Hello Tweets,

Today while conducting a few household tasks we enjoyed a nice assortment of birds in our yard,and conditions remained very nice with just a slight breeze at times. Our main highlight was a female-type Yellow Warbler that made a brief appearance to our tall row of Lombardy Popular trees at 2:30pm,then as most warblers do it quickly moved and was lost in the heavy yellow color of the leaves. This is a noteworthy date for this species,as well as our personal latest fall date on record. Occasionally a few Yellow Warblers are noted into November,but any other sightings after that are most likely overwintering birds. Another good bird noted in our yard this afternoon was a flyover adult Ring-billed Gull,which is our 2nd personal yard record to date and any gulls encountered in this manner over our yard are usually Glaucous-winged Gulls,primarily flying over from the Tacoma Landfill to the Titlow Beach area. Throughout the day our yard was quite active,especially at 1pm when a good movement of birds gathered in our front and backyard,as well as took advantage of our birdbaths. Other sightings from our yard today included the following:

1 adult Bald Eagle(flyover)
1 adult Red-tailed Hawk(flyover)
2-4 Band-tailed Pigeons
3-4 Anna's Hummingbirds
1 Red-breasted Sapsucker
1 pair of Downy Woodpeckers
3-4 Northern"Red-shafted"Flickers(with a "pure" Northern"Yellow-shafted"Flicker in our yard on the 24th of October)
4-5 Steller's Jays
6-7 Black-capped Chickadees
14+ Chestnut-backed Chickadees
12 Bushtits
2 Bewick's Wrens
7 Golden-crowned Kinglets
3 Ruby-crowned Kinglets
1-2 Hermit Thrushes
6 Cedar Waxwings(in our yard and not as flyovers!)
8-10 Am.Robins
1 Hutton's Vireo
1 Townsend's Warbler
2 Song Sparrows
12-15 Dark-eyed"Oregon"Juncos
1 Purple Finch
2-3 House Finches
3-4 Pine Siskins(recent fall arrivals to our yard)

We also observed a single darner(dragonfly)species roaming our neighborhood this afternoon,especially in the most exposed sunny areas.


In addition to today's list 3-4 Evening Grosbeaks made a morning flyover yesterday morning. Anyhow, a nice list of species for our yard on a sunny fall day!



Good yard birding,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
Fircrest,WA
godwit at worldnet.att.net