Porch Birding, Fallout-Style

i'm still in wonder over what just happened. minding my own business, i watched something i'd never seen in my forest backyard before: dozens of warblers (mostly townsend's first-winters (according to Sibley), though a few adults were mixed in), maybe 50-60 black-cap, chestnut-back chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches, three anna's hummers, and more than a dozen ruby-crowned kinglets, all feeding together on a very few trees just off my porch. all of them were in a frenzy, rarely staying in one spot more than 1-2 seconds; you can imagine how many photos were taken of empty branches and blurred wings. it wasn't a pretty sight.

things were so hectic for a moment that, while i was shooting, i had a nuthatch land on the lip of my lens cap and stay there for about 20 seconds, apparently watching itself in the camera lens.  a few minutes later, a warbler landed just two feet away from me on the porch rail next to the suet feeder; we stared at each other, neither moving, for about 15 seconds before he decided i was too close...

also seen:  juncos, bushtits, and a few steller's jays in the deciduous trees outside the chaos.  i thought there might have been a mountain chickadee in that mix, but my photographs don't show one.  i was probably fooled by nuthatches in halloween costume...

according to the timestamps on the photos, the whole event lasted about 425 megabytes of pixels (about 17 minutes)...

and, like that, they were gone...