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| Yellow-throated Warbler |
Walking toward the sawmill, I cut behind the white house which has a "lawn" and a good area of tangles behind it. Chipping Sparrows, as always, flew up into a cedar from the lawn, in the tangles I saw a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, always a nice bird, then flitting around a little higher, my FOY Blue-headed Vireo.
I walked around the sawmill area, saw nothing of note, then started up the millstream trail to the dam. I was pushing two phoebes along, while at the same time thinking that this was the spot where Louisiana Waterthrush has been found for the last 4 years running. Make it five, because I saw one in the tangles, almost in the exact spot that I saw one last year, on this same date. Trying for a picture was fruitless, since all I got in focus was twigs, and, since I was trying too had to take a photo, I lost the bird pretty quickly. But I had no doubt of the id--the white breast and flanks, the stripes, the bobbing tail. I put out an alert with some trepidation because I knew this bird would be tough to relocate.
I was kicking around the packing house when the first birder to respond my alert showed up. Even though I had little hope of refinding the bird, we started back to the trail. Passing the white house lawn, she saw a bird ground feeding. "What's that?" I was inclined to dismiss it as a robin, just be size, but a quick look blew that "theory" away. A brown bird with a thick, conical bill, tan wing bars--cowbird, no, towhee, no, grosbeak yes, Rose-breasted, no, Blue Grosbeak, bingo. This is an early bird, and probably a first year male that is a little late in molting, since Sibley shows this plumage as Aug-Mar.
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| Blue Grosbeak |
We walked down the purple trail, again hoping for some warblers and/or a Green Heron, recently reported, with no luck. By then the weather, which has been anything but spring-like the last few days, was getting colder and windier, so we were just about in the parking lot when we met a photographer who said he had just taken pictures of a Yellow-throated Warbler. At first it registered as Common Yellowthroat to me, and I wasn't inclined to walk another mile just for that bird, but then he emphasized Yellow-throated, and we were on our way. His directions were excellent and when we reach the location, at the back end of the last bog, there was tremendous warbler activity going on--there must have been an insect hatch just over the little stream that diverts from Cedar Creek because we found Yellow-rumped, Pine, and Palm Warblers all going nuts in the both the bare trees and cedar and then, without a lot of looking the very beautiful Yellow-throated Warbler popped out and gave us great looks even if it wouldn't stand still for a portrait. The bird flew back toward where we'd come from and we ran into it twice more on our way back, once fortuitously, when we ran into another birder who had seen my 3rd alert of the day. This time, I pointed my camera toward the tree it was on, and in all the pictures tree trunks, I managed one decent shot of the bird.
So, for a day where my expectations were low, I added 4 year birds. And yet, I never did see the bird I came for, the B&W Warbler. Maybe tomorrow.
20 species
Canada Goose 2 f/o
Mallard 4 two drakes, two hens
Great Egret 1
Black Vulture 2
Turkey Vulture 2
Greater Yellowlegs 1
Downy Woodpecker 1
Eastern Phoebe 2
Blue-headed Vireo 1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 6
Ruby-crowned Kinglet 1
Louisiana Waterthrush 1
Palm Warbler 2
Pine Warbler 8
Yellow-rumped Warbler 12
Yellow-throated Warbler 1 A
Chipping Sparrow 3
Eastern Towhee 1 Along trail from sorting house
Blue Grosbeak 1
Red-winged Blackbird 2 Singing
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