Yard Update... But No Photos

 Unfortunately my photographic activity in the yard is going downhill fast.  We have very tall fir trees to the south of us and the winter sun is not clearing the trees, so our yard is almost always in perpetual shade.  I have one small window of 20-30 minutes when my watercourse is illuminated (on rare sunny days) but I find that the intermittent bird activity usually doesn't coincide with that window.

Golden-crowned kinglets continue to visit the berry clusters on the madrona trees, searching for insects in the clusters.  Sometimes it's difficult to separate out the kinglets from all the other bird activity but I saw kinglets last Thursday and again yesterday (Sunday). 

On Friday we had another unusual visitor to the yard... a Townsend's warbler.  We had an influx two to three weeks ago but I figured they had all moved on when this straggler arrived.  It too was searching for insects in the madrona trees. 

Yesterday, just before dark, I saw a relatively large bird land in one of our fir trees in the front yard.  Just as I was acquiring the bird in my binoculars it flew towards me and over the house, presumably flying to the large madrona tree located immediately behind our house.  My initial reaction when the bird landed in the fir tree was that it was probably an American robin, but just as it flew I saw the marking on its breast that would indicate that it was a Varied thrush.  We've had quite a few robins over the last couple of weeks and I've been trying to keep a sharp eye out... this is the first Varied thrush that I've seen this year. 

I continue to see House finches eating berries in the madrona trees.  I'm running out of time for photographs as the berries are gradually fading and and either being eaten or dropping to the ground.  A mystery to me is why the House finches seem to enjoy the berries but the House sparrows, a very similar bird, don't seem to eat them.  In fact I very seldom see a House sparrow in the madrona trees at all. 

And speaking of House sparrows, for several months now I've let my large sunflower feeders stay empty in a fruitless effort to encourage the sparrows to go elsewhere.  Now that cold weather is back I've filled one of the feeders to benefit the Dark-eyed juncos and clinging birds.  In the meantime the juncos have learned how to access my feeders which discriminate against non-clinging birds.  In the case of the juncos I'm sure they learned the trick from the sparrows. 

Over the past two to three weeks most of our woodpeckers (Downys, Hairys and Northern flickers), which in warmer weather visited our feeder many times a day, seem to have moved on.  I think we're having an occasional visit by one of the Downy woodpeckers.