The Master of Crappy Warbler Photos

'Tis the season when our in-boxes and social media accounts are flooded with gorgeous bird imagery from our shutter-buggy friends who are sharing their most recent photographic tours de force. From well-known migration hotspots like High Island, Magee Marsh, and Central Park, an almost constant stream of bird photographs (usually of male warblers in their spring finery) floods your world. 

At first it's wonderful to see these striking images—they whet the appetite for your chance to get out there for a swim in the river of spring songbird migration. Then your reaction transitions slowly to one of envy, even jealousy. And by the time the final stages (grief and anger) hit you, you're thinking about giving up birding, photography, and social media for good.

Why do THEY (your talented photographer friends) get to spend endless days frolicking through the woods, marshes, and parks snapping away to their hearts' content while you have to sit here in your cubicle at work, cursing yourself for not taking the entire months of April and May as vacation/sick/personal emergency days.

But the joy keeps building. When you finally get out there with the birds, it's rainy and cold and the migration is pretty much over. You get some dark shots of American robins and red-winged blackbirds and one shot of a Canada goose family. But that's it. Maybe you're like me and you're struggling with an older camera that's not as easy to use [idiot-proof] as some of the newer DX/FX Mark XXVIII with the 800 fixed and a 1.4 converter with the Beamer thingy and a 'roided-up battery pack that lets you take 2,750 frames per second. I've got a Canon 30D with a 300mm fixed lens that has a mind of its own. Its auto focus takes longer than the 17-year locusts. When the shutter finally clicks, it sounds like one of the doors slamming shut in the intro to Get Smart. Canon keeps e-mailing me saying they want it for their exhibit at The Smithsonian Museum of Ancient Technology. It will sit right next to the cotton gin and the rotary phone.

It's at this point that you know—in your heart of hearts—that if one more person says "You shoulda been here last Saturday! It was a HUGE fallout" YOU. WILL. MURDER. THEM.

Rest easy, fellow non-traveler. I am here to assuage your feelings of being left out and left behind. To wash away that bitter taste left from seeing the 347th stunning shot of a male Blackburnian warbler, in deep tones of black, white, and Valencia orange, making duck lips at the camera. 

For I am just like you. I am a taker of crappy bird photos. I am a misser of migration. I am a gainfully employed, never-gonna-retire, working-for-the-weekend, gazer at the passing parade of nearly pornographic bird images as they drift past my open digital window. And I feel your pain.

Here is my antidote. I am posting, below, my crappiest warbler photos from two days this past week when I walked the boardwalk at Magee Marsh. During the past 10 days the photos coming out of Magee and The Biggest Week in American Birding have been stunning. And I took none of them. You perhaps did not either. 

So, like Jamie Lee Curtis proudly showing off her middle-aged, unretouched body and face, I am sharing these unedited images as a way to strike a blow for us normal bird photography folks. This is how OUR photos look. And they are realer than real, man. I only hope the world can handle them.

Male blackpoll warbler, imperfectly backlit.

Male Cape May warbler, butt-only. Shout-out to my buddy Dave, who specializes in burdbuttz.

Please Mr. Autofocus, focus on the stick, NOT on the bird. Thanks! Cape May warbler male.

This would be a perfect shot of sunlit ash leaves but for the blurry chestnut-sided warbler that photo-bombed it.

Magnolia warbler, fleeing the frame.

Beheaded magnolia warbler.

Yes, that's a male northern parula. Trust me.

Black-throated green playing hide-n-seek.

Perhaps the first photographic evidence of the ghost of an male American redstart.

So there you have it, friends. My photographic tour de farce. And I give you my word that none of these images was processed or tweaked in any way—because I'm sure you were wondering.

Peace, my brothers and sisters, and I'll see you out there with the birds (and without my camera).

BOTB

Christmas in April: Arrivals Pouring In!

Blue-gray gnatcatcher.

 

 

 

This spring every new day feels a little bit like Christmas morning.

It was a brutal, long, gloomy winter here in southeastern Ohio and springlike weather has been slow to arrive. But now that the insect-eating songbirds are beginning to make their spring appearances, I awake each morning full of anticipation about what gifts may have flown in from the south on the night breezes. This is why it's Christmas-like. Just like every Christmas Day morning for the past five decades, I'm rearing to go and full of "Can't wait!"

