| Photojournal
- 14 May 2006
Birdy
at Queen E
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What a difference a
day makes. The afternoon before, after a monring trip to Iona,
I had gone to Queen Elizabeth Park to try to find a Nashville
Warbler that my friend Ilya had seen. I ended up finding absolutely
no interesting birds that trip.
So on this day, Sunday,
I went back to Queen Elizabeth Park in the morning, armed with
more precise directions from Ilya. I arrived to find Hank, another
birder with a camera, in the area. I'd never met Hank before.
He had been there the day before with Ilya, and he showed me the
exact tree where they had seen the bird. That particular tree,
an oak, was relatively inactive at this time; it had been full
of different sorts of warblers the morning before.
Hank, who was about
to leave, showed me another tree that a few warblers were coming
and going from, but it was a tall tree with the little birds mostly
in the top part. I roamed up a small hill and when I got to the
top I found myself on a road that had been closed off for construction.
There in front of me was a pair of trees with lots of bird activity.
I watched through my
binoculars for a while, and most of the birds seemed to be of
two types: Wilson's Warblers and Warbling Vireos. However, there
seemed to be a few other species mixed in. I hefted my camera
and started taking photos. The first bird I got was a Wilson's.
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| I tracked
my next subject for a while, and noticed it was a bit more drab
and didn't have the black cap of the Wilson's. This one turned out
to be an Orange-crowned Warbler. I didn't get any really good i.d.
shots of him. |
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| After taking
shots of a few more Wilson's, I spotted this Yellow-rumped Warbler.
The yellow "wingpits" give him away. If I had to guess,
I guess that this was an male of the Audubon's subspecies, based
on the yellow headpatch and light breast. |
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| Mixed in
with the warblers were several Warbling Vireos. Many years back,
representatives from all warbler species convened and named the
Warbling Vireo an honorary warbler, simply because they had the
decency to have "warble" in their name. Ever since then,
Warbling Vireos have been welcome in the company of warblers everywhere.
Here's one of the white-and-greyish fellows now. |
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| And here's
two of them, with the one on the left warbling to the one on the
right. |
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I took a little rest,
as I had been holding my relatively heavy camera up at a pretty
high angle for a long time to get these shots.
When I got back to
it, I started taking photos of basically any bird that I could
get an unobstructed view of. Not surprisingly, I ended up with
several more photos of Wilson's Warblers. Here's a nice one, where
the bird has just launched off of a perch.
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| And here
I caught one peering over a few leaves. |
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| I then found
the most striking bird of the day, which was a Townsend's Warbler.
Here he is stretching out under a leaf, looking at something. It
may look like he's getting ready to launch, but he's not. He's still
balanced. |
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| Here's a
photo of him from three seconds later, clearly on the same perch. |
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| Way up in
the top of the tree, I spied another small bird. This one's grey
plumage, round body, and long tail instantly identified him as a
Bushtit. Unlike the Warbling Vireo, the Bushtit isn't an honorary
warbler, so he didn't get to hang out lower in the tree with the
rest of the bunch. |
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That was it from the
busy trees at the top of the hill. I didn't find the Nashville
Warbler, but I did find a lot of species. The Nashville had been
a long shot anyway; most people suspected that it had moved on
the day before.
I had plans for the
afternoon, and so I moved
on, myself. In the few mintues I had left, I stopped by the Rhododendrons
again, but I didn't get any photos as nice as the ones from the
day before.
I'll leave you with
the best of the bunch, though.
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Feeling all warbly
inside,
Tom
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