A Better Week

The beginning of this past week started off with more gloom.  A female Varied Thrush appeared on Tuesday and I was excited at the prospect of them being around a little longer.  However, when I saw her unable to fly the next morning, my optimism quickly turned to misery.

Thankfully, things got A LOT better this weekend.  On Saturday, I saw a male Rufous Hummingbird make about five trips to one of the nectar feeders (not bad, considering that I was at work for most of the day).  This continued through Sunday, with a male Anna's Hummer feeding during sunset.  This was big, as my nectar feeders had been used very sparingly for the past couple of weeks.  Late Saturday afternoon, a newcomer was seen: a White-crowed Sparrow.  It seemed to enjoy munching on the sunflower chips and gleaning from the black-oil sunflower shells, but seemed to enjoy sitting on the fence and just hanging out even more.  Interestingly, I saw two additional ones on Sunday - one was actually brave enough to go into my ground feeder this time.  But mostly, they seemed to enjoy just hanging and relaxing out on the fence or the neighbor's tree.  That's my kind of bird.  Spotted Towhees made another appearance in the yard on Sunday morning, the first in over a month.  Two of them sang loudly for a couple of hours, mostly from high atop the neighbor's tree but they also came down to forage around our driveway.

Sunday morning also brought another new visitor who I haven't completely identified yet - either a Swainson's Thrush or a Hermit Thrush.  It had a lighter coloring similar to the Pacific Coast race of Hermit, but it appeared to have the lighter spots on the breast indicative of a Swainson's.  Compounding the difficulty is the fact that it was in the tree for a whole five seconds or so.  Anyway, it was nice to see something new.

So, all in all, not a bad week.  The only downer was the absence of Chestnut-backed Chickadees and American Goldfinches (Lessers were still seen on occasion).  Flickers were less numerous than earlier this year, but Downies are more abundant now.  Black-capped Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches were in high abundance and I'm still seeing (and hearing) Ruby-crowned Kinglets.  Bushtits and House Finches are still frequent visitors and that male Myrtle Warbler is still doing his "hover-glean" thing at the suet basket.  It'll be interesting to see how long the latter hangs around, as Myrtles are uncommon out here in the summer.


White-crowned Sparrow foraging for stray sunflower seeds


Spotted Towhee checking out the real estate

Post a comment

  • Name:
  • E-Mail Address (optional):
  • URL (nofollow, optional):
  • Remember personal info
  • Comments (text only):