Sometimes the Birds Come to You
I was getting ready to mow the lawn when I heard a call that I knew wasn’t normal for my yard. I quickly figured out it was a pine warbler, but then heard another call that I recognized but couldn’t ID. A quick listen to some songs revealed it to be a prairie warbler. I went out with binoculars and found both birds – and dozens more. Out came the camera. I spent the next 30 minutes taking (bad) pictures of a number of rarities for our yard (* never seen in our yard before):
6 ruby-crowned kinglets, 12+ yellow-rumped warbler, 1 black-and-white warbler, 1 pine warbler*, 2-3 prairie warbler*, 3-4 northern parula*
Needless to say, the lawn was … postponed a bit. And it turned out that the tough light made it hard to get many decent shots of birds who were almost always 15-20′ in the trees, backlit, amidst the branches and moving quickly. But I did manage this one of a butterbutt.
I don’t know that I’ve every noticed quite how attractive a warbler they are in breeding plumage – they’ve always been (in my mind at least) one of the more drab species. But the collection of browns and yellows and that mask to make for an attractive set of markings.
Later, I got some bonus birds in the form of a Baltimore oriole and a Yellow warbler. I’ve never seen this many warblers around the house!
« See Rise of the Butterbutts on Flickr »
my woodpeckers are back in the same dead limb nest as last year, i need to keep my suet feeder full for them
Even better than suet is homemade gorp put into a homemade log feeder. Expect my post this week on making a feeder AND the gorp.
Love this time of the year with all the butterbutts and other warblers arriving!