It was another wet day, though less breezy than yesterday.

This afternoon just after 3, I noticed the juncos gathering in the branches of the trees east of the house. Several times this winter I have noticed juncos moving through those trees around this time (relative to sunset, rather than hour of the day). Each time they have come from the neighborhood to the south and east, moved through the trees in the yard, and from their continuing northeast across the road toward the Geodetic Way. A couple of times in the morning I have seen them reversing that route, but I’m less often paying attention out the windows at that time.

When I first noticed them today, I decided to go outside and watch. They seemed to stay in the trees longer than I remember noticing before. I’m not sure if the flock was more spread out, and the early arrivals were waiting for the rest to catch up. It’s also possible this was fairly typical, and I’ve just not noticed before.

While I was out there, an Anna’s Hummingbird flew up and then backed off when it realized I was there. It was a different individual than showed up a couple of days ago. The other one appeared to be an immature male, while this one seemed to be an adult. I came inside to give it space and grab my camera when I saw it. There wasn’t really much light remaining so conditions weren’t ideal, but I took a couple of pictures as it was feeding anyway.

For the first time in what seems like weeks, it skies were more clear than not. We didn’t do too much outside, but did take a short walk up the lower part of Gavan Trail. An Anna’s Hummingbird was visiting the feeder periodically – I hoped to get pictures, but didn’t manage to catch it any of the 3 times I saw it.

While walking by Indian River this morning, I was interested to see the water still flowing fairly high, but the color of the water was much grayer than I typically expect for flows this high. Most times when there is heavy enough rain to raise levels, the river is brown. I have always heard this is due to tannins that leach into the surface and near-surface waters of the forests and muskegs. That said, now that I think about it, it’s not entirely clear to me why this wouldn’t be going on all the time. Perhaps in periods without heavy rain, there is water with tannins coming in, but it’s a relatively small part of the overall flow, with the bulk of it being from snow melt and ground water. With heavy rainfall, most of the flow is from surface or near-surface runoff which is presumably pretty effective at leaching out the tannins. It would be interesting to know more. At any rate, I assume that currently the relatively high water is due to rainfall in part, but also a fair amount of snow melt. I’m not sure why it was gray, however. In the late spring on warm days, the river level can rise noticeably, but when I’ve seen it at that time, it’s still running clear. I wonder where the sediment was coming from today.

On another note, a hummingbird visited this morning a couple of times. I didn’t get a great look at it, but it seemed like it may have been a female (or young male) Anna’s Hummingbird.

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Rain and on-going snowmelt have raised the river above normal flow levels.

Rain and on-going snowmelt have raised the river above normal flow levels.

Rain and on-going snowmelt have raised the river above normal flow levels.

During part of the conversation from the other night, it came up that Andy is something of a mushroomer. At the time I encouraged him to pass on his photos/observations to help contribute to the understanding of fungi occurrence and distribution in Southeast. I thought it might be nice to send him the link to the section of the wiki devoted to fungi, but realized when I looked that it was showing signs of neglect. That prompted me to spend some time getting pages moved over to the newer format (a simple process) and deciding what to do with the legacy collection pages (a somewhat more involved process).

It wasn’t a great day for doing much anyway, as a head cold I’ve been feeling the last couple of days decided to move down to my chest – so the extra coughing and sleep put a bit of a damper on parts of the day, and I didn’t really make it outside (though I did notice some nice color in the sky this morning shortly before sunrise). On the plus side, I did make decent progress towards making the fungi section more usable for folks (including easier to update), and was able to raise my documented mushroom species number to 50 (though several of those are not fully identified) – with probably close to that many still to get through in my photo backlog.

Connor and Rowan watched for a hummingbird to show up at the feeder for a while today (when they weren’t trying to catch the juncos, at least – while I’m on the subject of kids and birds, I’ll make a note for myself that they started making species cards to record their bird observations, will need to get new cards very soon if they keep up with it, but time will tell – it was a reasonably enthusiastic start in any case), but didn’t see any. After the first day (when I saw them visit several times), I’ve only seen them visit once since. I haven’t been paying super close attention, but still, it would seem they’re finding food elsewhere at this point. Perhaps they’re eating flies (I’ve had more than one person mention seeing insects out and about still – which reminds me, Steve Heinl mentioned a published note on the winter diets of Western Screech-Owls in Southeast, turns out they eat a lot of insects, something I would not have expected – I need to look up the note and give it a read) and visiting other feeders that might be up around town. I did get one report of a male down with the Christmas lights in the Pioneer Home gardens. Given hummingbirds’ affinity for bright flowers, I wonder if they feel compelled to check out all of the colorful lights…

We saw a couple of interesting birds on a walk around town today – an Anna’s Hummingbird and a yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

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Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker.

Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna) observed 26 January 2008.

I recently learned that someone I know has had an Anna’s Hummingbird visiting. It’s probably more accurate to say that his wife has had an Anna’s Hummingbird visiting, as she is the one who has maintained the feeder since late fall, when the bird apparently first showed up.

When I first talked to her to get information for inclusion in the quarterly rare bird report, she described the bird as being green and distinctly larger than the normal (Rufous) hummingbirds she sees during the summer. Based on her description and patterns of past vagrancy, it seemed quite likely that it was an Anna’s Hummingbird. Anna’s Hummingbirds are considered Very Rare in Sitka, so I would not generally expect them to be around. According to the Birds of North America account, their breeding range seems to extend no further than southern British Columbia. However, they are early breeders (December-May) and expand their range north through Coastal British Columbia and into Southeast Alaska. Presumably they would normally head back south in August, like the Alaskan breeding Rufous Hummingbirds, but I guess this one went the wrong way and ended up in Sitka.

Although the feeder maintainer said she was not comfortable having other people (particularly those she doesn’t know) visit to see the hummingbird, she did offer to let me stop by and try to get some photos to document the bird. I was finally able to stop by last Saturday morning to try for some pictures.

I sat and waited outside near the feeder for a few minutes before I heard strange calls that seemed vaguely reminiscent of Rufous Hummingbird calls I have heard in the spring and summer. I went over and looked down from the deck and saw a hummingbird perched in a branch below. It sat there for a few minutes before approaching the feeder. I turned to watch it and it immediately retreated. I felt a little bad about scaring the bird with my sudden movement, so I resolved to not move the next time it approached. I got in a position where I could see the feeder well and waited. A few minutes later it returned to feed. It took a couple of minutes feeding, then flew off again to perch on a branch not far from the deck. Over the hour and a half or so that I watched, about every 10-15 minutes the bird would take a couple of minutes to feed at the feeder before going back to the branches.

Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna) observed 26 January 2008.

A couple of things struck me as interesting about this bird (beyond it’s mere presence at this time of year). First, It was quite vocal, regularly chattering between feedings. This seemed a little odd, but then I don’t know the typical behavior of this species. The other thing I did not notice until I looked at the pictures later. The bird never actually stuck its bill down into the feeder. For some reason that’s what I expected it to do, but instead it held its bill away from the feeder and extended its tongue to get its food.

I’m grateful to the homeowners who for making an exception for me and letting me stop by and document this unusual Sitka bird. In addition to being an unusual bird for the area, it had some extra interest to me personally as it is the 150th species of bird I have photographed in Sitka (assuming I managed to count things up correctly, anyway).