Very Interesting Yard Day - 27 Aug 2016

Last night's rain left water all over the windows. So, after I squeegeed them off I could see a Skunk foraging under the feeder. Since I needed to change the hummingbird feeder I decided to head out, anyway. No issues, it skedaddled out of sight as I approached the first time, but decided to stand its grown the second time. Tail up, it looked fearsome (for a second) before running back into the underbrush. I went back into the house and watched it for a bit when it came back. It would feed, then have a tail-up standoff w/ an unseen enemy, make several short charges forward, then run off. Really, very cute to watch.

Once the sun came up and the skunk headed out, the birds came in. At one point I had 8 Baltimore Orioles at the jelly feeder, including 4 brightly-colored males.

I spotted a juvenile Eastern Towhee on the ground and got some great digiscoped images. I just forgot to put a card in the camera. It was gone by the time I corrected my mistake.

A 1st-year female American Redstart made a brief appearance in the yard! It was a difficult ID to make, but luckily I was able to see it black-tipped undertail spots. Otherwise, I would've thought it was a juvenile Magnolia Warbler.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have been hammering the feeder all day. I got a few digiscoped images as they fought the wasps for a place on the feeder. I would go out later and vacuum as many of the wasps as I could in order to protect the hummers from getting stung.

I decided to clear away the brush at end of the grass so I borrowed my brother's weed-trimmer. A trip to Lowe's to get string resulted in another 12 bags of mulch, and a dozen perennials to plant once I'm done. I weed-sacked mostly grass, some emerging buckthorn, and a few willow sprouts, and mulched around some dogwood, black-eyed susan, and a few queen-ann's lace that I decided to keep. I managed to get the mulch down just before a nasty thunderstorm hit mid-afternoon.

Once the storm passed I checked the feeders again, and found a Brown Thrasher (adult) foraging next door under the cover of shade. The Eastern Towhee also made another appearance, and this time I was able to get pics of the juvenile bird.

Song Sparrows have returned. They look like little chicken poults as they were all missing tails!

I managed a short digiscoped 4K video of one of the juvenile Ruby-throated Hummingbirds just before dark.

Brownton Abbey, 26340 Higgins Way, Wayne, Michigan, US
Aug 27, 2016 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Protocol: Stationary
Checklist Comments:     Yard
6 species

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)  3
Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum)  1
Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)  2
Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)  1
Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)  8
American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)  1

View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S161418708

This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (https://ebird.org/home)