CHICK, CHICK, CHICKADEE

**Since fall is well upon us, we are seeing the first weeks of the annual bird migration. One of the first changes I notice is the arrival of the Oregon Juncos and similar birds which hang around in the winter. We have Black-capped Chickadees all year around, and a few Mountain Chickadees with their classy racing stripes on their helmets, but the Chestnut-backed Chickadees only show up as summer wanes.
**I think most of the brown-backed beauties spend summer months further north along the Pacific Coast as far up as Alaska, but a few may dwell in the higher elevations in the Cascade Mountains. These birds come down when the weather cools and seem to drift on further south for the coldest months. The active little guys are among my favorites. Black oil sunflower seeds make them happy and they will pluck a single seed out of a feeder and flit off to a nearby tree perch to open it, enjoy the morsel inside, and flit back for another. I've watched individuals long enough to think they are eating at least a seed a minute all day long.
**The picture is out our dining room window. Friendly and really fearless, these tiny birds will take the easier seeds from an open hand if it is held still and flat with the fingers together. The tiny fellows weigh nothing, and it is a kick to offer the treat and be able to softly twitter to them as they pick just the right seed for each trip. The Sibley Guide to Birds (a National Audubon Society publication) describes the tiny song of these guys as a weak tsity ti jee jee or when being even more gregarious a louder (buzzy-husky) tsidi-tsidi-tsidi-cheer-cheer. I can spend a lot of peaceful moments watching my little buddies.
**We did spot a new visitor a couple of days ago, but we could not identify it. I have most of the major, reputable bird books but haven't found the newbie in any of them yet. Description: It's the size of a robin or varied thrush and has a two-leg hop like those birds use, but it does not have the coloration of either [there is absolutely no hint of the typical thrush orange]; it is dark, silky gray from the top of its head down the back to the tail-tip; it has lighter shiny gray on throat, belly, and underparts; it has a narrow breastband of darker gray similar to a thrush which provides considerable contrast to the lighter (softer) gray of the throat and belly, but the necklace tends have more of a dip toward the center than expected; the wings when folded show a mottled pattern but no bars; and maybe the most distinctive marking of all is a prominent, light-colored stripe from before the eye, across the eye, and down the side of the neck as far as the shoulder [and this is somewhat of a "thrush-like pattern"]. Do any of you have a clue who this stranger is? I've got the camera ready now, but I fear my unknown transient may have been moving through the area headed south and I won't get another chance to get a picture. (Oh, well. I didn't get a photo of the yellow hummingbird several years ago either.)
**One more thing: the geese are on the move. Monday morning I saw clouds of geese - Canadian and Dusky, I think - pass by the golf course. Some of the multi-layered V-formations must have been composed of more than a thousand birds, and there scores of such clouds out as far as the horizon. There sure was a lot of honking in these aerial freeways. Here at home we can hear the low-flying strings coming well before they sail past just above the tree tops. Most of ours are local birds which overnight on the Columbia River and pass overhead each way enroute to or from a nearby waterway which is a favorite feeding ground. Both our local geese and the migrant geese are trying to fatten up either for wintering nearby or for the long flight south, perhaps to the Sacremento Delta in California.
**What bird migrations are you witnessing?