A few more images taken in the yard this week...

A Black-capped chickadee, found in our yard in about equal numbers with the Chestnut-backed chickadees...

A female Rufous hummingbird on the crocosmia...

And another... or maybe the same one!

A Pine siskin of which there are many in our yard.  Note the very pointed bill and the subtle yellow on the wing...

And last, a male House sparrow feeding a young bird...

You should be able to click, or double-click, on any of these images and enlarge them. 

I believe that we still have young House wrens in the bird box.  We had five Northern flickers visiting the yard a day or so ago and we still have five young California quail left out of this year's production which started with about 12-13... I think two males and three females.  We haven't seen the adults in some time.  And this evening, well before dark, I saw one of our Downy woodpeckers enter one of our bird houses and although I watched for several minutes I didn't see it emerge.  My guess is it's using the house as a roosting box rather than a nesting box but I'll be keeping a closer eye on things over the weekend!  My impression is that many of the cavity nesters prefer to do their own excavations and this nest box was empty, but now next year I might consider filling it with wood shavings.