Remarkable Day of Home Sequestration 4/3/2020

Winter Wren

   When the month of April started my yardlist for the new house was at 46 species and I had just worked my last day for a while as my worksite went to minimum staffing on a volunteer basis. When the choice came of lead, follow or get out of the way.....I got the hell out of the way.
  On Wednesday April 1st I added an Eastern Phoebe to the yardlist when one perched on the rail of the deck and looked in our living room window.  It was too close to get a photo with the big lens so I had to wait for it to land a little farther away.

  Thursday I added 3 more birds to the list to get it up to an even 50. Including the two birds pictured below plus a few unphotographed Double Crested Cormorants.

Brown Creeper

Female Eastern Bluebird

  That brings us to today, the remarkable day that saw me add 12 birds to the yardlist. It started early when a Red-headed Woodpecker flew by.  Around noon a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker briefly landed in a nearby tree and it left me one woodpecker(Pileated) short for the day of the set of seven members of the Picidae family that lives or passes through Mason County. Unfortunately I was only able to get shots of a Northern Flicker.

I added two sparrows....Chipping and American Tree.

American Tree Sparrow

   Besides the activity on the ground, a lot was happening overhead.

Sandhill Cranes

One of 35 Turkey Vultures that migrated through today

Northern Harrier

Common Loon

Greater Scaup

   Then a little later in the day three Mallards flew by.

   And 3 or 4 Golden-crowned Kinglets made their debut in my yard.  They brought the yard list species total to 62.

  I had 48 species during the daylight hours then I heard a Killdeer flying over when I went out around 9 pm to check out Venus as it passed through the Pleaides Star Cluster.  It had hazy clouds built up too much for me to get a photo of the planet but the International Space Station was an acceptable consulation prize.  

   Thanks to Matt McConnell for alerting me to the favorable ISS flyover.