Often, these last few weeks, my very first thought—before my eyes are open—is: "I'll bet today is the day that the hummingbirds (or tree swallows, or blue-winged warblers, or wood thrushes) get back." The little, brightly feathered "presents" that Nature brings us each spring—in dribs and drabs at first, then in a marvelous gush of song and color as migration reaches its peak.

Oddly our current spring migration has been somewhat inconsistent with our records for returning dates of migrants. Hummingbirds are several days late. Tree swallows are back all around us but ours have not appeared, making us worry about their fate. Only a few warblers have come back—so far no tanagers or orioles. 

Male yellow warbler.

It's all right. Let them take their time. After all, the anticipation is almost as wonderful as seeing and hearing an old familiar friend, returned from a winter away from this old ridgetop farm.

White-eyed vireo.

 

My first vireo of the spring was a male white-eyed vireo that was singing in our orchard on April 11, several days early according to our records. [We've been keeping arrival, departure, and nesting records here on Indigo Hill for 20 years. White-eyed vireos usually arrive each spring on April 15 or 16.]

Singing male ovenbird. Photo by Julie Zickefoose.

I was giddy to hear an ovenbird on Monday of this week. His song is so loud and percussive that it's hard to miss. I'm sure he was not back sooner. He was drifting around the old orchard to the west of our house, singing half-heartedly. By early May our woods will be ringing with the songs of ovenbirds and a dozen other warbler species.

Like the song says: "Springtime, you know it is my songbirds' sing time." And that's music to my ears.

Fall Migration: It's Starting!

I walked into Julie's studio yesterday afternoon to ask her something and a flash of zippy-swoopy movement in the birches just outside the windows caught my eye. I knew right away it was a warbler and not one of the 27 goldfinches, dozen titmice, or half-dozen chickadees that were flitting from trees to feeders to bird bath.

But how did I know it was a warbler?

I'm not completely sure. There are clues that the human brain can gather, sort, and decipher in a matter of milliseconds. All I saw was one quick swoop from one birch to another and my brain instantly said "Warbler!" If I had to 'splain it, I'd say it was something about the size, color, and style of movement—all things that I'd seen before, deduced, and confirmed. But I'm only grasping for an explanation here. All I know is that I instantly knew what family that feathered thing belonged to, and I was determined to see it better.

The warbler, in a show of fair play, hopped from the back of the bird tree to our side, which sent us scampering for binoculars and cameras. It was a female yellow-throated warbler! And this surely signalled the start of fall migration—in late July!

For the next 10 minutes we watched her glean insects and tiny caterpillars from the birch leaves. Man, our gray birches ALWAYS deliver the warblers. This might be the single most bird-friendly tree species on our farm, even though they do not do well in our clay soil and hot, dry summers.


Each late summer through mid-fall we get our annual influx of yellow-throated warblers. They nest down along the creek on Goss' Fork and after the breeding season is over, they come a-hill-toppin' up to our ridge top farm, looking for food or perhaps just exploring before the start of migration.

One of our first falls here at Indigo Hill, as we were out on the deck enjoying a fine morning of birding, a male yellow-throated warbler dropped out of the sky and landed on our stone chimney just two feet from us. It then flew to the deck railing a foot from us. Then it landed on the tripod leg two inches from my knee. It cocked its head as if to make certain we noticed his fine fall plumage, newly molted in for migration. Then he swooped over to our newly planted sycamore. This last act was almost too much for me—I grew up calling this warbler by its original name sycamore warbler.
My final view of Lady Sycamore, just before she slipped away. I dig her golden slippers!

After I left Julie's studio, heading back downstairs to do some podcast recording and editing, a young male American redstart and a female cerulean warbler also came through the birches. I missed them, but I certainly didn't miss the start of fall migration!

Philly Vireo Invasion

Fall provides the best birding on our farm in southeastern Ohio. And the middle weeks of September are the peak of fall passerine migration. Among the birds we see more regularly in the fall than spring is the Philadelphia vireo. This morning, when the sun started warming the birch trees in our yard, the foliage came alive with foraging warblers and vireos. By far the most numerous species was the Philly vireo.

Several birds (there were at least 10 Philly vireos) paused long enough in the birches to have their picture taken. Though these images aren't great, they represent the pinnacle of my Philly vireo photography career.

