This week has been bountiful for our back yard going into the winter season.  We have had a profusion of birds coming to our seed and suet feeders.  Birds that we rarely see in the yard have visited more frequently than before, and birds that we normally see in winter are around now.  These birds came around on Thanksgiving for our viewing pleasure.  Just one more thing to be thankful for.

Our Red-shafted Flicker was posing for us. “Which view sets off my beautiful red cheeks better, this, or that?” he seemed to say. We go some entire years without seeing him in the yard at all. Now, he comes nearly every day.

I have enjoyed using my cell-phone camera to take video, but I have to say that my Canon point-and-shoot camera has better zoom to get pictures like these.

The Bewick’s Wren was working hard on that suet, and I managed to get him in the perfect pose, so he was easily identifiable.  I keep my 1967 edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds handy to make sure I have the right bird.  You can see the bars on the tail, and the white eye-stripe that tells you instantly that he is the Bewick’s Wren.

It’s lucky the Varied Thrush has that orange belly, so you can see him among the branches of the vine maple tree.  I was surprised to see him in the tree, since they are ground-feeding carnivores mostly.

Then my favorite Townsend’s Warbler came around again.

And one of our many Black-capped Chickadees had a snack at the suet feeder.  They spend most of their time depleting the seed feeder.  When I am out in the yard in the spring and summer, they will let me get pretty close to them to get my still pictures and video.

We feel very fortunate that our birds have given us so much pleasure this year, when there has been so much depression around.