We were surprised one day to see a flock of yellow and black birds descend on the feeders in the front yard. They appeared late in the afternoon and were gone that evening; this is the only sighting I’ve had of these birds in the area.

Male, female, and immature birds can be seen below. These are the only yellow-headed birds with a black body in North America, although there is an extremely similar bird, the Yellow-hooded Blackbird of South America, Agelaius icterocephalus.

An adult female

Below is a Mourning dove with a Chipping sparrow.

Comparison of Mourning and White-winged doves. White-winged doves are slightly larger, with a distinctive white band on the wing and intense blue around the eye. Mourning doves have distinctive spots on their wings.

Also known as English Sparrows, these are not actually in the sparrow family. If you see sparrows taking dust baths, they’re House Sparrows. True sparrows don’t take dust baths.

I love the brilliant iridescence of this bird’s black plumage. As corvids, grackles are cousins to the crows and jays we came to love in Washington.

The brown and black birds in this photo are cowbirds. The female of the species can lay up to three dozen eggs in a season—in other birds’ nests.

We were completely stunned to discover these in the front yard under our feeder. They’re a flock started by a domestic group that got loose in the mid-eighties, and typically live about a mile away, on the other side of a mesa. They only stayed for the weekend. When they ventured into the backyard while she was there, our dog Ruffian loved chasing them up into the trees and onto the fence. The cats crowded to the windows, fascinated.