Thursday's Birds

There were a couple of times on Thursday when the yard was flooded with birds.  I first took my camera out a little after noon, one of the few times now that sunlight falls directly on the watercourse.  Due to the sun passing lower and lower in the sky each day these times are growing significantly shorter, and it probably won't be long before I won't have any direct sun on the watercourse.  While in some ways this is a setback for my photography, it also means that I won't have to dispose of so many photos due to shadows.  It's difficult to believe how many compromises there are in photography, and most seem to work against the photographer.  But that's another topic. 

I hadn't been in the yard but a couple of minutes before a Golden-crowned kinglet flew to the watercourse and I started taking photos.  This bird will probably be with us all winter, but up until this time it has been rather elusive and reluctant to actually land in the watercourse.  Yesterday two of them were involved with chasing each other around the yard and beyond.  But at any rate I managed to photograph one of them taking a bath, and this provided the opportunity to capture the bird's ruby crown which often is difficult to see in the field.

Another noteworthy bird in the yard, and one which up until this year has been quite rare, is the Red crossbill.  As I think I mentioned in a previous blog, these birds are quite shy and are experts at entering the watercourse undetected.  Yesterday they were visiting in small flocks and there would be times when at least five or six would be in the watercourse area at the same time.  In previous visits they would usually integrate their trips to the water with a lot of House sparrows or Pine siskins, but yesterday they were visiting singly and in small flocks.

I'm even having difficulty identifying the birds.  Earlier in the season the adult males and females were quite distinctive, but as they have raised young I'm getting birds of many diffierent hues and colors.  I think this bird might be an older juvenile since I've seen females with much more color during the past couple of months, but I'm just not sure.  It could also be a male juvenile changing into adult plumage. 

Here's an adult male, one of the rarest and shyest of the species to visit the yard...

And Thursday, for the first time, I observed that the crossed beak on what must be really young Red crossbills is hardly noticeable!  This bird, when its feathers aren't fluffed up from bathing, could easily be mistaken for a Pine siskin or a female House finch. 

 

And we're getting ever more Pine siskins and Dark-eyed juncos in the yard.  At one point I counted six siskins on one of the bird baths at one time, but birds would leave in one direction and be replaced by birds coming from another direction.  There must have been at least a dozen in the lower areas of the yard and I noticed on several occasions that groups were also eating from fir cones in the upper crowns of the fir trees.  

So we're getting a lot of visitors but it's mainly the same (winter) birds.  We now have a single Song sparrow which can generally be found in the yard and should be with us all winter.  Late in the afternoon we saw a Bewick's wren traversing a bench in the yard. 

Monday, October 1, 2012 turned out to be a beautiful day.  Despite a very sore lower back I had taken my 2.25-mile morning walk in Washington Park.  After a ‘recovery nap’ my back felt better so I decided to bird at the development-in-progress (San Juan Passage) on the NW portion of the island, in part because just sitting in the car wouldn’t aggravate my back problems.  However I first made a call to change our insurance and by the time I was finished with the call (about noon) Nancy was seeing a lot of bird action in the yard.  I had already loaded my camera equipment in the car but decided that I should give the yard a chance, especially since I had considerable light and at that time the light was shining directly on the main portion of the watercourse.  As things turned out, it was a good decision. 

After only a brief lull when I first started and got situated the birds came back into the yard.  As usual, it was mostly House sparrows but I immediately saw four male House finches, at least three of which were in water features at the same time.  Chickadees were strangely absent but my attention was quickly focused on three Northern flickers that were putting on a show.  Two of the flickers (a mature male and a female) were interacting, chasing each other around the yard and having confrontations.  This took place on the sides of trees, on our fence and on the ground.  When about a foot or two apart one would jump at the other and although I never saw any contact there was a lot of posturing.  I managed to photograph both sitting on our fence by the garden.  

This isn't a great photo for several reasons, but it's rather dramatic so I thought that I would include it... 

The fact that we would have three flickers in the yard at the same time was somewhat surprising.  Until a couple of weeks ago we had had only very rare sightings of a female flicker, and it was very shy.  For a while it wouldn’t enter the yard if I was out with my camera, but in the past few days it began frequenting all of our feeders (suet, peanut and sunflower seed) and has gotten bolder and bolder.  It’s now to the point where it will approach a feeder when I am standing as close as 10-15 feet away. 

