Check out my previous post for the preamble to today’s outing.
***
I woke with the sun on Saturday morning.
I TRIED to talk myself into enjoying a nice morning on the front porch watching the steam rise from my coffee cup, but all I could think about was that Indigo Bunting that nested in Mendon Ponds last year. It nested right next to the trail–close enough for a good photograph.
Visions of its radiant blue plumage filling up an entire frame fired my cortex. (Pause for cool fact: the bunting is not actually blue! Its feathers lack blue pigment, but the diffraction of light through the structure of the feathers makes them appear blue).
And then my mind wandered to the Brown Thrasher that nests only a few hundred yards from the bunting, and then to the Eastern Bluebird that nests in a box in the nearby field…they would look splendid in my viewfinder, wouldn’t they? Even better splashed across my computer screen!
The only way to silence the shutters clicking in my head was to get out of bed and go birding.
I headed to the Esker Trail in Mendon Ponds Park. Just out of the car, I heard an unknown warbler singing from the zenith of the highest tree…it repeatedly sang a thin, extremely high-pitched song that ended on an up-note.
Half of you already know what bird this was…but the bird was too high up for me to confirm with a sighting. Yes, it even flashed a flame throat once or twice, but I try not to ASSume too much having spent far too much time on the front end of that word when doing so.
From my position the bird was all black against a blue sky, so I clicked dozens of images with my 300 mm lens while trying to get a handle on its song.
I pulled out my iBird and headed straight to Blackburnian Warbler, but this time the cool iPhone application led me astray. I knew the up-note at the end of the song must be distinctive, and the iBird song file sounded similar, but ‘off.’ Chalk it up to regional variability, perhaps, but the song file was not a dead ringer.
I moved onto other possibilities. Yet none of the other high, thin-noted songsters seemed to fit. Would I go home with the frustration of no ID? Empty handed? No bird in the bag?
Yes, I would. But then I opened up my Peterson Field Guide and learned that Blackburnian Warbler has two variations of its song, including one that decidedly ends on an up-note! I was closer…
Then I downloaded my photos and zoomed in about 3 billion percent to see if I could make out any field marks. Most of the photos were miserable and useless, but even really bad photos can hold the key. In the end, the flame throat and song description gave the bird’s identity away: Blackburnian Warbler.
Check out the flame-throat on this Blackburnian Warbler!
A strange feeling settled over me.
Oh, I thought, I think I remember this feeling…the struggle to identify a warbling songster ending in victory…yes, I think I’ve been here before.
I rubbed the Aperture and Shutter priority settings out of my eyes and let this pre-dSLR birding satisfaction sink in.
Good thing I did, because on the photography scale the day stunk.
I didn’t come home with a killer shot that washed over me like warm sea foam. Nor the kind that my eyes could feast on until the next outing. Nor did I get any soulfully satisfying images one might see here, or here, perhaps, or especially here… (yes, go on, click away).
But I did get a few where you can actually recognize there’s a bird in the frame! And here they are:
Oh, stop it! YES, there IS a bird in this image. TWO, in fact! I found the Indigo Bunting again, with his brown-and-tan missus. But they were farther away than I’d hoped. A LOT farther away.
This bluebird couple seemed in love and happily ensconced on their country estate.
This female Baltimore Oriole was trying to ward off her flirty mate while she built her nest.
Leave it to the Northern Cardinal to make us all seem like good decent okay photographers.
The fun didn’t stop there. Deep in the woods I heard the rattle call of a Pileated Woodpecker. Then I saw it fly low and heard a VERY loud WAP! that sounded like an angry teenager beating a stick on an old stump.
WAP! WAP! WAP! WAP!
For the next fifteen minutes, I watched from an elevated perch while a Pileated Woodpecker drilled a hole at the base of a tree. Its powerful beak pummeled the trunk, it’s neck twisted in a maniacal fashion at every pause, and bark chips flew every which way. This fella was serious about his excavation.
I have a lot more photos of him, but most only my mother could love.
Watching this Pileated Woodpecker drill a hole was an intimately fantastic experience.
Hello? Anybody in there?
So even though I started the day obsessed about coming home with a brilliant image of a fantastic bird, I instead received an intimate view of our mightiest Eastern woodpecker in action and the satisfaction of a challenging of a warbler ID.
It’s good to know the old thrills still resonate.
(speaking of old thrills, a very noisy Passer domesticus pair is copulating on my patio as I write. I love Spring!)
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- Day 3 of The Biggest Week The weather improved considerably and so did the birding on Day 3, Sunday. Decent warbler reports came back from the boardwalk, baby Great Horned owlets were...
- Hooded Warbler, Scarlet Tanager @ Mendon Ponds, NY ...
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Laura!
Thanks for the props! Photography does mess with one’s birding a little bit. Sometimes when I’ve got a bird that is not really photographable for a variety of reasons–light, distance, etc.–I have to remind myself that I can simply watch it. Sometimes this works and I feel a rush of relaxation and enjoyment. Not always, but sometimes.
Jeff, the props are well deserved, you know!
I’m sure as I get used to having this camera I’ll be more discerning. Right now I’m having too much fun with it to slow down.
Best!
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