As promised, here are photos from Thursday morning at the Chicago Portage. I am also including photos from October 13th which was a very cloudy day: I just discovered that I must not have reviewed these photos previously as they remained unprocessed until now.

Thursday there was a bit more light, but the number of birds present was nominal. There were Yellow-rumped Warblers, but not too many of them.

There were a few Ruby-crowned Kinglets.

House Finches seem to be popping up here and there. They are not migrants but I don’t always see them.

I found a couple Orange-crowned Warblers. One very backlit and the other, blending in with the leaves.

Here are a few more Yellow-rumped Warbler photos.

Sparrow migration is here. I spotted a distant first-winter White-crowned Sparrow.

And a couple White-throated Sparrows.

Swamp Sparrows were everywhere.

Back to October 13, when the cloud cover subdued every view.

I haven’t seen many Brown Creepers this fall, but was somehow able to capture this one in low light, scaling the bark of a hackberry tree.

The silhouette of a Mourning Dove…

A tree full of Red-winged Blackbirds stark against the grey sky…

Then later, I got some closer views.

I was hoping I had a Winter Wren but upon closer examination this appears to be a House Wren instead. I am pretty sure I have seen a Winter Wren or two but I have been unable to photograph one yet this fall.

A couple more Yellow-rumped Warblers. There were more of them on the 13th.

Sunday was a beautiful, sunny day, but I spent the morning inside Unity Temple singing in the choir. The bees were in the backyard in the afternoon, enjoying the asters that I trimmed back in June. The trimming back did not keep the asters from expanding over the walk but it kept them shorter which is a plus.

We are warming up for a few days, and then it looks like we will settle into cooler temperatures. We may be done with fall warbler migration, but I haven’t run out of photos yet. I’ll be returning with more.