October on the creek has been wet. There are some new birds and some who have returned after a long absence. The female house finch is not particularly impressive and is easy to ignore. I am beginning to sort through all this years images and I realized that I didn't have any sharp images of this bird that has hung in all year, behaved fairly well and been interesting to watch.

I've been seeing Townsend's Warblers for about a month but have not been able to get close enough to get more than a blurry image. A crew of them came chirping through the birch trees out the upstairs window and didn't notice me opening the window and leaning over my computer.

The Green-backed Goldfinches, below, reached their peak numbers in April and May. Their numbers decreased but they never completely disappeared from the yard. They are more frequent with the rains at the end of summer. The female's plumage, below, is changing into it's winter colors.

The warbler's were one of the first birds to come when I put up the suet feeder in January. They disappeared when the weather began to warm.

The Cedar Waxwing, below, had friends in the surrounding trees but none found anything interesting enough in the yard to hang around. Looks like the piliated woodpecker finished off all the Oregon Grape and Cascara.

As much as I have conditioned the chickadees to the flash they become very expressive when I venture into their territory. The deer and the squirrels decimated the nice crop of sunflowers that was growing out back but chickadees are gleaners at heart.

There are far fewer Chestnut-backed Chickadees than their Black-capped friends. Both live here year round.

The male Flicker is a daily visitor to the yard. It seems that he is one of the three that was raised in the hole in the dead tree down on the creek.

Song Sparrows are one of the more greedy birds in the yard. I can see how they out compete native birds.

The Hutton's Vireo, below, is one of the little birds that lives on the periphery of the yard. I've caught them once or twice before in blurry photos. This one was preoccupied and let me get to the outer range of my lens.

The Junco's behavior, below, needs a movie. It is entertaining to see a bird stand on it's tip toes.

The Juncos thinned out after March and came back to the creek in October.