The Christmas plans came off well, and my family was surprised and pleased that I had come to visit. I mainly took a break from photography on Christmas, managing only four photos. It was more of a visiting day than a photo day.

The day after Christmas, however, was a different story. I had checked out of the motel and was staying with my brother and family for the rest of my trip. I got up around 8:30 and snuck outside before my nieces got going for the day.

My brother has a few small trees and bushes in his back yard, but behind the yard there is a small creek that leads to a pond. I headed for the back gate and stopped when I saw a orangish bird pop out of the bushes onto a tree branch. The strong white stripe above the eye and the distinctive shape told me I had a wren. The orangey belly told me it was a Carolina Wren. I made sure I got focussed on this one.

I had been a little bummed that my photos from my wren encounter two days before had not turned out. I was afraid that I would have to return to Vancouver having seen a species but having not gotten decent photos of it...and that would really bother me. So I was happy to see this little guy.

Curiously, this supposedly-secretive bird put on quite a show for me.

I think maybe he didn't read the part about being secretive in his instruction manual.

Once behind the yard near the creek, I saw a sparrow flying around, and when he finally stopped somewhere where I could get a decent look at him, I found he was a White-throated Sparrow.

I'd been looking for these sparrows in Vancouver for months, making several special trips to try to see them when they were reported. I finally saw a couple in October (see the October 8 Photojournal entry), but I really had to work at it. And here they were, one of the first things I find in my brother's yard.

What's rare and special in one place is ordinary in another, I guess. Over the course of my trip, I found that White-throated is one of the most common local sparrows in the area. Here's a less-obstructed view of one from later in the morning.

He went straight for a tall thin snag that was on the side of the pond.

It was chilly and windy out, and the hawk's feathers were ruffled quite a bit up there on his exposed perch. He didn't seem to be enjoying his time there.

My first impression of this hawk was that he was a Red-tailed Hawk, but he didn't have the characteristic dark spots on the leading edge of the wing. Red-tails are one of the most common North American hawks, though, and they have many plumage variations, so I thought that maybe it was just a form of the Red-tail that I hadn't seen before.

Eventually, I checked a field guide and found that this hawk was not a Red-tailed Hawk, but rather its cousin the Red-shouldered Hawk. No form of the Red-tail has a tail that looks like that last photo. And other field marks for the Red-shouldered can be seen in the three other photos.

So the odd Red-tail turned out to be a lifer for me.

Back closer to earth, I found a bird that definitely wasn't a lifer: a Song Sparrow. These birds are quite common in Vancouver.

That was it for the morning, and I headed back indoors to a very welcome cup of warm coffee.

In the afternoon, I went outside with my nieces for about ten mintues and found two birds. The first of them was a Carolina Chickadee who dropped by for a brief visit.

In Vancouver, our most common chickadee is the Black-capped Chickadee, which looks almost exactly the same as the Carolina; they're so simllar that I don't think I could tell the two species apart in the field. Luckily, though, Black-caps don't seem to come to central Virginia, so this must be a Carolina.

In fact, Carolina is the only chickadee in range in Richmond. This is sad, because chickadees are very inquisitive and social little birds, and they're fun to watch. We get three types of them in BC.

Another bird that we get in BC is the Mourning Dove. It turns out that my brother's neighborhood is full of 'em, and I heard their cooing the whole time I was out. They like to hang out on the roofs of the houses.

Alas, my nieces have a shorter attention span than I do, and so they were soon dragging me to do other things. I saw no more birds that day.

Later in the evening, though, I put my macro lens on my camera and roamed the house looking for Christmas and interior subjects. I found a number of things, and rather than describe them all, I'm just going to present the whole series without words.

And that was it for Boxing Day, which in Virginia seems more formally known as "the day after Christmas." Next time, I'll bring you a few photos from a park on an island in the James River.

Thoroughly unboxed,
Tom