A quiet week with late visitors

A mostly sunny and unusually warm week turning to cloud and some rain on occasion. The seed in the feeders has started to go down again due to the resumption of feeding by the usual suspects such as Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals – lots of them – Black-capped Chickadees and House Finches, the latter being a mostly new addition since the spring.

A (late) Song Sparrow early in the week was followed by White-crowned Sparrow, always a pleasure to see those smart fellows. Only a brief chance to photograph him so you will have to make do with the fuzzy record shot provided here. Hopefully we get more and better views shortly.

Heavy rain associated with the remnants of Hurricane Nate brought us a small flock of White-throated Sparrows enjoying the last remaining rose hips from the Rosa glauca bushes (still find it very hard not to call them R. rubrifolia, which used to be their name for many years.)

Mid week, a White-crowned Sparrow was back at the feeders (no camera to hand) plus a couple of Song Sparrows – they really ought to have been away by now. We assume these are late migrants from up north somewhere. Several Ruby-crowned Kinglets appeared flitting rapidly amongst the birches, always on the move. Magnolia and Yellow-rumped Warblers put in appearances and there was a Least Flycatcher sallying from the Katsura over the pond. We even watched a female Northern Cardinal feeding a very late juvenile.

A couple of passing Common Grackles were also later here than usual.

Friday morning brought us the first white and frosted roofs … short-lived but a reminder of what is to come.

The featured picture heading this post is a good example of how late the autumn is this year. This is the Katsura tree beside our pond. On Saturday morning, as you can see, it was still mostly green with the very occasional yellow leaf … contrast that to the adjacent picture taken this time of the month last year, much more typical. It’s been a very strange year.