There is something about the face of a Philly vireo that makes it instantly recognizable to me. The gray cap, white lines curving above and below the large, black eye, and the somewhat stubby-appearing bill all combine to help me put a name on this gray-yellow-green leaf-skulker whenever I see it.

The field guides will point to the yellow-washed underparts and the dark spot before the eye (or in some cases a thin black line through the eye). But this species can vary in appearance. Pale Phillys can be easily confused with warbling vireos.

Also making an appearance this morning, in the few short hours before I headed in to work at BWD: magnolia, Tennessee, Nashville, black-throated green, Cape May, bay-breasted, blackpoll, and Blackburnian warblers and American redstart. I heard a singing black-and-white warbler, but did not see it.

A Warbler Charm Bracelet

Male Canada warbler.

When I was a kid, my grandma Thompson had a charm bracelet that she'd wear most days. I loved flipping the charms through my fingers, asking her about each one—where it came from, who gave it to her, what it symbolized. She'd patiently tell me the story of every charm.

While flipping through some of my bird photographs from this spring, I got to the sets of images I took at Magee Marsh in mid-May and I was surprised at the number of species—particularly warbler species—of which I got decent images. Decent=web-usable, nice to look at, but not publication-quality.

If you'd asked me while I was there, I'd have said I got a few, but mostly I wasn't quick enough, the light was bad, I lacked the right equipment (an external flash unit is what the pros use there), blah-blah-blah. It WAS frustrating shooting there, and after a while I just decided to look at birds and enjoy them. That lasted a few minutes, until yet another beautiful wood warbler hopped into the sunlight on a branch, six feet away, then it was click-click-click.

So, here is my charm bracelet of warblers from two days in May at Magee Marsh. I'd love to share these with Grandma Thompson, but she's no longer alive. Who knows, maybe she's seeing them anyway?

Male Wilson's warbler.

Male black-throated green warbler.

Male magnolia warbler.

Female Cape May warbler.

Male black-throated blue warbler.

Male bay-breasted warbler.

Male prothonotary warbler.

Male chestnut-sided warbler.

Lucky Shot: Black-throated Green

While following colorful, feathered sprites around Magee Marsh last weekend, I managed to score a few lucky shots. This one I especially like. It's a male black-throated green warbler and it looks like he's singing. But if you look closely, you can see he's actually noshing on a small insect.

So there I was, having taking this warbler's picture, and I started thinking about mortality. The thought crossed my mind, as I strolled farther along the Magee boardwalk with insectivorous birds all around me, that if I were to be reincarnated as an insect or caterpillar, I REALLY hope it's not in May on the south shore of Lake Erie. That would be a very short life indeed.

The Reality of Warbler Photography

Cameras purchased by bird watchers who want to become bird photographers should come with a warning sticker that says:

Bird photography is not as easy as it looks.
In fact, it's not even close to being easy!
You need to be prepared to be extremely disappointed
in the images you'll be getting despite spending all this money.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
And no, there's nothing wrong with your camera.

That sort of fair warning/truth in advertising would go a long way to helping me feel better about the plethora of warbler images I take that look like this:

Or the ones that look like this:


Or this. Great photo of vegetation, perfectly in focus, hiding a blurry bird.



And then, before you figure things out, the bird bolts. Sweet!

But if the birding gods are smiling, the bird does a 180 and stops to check you out for just five seconds more, and you get this (below), an image which is JUST GOOD ENOUGH to keep you coming back, camera in hand, chasing after colorful fleeting things with wings.


Cropping and tweaking results in an image that is good enough for the old blog, but probably won't pass muster for the cover of National Geographic. Still, what a handsome devil this male magnolia warbler is!

Happy shutter-bugging to every bird watcher who is similarly afflicted.

Warblers Up Close

Bay-breasted warbler, probably an old female, at Magee Marsh.

Having lived in Ohio for most of my birding life as a grown-up (relatively speaking), you'd think that catching the phenomenal warbler and songbird migration at Magee Marsh along Lake Erie's southern shore would be something I'd experienced annually. Most avid bird watchers in Ohio (and in the surrounding states for that matter) get to Magee at some point during the height of spring migration—between mid-April and mid-May.

To a migrant songbird in spring, Magee Marsh is the perfect rest stop before flying over Lake Erie and into Canada. When the wind is blowing from north to south (a headwind for migrants) the birds drop into the trees at Magee to rest, forage, and wait for more favorable traveling weather.