I noticed at one point that we had a male Downy woodpecker, a male Hairy woodpecker and two or more of the Northern flickers in the yard at the same time!  Later in the afternoon a female Downy woodpecker visited one of the water features. 

And during the entire 2-3 hours that I was in the yard the Red crossbills kept coming back to visit the water feature.  In the past it was usually only a mature male and female, often together,  and more recently we have been having juveniles of an undetermined sex.  Unless examined very closely they appear to be brown and it’s very easy to mix them up with the many House sparrows in the yard.  Their technique for a visit to the water feature is to let several sparrows go in for water and then they dart down and intermingle with the sparrows.  Due to all the activity it can be challenging to separate them from the sparrows.  Yesterday on several occasions we had an entire family visit the watercourse at one time, with a mature male and female and at least two juveniles.  And I managed to obtain my first photos of one of the juveniles, which has been a goal for some time!  

In this photo one of the crossbills is having a little argument with a House sparrow that is just out of the photo on the right...

We have at least two Anna’s hummingbirds frequenting the yard, at least one of which is a male.  Yesterday the male made an unusual number of trips to the water feature and I managed to acquire more photos of it in flight (1/120 shutter speed), but unfortunately I don’t think I got any with the light reflecting off its gorget.  Late in the afternoon I noticed that the male kept returning to a location that was too close to me to photograph, so I eventually moved my chair back so that the location would be in focus range.  However at that point the bird decided to relocate elsewhere.  We have a feeder hanging in our Pacific yew tree and despite the tree receiving little sun, the hummingbird seems to like to spend time in the middle of the tree’s canopy… where I can’t photograph it due to lack of light, too close a focal distance and intervening branches.  

Another couple of photos of the male Anna's hummingbird, this one with its gorget showing... 

 and this photo with his back to the camera in the only stationary shot I managed to obtain.

Our population of Dark-eyed juncos (Oregon race) is slowly growing and by mid-winter they may rival the House sparrows as the most numerous birds in the yard.  And I’m looking forward to the arrival of at least one Slate-colored junco that we’ve logged each of the last five winters. 

In between all the other activity I kept myself busy photographing American robins, Spotted towhees, House sparrows, Red-breasted nuthatches, Golden-crowned sparrows, a Song sparrow, chickadees and a shy and elusive Golden-crowned kinglet.  

This isn't a very good photo of the Golden-crowned kinglet, but it's enough to provide identification and I'm including it due to all the 'work' I had to do to obtain the photo... 

 And along the way I took these and other photos... 

Chestnut-backed chickadee...

Pine siskin standing in the watercourse...

 and male Downy woodpecker...

Throw in a few shots of airplanes and helicopters flying overhead and I was left with a 140- image processing load!  After processing I ended up with 84 photos, 12 of which by my standards I judged ‘outstanding’. 

Late September Yard Birds

Interesting yard birds have been getting more and more difficult to see and photograph lately, but the yard is not totally devoid of interest.  Perhaps the most interesting visitor this week was a Hermit's thrush that visited the watercourse just before 7pm one evening this last week.  It was probably too dark to obtain a photo but that didn't keep me from trying, but before I could get into position the thrush flew... after taking a lengthy bath.

Then a day or so later I was surprised to see (and obtain a single photo) of another rare visitor to the yard, one I at first mistook for one of the many sparrows that was in the yard at the time.  While the bird took a lengthy bath, I was not in position to get photos of it in the watercourse.  This is a Yellow-rumped warbler and I won't even hazard a guess as to the race (Audubon's or Myrtle's) or sex of the visitor.  I've got well over a hundred photos of this species taken within several hundred yards of our location during fall migration in past years, but for whatever reason it's a rare visitor to our yard. 

 

And today I obtained a photo I've been wanting for quite some time.  Our Rufous hummingbirds are long gone, but for the past couple of winters we've had a pair of Anna's hummingbirds that have survived cold temperatures and even a week's worth of snow.  This appears to be a female Anna's hummingbird hovering over our watercourse... but it is not!  

 

When the hummingbird turns to where the light reflects off of its gorget it is revealed as a male Anna's hummingbird... in flight and taken with a shutter speed of 1/1250 of a second.