Spring warbs

It's rule #7 of the bird blogger bylaws that you must do a spring warbler post! 

This is the first decent portrait I've ever taken of a Cerulean.

Cerulean is actually pretty closely related to Blackburnian, though you wouldn't know it from this angle (now if I had a female sideways the similarities might start showing better).

Last year I did pretty well with Blackpolls, and they were pretty common this year too.

Black-throated Blue is likely on most peoples favorite list (though that's generally a pretty long list).

I thought I was finally learning Blue-headed Vireo's song this year ... but then half the time they would turn out to be Yellow-throateds.  No problems with silent birds.

Aaaaaand the opposite of spring warblers, spring cowbirds, blecccchhh.

Don't look ... oh wait, Look!

 We all know how challenging the north winds for most of the last 3 weeks have been, so when they relented the day before Birdathon we couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.  The day before Birdathon Floral was filled with birds ... but you had to figure out where to look.

First rule of birdathon (OK, it's not the first rule, but work with me here):  Don't look at Catbirds.

On scouting morning, second rule was: Don't look at white-throated sparrows

There were hordes of them, and time spent on them could be better spent on more likely candidates for rarities.  Of course that second night of south winds meant that the White-throats exited stage north and we had to work to find a single one on Birdathon day.  They'd flown! (kinda like the White-eyed Vireo that had been hanging out).

Of course one of the reasons not to look at WT Sparrows was that you needed to home in instead on other birds a person might need.  Like (this year), thrushes.  Up until Birdathon day I'd seen one (!!!) Swainson's Thrush this spring, and zero Gray-cheeks.  So it was a bit of a relief that Gray-cheeked was pretty easy on the big day.

Unlike the White-throats, White-crowns stuck around in decent numbers.

Unlike the warblers which has mostly bailed.  We had to work to find even many of the common ones.

The one bird we didn't have to work for?  Least Bittern.  It's a bird that can't be expected, or really even planned for.  So we were pretty happy when a Least jumped into the scope view as we looked at a Coot at the dump pond.  And we were flabbergasted when we found a second one later in the day (with more bonus moorhens to boot!)

The theme of the day might have been trading birds.  We didn't find a Prairie Warbler ... but a Summer Tanager was pitty-tucking where the Prairie was supposed to be.

Tiscornia gave its frequent contribution of a 3 bird bump.  One of them is almost always RB Merg.  There weren't any mergs ... but both black-backed gulls were present.  I doubt we've ever had both black-backs on Birdathon.

At any rate, it was a very enjoyable day.  While we didn't break any records, I'd had the best sleep the day before that I've had pre-Birdathon in years for which I was very grateful, and no doubt contributed the much more relaxed feel.

portraits in the marsh

There weren't a ton of migrants around this morning so fun local breeders were the highlights.

I haven't been hearing moorhens in the morning listens so it was nice to find a pair near the golf course.

Marsh Wrens were singing prominently as well.

The teal were following the color theme (what's all this spring green crap?  we want brown!)

And a Palm Warbler that's probably my best pic this spring.

sometimes they come to you

 I had to sleep all day today and when I got up it was warm and windy.  I spent a couple hours weeding garlic mustard in the park next to my house thinking I might come across one of the elusive catbirds or rose-breasted grosbeak or May thrushes that were blowing up my eBird needs alerts while I slept.

No luck there, but karma rewarded my efforts when I looked out the window after dinner and saw a young Summer Tanager following an oriole to the oranges on my feeder.

It sat long enough for me to grab the camera that lives in front of the window, blast half a dozen frames, realize the settings were completely buggered, crank the ISO up, blast another 5 frames ... and gone.  I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've encountered Summer Tanager in Michigan without actively seeking it out and maybe once where I didn't find it by hearing it first.

A few other pics from mornings earlier in the week.  This parula would have been a sweet pic if it had poked its head out a little further.

And this Black and White would have been fun if it had come into the redbud in the foreground

This Solitary Sandpiper in the stream at Kesling though was a decidedly more photogenic setting than their typical poop pond habitats.

And finally a montage of a kestrel that hovered in front of me in the dunes while hawk-watching earlier in the week...