Double Trouble SP 5/21--Bay-breasted Warbler

Eagles stay still; warblers don't

It was a bifurcated birding day. I had to be in Manhattan this morning for some minor unpleasantness so I was in Central Park, at Tanner's Spring, where I immediately saw a Swainson's Thrush. A redstart came in, I heard an Overbird and Northern Waterthrush, but after about a half hour I felt I had to move on. I always feed rushed birding Central Park--it is a  perfect example of no matter where you are you feel like you should be somewhere else.

I did have a few enjoyable sightings in the couple of hours I was there. At Turtle Pond I heard a song that seemed familiar and oriole-like but not quite and yet it did indeed turn out to be a bright male Baltimore Oriole singing at the top of a bald cypress.

In the maintenance meadow I saw a female oriole going in and out of her basket nest, presumably feeding chicks. And along a peninsula that juts into the lake I found a very close Wilson's Warbler, one that was so confiding I didn't really need my bins to admire it.

I spent some time in The Ramble; the park was crawling with birders. Even when I lived in Brooklyn, Central Park birders had a reputation for snootiness. Where else are you going to see, as I once did, a birder in tweeds and a bow tie? Today was no different. One birder deigned to ask me if I knew about the oriole nest, this after I was standing beneath it looking up at it, and no one was really sharing anything they saw. All whispering as if they're in a museum, while all around them jackhammers are rattling the ground and truck horns are sounding. If the birds don't mind that, then speaking in a normal voice isn't going to scare them away.

After I did what I had to do I hustled out of town as fast as I could. Even with walking from the west side of the park to Second Avenue I didn't quite make my 10,000 steps, so I stopped off at Double Trouble on the way home, even though it was way past noon by the time I started. I didn't really expect to see much and certainly didn't expect to find, finally, a year bird warbler--Bay-breasted Warbler, up by Ore Pond.  I just walked the little loop to Ore Pond from the parking lot back to the sawmill and over to the sorting house. At Ore Pond I've fallen into the habit of scanning the power line towers that you can see across the water--I'd say 50% of the time an eagle is sitting atop one of them. Today was one of those days.

With the trees just about fully leafed out, finding the warblers gets more difficult by the day. I find that I lose the bird if I bring down my binoculars. I'll be sorry to see migration end, I suppose, but at least then I can switch over to not finding shorebirds in the reeds.

One thing I like about turtles: They don't flit around very fast