I'd been to the famous Magee boardwalk in spring, but always a bit too early or too late to catch many migrants. And I was there once with a team of birders trying to break Ohio's Big Day record. We timed things perfectly for everywhere in the state, except Magee, which was practically birdless on that May morning. Perfect weather—clear skies and a south to north wind—encourages the northbound birds to keep on moving across Lake Erie. And we chose for our Big Day attempt, a perfect weather day for the birds to keep on flying north. We ended that day deep in the wilds of southern Ohio, with 186 species (well short of the record) and with a bunch of unchecked boxes among the warblers on our checklist.

Last weekend the Ohio Ornithological Society held its annual meeting not too far from Magee Marsh. As a board member of this fine organization, I was required to be at the meeting, with the happy knowledge that it would REQUIRE me to spend two mornings watching birds at one of North America's most famous warbler hotspots.

The first day, Saturday, was overcast but warm at the start. By the time we left Magee around 11:45 AM to head to some other local birding sites, it was getting cooler and starting to rain. Still, we saw 20 warbler species, three vireo species, three thrush species, and so on. It was my best day ever at Magee. My fellow bird watchers chuckled at my enthusiasm.

Then came Sunday. Sunny and cold at daybreak, it did not really warm up until well into the afternoon. Bird watchers along the boardwalk gathered in crowds within the scattered pools of sunlight. If I'd thought Saturday was good, Sunday was amazing. Thousands of newly arrived birds moved through the trees, brush, and undergrowth. Everywhere you looked there was movement and song. People called out warbler names to no one in particular, with a mixture of joy and wonder in their voices. I thought to myself: This must be what heaven is like for birders. Except heaven would have a few more Porto potties and beautiful angels would be plying us all with warm doughnuts and hot coffee. But this was pretty close!

The boardwalk at Magee is crowded with bird watchers from late April through mid-May.

There were more female warblers present on Sunday, and more young, first-spring males, giving us a chance to note the subtle differences in plumage. However the most incredible thing about Sunday's bird action was the behavior of many of the migrants. Whether it was hunger, the cold temperatures, or just the rush of the migratory imperative, many of the warblers were low in the vegetation, foraging and singing actively, seeming to be oblivious to the humans a few feet or even mere inches away! And it's not like we were all being quiet and respectful. Cameras clicked, beeped, whirred, and flashed. Birders shouted to one another and narrated the birds' every moves:

"OH MY! LOOK at this bird! COOL! He just caught a bug! Now he's flitting over here! He's attacking that other bird. Oh, he's gonna poop! WOW! What a great LOOK! I can't BELIEVE THIS!" and so on.

But that was not all.

I heard at least three throaty cries of ecstasy—the kind of sounds that are usually accompanied by bad dialogue, cheesy jazz, and a rating beyond the reach of NC-17.

Like I said, the birding was good.

To illustrate one of my own close encounters of the warbler kind, here is a short video (rated G) that I shot with my point-and-shoot camera.

You can hear some birders talking in the background, including Jon Dunn, author of several key field guides, including the National Geographic Field Guide to Birds of North America. This male black-throated blue warbler was less than two feet from me, on the trunk of the tree, completely unperturbed by all the chattering humans draped in expensive optics.

I already know where I want to be when the birds come back next May.

Washington County Big Day 2009

What is that old saying about publicity? I don't care how you talk about me, just talk about me?

Saturday morning, May 9, 2009, came mighty early for those of us who were playing a gig at the Whipple/Wrangler Tavern the night before. But did that stop us from getting up at some ungodly hour to tally birds in the Mostly Annual Washington County, Ohio Big Day? Nope.

When I was a mere boy bird watcher, under the watchful tutelage of Mrs Pat Murphy and my mom Elsa Thompson, it was an annual ritual each May to try to see 100 species within Washington County, Ohio, where we all lived. We called it a Century Day—get it? Century=100 species!

I think I remember maybe one year when we got 100+ species. Nowadays with all our newfangled technology, including the Tubes of the Interwebs and The Google, we can pinpoint the location of happening bird action on a minute-by-minute basis. Our friends can tell us where all the warblers are warblering and where all the tanagers are tanagering.

