Warbler Photography, Quick and Dirty

A migrant white-crowned sparrow hops amongst the dandelions and spent lilac flowers.

It's here, that time of spring when everything happens too fast. There were still migrant blackpoll warblers singing this morning, sounding, as Jeff Gordon points out, like a bike wheel out of true: tsit tsit tsit tsit tsit.

I look at my spring bird photos and know I must post them before they go bad.

We won't go bad. We stay around all year.


One of the cuter tufted titmouse displays--presenting the fluffy butt. Good thing they're both presenting at the same time. Nobody gets insulted.


A cardinal sits with a white-crowned sparrow. That little crown stands out like a logo--you can identify this bird at a ridiculous distance.


This pair of cardinals is always exchanging sweet seed kisses.


Meanwhile, the blue-winged warblers are making our old decrepit orchard a wonderful place to be. Part of the courting razzmatazz of the blue-winged warbler is spectacular chases, looping in and out of low prickly vegetation.

Most of the looks you get are like this:


and then they're off again. But sometimes you get a clear look at the warbler's disappearing tail.


or its back as it pauses to catch its breath.


And then sometimes, if you stand around in the briar patch for an hour or so, waiting and taking dozens of pictures, one pauses long enough for you to fumble the manual focus onto it before it wings away again. Autofocus is not an option, with so much bramble in the way. The camera will pick an extraneous twig and focus on that instead of the bird. Maybe I'm weird, but I absolutely love trying to get my lens on a warbler and manually focus him into a decent image. Maybe because it's almost impossible. I love a challenge.

This isn't publishable, but it's good enough for me, and a heck of a nice way to spend a morning before the bus comes.

Heady May

Oh, there's just too much to do, and the weather is too beautiful. I'm letting myself garden, and even buy a few plants for the border. I realized I was all out of delphiniums, which are short-lived perennials, so I've bought four and am hoping they're sky blue. I made hanging baskets and planters all day today with the plants from the greenhouse. Ahhhhh. The sun shone and the birds sang and I got real dirty. When I heard a good bird I lit out after it with the long lens.

This picture may not look like much, but I'm thrilled with it, because it shows a foraging behavior characteristic of blue-winged warblers. They insert the closed bill into an insect-damaged leaf cluster--often a webby one--and open it, prying it apart to find treasure inside. I've watched them do this but never thought I'd get a photo of it! Note how the bird has keyed in to the insect -damaged leaves. When they hop through the branches they're scrutinizing each leaf for chew holes left by caterpillars, and webbed-together leaves that might hide food. They're doing so much that we don't even realize or appreciate. Watching quietly opens it all to me.

While I take photos or garden, Chet Baker keeps me company through it all. Such a pretty boy, with his brindle coat and little cat paws.

The blue-grey gnatcatcher nest in our driveway is occupado. Such vocal little birds; they can't help singing even while incubating! How perfect they are, how perfect their nests.

I took this picture when the cardinal was brooding her young. They fledged yesterday, and they're peeping incessantly in the thicket behind the garage. Hooray! That's how fast May goes--like lightning. I'm so happy she got a brood out before the snakes got to them. It's a race in May, a race to procreate before the predators wake up.

On Mother's Day, Baker helped me shoot some crappy redstart pictures. He watched intently as I focused on the tiny bird flitting over my head in the ash tree. A pair of towhees started scratching in the litter just inside the thicket. Baker's ears perked and he listened, considering whether to give chase.

He glanced up at me as a child would, looking for guidance. "Those are towhees, Baker. Just birds. Mother's birds." And that angelic little dog relaxed and sat down, content to listen, not chase.Yes, Mether. I know a towhee when I hear one. If that was a chiptymunk, I would chase it, just so you know.

It's a grab bag, this post, but then so is May. Everything happens in May.

Jane, this one's for you. Welcome home!! and thanks again for the best doggie in the whole universe.

West Virginia Backroads

There's someting to be said for being out all day for three days, just looking and watching. The things you see! I guess I'll get the not-so-pretty things out of the way first. Our group of 20 or so birders was probably the most interesting thing that had happened on a certain gravel back road for some time. We got an escort of kids, each armed with a different weapon, and a pack of dogs. Some looked healthy. Some didn't. Katdoc and I had a hard time with that, a real hard time. Demodectic mange. Awful. Katdoc said that all dogs are born with the mites that cause this horrible affliction, just like we all have mites in our eyelashes and and eyebrows. But some dogs with compromised immune systems succumb to the infestation. Still, there was a dignity and a certain beauty about this miserable dog the boys were calling Jake. I like this photo, heartbreaking as it is.
On the same road, sleepy duskywings were waking up in the unaccustomed sun.Not far away, a blue-winged warbler probed inside the blossoms of a buckeye tree, looking for insects. The scale of the leaves and this inflorescence seems positively tropical. I always love making pictures that tell something of how a bird feeds and lives. This killdeer is at home in riprap, sitting her eggs.You just have to love tree swallows. This little gal has made her home in a decorative house, over a matching mailbox, barely three feet off the ground. So close to habitation, she may just dodge the snakes. I said a little prayer for her and her eggs. You can't put a baffle on every nestbox, Zick.
I'll leave you with another quintessentially West Virginian image--an eastern kingbird, teed up on a gravestone, with lots of silk flowers as a backdrop. Birds lend such grace to any scene. The flycatchers make up in flair what they lack in bright colors. Our first kingbird--a female--arrived today. I hope she starts tugging at the basket of nesting material I put out for her!