, and I barely managed to catch this hummingbird investigating an iris before it quickly moved on. 

Within about a week I'll be playing catch-up on my photo processing.  I've been having problems with my camera and it's still in warranty, so it'll get sent to Nikon for repairs by the end of next week.  That will be the end of my current yard photos for several weeks while the camera is checked out and repaired.  While that is being done I can hopefully be motivated to address the backlog of photos I have on my computer and I'll again begin posting photos from trips.