It doesn't feel like Louisiana

though it should get warm one of these days.

The waterthrushes that are back are mostly Louisiana.  This bird was at Warren Dunes, the first one I've had there.  The long heavy bill, broad white eyestripe especially behind the eye, as well as the warm salmon along the flanks are good clues to the identity.  This one was only chipping, it never sang.

This is a merlin from Tiscornia.  It feels like there's been a generous number there this spring; they're most common in mid-Fall.

The adults in spring are a lot paler than the young birds that predominate in fall, though this one felt like a bit of an outlier.  It's closer to the pic of the Prairie race/subspecies in Sibley than to the Boreal one.  I don't know how much variation there is however and probably won't have time to do a lot of reading about them for some time.

 

I think there's a couple races of Brown Creeper too, not sure how a person would separate those. 

 Not so with the Fox Sparrows, they're easy to separate (at least the Eastern form is).

 Finally a Rusty Blackbird, I think this was the first passerine spring migrant I had this year.