These days, three full decades removed from Pat Murphy's Century Days, it's The Whipple Bird Club that has taken up the chalice and taken on the challenge of trying to top 100 species in little old Washington County, Ohio. This is an account of how things went on Saturday.

After we finished our gig on Friday night/Saturday morning, we loaded up the vans and cars with gear and everyone hit the road. I stayed behind a moment to collect my thoughts—the only person still extant at The Whipple/Wrangler Tavern. And I was rewarded for my fortitude by the nocturnal flight call of a Swainson's thrush! A mere 20 minutes later, as I traipsed up the walk to the house, I added species #2: An American woodcock which kindly peented its way onto the list.

And then I slept for 2.5 hours.

To start the daylight portion our Big Day, I rolled my tired carcass up the stairs to our birding tower. Day was dawning and the birds were already aloft, calling, or stirring themselves to life. But the clouds in the West indicated a day of unsettled weather. In quick succession I heard or saw a dozen, then two dozen species. By 7:15 am I was up to 45 species. That's when Shila showed up and added her bird-spotting skills to the team effort. The wind picked up and we pulled on additional coats against the wind. At least it was not raining.

The day started off promisingly from the birding tower.

The Whipple Bird Club is four core members: me, Julie Zickefoose, Shila Wilson, and Steve McCarthy. We've got lots of honorary members, but, it's the four core peeps who wave the flag of the good ol' WBC.

Every Big Day has a few birds that are total surprises and a few that completely skunk you. One of our early surprises was a merlin that Shila and I saw skirt the tower not once but twice! I got a bad photo of it flying away, having missed on its chance to nail a tree swallow.

Julie floated up the tower stairs about 8 am, bearing more coffee and some munchies. We were somewhere north of 50 species. Three hours later we were ready to leave Indigo Hill for the rest of the county and we had 70 species.

Pine siskins were still hanging around after last winter's influx.

A gorgeous male rose-breasted grosbeak came close enough for digiscoping.

Our male blue-winged warbler sang from the end of the orchard.

Phoebe and Chet came up to check on us in the tower.

Down the road just a couple of miles, we came across an eastern box turtle. It was a beautiful adult male and we helped him across the road to wherever he was going.

The box turtle we saved.

The Whipple Bird Club flashes its gangland hand signs near the Belpre Bridge (where there were no peregrines).

After poking around the western part of the county in a largely fruitless search for some long-shot species, and waiting to pick up the Royal Meteorologist of the WBC, Steve McCarthy, we headed back toward Marietta, the county seat, for some more familiar birding turf. We got the bobolinks not far from Route 676 where they've nested for a few years. We got American kestrel and killdeer there, too. Then it was off to the Kroger Wetland for some target shorebirds. We got both spotted sandpiper and solitary sandpiper there, plus willow flycatcher and house wren. A bonus yellow-billed cuckoo flew over. We dipped out on phothonotary warbler, however.

It was 5:00 pm and we had 96 species. The county record (unofficial) is 110 set by Steve, Shila, and me in 2007. We ate LEAST wanted to tie that. Preferably we'd beat the living tar out of it.

Spotted sandpiper at the Kroger Wetlands.

Steve scans the Kroger Wetlands while Liam and Phoebe dream.

Then we headed up the Ohio River for some other hopeful hotspots counting every species we got and plotting to add the next bird. We ran into a streak of shorebirds at the tank farm along Ohio 7: greater and lesser yellowlegs, plus an unexpected snowy egret. Then we hit Newell's Run. By this time it was already dinner time and the sun was sinking below the hills. We added a few of the expected warblers along Newell's Run: Louisiana waterthrush, yellow-throated warbler, and

Trying to drum up a few target birds on Newell's Run.

Bored kids will find something to climb.

By 8:30 pm we were deep in the woods of Wayne National Forest, hoping for a cerulean warbler. We got no joy. By 9:10 pm it was actively dark and the kids were weeping from hunger (as were we). A calling whip-poor-will came in as species #108 and we called it a day.

We pulled out ALL the stops in our effort to find more than 100 species.

I stepped outside the house a couple of times before midnight, but the wind was howling and the rain spitting and I knew that no self-respecting owl would be calling in such weather.

108. One shy of tying the record, which still stands.

Of course, the next day dawned clear and sunny and still and I felt like doing it all over again.
But would I?