Overwhelmed with Yard Birds!

I had a rather stellar hour and a half in the yard yesterday.  It began when I was sitting at my computer in my office and glanced out the window just in time to see what appeared to be a yellow bird going down through the canopy of our Golden Chain tree towards our watercourse.  (Unfortunately, through either age or false hopes many of the birds I see moving these days appear yellow.)  I decided to take a chance and rushed for my camera downstairs, then crept outside until I had a good view of the watercourse and other bird baths in the yard.  I had to wait a few minutes, but eventually a warbler emerged from the tree.  My guess is that it is a female Yellow warbler, but I can't rule out a Wilson's warbler.  I obtained photos of it not only in the tree but also along the watercourse.  It was a great start to a very productive photographic period. 

During the period I sat in the yard I had 5-6 appearances by Orange-crowned warblers, including two in the watercourse at the same time.  It's the first time I can ever remember having two warblers in the yard at the same time, but that's probably because once I see one I become so focused (pun intended) on it that I ignore just about all other bird activity!  One of the warblers brought some sort of colorful insect to the ground and spent about five minutes attempting to eat all of it.  I think I took 39 photos of it and retained 24 of them!  (You can't believe how difficult it is to discard good warbler photos, so I'll be having a sale on them later in the week!) 

 

Here's a more serene pose by an Orange-crowned warbler perched over the watercourse. 

 I've included this photo I took of House sparrows for a special reason.  I've found it difficult to obtain photos of a male and female House sparrow together.  In my yard the sexes are almost always separated, even though there may be well over a dozen waiting to access the same feeder.  While I can use photo-processing software to display a male and female side-by-side, it's nice to have a real photo of the two of them together. 

 Finally, for this posting, I had a cooperative Anna's hummingbird that seemed very interested in the water as long as other birds were enjoying themselves in it.  It hovered just over the water on several occasions, letting me obtain in-flight photos at a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/200th of a second.  It's not a very good photo, but click on it to enlarge it and examine the details of the bird's feathers. 

 And finally, here's a photo of a Song sparrow enjoying the watercourse...

The following birds made appearances during the time I was in the yard:

(presumably) Yellow warbler 

Orange-crowned warbler 

Golden-crowned kinglets

Ruby-crowned kinglets

Golden-crowned sparrows (at least two)

Song sparrow

House sparrows

House finches

Northern flicker

Hairy woodpecker

Downy woodpecker

California quail (five males and one female)

American robins

Dark-eyed juncos, Oregon race

Chestnut-backed chickadees

Black-capped chickadees

Red-breasted nuthatches

Brown creeper

Spotted towhees

Anna’s hummingbird (which hovered above the watercourse and allowed me to take photos) 

European starlings

I've been on a lot of outings where I didn't see as much, and this was all in the yard and I managed to photograph most of these species!  

The tally for 1.5 hours of bird observation/photography:  178 photos of which I retained exactly half!   Add about three hours for processing/cataloging images and at least another hour for writing/composition and you can see what this hobby does to a retired person's discretionary time!