I saw the birds again yesterday morning on my way back from walking the kids to the bus stop. The five-minute walk back from the bus stop is often my quiet observation time since there are often birds and red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) around busily gathering their breakfast. I was able to get quite close by staying very still and listening for the soft "chip" of their alarm call. They were small - about 4-5 inches long - similar to a chickadee in size and movement except for the hovering they would sometimes do with their wings dissolving into a blur at their sides for 2 or 3 seconds at a time. They had dramatic yellow stripes on their heads and wings.
Like the black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) we often get, these moved too fast for me to get a photo. I managed to find a photo in my bird book of a bird that looked similar, so I'm pretty sure they are Townsend's Warblers (Setophaga townsendi).
I found information about them on the Seattle Audubon website as well as the Cornell's Ornithology Lab's All About Birds site.
They eat insects which they glean from the branches and leaves of trees. They prefer coniferous and mixed coniferous/deciduous forests and they migrate down to Mexico in the winter. The Seattle Audubon site indicated they they should be gone by now. I suspect it has been such a mild winter that they have had plenty of food and haven't had the pressure to migrate this year.
In our neighborhood, they were going through the downed fir branches on the ground, the blackberry brambles and salmon berry thicket, the cedar trees and the noble fir by the side of our house. One could watch them pecking at the joins between needles/branches, leaves/stems, and branches/trunks.
I hope to obtain a picture of these little cuties at some point, but I need a faster shutter!
POST SCRIPT:
Looking through the photos (mostly of branches and brambles) I did manage to capture one, but you get the "impression" of the bird rather than a nice sharp view --
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