We went to Black Butte Ranch this past weekend, and while cleaning gutters and burning pine needles we've accumulated over the past two years was the primary purpose of our visit; birding and admiring the scenery competed equally for our attention when we had spare time. 

Below is the image we captured as we looked across Phalarope Lake toward Mt. Washington. At the moment it was obvious that we would not be counting flocks of wintering waterfowl competing for patches of open water on this visit.

On our first brief outing to search for birds we came across two warblers.  Given the stream-side location and time of year we initially thought latent Common Yellowthroat, but after a few additional brief looks, we concluded ORANGE-CROWNED and MacGillivary's WARBLER. Once back at home with the benefit of pictures we were able to determine Orange-crowned Warbler as we suspected for the first bird, but the second one was not so easy for us to identify. 

Two images of the first bird, an Orange-crowned Warbler:

Orange-crowned Warbler

Now for the test of our ID SKILLS - please record you answer before scrolling to the bottom of second image:

We believe the bird pictured above is a 1st year Orange-crowned Warbler - which would be a first for us.

Comments and criticisms welcomed, encouraged, pleaded for actually :-)

Beyond the subjects pictured above, we do not have much extraordinary to show for our visit beyond clean gutters and an absence of pine needles. Nonetheless, we'd like to share a few of the other images we enjoyed on this visit with you, as well. 

The not-so-easy to locate (female) WILLIAMSON'S SAPSUCKER:

The ubiquitous RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET (5 frames):

And finally - three species sharing a watering hole (not all are obvious in appearance):